Kitabı oku: «The Water Ghost and Others», sayfa 5
"Blue is never so withering as red," I retorted, at the same time caressing the scarf I wore.
"Perhaps not—but—ah—if you will look in the glass, Hiram, you will observe that your point is not well taken," said my vis-a-vis, calmly.
I acted upon the suggestion, and looked upon my reflection in the glass, lighting a match to facilitate the operation. I was horrified to observe that my beautiful blue tie, of which I was so proud, had in some manner changed, and was now of the same aggressive hue as was that of my visitor, red even as a brick is red. To grasp it firmly in my hands and tear it from my neck was the work of a moment, and then in a spirit of rage I turned upon my companion.
"See here," I cried, "I've had quite enough of you. I can't make you out, and I can't say that I want to. You know where the door is—you will oblige me by putting it to its proper use."
"Sit down, Hiram," said he, "and don't be foolish and ungrateful. You are behaving in a most extraordinary fashion, destroying your clothing and acting like a madman generally. What was the use of ripping up a handsome tie like that?"
"I despise loud hues. Red is a jockey's color," I answered.
"But you did not destroy the red tie," said he, with a smile. "You tore up your blue one—look. There it is on the floor. The red one you still have on."
Investigation showed the truth of my visitor's assertion. That flaunting streamer of anarchy still made my neck infamous, and before me on the floor, an almost unrecognizable mass of shreds, lay my cherished cerulean tie. The revelation stunned me; tears came into my eyes, and trickling down over my cheeks, fairly hissed with the feverish heat of my flesh. My muscles relaxed, and I fell limp into my chair.
"You need stimulant," said my visitor, kindly. "Go take a drop of your Old Reserve, and then come back here to me. I've something to say to you."
"Will you join me?" I asked, faintly.
"No," returned the visitor. "I am so fond of whiskey that I never molest it. That act which is your stimulant is death to the rye. Never realized that, did you?"
"No, I never did," I said, meekly.
"And yet you claim to love it. Bah!" he said.
And then I obeyed his command, drained my glass to the dregs, and returned. "What is your mission?" I asked, when I had made myself as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances.
"To relieve you of your woes," he said.
"You are a homoeopath, I observe," said I, with a sneer. "You are a homoeopath in theory and an allopath in practice."
"I am not usually unintelligent," said he. "I fail to comprehend your meaning. Perhaps you express yourself badly."
"I wish you'd express yourself for Zulu-land," I retorted, hotly. "What I mean is, you believe in the similia similibus business, but you prescribe large doses. I don't believe troubles like mine can be cured on your plan. A man can't get rid of his stock by adding to it."
"Ah, I see. You think I have added to your troubles?"
"I don't think so," I answered, with a fond glance at my ruined tie. "I know so."
"Well, wait until I have laid my plan before you, and see if you won't change your mind," said my visitor, significantly.
"All right," I said. "Proceed. Only hurry. I go to bed early, as a rule, and it's getting quite early now."
"It's only one o'clock," said the visitor, ignoring the sarcasm. "But I will hasten, as I've several other calls to make before breakfast."
"Are you a milkman?" I asked.
"You are flippant," he replied. "But, Hiram," he added, "I have come here to aid you in spite of your unworthiness. You want to know what to provide for your club night on the 15th. You want something that will knock the 'Martyr's Night' silly."
"Not exactly that," I replied, "I don't want anything so abominably good as to make all the other things I have done seem failures. That is not good business."
"Would you like to be hailed as the discoverer of genius? Would you like to be the responsible agent for the greatest exhibition of skill in a certain direction ever seen? Would you like to become the most famous impresario the world has ever known?"
"Now," I said, forgetting my dignity under the enthusiasm with which I was inspired by my visitor's words, and infected more or less with his undoubtedly magnetite spirit—"now you're shouting."
"I thought so, Hiram. I thought so, and that's why I am here. I saw you on Wall Street to-day, and read your difficulty at once in your eyes, and I resolved to help you. I am a magician, and one or two little things have happened of late to make me wish to prestidigitate in public. I knew you were after a show of some kind, and I've come to offer you my services."
"Oh, pshaw!" I said. "The members of the Gutenberg Club are men of brains—not children. Card tricks are hackneyed, and sleight-of-hand shows pall."
"Do they, indeed?" said the visitor. "Well, mine won't. If you don't believe it, I'll prove to you what I can do."
"I have no paraphernalia," I said.
