The Magician

Arthur Burdon and Dr. Porhoët walked in silence. They had lunched at a restaurant in the Boulevard Saint Michel, and were sauntering now in the gardens of the Luxembourg. Dr. Porhoët walked with stooping shoulders, his hands behind him. He beheld the scene with the eyes of the many painters who have sought by means of the most charming garden in Paris to express their sense of beauty. The grass was scattered with the fallen leaves, but their wan decay little served to give a touch of nature to the artifice of all besides. The trees were neatly surrounded by bushes, and the bushes by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without abandonment, as though conscious of the decorative scheme they helped to form. It was autumn, and some were leafless already. Many of the flowers were withered. The formal garden reminded one of a light woman, no longer young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a brave show of despair. It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the hurrying years have rendered vain.

Dr. Porhoët drew more closely round his fragile body the heavy cloak which even in summer he could not persuade himself to discard. The best part of his life had been spent in Egypt, in the practice of medicine, and the frigid summers of Europe scarcely warmed his blood.

He spoke English with a Parisian accent.

Miss Boyd was beginning to tear him gaily limb from limb, when the door was flung open, and a large person entered. He threw off his cloak with a dramatic gesture.

“Marie, disembarrass me of this coat of frieze. Hang my sombrero upon a convenient peg.”

He spoke execrable French, but there was a grandiloquence about his vocabulary which set everyone laughing.

“Here is somebody I don’t know,” said Susie.

“But I do, at least, by sight,” answered Burdon. He leaned over to Dr. Porhoët who was sitting opposite, quietly eating his dinner and enjoying the nonsense which everyone talked. “Is not that your magician?”

“Oliver Haddo,” said Dr. Porhoët, with a little nod of amusement.

The new arrival stood at the end of the room with all eyes upon him. He threw himself into an attitude of command and remained for a moment perfectly still.

“You look as if you were posing, Haddo,” said Warren huskily.

“He couldn’t help doing that if he tried,” laughed Clayson.

Oliver Haddo slowly turned his glance to the painter.

“I grieve to see, O most excellent Warren, that the ripe juice of the aperitif has glazed your sparkling eye.”

“Do you mean to say I’m drunk, sir?”

“In one gross, but expressive, word, drunk.”

The painter grotesquely flung himself back in his chair as though he had been struck a blow, and Haddo looked steadily at Clayson.

“How often have I explained to you, O Clayson, that your deplorable lack of education precludes you from the brilliancy to which you aspire?”

He held up the flap that gave access to the booth, and Susie went in. Margaret and Arthur Burdon, somewhat against their will, were obliged to follow. The native closed the opening behind them. They found themselves in a dirty little tent, ill-lit by two smoking lamps; a dozen stools were placed in a circle on the bare ground. In one corner sat a fellah woman, motionless, in ample robes of dingy black. Her face was hidden by a long veil, which was held in place by a queer ornament of brass in the middle of the forehead, between the eyes. These alone were visible, large and sombre, and the lashes were darkened with kohl: her fingers were brightly stained with henna. She moved slightly as the visitors entered, and the man gave her his drum. She began to rub it with her hands, curiously, and made a droning sound, which was odd and mysterious. There was a peculiar odour in the place, so that Dr. Porhoët was for a moment transported to the evil-smelling streets of Cairo. It was an acrid mixture of incense, of attar of roses, with every imaginable putrescence. It choked the two women, and Susie asked for a cigarette. The native grinned when he heard the English tongue. He showed a row of sparkling and beautiful teeth.

“My name Mohammed,” he said. “Me show serpents to Sirdar Lord Kitchener. Wait and see. Serpents very poisonous.”

He was dressed in a long blue gabardine, more suited to the sunny banks of the Nile than to a fair in Paris, and its colour could hardly be seen for dirt. On his head was the national tarboosh.

“You have a marvellous collection of tall stories,” said Arthur. “I’m afraid I should want better proof that these particular snakes are poisonous.”

Oliver turned to the charmer and spoke to him in Arabic. Then he answered Arthur.

“The man has a horned viper, cerastes is the name under which you gentlemen of science know it, and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian snakes. It is commonly known as Cleopatra’s Asp, for that is the serpent which was brought in a basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order that she might not endure the triumph of Augustus.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Susie.

He smiled but did not answer. He stepped forward to the centre of the tent and fell on his knees. He uttered Arabic words, which Dr. Porhoët translated to the others.

“O viper, I adjure you, by the great God who is all-powerful, to come forth. You are but a snake, and God is greater than all snakes. Obey my call and come.”

A tremor went through the goatskin bag, and in a moment a head was protruded. A lithe body wriggled out. It was a snake of light grey colour, and over each eye was a horn. It lay slightly curled.

“Do you recognize it?” said Oliver in a low voice to the doctor.

“I do.”

The charmer sat motionless, and the woman in the dim background ceased her weird rubbing of the drum. Haddo seized the snake and opened its mouth. Immediately it fastened on his hand, and the reptile teeth went deep into his flesh.

“When we were married, I reminded him that he’d promised to take me to his mother. He would never speak of her, but I felt I must see her. And one day, suddenly, he told me to get ready for a journey, and we went a long way, to a place I did not know, and we drove into the country. We seemed to go miles and miles, and we reached at last a large house, surrounded by a high wall, and the windows were heavily barred. We were shown into a great empty room. It was dismal and cold like the waiting-room at a station. A man came in to us, a tall man, in a frock-coat and gold spectacles. He was introduced to me as Dr. Taylor, and then, suddenly, I understood.”

Margaret spoke in hurried gasps, and her eyes were staring wide, as though she saw still the scene which at the time had seemed the crowning horror of her experience.

“I knew it was an asylum, and Oliver hadn’t told me a word. He took us up a broad flight of stairs, through a large dormitory⁠—oh, if you only knew what I saw there! I was so horribly frightened, I’d never been in such a place before⁠—to a cell. And the walls and the floor were padded.”

Margaret passed her hand across her forehead to chase away the recollection of that awful sight.

“Oh, I see it still. I can never get it out of my mind.”