"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.