“Hush! Speak not, Bartow, or you will break the spell and shatter it into a thousand tinkling fragments.”
She went on, muttering to herself, until at last they came to a large wooden building. A flickering light from its gaping windows threw grotesque shadows upon the ground.
Bomba felt a dread of entering the place. Like the wild things of the jungle, he felt safer in the open. But Sobrinini’s hand was upon his arm, and she dragged him through the doorway. Her manner grew ever more feverish and wild. She seemed possessed by a terrible excitement. Bomba did not venture to dispute her will.
He found himself in a strange place, the like of which he had never seen before. Tearing his glance from the withered mask that was the face of Sobrinini, he looked about him.
Torches flickered and flared in crude receptacles fastened to the walls and lighted up the bare and desolate room.
Rows of crude chairs stood upon the uneven wooden floor, and above these, halfway to the patched and leaking roof, a tiny balcony had been constructed. At either end of this was a small compartment with rounded front, meant to represent an opera box, though this of course Bomba could not know.
At the extreme front of the big room was a raised platform, meant to serve as a stage of this dismal imitation of an opera house.
As Bomba gazed about him, surprised and bewildered, Sobrinini left his side, and with a horrid simulation of youth skipped to the platform.
Then she turned and made him a low bow, a hideous smirk cracking the wrinkles of her withered face.
“Come closer, Bartow. Come closer, dear Bartow! Do!” she urged, in a voice at first soft and coaxing, but that ended in a shrill cackle. “I will give you a good seat, Bartow—the best seat in the house—in the first row center. You can hear me better there than from a box. Come!” she cried, as he hesitated, her simpering giving place to a terrible frown. “Why do you stand there blinking at me like a fool? Do not rouse my wrath, Bartow! The wrath of Sobrinini is a terrible thing, as no one should know better than you.”