In the Days of My Youth Part 4

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 n.o.body lend me the watch?" asked the Chevalier; but in a voice so hoa.r.s.e 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 resigner_."

"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 quant.i.ty 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sive 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and set down my gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.

Mr. Cobbe laughed triumphantly.