Bomba came forward quickly, alarmed by the swift change in the old crone’s manner. But she simpered and smirked again when he approached, and, skipping lightly from the platform, forced him with a playfulness that Bomba found scarcely less terrifying than her wrath into one of the crazy chairs close to the stage.
“Now I will sing to you!” she cried, and sprang up again upon the platform.
Bomba watched with a strange fascination while the old woman danced and sang in a strange language unknown to him. The lilting songs, even when sung by that cracked and ruined voice, struck a responsive chord in the boy and filled him with emotions that he could neither analyze nor understand.
He did not know that that voice, when in its prime, had thrilled great audiences that included emperors and kings and had given the singer a reputation as wide as the civilized world.
Suddenly Sobrinini paused, and fixing Bomba with a strange intent gaze, sang in a voice that had magically lost most of its raucous quality and for the moment had become the faint, sad echo of something that had been supremely beautiful—sang a tender, haunting melody that touched some almost forgotten memory in Bomba’s heart and filled him with an exquisite pain.
Somewhere, long since, he had heard that melody! But when and where?
Slowly the music drew him step by step toward that fantastic figure on the stage.
“Tell me!” he cried imploringly. “Tell me, Sobrinini, was that my mother’s song?”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
For an instant the fierce, bright eyes of the old hag softened. Her bony fingers hovered over Bomba’s hair, as though they would have stroked it.