CHAPTER VII.
[THE NEGRO JUGGLER.]
Meanwhile two unusual things had taken place in Chetwynd Street; from the western end (the street ran nearly due east and west) the canons regarding broadcloth had been violated once more, for John Hanbury, twenty-six years of age, of independent fortune, had entered it in a black frock coat and low black felt hat, with Dora Ashton, aged twenty, to whom he was privately engaged to be married. Dora had never seen any of the poorer parts of London, and he, after much expostulation and objection, consented to escort her through Chetwynd Street, not a mile distant from Westminster Abbey.
At the eastern end, William Sampson, Negro, and Street Entertainer, had entered, passed down the street until he came to Welbeck Place, and there prepared to perform, hoping to win a few coppers from the loungers about the mews and the Hanover public-house. Men with faces blackened by pursuit of various trades and arts were common in Chetwynd Street; but a black man, wholly a product of nature, was a rare visitor.
"I--I never was in a place of this kind before, Jack," said Dora Ashton, clinging more closely to Hanbury's arm as they moved along the left-hand side of the street.
"I should think not," he said shortly. He did not like the expedition at all. He was not accustomed to wearing a round topped hat when escorting a lady in London; but on this occasion he put one on rather than provoke the inhabitants to throw brickbats at him. When Dora suggested that he should wear a tweed coat he declined point blank. A line most be drawn somewhere.
"I'm--I'm not in--in the least afraid, Jack," she said with grave tremulousness in her fresh voice.
"Not in the least, of course!" he said ungraciously, scornfully. "But you would come, you know. Nice place, eh? Nice looking houses, eh? Aren't you glad you came?" His manner was contemptuous, almost fierce. Jack Hanbury had the reputation of being, clever, extremely clever. He was very fond of Dora, but like many clever young men, he had a great scorn of women when they assumed, or took an interest in things out of their sphere. Dora knew the impetuous, volcanic nature of Jack, and, under ordinary circumstances, admired and smiled at his outbursts, for she knew that while they might be provoked by her, personally, they were not directed against her personally, but against her sex generally.
"Indeed, Jack, you wrong me, if you think I am alarmed. I am only surprised, not frightened."
"You would come, you know," he repeated, a little softened. The heart of the man would be hard indeed, if he could be insensible to the beauty of her face and her voice, and the touch of her trembling, confiding, delicate, brown-gloved hand.
With a little shudder of reassurance, she looked round, "And, Jack, are these the people who live here?"
"Yes," he answered, moving his eyes from right to left in disdain, "these are the people who live here. I told you they weren't nice. Are they? How should you like to live here in this part of Westminster?"
She shuddered again and pressed his arm to convince herself of his presence and protection. "It is of no consequence whether I should like to live here or not----"
"No; because you are not obliged to live here."
"That is not what I was going to say. It is of no consequence whether I should like to live here or not. What is of consequence is that these poor people have to live here, Jack."
"They aren't people at all, I tell you. The people of no country are people in the sense of fine ladies."
"Jack!" she said, in protest and expostulation.
"They are not people, I say. It is only philanthropists and other idle men, and those who want the applause of the crowd, who call them people. Look at him, for instance. There is a creature who is more than one of the people. He is a Man, and a Brother too. Ugh!" Hanbury turned away in disgust.
William Sampson, the negro, a tall man with round shoulders and restless eyes, was gesticulating violently, at the open end of Welbeck Place, and addressing loud speech, apparently to the first-floor windows of the houses opposite him in Chetwynd Street.
"What is he, Jack?" asked the girl, whose composure was gradually returning.
"Can't you see, he's a Nigger?"
"I know. But what is he going to do? Why is there a crowd gathering about him?"
The two drew up under the windows which the Negro seemed to be addressing. A couple of dozen people had drifted near the Negro, who was now declaring, in stentorian voice, that he undertook to perform feats hitherto unattempted by man.
"I don't know what he's going to do, at first. Collect money in the end, I am certain. Conjuring; balancing straws or chairs; fire-eating, or something of that kind. Would you like to stay and see, Dora?" His manner softened still further, and he bent his body towards her in a caressing and lover-like way.