"Well, I have," said he, and as he spoke, a pack of cards seemed to grow out of my hands. I must have turned pale at this unexpected happening, for my visitor smiled, and said:
"Don't be frightened. That's only one of my tricks. Now choose a card," he added, "and when you have done so, toss the pack in the air. Don't tell me what the card is; it alone will fall to the floor."
"Nonsense!" said I. "It's impossible."
"Do as I tell you."
I did as he told me, to a degree only. I tossed the cards in the air without choosing one, although I made a feint of doing so.
Not a card fell back to the floor. They every one disappeared from view in the ceiling. If it had not been for the heavy chair I had rolled in front of the door, I think I should have fled.
"How's that for a trick?" asked my visitor.
I said nothing, for the very good reason that my words stuck in my throat.
"Give me a little creme de menthe, will you, please?" said he, after a moment's pause.
"I haven't a drop in the house," I said, relieved to think that this wonderful being could come down to anything so earthly.
"Pshaw, Hiram!" he ejaculated, apparently in disgust. "Don't be mean, and, above all, don't lie. Why, man, you've got a bottle full of it in your hand! Do you want it all?"
He was right. Where it came from I do not know; but, beyond question, the graceful, slim-necked bottle was in my right hand, and my left held a liqueur-glass of exquisite form.
"Say," I gasped, as soon as I was able to collect my thoughts, "what are your terms?"
"Wait a moment," he answered. "Let me do a little mind-reading before we arrange preliminaries."
"I haven't much of a mind to read tonight," I answered, wildly.
"You're right there," said he. "It's like a dime novel, that mind of yours to-night. But I'll do the best I can with it. Suppose you think of your favorite poem, and after turning it over in your mind carefully for a few minutes, select two lines from it, concealing them, of course, from me, and I will tell you what they are."
Now my favorite poem, I regret to say, is Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwock," a fact I was ashamed to confess to an utter stranger, so I tried to deceive him by thinking of some other lines. The effort was hardly successful, for the only other lines I could call to mind at the moment were from Rudyard Kipling's rhyme, "The Post that Fitted," and which ran,
"Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits."
"Humph!" ejaculated my visitor. "You're a great Hiram, you are."
And then rising from his chair and walking to my "poet's corner," the magician selected two volumes.
"There," said he, handing me the Departmental Ditties. "You'll find the lines you tried to fool me with at the foot of page thirteen. Look."
I looked, and there lay that vile Sleary sentiment, in all the majesty of type, staring me in the eyes.
"And here," added my visitor, opening Alice in the Looking-Glass—"here is the poem that to your mind holds all the philosophy of life:
"'Come to my arms, my beamish boy,
He chortled in his joy.'"
I blushed and trembled. Blushed that he should discover the weakness of my taste, trembled at his power.
"I don't blame you for coloring," said the magician. "But I thought you said the Gutenberg was made up of men of brains? Do you think you could stay on the rolls a month if they were aware that your poetic ideals are summed up in the 'Jabberwock' and 'Sleary's Fits'?"
"My taste might be far worse," I answered.
"Yes, it might. You might have stooped to liking some of your own verses. I ought really to congratulate you, I suppose," retorted the visitor, with a sneering laugh.
This roused my ire again.
"Who are you, anyhow, that you come here and take me to task?" I demanded, angrily. "I'll like anything I please, and without asking your permission. If I cared more for the Peterkin Papers than I do for Shakespeare, I wouldn't be accountable to you, and that's all there is about it."
"Never mind who I am," said the visitor. "Suffice to say that I am myself. You'll know my name soon enough. In fact, you will pronounce it involuntarily the first thing when you wake in the morning, and then—" Here he shook his head ominously, and I felt myself grow rigid with fright in my chair. "Now for the final trick," he said, after a moment's pause. "Think of where you would most like to be at this moment, and I'll exert my power to put you there. Only close your eyes first."
I closed my eyes and wished. When I opened them I was in the billiard-room of the Gutenberg Club with Perkins and Tompson.
"For Heaven's sake, Spencer," they said, in surprise, "where did you drop in from? Why, man, you are as white as a sheet. And what a necktie! Take it off!"
"Grab hold of me, boys, and hold me fast," I pleaded, falling on my knees in terror. "If you don't, I believe I'll die."
The idea of returning to my sanctum was intolerably dreadful to me.
"Ha! ha!" laughed the magician, for even as I spoke to Perkins and Tompson I found myself seated opposite my infernal visitor in my room once more. "They couldn't keep you an instant with me summoning you back."
His laughter was terrible; his frown was pleasanter; and I felt myself gradually losing control of my senses.
"Go," I cried. "Leave me, or you will have the crime of murder on your conscience."
