I SEE THE RING OF THE PERSIAN MAGICIAN.
'That's a devilish fine girl,' said Mark Wylder.
He was sitting at this moment on the billiard table, with his coat off
and his cue in his hand, and had lighted a cigar. He and I had just had a
game, and were tired of it.
'Who?' I asked. He was looking on me from the corners of his eyes, and
smiling in a sly, rakish way, that no man likes in another.
'Radie Lake--she's a splendid girl, by Jove! Don't you think so? and she
liked me once devilish well, I can tell you. She was thin then, but she
has plumped out a bit, and improved every way.'
Whatever else he was, Mark was certainly no beauty;--a little short he
was, and rather square--one shoulder a thought higher than the other--and
a slight, energetic hitch in it when he walked. His features in profile
had something of a Grecian character, but his face was too broad--very
brown, rather a bloodless brown--and he had a pair of great, dense,
vulgar, black whiskers. He was very vain of his teeth--his only really
good point--for his eyes were a small cunning, gray pair; and this,
perhaps, was the reason why he had contracted his habit of laughing and
grinning a good deal more than the fun of the dialogue always warranted.
This sea-monster smoked here as unceremoniously as he would have done in
'Rees's Divan,' and I only wonder he did not call for brandy-and-water.
He had either grown coarser a great deal, or I more decent, during our
separation. He talked of his _fiancée_ as he might of an opera-girl
almost, and was now discussing Miss Lake in the same style.
'Yes, she is--she's very well; but hang it, Wylder, you're a married man
now, and must give up talking that way. People won't like it, you know;
they'll take it to mean more than it does, and you oughtn't. Let us have
another game.'
'By-and-by; what do you think of Larkin?' asked Wylder, with a sly glance
from the corners of his eyes. 'I think he prays rather more than is good
for his clients; mind I spell it with an 'a,' not with an 'e;' but hang
it, for an attorney, you know, and such a sharp chap, it does seem to me
rather a--a joke, eh?'
'He bears a good character among the townspeople, doesn't he? And I don't
see that it can do him any harm, remembering that he has a soul to be
saved.'
'Or the other thing, eh?' laughed Wylder. 'But I think he comes it a
little too strong--two sermons last Sunday, and a prayer-meeting at nine
o'clock?'
'Well, it won't do him any harm,' I repeated.
'Harm! O, let Jos. Larkin alone for that. It gets him all the religious
business of the county; and there are nice pickings among the charities,
and endowments, and purchases of building sites, and trust deeds; I dare
say it brings him in two or three hundred a year, eh?' And Wylder laughed
again. 'It has broken up his hard, proud heart,' he says; 'but it left
him a devilish hard head, I told him, and I think it sharpens his wits.'
'I rather think you'll find him a useful man; and to be so in his line of
business he must have his wits about him, I can tell you.'
'He amused me devilishly,' said Wylder, 'with a sort of exhortation he
treated me to; he's a delightfully impudent chap, and gave me to
understand I was a limb of the Devil, and he a saint. I told him I was
better than he, in my humble opinion, and so I am, by chalks. I know very
well I'm a miserable sinner, but there's mercy above, and I don't hide my
faults. I don't set up for a light or a saint; I'm just what the
Prayer-book says--neither more nor less--a miserable sinner. There's only
one good thing I can safely say for myself--I am no Pharisee; that's all;
I air no religious prig, puffing myself, and trusting to forms, making
long prayers in the market-place' (Mark's quotations were paraphrastic),
'and thinking of nothing but the uppermost seats in the synagogue, and
broad borders, and the praise of men--hang them, I hate those fellows.'
So Mark, like other men we meet with, was proud of being a Publican; and
his prayer was--'I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, spiritually
proud, formalists, hypocrites, or even as this Pharisee.'
'Do you wish another game?' I asked.
'Just now,' said Wylder, emitting first a thin stream of smoke, and
watching its ascent. 'Dorcas is the belle of the county; and she likes
me, though she's odd, and don't show it the way other girls would. But a
fellow knows pretty well when a girl likes him, and you know the marriage
is a sensible sort of thing, and I'm determined, of course, to carry it
through; but, hang it, a fellow can't help thinking sometimes there are
other things besides money, and Dorcas is not my style. Rachel's more
that way; she's a _tremendious_ fine girl, by Jove! and a spirited minx,
too; and I think,' he added, with an oath, having first taken two puffs
at his cigar, 'if I had seen her first, I'd have thought twice before I'd
have got myself into this business.'
I only smiled and shook my head. I did not believe a word of it. Yet,
perhaps, I was wrong. He knew very well how to take care of his money; in
fact, compared with other young fellows, he was a bit of a screw. But he
could do a handsome and generous thing for himself. His selfishness would
expand nobly, and rise above his prudential considerations, and drown
them sometimes; and he was the sort of person, who, if the fancy were
strong enough, might marry in haste, and repent--and make his wife, too,
repent--at leisure.
'What do you laugh at, Charlie?' said Wylder, grinning himself.
'At your confounded grumbling, Mark. The luckiest dog in England! Will
nothing content you?'
'Why, I grumble very little, I think, considering how well off I am,'
rejoined he, with a laugh.
