THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
For an 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
that had 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 now
looking 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 his heart 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.