"I don't want to dream. They might be horrid dreams--"
And then Jeanette came down, and poured their coffee, and asked about
the news in the morning paper.
Dressed for her trip to the circus, Anne looked like a girl in her
teens--white skirt and short green coat--stout sports shoes and white
hat. She wore her silver beads, and Christopher said, "I'm not sure that
I would if I were you."
"Why not?"
"In such a crowd."
But she kept them on.
They motored to the circus grounds, and came in out of the white glare
to the cool dimness of the tent as if they had dived from the sun-bright
surface of the sea. But there the resemblance ceased. Here was no
silence, but blatant noise--roar and chatter and shriek, the beat of the
tom-tom, the thin piping of a flute--the crash of a band. But it was the
thin piping which Christopher followed, guiding Anne with his hand on
her arm.
Following the plaintive note, they came at last to the snake-charmer--an
old man in a white turban. The snakes were in a covered basket. He sat
with his feet under him and piped.
Christopher spoke to him in a strange tongue. The piping broke off
abruptly and the man answered with eagerness. There was a quick
interchange of phrases.
"I know his village," Christopher said; "he is going to show you his
snakes."
A crowd gathered, but the snake-charmer saw only the big man who had
spoken to his homesick heart, and the girl with the silver beads. He
knew another girl who had had a string of beads like that--and they had
brought her luck--a dark-skinned girl, his daughter. Her husband had
bestowed the beads on her marriage night, and her first child had been a
son.
He put the thin reed to his lips, and blew upon it. The snakes lifted
their heads. He drew them up and out of the basket, and put them through
their fantastic paces. Then he laid aside his pipe, shut them in their
basket, and spoke to Christopher.
"He says that no evil can teach you while you wear the beads,"
Christopher told Anne.
The old man, with his eyes on her intent face, spoke again. "What you
think is evil--cannot be evil," Christopher interpreted. "The gods know
best."
They moved toward the inner tent.
"Are you tired?" Christopher asked. "We don't have to stay."
"I want to stay," and so they went in, and presently with a blare of
trumpets the great parade began. They looked down on men and women in
Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on
camels--painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan
chairs--Cleopatra, Pompadour--history reduced to pantomime, color
imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the
crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer
showed in the press of the crowd.
Christopher's eyes went to Anne. She was leaning forward, one hand
clasping the silver beads. He would have given much to know what was in
her mind. How little she was and how young. And how he wanted to get her
away from the thing which hung suspended over her like a keen-edged
sword.
But to get her away--how? He could never get her away from her thoughts.
Unless....
Suddenly he heard her laughing. Two clowns were performing with a lot of
little dogs. One of the dogs was a poodle who played the fool. "What a
darling," Anne was saying.
There was more than they could look at--each ring seemed a separate
circus--one had to have more than a single pair of eyes. Christopher was
blind to it all--except when Anne insisted, "Look--look!"
Six acrobats were in the ring--four men and two women. Their tights were
of a clear shimmering blue, with silver trunks. One could not tell the
women from the men, except by their curled heads, and their smaller
stature. They were strong, wholesome, healthy. Christopher knew the
quality of that health--hearts that pumped like machines--obedient
muscles under satin skins. One of the women whirled in a series of
handsprings, like a blue balloon--her body as fluid as quicksilver. If
he could only borrow one-tenth of that endurance for Anne--he might keep
her for years.
Then came Pantaloon, and Harlequin and Columbine. The old man was funny,
but the youth and the girl were exquisite--he, diamond-spangled and lean
as a lizard, she in tulle skirts and wreath of flowers. They did all the
old tricks of masks and slapping sticks, of pursuit and retreat, but
they did them so beautifully that Anne and Christopher sat
spellbound--what they were seeing was not two clever actors on a sawdust
stage, but love in its springtime--girl and boy--dreams, rapture,
radiance.
Then, in a moment, Columbine was dead, and Harlequin wept over
her--frost had killed the flower--love and life were at an end.
Christopher was drawing deep breaths. Anne was tense. But
now--Columbine was on her feet, and Harlequin was blowing kisses to the
audience!
"Let's get out of this," Christopher said, almost roughly, and led Anne
down the steps and into the almost deserted outer tent. They looked for
the snake-charmer, but he was gone. "Eating rice somewhere or saying his
prayers," Christopher surmised.
"How could he know about the gods?" Anne asked, as they drove home.
"They know a great deal--these old men of the East," Christopher told
her, and talked for the rest of the way about the strange people among
whom he had spent so many years.
V
Ridgeley did not come home to dinner. He telephoned that he would be
late. It was close and warm. Christopher, sitting with Anne and Jeanette
on the porch, decided that a storm was brewing.
Anne was restless. She went down into the garden, and Christopher
followed her. She wore white, and he was aware of the rose scent. He
picked a rose for her as he passed through the garden. "Bend your head,
and I'll put it in your hair."
"I can't wear pink."
"It is white in the dusk--" He put his hands on her shoulders, stopped
her, and stuck the rose behind her ear. Then he let her go.
They came to the grove of birches, and sat down on the stone seat. It
had grown dark, and the lightning flashing up from the horizon gave to
the birches a spectral whiteness--Anne was a silver statue.
"It was queer," she said, "about the old man at the circus."
"About the beads?"
"Yes. I wonder what he meant, Christopher? _'What you think is
evil--cannot be evil'?_ Do you think he meant--Death?"
He did not answer at once, then he said, abruptly, "Anne, how did it
happen that you and Ridgeley drifted apart?"
"Oh, it's hard to tell."
"But tell me."
"Well, when we were first married, I expected so much ... things that
girls dream about--that he would always have me in his thoughts, and
that our lives would be knit together. I think we both tried hard to
have it that way. I used to ride with him on his rounds, and he would
tell me about his patients. And at night I'd wait up for him, and have
something to eat, and it was--heavenly. Ridgeley was so ... fine. But
his practice got so big, and sometimes he wouldn't say a word when I
rode with him.... And he would be so late coming in at night, and he'd
telephone that I'd better go to bed.... And, well, that was the
beginning. I don't think it is really his fault or mine ... it's just
... life."
"It isn't life, and you know it," passionately. "Anne, if you had
married me ... do you think...?" He reached out in the dark and took
her hand. "Oh, my dear, we might as well talk it out."