"I have no con—" he began; but I heard no more.
That is the last I remember of that fearful night. I must have fainted, and then have fallen into a deep slumber.
When I waked it was morning, and I was alone, but undressed and in bed, unconscionably weak, and surrounded by medicine bottles of many kinds. The clock on the mantle on the other side of the room indicated that it was after ten o'clock.
"Great Beelzebub!" I cried, taking note of the hour. "I've an engagement with Barlow at nine."
And then a sweet-faced woman, who, I afterwards learned, was a professional nurse, entered the room, and within an hour I realized two facts. One was that I had lain ill for many days, and that my engagement with Barlow was now for six weeks unfulfilled; the other, that my midnight visitor was none other than—
And yet I don't know. His tricks certainly were worthy of that individual; but Perkins and Tompson assert that I never entered the club that night, and surely if my visitor was Beelzebub himself he would not have omitted so important a factor of success as my actual presence in the billiard-room on that occasion would have been; and, besides, he was altogether too cool to have come from his reputed residence.
Altogether I think the episode most unaccountable, particularly when I reflect that while no trace of my visitor was discoverable in my room the next morning, as my nurse tells me, my blue necktie was in reality found upon the floor, crushed and torn into a shapeless bundle of frayed rags.
As for the club entertainment, I am told that, despite my absence, it was a wonderful success, redeemed from failure, the treasurer of the club said, by the voluntary services of a guest, who secured admittance on one of my cards, and who executed some sleight-of-hand tricks that made the members tremble, and whose mind-reading feats performed on the club's butler not only made it necessary for him to resign his office, but disclosed to the House Committee the whereabouts of several cases of rare wines that had mysteriously disappeared.
A QUICKSILVER CASSANDRA
It was altogether queer, and Jingleberry to this day does not entirely understand it. He had examined his heart as carefully as he knew how, and had arrived at the entirely reasonable conclusion that he was in love. He had every symptom of that malady. When Miss Marian Chapman was within range of his vision there was room for no one else there. He suffered from that peculiar optical condition which enabled him to see but one thing at a time when she was present, and she was that one thing, which was probably the reason why in his mind's eye she was the only woman in the world, for Marian was ever present before Jingleberry's mental optic. He had also examined as thoroughly as he could in hypothesis the heart of this "only woman," and he had—or thought he had, which amounts to the same thing—reason to believe that she reciprocated his affection. She certainly seemed glad always when he was about; she called him by his first name, and sometimes quarrelled with him as she quarrelled with no one else, and if that wasn't a sign of love in woman, then Jingleberry had studied the sex all his years—and they were thirty-two—for nothing. In short, Marian behaved so like a sister to him that Jingleberry, knowing how dreams and women go by contraries, was absolutely sure that a sister was just the reverse from that relationship which in her heart of hearts she was willing to assume towards him, and he was happy in consequence. Believing this, it was not at all strange that he should make up his mind to propose marriage to her, though, like many other men, he was somewhat chicken-hearted in coming to the point. Four times had he called upon Marian for the sole purpose of asking her to become his wife, and four times had he led up to the point and then talked about something else. What quality it is in man that makes a coward of him in the presence of one he considers his dearest friend is not within the province of this narrative to determine, but Jingleberry had it in its most virulent form. He had often got so far along in his proposal as "Marian—er—will you—will you—," and there he had as often stopped, contenting himself with such commonplace conclusions as "go to the matinee with me to-morrow?" or "ask your father for me if he thinks the stock market is likely to strengthen soon?" and other amazing substitutes for the words he so ardently desired, yet feared, to utter. But this afternoon—the one upon which the extraordinary events about to be narrated took place—Jingleberry had called resolved not to be balked in his determination to learn his fate. He had come to propose, and propose he would, ruat coelum. His confidence in a successful termination to his suit had been reinforced that very morning by the receipt of a note from Miss Chapman asking him to dine with her parents and herself that evening, and to accompany them after dinner to the opera. Surely that meant a great deal, and Jingleberry conceived that the time was ripe for a blushing "yes" to his long-deferred question. So he was here in the Chapman parlor waiting for the young lady to come down and become the recipient of the "interesting interrogatory," as it is called in some sections of Massachusetts.
"I'll ask her the first thing," said Jingleberry, buttoning up his Prince Albert, as though to impart a possibly needed stiffening to his backbone. "She will say yes, and then I shall enjoy the dinner and the opera so much the more. Ahem! I wonder if I am pale—I feel sort of—um—There's a mirror. That will tell." Jingleberry walked to the mirror—an oval, gilt-framed mirror, such as was very much the vogue fifty years ago, for which reason alone, no doubt, it was now admitted to the gold-and-white parlor of the house of Chapman.