She looked up and down, apprehensively. "Yes, if you are not afraid."
"Afraid! Afraid!" he laughed, "afraid of what? You do not think he is a cannibal? and even if he were, they don't permit Niggers to eat harmless English folk in the public streets of London. The days for that kind of thing are gone by here," and he laughed again.
She looked at him protestingly. "You know I didn't mean any such folly. You ought to know what I did mean."
"I confess I don't. Tell me what you did mean."
She coloured slightly. "I meant did you think this is a fit place for me to stand still in?"
He became grave all at once and glanced hastily around. "No one of your acquaintance will see you here, if you mean that."
"Then I will stay," she answered with a little sigh. She had not dreaded any one seeing her. Jack was very dull, she thought.
He caught a look of disappointment on her face, and gathered from it that he had not answered her question as she expected. He added quickly: "They will not molest you, if that is your doubt."
She shook her head. "I cannot bear--it's very silly, I know--I cannot bear to hear people say dreadful things. Will that Negro swear, Jack?"
He laughed. "That Negro swear! Oh, dear no. The Lord Chamberlain would not license the piece if there were any bad language in it. Let us cross over, Dora, if you would really care to see. You may be sure he will use no bad language. He would not dare go half as far in that way as the writer of a comedy for a Quaker audience."
The two crossed and stood in front of Forbes's bakery, a few yards from the thin crowd around the Negro. The people noticing that the young girl and her companion were well dressed, fell back a little right and left to leave a clear view of the performer. The people did this not from servility or courtesy, but that the Negro might benefit by the contribution from the well-off strangers.
The Negro turned his face towards John Hanbury and Dora Ashton. He had beside him, on the ground, two cubes of stone, one the size of an iron half-hundredweight, the other somewhat bigger. In his hand he held a small square of thin board.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "like a great opera singer, I earn the bread I put into my mouth with the mouth I put it into. I have a lovely mouth," opening an enormous cavern and showing a magnificent set of teeth, the lower row of which projected half an inch beyond the upper.
Dora shuddered and clung closer to her companion. Hanbury straightened his back and squared his shoulders, and whispered: "Don't be afraid, Dora." He was tall and powerful, and solid-looking for a man of six-and-twenty. He could have answered for any man among the spectators. The Negro stood half-a-head taller, and looked powerful and stubborn. Hanbury surveyed him curiously and finished his examination by thinking, "I shouldn't mind taking him on. I dare say he knows how to use his fists." He himself had taken lessons with the gloves, and was a creditable amateur in the art. Young amateur boxers always look on every strange man as a possible antagonist. Hanbury felt great pleasure in his own physical prowess when he thought of the hand of the young girl on his arm and looked down at the pale olive face and into the confiding hazel eyes. "Don't be afraid." he murmured.
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen," the Negro went on, "I grind my own corn with my own mill-stones," showing his fine, large, white teeth. "Men in Parliament are celebrated for their jaw, so am I. I am like them all round. With my teeth and my mouth and my jaw, I get my living. Here is my stock in trade," patting his chin and cheek and teeth, "and I never can sell them that puts faith in me, as the Parliament men do, for these here things of mine would be no use to anyone else, and I couldn't sell 'em the same as votes if I would." He made a hideous grimace, at which there was another laugh mingled with a cheer.
This laugh brought Mr. Williams, landlord of the Hanover, to his door, and finally into the street. He glanced at the Negro and the crowd with benignant toleration, then turning his eyes upwards he saw Leigh at the window, whither he had been attracted by the noise of the crowd. The window was open, and Leigh was leaning out and watching the group below.
Williams called out to the hunchback, "His trumpeter isn't dead," nodding to the Negro. "Come down Mr. Leigh, and see the fun." A man who could afford to give good English money for a dead Egyptian prince would surely be interested in a living African black, whom he could see and hear for nothing.
Leigh hesitated for a moment, then called out, "All right," and disappeared from the window.
