"I should like to think they were true."
"You ought to rest," said Christopher at the breakfast table.
"I ought not. There are to be no more oughts--ever--"
He nodded as if he understood, leaning elbows on the table.
"I am going to pack the days full"--she went on. "Why not? I shall have only a few months--and then--annihilation--" She flung her question across the table. "You believe that, don't you?"
He evaded. "We sleep--'perchance to dream.'"
"I don't want to dream. They might be horrid dreams--"
And then Jeanette came down, and poured their coffee, and asked about the news in the morning paper.
Dressed for her trip to the circus, Anne looked like a girl in her teens--white skirt and short green coat--stout sports shoes and white hat. She wore her silver beads, and Christopher said, "I'm not sure that I would if I were you."
"Why not?"
"In such a crowd."
But she kept them on.
They motored to the circus grounds, and came in out of the white glare to the cool dimness of the tent as if they had dived from the sun-bright surface of the sea. But there the resemblance ceased. Here was no silence, but blatant noise--roar and chatter and shriek, the beat of the tom-tom, the thin piping of a flute--the crash of a band. But it was the thin piping which Christopher followed, guiding Anne with his hand on her arm.
Following the plaintive note, they came at last to the snake-charmer--an old man in a white turban. The snakes were in a covered basket. He sat with his feet under him and piped.
Christopher spoke to him in a strange tongue. The piping broke off abruptly and the man answered with eagerness. There was a quick interchange of phrases.
"I know his village," Christopher said; "he is going to show you his snakes."
A crowd gathered, but the snake-charmer saw only the big man who had spoken to his homesick heart, and the girl with the silver beads. He knew another girl who had had a string of beads like that--and they had brought her luck--a dark-skinned girl, his daughter. Her husband had bestowed the beads on her marriage night, and her first child had been a son.
He put the thin reed to his lips, and blew upon it. The snakes lifted their heads. He drew them up and out of the basket, and put them through their fantastic paces. Then he laid aside his pipe, shut them in their basket, and spoke to Christopher.
"He says that no evil can teach you while you wear the beads," Christopher told Anne.
The old man, with his eyes on her intent face, spoke again. "What you think is evil--cannot be evil," Christopher interpreted. "The gods know best."
They moved toward the inner tent.
"Are you tired?" Christopher asked. "We don't have to stay."
"I want to stay," and so they went in, and presently with a blare of trumpets the great parade began. They looked down on men and women in Roman chariots, men on horseback, women on horseback, on elephants, on camels--painted ladies in howdahs, painted ladies in sedan chairs--Cleopatra, Pompadour--history reduced to pantomime, color imposed upon color, glitter upon glitter, the beat of the tom-tom, the crash of the band, the thin piping, as the white-turbaned snake-charmer showed in the press of the crowd.
Christopher's eyes went to Anne. She was leaning forward, one hand clasping the silver beads. He would have given much to know what was in her mind. How little she was and how young. And how he wanted to get her away from the thing which hung suspended over her like a keen-edged sword.
But to get her away--how? He could never get her away from her thoughts. Unless....
Suddenly he heard her laughing. Two clowns were performing with a lot of little dogs. One of the dogs was a poodle who played the fool. "What a darling," Anne was saying.
There was more than they could look at--each ring seemed a separate circus--one had to have more than a single pair of eyes. Christopher was blind to it all--except when Anne insisted, "Look--look!"
Six acrobats were in the ring--four men and two women. Their tights were of a clear shimmering blue, with silver trunks. One could not tell the women from the men, except by their curled heads, and their smaller stature. They were strong, wholesome, healthy. Christopher knew the quality of that health--hearts that pumped like machines--obedient muscles under satin skins. One of the women whirled in a series of handsprings, like a blue balloon--her body as fluid as quicksilver. If he could only borrow one-tenth of that endurance for Anne--he might keep her for years.
