MR. JACOBS
A TALE
OF
THE DRUMMER THE REPORTER
AND THE PRESTIDIGITATEUR
SEVENTH EDITION
BOSTON
W. B. CLARKE & CARRUTH
1883
* * * * *
MR. JACOBS.
CHAPTER I.
In spite of Jean-Jacques and his school, men are not everywhere,
especially in countries where excessive liberty or excessive tiffin
favors the growth of that class of adventurers most usually designated
as drummers, or by a still more potent servility, the ruthless
predatory instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may and
almost certainly will; and in those more numerous and certainly more
happy countries where the travelling show is discouraged, the
unwearying flatterer, patient under abstemious high-feeding, will
assuredly become a roving sleight-of-hand man.
Without doubt the Eastern portion of the world, when an hereditary,
or, at least, a traditional, if not customary, or, perhaps,
conservative, not to say legendary, or, more correctly speaking,
historic, despotism has never ceased to ingrain the blood of Russia,
Chinese, Ottoman, Persia, India, British, or Nantasket, in a perfect
instance of a ruthless military tiffin, where neither blood nor
stratagem have been spared.[1]
[Footnote 1: The editor was here obliged to omit a score of pages, in
which the only thing worth preserving was a carcanet of sulphur
springs.]
* * * * *
I was at tiffin. A man sat opposite whose servant brought him water
in a large goblet cut from a single emerald. I observed him closely. A
water-drinker is always a phenomenon to me; but a water-drinker who
did the thing so artistically, and could swallow the fluid without
wincing, was such a manifestation as I had never seen.
I contrasted him with our neighbors at the lunch-counter, who seemed
to be vying, like the captives of Circe, to ascertain by trial who
could swallow the most free lunch, and pay for the fewest
"pegs,"--those vile concoctions of spirits, ice, and soda-water, which
have destroyed so many splendid resolutions on the part of the
Temperance Alliance,--and an impression came over me that he must be
the most innocent man on the road.
Before I go farther let me try and describe him. His peculiarity was
that, instead of eyes, he had jewels composed of six precious stones.
There was a depth of life and vital light in them that told of the
pent-up force of a hundred, or, at least, of ninety-nine generations
of Persian magi. They blazed with the splendor of a god-like nature,
needing neither tiffin nor brandy and soda to feed their power.
My mind was made up. I addressed him in Gaelic. To my surprise, and
somewhat to my confusion, he answered in two words of modern Hebrew.
We fell into a polyglot but refined conversation.
"Come and smoke," he said, at length.
Slipping into the office of the hotel, and ascertaining that there was
no danger, I followed to his room.
"I am known as Mr. Jacobs," he said. "My lawful name is Abdallah
Hafiz-ben-butler-Jacobi."
The apartment, I soon saw, was small,--for India at least,--and every
available space, nook, and cranny, were filled with innumerable
show-cases of Attleboro' jewelry.
"Pretty showy?" he remarked familiarly. "I am a drummer."
"My name is Peter Briggs," I replied. "I am a correspondent of the
_Calcutta Jackal_."
"My star!" he said. "That is the dog-star. A sudden thought strikes
me," he added. "Let us swear an eternal friendship."
He thereupon told me his entire history, from childhood up. It was
interesting to the last degree, as I had thought often before, when I
read it in various dime novels.
He ceased speaking, and the waning moon rose pathetically, with a
curiously doleful look, expressive of quiet, but deep contempt.
CHAPTER II.
The next morning I had tiffin.
I speculated in regard to Mr. Jacobs. A long and eventful experience
with three-card monte men had made me extremely shy of persons who
begin an acquaintance by making confidences; and I wondered why he had
taken the trouble to make up the story of his life, to relate to an
entire stranger. Still, there was something about the man that seemed
to promise an item for the _Calcutta Jackal_, and therefore, when
Jacobs appeared, looking like the sunflower, for all his wild dress
and his knee-breeches, I felt the "little thrill of pleasure," so
aptly compared by Swinburne to the clutch of a hand in the hair.
"Are you married?" queried Mr. Jacobs.
"Thank heavens, no!" I replied, convulsively. "Are you?"
"Some," returned he, gloomily. "I have three. They do not agree. Do
you think a fourth wife would calm them?"
