[THE JUGGLER'S LAST FEAT.]
After the shout of applause this time fell a little shower of coppers. The Negro, with as much rapidity as he had before shown deliberateness, placed the heavier stone on the piece of board and shot it still further behind him by the force of the mere muscles of his jaws.
"He's about done now," said the landlord of the Hanover to the air. Leigh was no longer near, and no one else within hail seemed worthy of a prosperous licensed victualler's speech outside his own bar and house. Inside the portals he was a publican, outside he was a private being with individual existence, rights and tastes, an impressively large waistcoat and watch-chain to match, and an opinion of himself out of all proportion with even his waistcoat or watch-chain. When half a man is concealed from you behind a counter, his individuality can never impress you nearly so much as when he stands forth disenthralled from sole to crown. The ordinary man glides into his most private aspect when he slips behind the door of his own home; the publican when he emerges from his house.
The Negro now took up the two stones and placing the less on the greater and the greater on the white ledge of wood jerked them both together over his head, as easily as he had thrown the light one by itself.
Then he made a gesture for silence. All the spectators were more than attentive, all except Oscar Leigh, who with the air of one in a trance of perplexity and wonder stole glances at the exquisite line of the girl's cheek and forehead; no more of her face could be seen from his position. She was bent forward and breathless with excitement. She had often seen feats of strength and dexterity before, many more wonderful than Sam's; but she had never until now stood in the arena with the performer. The propinquity was fascinating, the presence horrible, the situation novel, exciting, confounding.
Black Sam drew the two stones towards him with his huge unhandsome feet, and stooped down, holding the piece of wood still in his mouth. He moved his feet a little this way, a little that, selecting their final resting place with care. He passed the cubes back between his legs and, setting one on the other, sat on the upper of the two, looked up and expanding his chest drew a full breath. The people could not now take their gaze off him if they tried. Still Oscar Leigh had no eyes for him. He watched the girl as though his life, the fate of his soul, depended on not losing sight of her for an instant. "She must have seen me, and yet she does not notice me! Are her presence here and her indifference to my presence the result of magic--of real magic, not charlatan tricks?" he thought.
Black Sam lifted his body a couple of inches, resting his entire weight on his feet then passing his hands back he slid them under the lower cube, and raised both hands from the ground, the lower cube resting on the palms. With back bent like a bow he thrust out his head, holding the piece of board in his mouth parallel to the horizon, then he swung his body, first forward, then backward, and with a prodigious effort and violent thrust of his arms and head between his legs, threw the two cubes up into the air, straightened himself like a flash, stepped back a pace and, still holding the piece of white board in his enormous mouth parallel to the horizon, caught the two cubes on it as they fell.
There was a loud cry of exultation. Hanbury forgot the girl by his side, forgot everything but the black man and his feat and shouted:
"Well done by----, Nigger!"
Dora started as though she had been stung. She had more horror of an oath than of a serpent or a blow. She had never heard one so near her before. The words men utter with no thought behind them beyond the desire for emphasis had to her a meaning, not only a meaning through the reason but through the imagination. When she heard the oath her imagination became filled with the spectacle of an august and outraged Presence. Profanity was more horrible to her than almost any other crime. It was a deliberate impiety, a daring and blasphemous insolence.