'Grumble! If you had a particle of gratitude, you'd build a temple to
Fortune--you're pagan enough for it, Mark.'
'Fortune has nothing to do with it,' says Mark, laughing again.
'Well, certainly, neither had you.'
'It was all the Devil. I'm not joking, Charlie, upon my word, though I'm
laughing.' (Mark swore now and then, but I take leave to soften his
oaths). 'It was the Persian Magician.'
'Come, Mark, say what you mean.'
'I mean what I say. When we were in the Persian Gulf, near six years ago,
I was in command of the ship. The captain, you see, was below, with a
hurt in his leg. We had very rough weather--a gale for two days and a
night almost--and a heavy swell after. In the night time we picked up
three poor devils in an open boat--. One was a Persian merchant, with a
grand beard. We called him the magician, he was so like the pictures of
Aladdin's uncle.'
'Why _he_ was an African,' I interposed, my sense of accuracy offended.
'I don't care a curse what he was,' rejoined Mark; 'he was exactly like
the picture in the story-books. And as we were lying off--I forget the
cursed name of it--he begged me to put him ashore. He could not speak a
word of English, but one of the fellows with him interpreted, and they
were all anxious to get ashore. Poor devils, they had a notion, I
believe, we were going to sell them for slaves, and he made me a present
of a ring, and told me a long yarn about it. It was a talisman, it seems,
and no one who wore it could ever be lost. So I took it for a keepsake;
here it is,' and he extended his stumpy, brown little finger, and showed
a thick, coarsely-made ring of gold, with an uncut red stone, of the size
of a large cherry stone, set in it.
'The stone is a humbug,' said Wylder. 'It's not real. I showed it to
Platten and Foyle. It's some sort of glass. But I would not part with it.
I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that
glass stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now look at these
Persian letters on the inside, for that's the oddest thing about it. Hang
it, I can't pull it off--I'm growing as fat as a pig--but they are like a
queer little string of flowers; and I showed it to a clever fellow at
Malta--a missionary chap--and he read it off slick, and what do you think
it means: "I will come up again;"' and he swore a great oath. 'It's as
true as you stand there--_our_ motto. Is not it odd? So I got the
"resurgam" you see there engraved round it, and by Jove! it did bring me
up. I was near lost, and did rise again. Eh?'
Well, it certainly was a curious accident. Mark had plenty of odd and not
unamusing lore. Men who beat about the world in ships usually have; and
these 'yarns,' furnished, after the pattern of Othello's tales of
Anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, one
of the many varieties of fascination which he practised on the fair sex.
Only in justice to Mark, I must say that he was by no means so shameless
a drawer of the long-bow as the Venetian gentleman and officer.
'When I got this ring, Charlie, three hundred a year and a London life
would have been Peru and Paradise to poor Pill Garlick, and see what it
has done for me.'
'Aye, and better than Aladdin's, for you need not rub it and bring up
that confounded ugly genii; the slave of your ring works unseen.'
'So he does,' laughed Wylder, in a state of elation, 'and he's not done
working yet, I can tell you. When the estates are joined in one, they'll
be good eleven thousand a year; and Larkin says, with smart management, I
shall have a rental of thirteen thousand before three years! And that's
only the beginning, by George! Sir Henry Twisden can't hold his
seat--he's all but broke--as poor as Job, and the gentry hate him, and he
lives abroad. He has had a hint or two already, and he'll never fight the
next election. D'ye see--hey?'
And Wylder winked and grinned, with a wag of his head.
'M.P.--eh? You did not see that before. I look a-head a bit, eh? and can
take my turn at the wheel--eh?'
And he laughed with cunning exultation.
'Miss Rachel will find I'm not quite such a lubber as she fancies. But
even then it is only begun. Come, Charlie, you used to like a bet. What
do you say? I'll buy you that twenty-five guinea book of pictures--what's
its name?--if you give me three hundred guineas one month after I'm a
peer of Parliament. Hey? There's a sporting offer for you. Well! what do
you say--eh?'
'You mean to come out as an orator, then?'
'Orator be diddled! Do you take me for a fool? No, Charlie; but I'll come
out strong as a _voter_--that's the stuff they like--at the right side,
of course, and that is the way to manage it. Thirteen thousand a
year--the oldest family in the county--and a steady thick and thin
supporter of the minister. Strong points, eh, Charlie? Well, do you take
my offer?'
I laughed and declined, to his great elation, and just then the gong
sounded and we were away to our toilets.
While making my toilet for dinner, I amused myself by conjecturing
whether there could be any foundation in fact for Mark's boast, that Miss
Brandon liked him. Women are so enigmatical--some in everything--all in
matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is
repulsive? Does not brutality in our sex, and even rascality, interest
them sometimes? Don't they often affect indifference, and occasionally
even aversion, where there is a different sort of feeling?
As I went down I heard Miss Lake chatting with her queen-like cousin near
an open door on the lobby. Rachel Lake was, indeed, a very constant guest
at the Hall, and the servants paid her much respect, which I look upon as
a sign that the young heiress liked her and treated her with
consideration; and indeed there was an insubordinate and fiery spirit in
that young lady which would have brooked nothing less and dreamed of
nothing but equality.