"Blessed things these mirrors," said Jingleberry, gazing at the reflection of his face. "So reassuring. I'm not at all pale. Quite the contrary. I'm red as a sunset. Good omen that! The sun is setting on my bachelor days—and my scarf is crooked. Ah!"
The ejaculation was one of pleasure, for pictured in the mirror Jingleberry saw the form of Marian entering the room through the portieres.
"How do you do, Marian? been admiring myself in the glass," he said, turning to greet her. "I—er—"
Here he stopped, as well he might, for he addressed no one. Miss Chapman was nowhere to be seen.
"Dear me!" said Jingleberry, rubbing his eyes in astonishment. "How extraordinary! I surely thought I saw her—why, I did see her—that is, I saw her reflection in the gla—Ha! ha! She caught me gazing at myself there and has hidden."
He walked to the door and drew the portiere aside and looked into the hall. There was no one there. He searched every corner of the hall and of the dining-room at its end, and then returned to the parlor, but it was still empty. And then occurred the most strangely unaccountable event in his life.
As he looked about the parlor, he for the second time found himself before the mirror, but the reflection therein, though it was of himself, was of himself with his back turned to his real self, as he stood gazing amazedly into the glass; and besides this, although Jingleberry was alone in the real parlor, the reflection of the dainty room showed that there he was not so, for seated in her accustomed graceful attitude in the reflected arm-chair was nothing less than the counterfeit presentment of Marian Chapman herself.
It was a wonder Jingleberry's eyes did not fall out of his head, he stared so. What a situation it was, to be sure, to stand there and see in the glass a scene which, as far as he could observe, had no basis in reality; and how interesting it was for Jingleberry to watch himself going through the form of chatting pleasantly there in the mirror's depths with the woman he loved! It almost made him jealous, though, the reflected Jingleberry was so entirely independent of the real Jingleberry. The jealousy soon gave way to consternation, for, to the wondering suitor, the independent reflection was beginning to do that for which he himself had come. In other words, there was a proposal going on there in the glass, and Jingleberry enjoyed the novel sensation of seeing how he himself would look when passing through a similar ordeal. Altogether, however, it was not as pleasing as most novelties are, for there were distinct signs in the face of the mirrored Marian that the mirrored Jingleberry's words were distasteful to her, and that the proposition he was making was not one she could entertain under any circumstances. She kept shaking her head, and the more she shook it, the more the glazed Jingleberry seemed to implore her to be his. Finally, Jingleberry saw his quicksilver counterpart fall upon his knees before Marian of the glass, and hold out his arms and hands towards her in an attitude of prayerful despair, whereupon the girl sprang to her feet, stamped her left foot furiously upon the floor, and pointed the unwelcome lover to the door.
Jingleberry was fairly staggered. What could be the meaning of so extraordinary a freak of nature? Surely it must be prophetic. Fate was kind enough to warn him in advance, no doubt; otherwise it was a trick. And why should she stoop to play so paltry a trick as that upon him? Surely fate would not be so petty. No. It was a warning. The mirror had been so affected by some supernatural agency that it divined and reflected that which was to be instead of confining itself to what Jingleberry called "simultaneity." It led instead of following or acting coincidently with the reality, and it was the part of wisdom, he thought, for him to yield to its suggestion and retreat; and as he thought this, he heard a soft sweet voice behind him.
"I hope you haven't got tired of waiting, Tom," it said; and, turning, Jingleberry saw the unquestionably real Marian standing in the doorway.
"No," he answered, shortly. "I—I have had a pleasant—very entertaining ten minutes; but I—I must hurry along, Marian," he added. "I only came to tell you that I have a frightful headache, and—er—I can't very well manage to come to dinner or go to the opera with you to-night."
"Why, Tom," pouted Marian, "I am awfully disappointed! I had counted on you, and now my whole evening will be spoiled. Don't you think you can rest a little while, and then come?"
"Well, I—I want to, Marian," said Jingleberry; "but, to tell the truth, I—I really am afraid I am going to be ill; I've had such a strange experience this afternoon. I—"
"Tell me what it was," suggested Marian, sympathetically; and Jingleberry did tell her what it was. He told her the whole story from beginning to end—what he had come for, how he had happened to look in the mirror, and what he saw there; and Marian listened attentively to every word he said. She laughed once or twice, and when he had done she reminded him that mirrors have a habit of reversing everything; and somehow or other Jingleberry's headache went, and—and—well, everything went!