"A man," I observed, sententiously, "is better off with no wife at all
than with three."
His subtle mind caught the flaw instantly.
"Negative happiness," he murmured; "very negative. Oh, I would I could
marry all the sweet creatures!"
Having our tiffins saddled, we rode off at a breakneck pace, and
cleverly managed to ride down the uncle of the heroine.
"Dear uncle," casually remarked that young lady, riding up, "I hope
you are not hurt."
"What an original remark!" exclaimed Jacobs, with rapture. "Miss
Eastinhoe is beautiful and sensible. I like her. What do you suppose
she is worth?"
CHAPTER III.
Having tiffined, we reclined upon a divan.
"My father," said Mr. Jacobs, "had but one wife; I have already raised
him two, as I told you, and mean to go him one better."
I smoked in silence.
"A hint for the _Calcutta Jackal_," I thought, with satisfaction.
"Bigamy raised to the third power."
"You are right," he said, slowly, his half-closed eyes fixed on his
feet; "yes, you are right. But why not?"
I shook myself, drank some sherbert, and kicked off one shoe
impatiently. This reading of a gentleman's private thoughts seemed to
me an unwarrantable impertinence; but a sudden light flashed over my
obscured intellect, and, observing that he was in a trance, I felt it
would be indelicate to argue the matter. I fired my shoe at him, to
assure myself of his condition, and then held a free pass towards him.
He instantly recovered, and stretched out his hand to take it.
"I must have been dreaming," he said, a look of annoyance shading his
features as I drew the pass away. "But I am in love."
It was near midnight, and the ever-decreasing moon was dragging
herself up, as if ashamed of her waning beauty and tearful look.
CHAPTER VI.
We called upon Miss Eastinhoe the following day. She was playing with
a half-tamed young tiffin, a charming little beast, with long gray fur
and bright twinkling eye, mischievous and merry as a gnome's. He was a
gift of Mr. Jacobs to the lady. He cost nothing.
"Are you spoken for?" Miss Eastinhoe asked, her eyes opening a moment
and meeting his, but falling again instantly with a change of
color.[2]
[Footnote 2: The editor had his doubts about this; but as it so stands
in the original MS. (p. 69), concludes that in low latitudes, eyes do
change color on slight provocation.]
"Miss Eastinhoe," he said, quietly, "you know I am a man of muscle,
and that I have three wives."
"Oh, I had forgotten!" she said; "I forgot about your wives."
"Among primitive people, and persons in pinafores," I interposed,
"marriage is a social law."
"You surprise me, Mr. Briggs," she said, with an air of childlike
simplicity.
I felt that I had put a plug into my end of the conversation.
"We will play polo next week," said Mr. Jacobs. "Meanwhile, let us
visit a Certain Mighty Personage."
CHAPTER V.
"We will go at four," said Jacobs, coming into my room after tiffin.
"I said three this morning, but it is not a bad plan to keep natives
waiting."
"Why do we go?" I inquired, languidly.
"The Certain Mighty Personage has a prisoner whom I wish to purchase."
"Who is it?"
Leaning over until his mouth almost touched my ear, he whispered
quietly:
"Number One."
"The devil, you say!" I ejaculated, surprised out of grammar and
decorum by the startling news.
"Are you thinking of marrying Miss Eastinhoe?" I demanded, after a
pause of some tiffins.
"Yes," he answered, "if her settlements are satisfactory."
Arrived at the residence of the Certain Mighty Personage, we were
received in a jemadar where a sahib charpoyed the sowans and tiffined
the maharajah.
"I'll have you exposed in the newspapers," said Jacobs, sternly, to
the Certain Mighty Personage, "if you do not deliver into my hands,
before the dark half of the next moon, the man Number One."
The Uncertain Mighty Personage signed a contract to that effect, with
extreme reluctance, and with many forcible remarks disrespectful to
both the ancestors and posterity of Jacobs.
"What do you want of Number One?" I inquired, as we rode away.
"He is the only man alive that can keep a plated watch from turning
black in this accursed climate."
"But why did you bring me along, when you didn't need me?"
"To frighten him with the threat of the _Calcutta Jackal_. Besides,
how else could you tell the story?"