THE EVENTS OF AN EVENING.
"Basil, my boy, if you are going to that place, you must take Collins
with you."
"Won't you go yourself, father?"
"I! Is the boy mad!"
"I hope not, sir; only as you took eight reserved seats, I thought...."
"You've no business to think, sir! Seven of those tickets are in the
fire."
"For fear, then, you should fancy to burn the eighth, I'll wish you
good-evening!"
So away I darted, called to Collins to follow me, and set off at a brisk
pace towards the Red Lion Hotel. Collins was our indoor servant; a
sharp, merry fellow, some ten years older than myself, who desired no
better employment than to escort me upon such an occasion as the
present. The audience had begun to assemble when we arrived. Collins
went into the shilling places, while I ensconced myself in the second
row of reserved seats. I had an excellent view of the stage. There, in
the middle of the platform, stood the conjuror's table--a quaint,
cabalistic-looking piece of furniture with carved black legs and a deep
bordering of green cloth all round the top. A gay pagoda-shaped canopy
of many hues was erected overhead. A long white wand leaned up against
the wall. To the right stood a bench laden with mysterious jars,
glittering bowls, gilded cones, mystical globes, colored glass boxes,
and other properties. To the left stood a large arm-chair covered with
crimson cloth. All this was very exciting, and I waited breathlessly
till the Wizard should appear.
He came at last; but not, surely, our dapper little visitor of
yesterday! A majestic beard of ashen gray fell in patriarchal locks
almost to his knees. Upon his head he wore a high cap of some dark fur;
upon his feet embroidered slippers; and round his waist a glittering
belt patterned with hieroglyphics. A long woollen robe of chocolate and
orange fell about him in heavy folds, and swept behind him, like a
train. I could scarcely believe, at first, that it was the same person;
but, when he spoke, despite the pomp and obscurity of his language. I
recognised the plaintive voice of the little Chevalier.
"_Messieurs et Mesdames_," he began, and took up the wand to emphasize
his discourse; "to read in the stars the events of the future--to
transform into gold the metals inferior--to discover the composition of
that Elixir who, by himself, would perpetuate life, was in past ages the
aim and aspiration of the natural philosopher. But they are gone, those
days--they are displaced, those sciences. The Alchemist and the
Rosicrucian are no more, and of all their race, the professor of
Legerdemain alone survives. Ladies and gentlemen, my magic he is simple.
I retain not familiars. I employ not crucible, nor furnace, nor retort.
I but amuse you with my agility of hand, and for commencement I tell you
that you shall be deceived as well as the Wizard of the Caucasus can
deceive you."
His voice trembled, and the slender wand shivered in his hand. Was this
nervousness? Or was he, in accordance with the quaintness of his costume
and the amplitude of his beard, enacting the feebleness of age?
He advanced to the front of the platform. "Three things I require," he
said. "A watch, a pocket-handkerchief and a hat. Is there here among my
visitors any person so gracious as to lend me these trifles? I will not
injure them, ladies and gentlemen. I will only pound the watch in my
mortar--burn the _mouchoir_ in my lamp, and make a pudding in the
_chapeau_. And, with all this, I engage to return them to their
proprietors, better as new."
There was a pause, and a laugh. Presently a gentleman volunteered his
hat, and a lady her embroidered handkerchief; but no person seemed
willing to submit his watch to the pounding process.
"Shall nobody lend me the watch?" asked the Chevalier; but in a voice
so hoarse that I scarcely recognised it.
A sudden thought struck me, and I rose in my place.
"I shall be happy to do so," I said aloud, and made my way round to the
front of the platform.
At the moment when he took it from me, I spoke to him.
"Monsieur Proudhine," I whispered, "you are ill! What can I do for you?"
"Nothing, _mon enfant_," he answered, in the same low tone. "I suffer;
_mais il faut se résigner_."
"Break off the performance--retire for half an hour."
"Impossible. See, they already observe us!"
And he drew back abruptly. There was a seat vacant in the front row. I
took it, resolved at all events to watch him narrowly.
Not to detail too minutely the events of a performance which since that
time has become sufficiently familiar, I may say that he carried out his
programme with dreadful exactness, and, after appearing to burn the
handkerchief to ashes and mix up a quantity of eggs and flour in the
hat, proceeded very coolly to smash the works of my watch beneath his
ponderous pestle. Notwithstanding my faith, I began to feel seriously
uncomfortable. It was a neat little silver watch of foreign
workmanship--not very valuable, to be sure, but precious to me as the
most precious of repeaters.
"He is very tough, your watch, Monsieur," said the Wizard, pounding away
vigorously. "He--he takes a long time ... _Ah! mon Dieu!_"
He raised his hand to his head, uttered a faint cry, and snatched at the
back of the chair for support.
My first thought was that he had destroyed my watch by mistake--my
second, that he was very ill indeed. Scarcely knowing what I did, and
quite forgetting the audience, I jumped on the platform to his aid.
He shook his head, waved me away with one trembling hand, made a last
effort to articulate, and fell heavily to the ground.
All was confusion in an instant. Everybody crowded to the stage; whilst
I, with a presence of mind which afterwards surprised myself, made my
way out by a side-door and ran to fetch my father. He was fortunately at
home, and in less than ten minutes the Chevalier was under his care. We
found him laid upon a sofa in one of the sitting-rooms of the inn, pale,
rigid, insensible, and surrounded by an idle crowd of lookers-on. They
had taken off his cap and beard, and the landlady was endeavoring to
pour some brandy down his throat; but his teeth were fast set, and his
lips were blue and cold.