Meanwhile the athlete was continuing his harangue. Such artistes are prodigal of personal history, reticent of the feats they intend to perform. This one told the audience his name was William Sampson, but that the President of the United States, King Ja-Ja, and the Emperor of China, called him Black Sam, when he dined with them in private. "The ladies, who are to a man fond of me, call me Black Sam too. You may laugh, but you won't see me blush when you laugh at me. You don't find this Nigger so green as to blush because he's popular with the ladies. Not me! I was born at midnight, in the Black Country near Brummagem, that accounts for my dark complexion, and I'm in mourning for my great grandfather, Adam, which accounts for my being called Sam, and also for my nobby head of hair."
He paused awhile, and walked round the two cubes of stone which he had placed on the ground. He surveyed them as though they were living animals of priceless value. Then he returned to his first position facing Welbeck Place, and resumed:
"I carry them stones there about with me to prove to any man, who won't take my word for it, that I am the strongest jawed man in all the world. Ladies and gentlemen, when I was last in America, I went out West. You have often heard of the Rocky Mountains--there," pointing to the stones, "there they are. Now I am going to prove my words to you."
"What will he do with the stones, Jack?" whispered Dora, with some apprehension of danger.
"Eat them," answered Hanbury in a whisper. "Didn't you hear him say so?"
At this point Oscar Leigh opened the side door of Forbes's bakery, the door in Welbeck Place, and stepped into the street.
"You're just in time," shouted Williams, across the street, "He's going to begin."
John Hanbury, with Dora Ashton on his arm, was standing at the curb on the footway in Chetwynd Place against the blank wall of Forbes's bakery.
About fifty people, men, women, and children, were now gathered at the head of Welbeck Place. Half-a-dozen men stood behind the Negro, between him and the gateway of Welbeck Mews, at the end of the Place. There was a clear view of the Negro from where Hanbury and Miss Ashton stood, and from where Williams the landlord lounged directly opposite. When Leigh reached Williams's side nothing intervened between him and the stranger except the Negro.
Leigh took up his place by the landlord, without a word, and stood leaning heavily on his stick. He fixed his quick, piercing eyes on the Negro.
Black Sam had finished his introductory speech, and was getting ready for his performance. His preparations consisted in violent gestures menacing the four cardinal points of the heavens, and then the four cardinal points of earth, and finally the two stone cubes on the ground in front of him.
Leigh watched with a cynical smile. "What is he going to do with the stones, landlord?"
"Try which is the hardest, his head or them," said Williams, with a laugh. He had a great turn for humour when in the open air near his house.
"Then the stones are going to have a bad time?" said Leigh.
The Negro first took up the smaller block, tossed it high into the air, and let it fall on the road, saying, in a defiant voice, "Eighteen pounds." Then he took the larger block, and treating it in the same way, said, "Twenty-four pounds. The two together forty-two pounds!"
"And not an ounce more taken off for cash down?" said a man in the crowd.
"Any gentleman that doubts my word is at liberty to weigh them. If I am a pound out, I'll stand a bottle of champagne to the men, give a shilling's worth of jujubes to the children, and present each lady here with a gold wedding-ring." The people laughed.
"And a husband?" asked the man who had spoken before.
"And the best husband in this whole country--meaning myself." He placed his hand on his heart and bowed profoundly.
The people were in the best of good humour, except the children, who thought that a serious matter, such as jujubes, was being treated with disgraceful levity.
Then Black Sam began a series of tricks with the stones. Before starting, he placed on the ground the square piece of white thin board he held in his hand. It was about a quarter of an inch thick, and six inches by four. Then he balanced a stone on the point of the first finger of each hand, and then jerked the lesser stone from the point of his left fore-finger to the top of the larger stone, still balanced on the fore finger of his right hand, and kept both upright on the point of his right fore-finger for half a minute.
Suddenly he dropped both towards the ground together, and kicking away the heavier one as they fell caught the lighter one on the toe of his left foot, flung this stone into the air, and received and retained it on his right shoulder.
"That must hurt his shoulder dreadfully," whispered Dora.
"Padded and resined," said Hanbury laconically, unsympathetically. He was interested in the performance by this time. It was new to him, and an amateur athlete is always wanting to know, although always extremely knowing.
The Negro stooped carefully, seized the larger stone, threw it a few feet into the air, and caught and balanced it on the top of the smaller one still resting on his shoulder.
