"That would not matter to Bob," said Flora. "But I wonder what they cost the others, the dark-skinned men who found them on the sands beneath the Caribbean. Pearls, you know, sometimes stand for tears." She moved from the glass, for the room was filling, and smiled as she resumed: "I don't know why I indulge a morbid sentiment when I'm happy. You will never have much grounds to cry for Bob."
They went down a passage and found their places in the stalls. The house was full and Marston had engaged such seats as he could get. Wyndham, Flora and Chisholm were in front; Mabel and Marston in the row behind.
"Macbeth!" he said as he gave Mabel a program. "Rather curious; but I like the play. Kind of plot one can understand."
"Why is it curious?" Mabel asked. "Don't you understand them all?"
"Not like this," said Marston, with a touch of awkwardness. "The motto—or d'you call it the motive?—is plain from the start. 'Ambition that over-leaps itself,' if I'm quoting right."
Mabel said nothing. Bob was not clever, but he was sometimes shrewd and she saw what was in his mind. This was easier because he looked uncomfortable. The poor fellow felt he had not been quite loyal to his friend. Then Mabel frowned. Perhaps Bob had seen clearly; there was a parallel.
The lights went out and when the curtain rose Marston tried to banish his disturbing thoughts and enjoy the play. He had seen it often, but the story gripped him with a force he had not felt before. All was well done. Pale flames played round the witches' cauldron, and there was something strangely suggestive about the bent figures that hovered about the fire and faded in the gloom. He had sometimes thought the witch-scene unnecessary, but now he felt its significance. In Shakespeare's days, men believed in witchcraft, and when one had been in Africa one owned there were powers that ruled the dark. Bob was quiet and listened, with his mouth firmly set.
A line caught his notice: "Her husband's to Aleppo gone, the master of the Tiger." Marston had not thought much about this before, but he saw the strange, high-pooped old vessel, manned by merchant adventurers, plunge across the surges of the Levant. She was a type; there were always merchant adventurers, and he pictured Columbine rolling on the African surf.
Then for a time he let the play absorb him. The witches were tempting Macbeth, flattering his ambition, promising him power. The gloom and the flickering light round the cauldron recalled Africa; Marston had seen the naked factory boys crouch beside their fires, tapping little drums, and singing strange, monotonous songs that sounded like incantations. He thought about Rupert Wyndham; witches were numerous in Africa and Marston wondered what they had promised him. Was it power? Or knowledge the cautious white man shuns? Marston glanced at Wyndham, in front. He had not spoken since the curtain rose and the pose of his head indicated that his eyes were fixed on the stage. He was very still and Marston thought the drama had seized his imagination.
The cauldron fire leaped up, throwing red reflections that touched a figure moving in the gloom. Marston wondered whether his eyes were dazzled, for the hooded figure began to look like the Bat. Then there was a flash, the witches vanished, and he felt a strange relief when the curtain fell and the lights went up.