"Oh, Doctor Arbuthnot! Doctor Arbuthnot!" cried a dozen voices at once,
"the Conjuror is dying!"
"For which reason, I suppose, you are all trying to smother him!" said
my father angrily. "Mistress Cobbe, I beg you will not trouble yourself
to pour that brandy down the man's throat. He has no more power to
swallow it than my stick. Basil, open the window, and help me to loosen
these things about his throat. Good people, all, I must request you to
leave the room. This man's life is in peril, and I can do nothing while
you remain. Go home--go home. You will see no more conjuring to-night."
My father was peremptory, and the crowd unwillingly dispersed. One by
one they left the room and gathered discontentedly in the passage. When
it came to the last two or three, he took them by the shoulders, closed
the door upon them, and turned the key.
Only the landlady, and elderly woman-servant, and myself remained.
The first thing my father did was to examine the pupil of the patient's
eye, and lay his hand upon his heart. It still fluttered feebly, but the
action of the lungs was suspended, and his hands and feet were cold
as death.
My father shook his head.
"This man must be bled," said he, "but I have little hope of saving
him."
He was bled, and, though still unconscious, became less rigid They then
poured a little wine down his throat, and he fell into a passive but
painless condition, more inanimate than sleep, but less positive than a
state of trance.
A fire was then lighted, a mattress brought down, and the patient laid
upon it, wrapped in many blankets. My father announced his intention of
sitting up with him all night. In vain I begged for leave to share his
vigil. He would hear of no such thing, but turned me out as he had
turned out the others, bade me a brief "Good-night," and desired me to
run home as quickly as I could.
At that stage of my history, to hear was to obey; so I took my way
quietly through the bar of the hotel, and had just reached the door when
a touch on my sleeve arrested me. It was Mr. Cobbe, the landlord--a
portly, red-whiskered Boniface of the old English type.
"Good-evening, Mr. Basil," said he. "Going home, sir?"
"Yes, Mr. Cobbe," I replied. "I can be of no further use here."
"Well, sir, you've been of more use this evening than anybody--let alone
the Doctor--that I must say for you," observed Mr. Cobbe, approvingly.
"I never see such presence o' mind in so young a gen'leman before.
Never, sir. Have a glass of grog and a cigar, sir, before you turn out."
Much as I felt flattered by the supposition that I smoked (which was
more than I could have done to save my life), I declined Mr. Cobbe's
obliging offer and wished him good-night. But the landlord of the Red
Lion was in a gossiping humor, and would not let me go.
"If you won't take spirits, Mr. Basil," said he, "you must have a glass
of negus. I couldn't let you go out without something warm--particular
after the excitement you've gone through. Why, bless you, sir, when they
ran out and told me, I shook like a leaf--and I don't look like a very
nervous subject, do I? And so sudden as it was, too, poor little
gentleman!"
"Very sudden, indeed," I replied, mechanically.
"Does Doctor Arbuthnot think he'll get the better of it, Mr. Basil?"
"I fear he has little hope."
Mr. Cobbe sighed, and shook his head, and smoked in silence.
"To be struck down just when he was playing such tricks as them
conjuring dodges, do seem uncommon awful," said he, after a time. "What
was he after at the minute?--making a pudding, wasn't he, in some
gentleman's hat?"
I uttered a sudden ejaculation, and set down my glass of negus untasted.
Till that moment I had not once thought of my watch.
"Oh, Mr. Cobbe!" I cried, "he was pounding my watch in the mortar!"
"_Your_ watch, Mr. Basil?"
"Yes, mine--and I have not seen it since. What can have become of it?
What shall I do?"
"Do!" echoed the landlord, seizing a candle; "why, go and look for it,
to be sure, Mr. Basil. That's safe enough, you may be sure!"
I followed him to the room where the performance had taken place. It
showed darkly and drearily by the light of one feeble candle. The
benches and chairs were all in disorder. The wand lay where it had
fallen from the hand of the Wizard. The mortar still stood on the table,
with the pestle beside it. It contained only some fragments of
broken glass.
Mr. Cobbe laughed triumphantly.
"Come, sir," said he, "the watch is safe enough, anyhow. Mounseer only
made believe to pound it up, and now all that concerns us is to
find it."
That was indeed all--not only all, but too much. We searched everything.
We looked in all the jars and under all the moveables. We took the cover
off the chair; we cleared the table; but without success. My watch had
totally disappeared, and we at length decided that it must be concealed
about the conjuror's person. Mr. Cobbe was my consoling angel.
"Bless you, sir," said he, "don't never be cast down. My wife shall
look for the watch to-morrow morning, and I'll promise you we'll find
out every pocket he has about him."
"And my father--you won't tell my father?" I said, dolefully.
Mr. Cobbe replied by a mute but expressive piece of pantomime and took
me back to the bar, where the good landlady ratified all that her
husband had promised in her name.
The stars shone brightly as I went home, and there was no moon. The town
was intensely silent, and the road intensely solitary. I met no one on
my way; let myself quietly in, and stole up to my bed-room in the dark.
It was already late; but I was restless and weary--too restless to
sleep, and too weary to read. I could not detach myself from the
impressions of the day; and I longed for the morning, that I might learn
the fate of my watch, and the condition of the Chevalier.
At length, after some hours of wakefulness, I dropped into a profound
and dreamless sleep.
* * * * *