"Good," said Hanbury, in the tone of a connoisseur, who, although he knows much, is not ungenerous.
The people applauded out loud, and twopence were cast on the ground close to the black man's huge feet. He smiled at the applause, and affected to know nothing of the twopence. The mercenary spirit ought not to exist in the bosom of the real artiste--for pence, anyway.
Black Sam shook his back, and the two stones fell to the ground. Then he stooped once more and took up the piece of flat white board and placed it between his gleaming teeth, rolling back his lips so that the spectators might see the white teeth closed upon the white wood. His lower jaw projected enormously, even for a Negro. By no motion of the lower jaw could its front teeth be made to meet the front teeth of the upper.
"Going to bolt the timber?" asked the landlord of the Hanover, with a laugh and a wink at Leigh.
The Negro took no notice of the question. Leigh did not see the wink. Something more wonderful than the contortions of Black Sam had at that moment attracted Leigh's attention. He had caught sight of Dora Ashton; the roadway between her and him was free save for the Negro, and Leigh's eyes had travelled beyond the burly man of colour and were fixed on the slender form and pale olive face of the girl, with an expression of amazement. He looked like an animal that suddenly sees something it dreads, and from which it desires to remain concealed. He seemed stupefied, stunned, dazed. All the scorn had gone out of his face. He leaned forward more heavily than formerly on his crooked stick. He appeared to doubt the evidence of his senses.
The Negro went on with his performance.
John Hanbury's attention was wholly absorbed in Black Sam. Leigh never took his fascinated gaze off the girl at Hanbury's side. Hanbury was an athlete examining the feats of another athlete. Leigh was a man looking at the incredible, seeing the invisible, beholding in full daylight a ghost whom he must not challenge, and whom he cannot leave. Dora was watching with mingled fear, disgust and pity, the dangerous gyrations of a man of pathetically low type, a man who seemed in his own person connecting the race of man with the race of beasts, as put forth in recent theories.
With a piece of wood in his mouth, Black Sam made the circuit of the little crowd. The line of gleaming white teeth upon the line of white wood in the distorted ebony face made the head seem cut in two at the line of the folded back upper lip, and the polished upper part of the head with its rolling eyes, as if placed on a trencher.
At length he took up his position in the centre of the ring. Then he stooped, raised the lesser stone, and placed it on the piece of white board, now at right angles to the ebony glittering face, and parallel to the horizon.
Then he did a thing that looked horrible.
Still keeping the piece of white board parallel to the horizon, he began slowly leaning his head back. This he did by gradually opening his huge mouth from ear to ear, the piece of wood being jambed in the angle of the jaws, and resting on the teeth of the huge undershot lower jaw. He bent back the upper part of his head until his eyes stared vertically into the unclouded blue sky of the June afternoon. It appeared as if the Negro's lower jaw had been torn down from the skull by the weight of the stone, and would presently be rent from its place and dashed to the ground. The red palate and arch of the gullet were visible above the white tongue of wood lying on the teeth, and jambed into the angles of the jaws above the invisible red tongue of the mouth.
All eyes were fixed on the Negro, all eyes but those of Oscar Leigh. His eyes were rivetted on the face of Dora Ashton.
The crowd watched the Negro in breathless expectancy. Oscar Leigh watched the girl in amazement, incredulity, fear.
With both hands Black Sam bespoke attention. All saw and responded, all but Oscar Leigh. He had eyes for no one, nothing but the girl opposite him. He was in a trance of wonder.
Suddenly, while the head remained motionless, the lower jaw of the Negro swept upon its hinges, the piece of wood was brought into swift contact with the upper teeth, and the stone, impelled from the catapult formed by the muscles of the jaws, flew over the Negro's head, and fell to the ground a dozen feet behind his clumsy heels.
There was a shout of applause from all.
Dora drew back with a sigh of relief.
"I never saw anything like that," said the landlord of the Hanover to Oscar Leigh, with the Negro in his mind.
"Nor I," said Oscar Leigh, "anything like it," having the girl opposite in his mind. "Pray excuse me!" He crossed the road, and placed himself on the curb within a couple of paces of where she stood, and stared at her furtively with unbelieving eyes.