Then came Pantaloon, and Harlequin and Columbine. The old man was funny, but the youth and the girl were exquisite--he, diamond-spangled and lean as a lizard, she in tulle skirts and wreath of flowers. They did all the old tricks of masks and slapping sticks, of pursuit and retreat, but they did them so beautifully that Anne and Christopher sat spellbound--what they were seeing was not two clever actors on a sawdust stage, but love in its springtime--girl and boy--dreams, rapture, radiance.
Then, in a moment, Columbine was dead, and Harlequin wept over her--frost had killed the flower--love and life were at an end.
Christopher was drawing deep breaths. Anne was tense. But now--Columbine was on her feet, and Harlequin was blowing kisses to the audience!
"Let's get out of this," Christopher said, almost roughly, and led Anne down the steps and into the almost deserted outer tent. They looked for the snake-charmer, but he was gone. "Eating rice somewhere or saying his prayers," Christopher surmised.
"How could he know about the gods?" Anne asked, as they drove home.
"They know a great deal--these old men of the East," Christopher told her, and talked for the rest of the way about the strange people among whom he had spent so many years.
V
Ridgeley did not come home to dinner. He telephoned that he would be late. It was close and warm. Christopher, sitting with Anne and Jeanette on the porch, decided that a storm was brewing.
Anne was restless. She went down into the garden, and Christopher followed her. She wore white, and he was aware of the rose scent. He picked a rose for her as he passed through the garden. "Bend your head, and I'll put it in your hair."
"I can't wear pink."
"It is white in the dusk--" He put his hands on her shoulders, stopped her, and stuck the rose behind her ear. Then he let her go.
They came to the grove of birches, and sat down on the stone seat. It had grown dark, and the lightning flashing up from the horizon gave to the birches a spectral whiteness--Anne was a silver statue.
"It was queer," she said, "about the old man at the circus."
"About the beads?"
"Yes. I wonder what he meant, Christopher? _'What you think is evil--cannot be evil'?_ Do you think he meant--Death?"
He did not answer at once, then he said, abruptly, "Anne, how did it happen that you and Ridgeley drifted apart?"
"Oh, it's hard to tell."
"But tell me."
"Well, when we were first married, I expected so much ... things that girls dream about--that he would always have me in his thoughts, and that our lives would be knit together. I think we both tried hard to have it that way. I used to ride with him on his rounds, and he would tell me about his patients. And at night I'd wait up for him, and have something to eat, and it was--heavenly. Ridgeley was so ... fine. But his practice got so big, and sometimes he wouldn't say a word when I rode with him.... And he would be so late coming in at night, and he'd telephone that I'd better go to bed.... And, well, that was the beginning. I don't think it is really his fault or mine ... it's just ... life."
"It isn't life, and you know it," passionately. "Anne, if you had married me ... do you think...?" He reached out in the dark and took her hand. "Oh, my dear, we might as well talk it out."
She withdrew her hand. "Talk what out?"
"You know. I've learned to care for you an awful lot. I had planned to go away. But I can't go now ... not and leave you to face things alone."
He heard her quick breath. "But I've got to face them."
"But not alone. Anne, do you remember what you said ... this morning? That you were going to pack the days full? And you can't do that without some one to help you. And Ridgeley won't help. Anne, let me do it. Let me take you away from here ... away from Ridgeley. We will go where we can hear the temple bells. We'll ride through the desert ... we'll set our sails for strange harbors. We'll love until we forget everything, but the day, the hour,--the moment! And when the time comes for endless dreams...."
"Christopher...."
"Anne, listen."
"You mustn't say things like that to me ... you must not...!"
"I must. I want you to have happiness. We'll crowd more in to a few short months than some people have in a lifetime. And you have a right to it."
"Would it be happiness?"
"Why not? In a way we are all pushing death ahead of us. Who knows that he will be alive to-morrow? There's this arm of mine ... there's every chance that I'll have trouble with it. And an automobile accident may wreck a honeymoon. You've as much time as thousands who are counting on more."