CHAPTER XVIIITHE MYSTERY DEEPENS
Foran instant the fierce, bright eyes of the old hag softened. Her bony fingers hovered over Bomba’s hair, as though they would have stroked it.
Then she threw back her head and laughed, a harsh, cackling laugh that caused Bomba to wince and shrink back as from the sharp thrust of a knife.
“Eh, Bartow, you would have a joke with Sobrinini, my fine one,” croaked the old crone, wagging her finger in Bomba’s face and leering at him in a way she meant to be facetious. “No, no, Bartow—or Bartow’s ghost—that was not your mother’s song, but the song of your wife——”
“My wife!” the words broke from Bomba impetuously. “What mean you, Sobrinini?”
“Ah, you would still have your joke with Sobrinini, eh?” The old woman leaned forward again and tapped him on the arm with her skinny finger. “But you cannot forget that song, Bartow, the song your wife sang after Bonny was born.”
But when Bomba would have questioned her further, she pushed him away from her and began to sing again.
“La la la! la la la!” she sang.
It was the gay and vibrant melody that poor Casson had tried to sing.
Bomba could do nothing but stand in bewildered silence and watch the old woman as she danced and sang, whirling about the poor stage with a nimbleness that was amazing in one of her age.
Confusedly, he tried to think of the things she had said to him, but beneath the wild spell of that performance he could reason nothing out, and could only stare dazedly at this wreck of what had once been a great genius.
What would happen to him, Bomba wondered, when the woman tired of dancing and perhaps found out that he was not Bartow or Bartow’s ghost as she thought him then, but only Bomba, a boy of the jungle.
With one last twirl and a deep bow to an imaginary audience, Sobrinini brought her weird performance to an end. She grinned toothlessly at the staring boy, and skipped lightly to the edge of the platform.
“Ha, Bartow, like you Sobrinini in the dance that charmed all Paris?” she chirped, patting Bomba’s shoulder coquettishly. “Sobrinini has not lost her art. How say you, Bartow?”
Bomba felt that he must keep her in good humor with him if he were to gain that information about himself for which he had risked so much. He had already learned something—or guessed something. Perhaps he could learn more.
“I like your dance,” he told her gravely. “But I like best the song that Bartow’s wife sang when—when——”
“When Bonny was born?” prompted the old woman, and without waiting for a reply began to hum again that tender melody that had found its way to the depths of Bomba’s heart.
It thrilled the boy again more strangely than before. When the song was done, emotion conquered Bomba’s caution, and he flung out his hands to Sobrinini, begging her to tell him what she knew about Bartow, about Bartow’s wife, about the child that she had called Bonny.
But Sobrinini drew back from him, quick suspicion glinting in her eyes.
“No, no! Not now, Bartow, not now! It is another joke that you play on Sobrinini. No, no! To-night you will sleep here and to-morrow I will pay back your jokes with some of my own. Come! I will show you where you are to sleep.”
So saying, and mumbling to herself as she had before, the demented woman led him out of the strange room with the chairs and platform thathad so bewildered the boy and down a long, dark passage.
There Sobrinini paused and clapped her hands sharply.
As though by magic, a figure appeared out of the darkness before them.
“A torch!” croaked Sobrinini. “A torch to drive the shadows back into the night. Bring a torch. Make haste.”
The figure disappeared and in a few seconds returned with a light. The features of the slave seemed savage and sinister in the flickering illumination.
“Give it to me! Give it to me!” cried Sobrinini irritably. “Now, slave, begone!”
Instantly the figure vanished again, and Bomba looked about him apprehensively. For a moment he had the fantastic notion that the shadows all about him were filled with ghostly figures that appeared and disappeared by magic and made no noise.
But Sobrinini stalked before him, flaring torch in hand. Bomba followed her into a room so small that the farthest corners were made bright by the wavering light of the torch.
As Bomba entered the place he had a strange feeling that he had seen it before, had been in it before, had once looked about him as he was nowlooking at the few articles of furniture and the pictures on the walls.
But even while he felt this so strongly that it seemed almost uncanny, Bomba knew that it could not be so and that it was impossible he had ever enacted this scene or anything like it before.
In all his wild life in the jungle, he had never seen anything like that strange object in one corner of the room, raised from the floor by posts and covered with a cloth. If Bomba had been told that the strange object was a bed, he would have been no better informed than before. As far as he could remember, he had never slept in anything like that in his life.
While he was taking in the various features of the room, Sobrinini deposited the torch in a socket on the wall and turned again to Bomba.
“Bartow,” she said, and there was that softened light in her wild eyes that had appeared there while she was singing the tender lullaby that Bartow’s wife had crooned to Bonny, “this is where you sleep while you remain with Sobrinini on her island. Good-night, Bartow, or Bartow’s ghost, and pleasant dreams!”
Then she turned and, noiselessly as a ghost or a shadow, glided from the room.
Bomba stood where she had left him, motionless.
What was that strange feeling that made hisheart swell within him until he could not bear the pain of it, that made him reach out wildly, beseechingly, for some vague, beautiful thing that he had never known, or only dimly remembered?
What was it that suddenly made him feel his loneliness and desolation more keenly than he had ever felt it in his life, as though he had been given for a moment a glimpse of something warm and friendly and sweet, only to have the curtain fall again and leave him in his solitude, more utterly alone than he had ever been before?
What was it that drew him haltingly, almost fearfully, across the tiny room to stop beneath a picture on the wall and, with his hungry eyes upraised, stare at it intently?
Bomba could not tell. He only knew that within him there was a growing tumult of emotions, fear, hope, doubt, and a longing so fierce that it was pain.
Into the jungle lad’s upturned, pleading face the beautiful eyes in the picture looked steadily and gravely down. It was a lovely face, girlish and sweet, with soft hair waved back from a broad, low forehead and with eyes one knew were soft and dark. The lips turned up at the corners, half-smiling.
Bomba had never seen that beautiful pictured face before, as far as he could remember. Then how was it that those great eyes looking into his,those sweet lips parted as though to speak to him, touched a chord in him that had never before resounded, and increased a thousandfold his longing for that vague and beautiful thing that he had never known?
She was even fairer than the woman with the golden hair. Yes, much more fair and sweet.
Suddenly Bomba’s eyes were full of tears, and he heard himself crying in a voice that shook:
“Mother! Mother!”
With both hands upraised toward the beautiful face, Bomba slid slowly to the floor and lay there, his frame shaking with unaccustomed sobs.
Softly, weirdly, tenderly, there floated to the lad, as though from a great distance, the strain of that sweet melody, the song that Bartow’s wife had sung to Bonny.
Long after the lullaby had died away Bomba remained there, motionless, crouched beneath the picture, one arm before his eyes.