The Essential G. K. Chesterton

by G. K. Chesterton

  CONJURER. _Was_ Joan of Arc a Vegetarian?

  DUKE. Oh, well, it's a very high ideal, after all. The Sacredness of Life, you know--the Sacredness of Life. [_Shakes his head._] But they carry it too far. They killed a policeman down in Kent.

  CONJURER. Killed a policeman? How Vegetarian! Well, I suppose it was, so long as they didn't eat him.

  HASTINGS. They are asking only for small subscriptions. Indeed, they prefer to collect a large number of half-crowns, to prove the popularity of their movement. But I should advise....

  DUKE. Oh, give them three shillings, then.

  HASTINGS. If I might suggest....

  DUKE. Hang it all! We gave the Anti-Vegetarians three shillings. It seems only fair.

  HASTINGS. If I might suggest anything, I think your Grace will be wise not to subscribe in this case. The Anti-Vegetarians have already used their funds to form gangs ostensibly to protect their own meetings. And if the Vegetarians use theirs to break up the meetings--well, it will look rather funny that we have paid roughs on both sides. It will be rather difficult to explain when it comes before the magistrate.

  DUKE. But I shall be the magistrate. [CONJURER _stares at him again._] That's the system, my dear Hastings, that's the advantage of the system. Not a logical system--no Rousseau in it--but see how well it works! I shall be the very best magistrate that could be on the Bench. The others would be biassed, you know. Old Sir Lawrence is a Vegetarian himself; and might be hard on the Anti-Vegetarian roughs. Colonel Crashaw would be sure to be hard on the Vegetarian roughs. But if I've paid both of 'em, of course I shan't be hard on either of 'em--and there you have it. Just perfect impartiality.

  HASTINGS. [_Restrainedly._] Shall I take the programmes, your Grace?

  DUKE. [_Heartily._] No, no; I won't forget 'em. [_Exit_ HASTINGS.] Well, Professor, what's the news in the conjuring world?

  CONJURER. I fear there is never any news in the conjuring world.

  DUKE. Don't you have a newspaper or something? Everybody has a newspaper now, you know. The--er--Daily Sword-Swallower or that sort of thing?

  CONJURER. No, I have been a journalist myself; but I think journalism and conjuring will always be incompatible.

  DUKE. Incompatible--Oh, but that's where I differ--that's where I take larger views! Larger laws, as old Buffle said. Nothing's _incompatible_, you know--except husband and wife and so on; you must talk to Morris about that. It's wonderful the way incompatibility has gone forward in the States.

  CONJURER. I only mean that the two trades rest on opposite principles. The whole point of being a conjurer is that you won't explain a thing that has happened.

  DUKE. Well, and the journalist?

  CONJURER. Well, the whole point of being a journalist is that you do explain a thing that hasn't happened.

  DUKE. But you'll want somewhere to discuss the new tricks.

  CONJURER. There are no new tricks. And if there were we shouldn't want 'em discussed.

  DUKE. I'm afraid you're not _really_ advanced. Are you interested in modern progress?

  CONJURER. Yes. We are interested in all tricks done by illusion.

  DUKE. Well, well, I must go and see how Morris is. Pleasure of seeing you later.

  [_Exit_ DUKE, _leaving the programmes._

  CONJURER. Why are nice men such asses? [_Turns to arrange the table._] That seems all right. The pack of cards that is a pack of cards. And the pack of cards that isn't a pack of cards. The hat that looks like a gentleman's hat. But which, in reality, is no gentleman's hat. Only my hat; and I am not a gentleman. I am only a conjurer, and this is only a conjurer's hat. I could not take off this hat to a lady. I can take rabbits out of it, goldfish out of it, snakes out of it. Only I mustn't take my own head out of it. I suppose I'm a lower animal than a rabbit or a snake. Anyhow they can get out of the conjurer's hat; and I can't. I am a conjurer and nothing else but a conjurer. Unless I could show I was something else, and that would be worse.

  [_He begins to dash the cards rather irregularly about the table. Enter_ PATRICIA.

  PATRICIA. [_Coldly_] I beg your pardon. I came to get some programmes. My uncle wants them.

  [_She walks swiftly across and takes up the programmes._

  CONJURER. [_Still dashing cards about the table._] Miss Carleon, might I speak to you a moment? [_He puts his hands in his pockets, stares at the table; and his face assumes a sardonic expression._] The question is purely practical.

  PATRICIA. [_Pausing at the door._] I can hardly imagine what the question can be.

  CONJURER. I am the question.

  PATRICIA. And what have I to do with that?

  CONJURER. You have everything to do with it. I am the question: you....

  PATRICIA. [_Angrily._] Well, what am I?

  CONJURER. You are the answer.

  PATRICIA. The answer to what?

  CONJURER. [_Coming round to the front of the table and sitting against it._] The answer to me. You think I'm a liar because I walked about the fields with you and said I could make stones disappear. Well, so I can. I'm a conjurer. In mere point of fact, it wasn't a lie. But if it had been a lie I should have told it just the same. I would have told twenty such lies. You may or may not know why.

  PATRICIA. I know nothing about such lies.

  [_She puts her hand on the handle of the door, but the_ CONJURER, _who is sitting on the table and staring at his boots, does not notice the action, and goes on as in a sincere soliloquy._

  CONJURER. I don't know whether you have any notion of what it means to a man like me to talk to a lady like you, even on false pretences. I am an adventurer. I am a blackguard, if one can earn the title by being in all the blackguard societies of the world. I have thought everything out by myself, when I was a guttersnipe in Fleet Street, or, lower still, a journalist in Fleet Street. Before I met you I never guessed that rich people ever thought at all. Well, that is all I have to say. We had some good conversations, didn't we? I am a liar. But I told you a great deal of the truth.

  [_He turns and resumes the arrangement of the table._

  PATRICIA. [_Thinking._] Yes, you did tell me a great deal of the truth. You told me hundreds and thousands of truths. But you never told me the truth that one wants to know.

  CONJURER. And what is that?

  PATRICIA. [_Turning back into the room._] You never told me the truth about yourself. You never told me you were only the Conjurer.

  CONJURER. I did not tell you that because I do not even know it. I do not know whether I am only the Conjurer....

  PATRICIA. What do you mean?

  CONJURER. Sometimes I am afraid I am something worse than the Conjurer.

  PATRICIA. [_Seriously._] I cannot think of anything worse than a conjurer who does not call himself a conjurer.

  CONJURER. [_Gloomily._] There is something worse. [_Rallying himself._] But that is not what I want to say. Do you really find that very unpardonable? Come, let me put you a case. Never mind about whether it is our case. A man spends his time incessantly in going about in third-class carriages to fifth-rate lodgings. He has to make up new tricks, new patter, new nonsense, sometimes every night of his life. Mostly he has to do it in the beastly black cities of the Midlands and the North, where he can't get out into the country. Now and again he does it at some gentleman's country-house, where he can get out into the country. Well, you know that actors and orators and all sorts of people like to rehearse their effects in the open air if they can. [_Smiles._] You know that story of the great statesman who was heard by his own gardener saying, as he paced the garden, "Had I, Mr. Speaker, received the smallest intimation that I could be called upon to speak this evening...." [PATRICIA _controls a smile, and he goes on with overwhelming enthusiasm._] Well, conjurers are just the same. It takes some time to prepare an impromptu. A man like that walks about the woods and fields doing all his tricks beforehand, and talking all sorts of gibberish because he thinks he is alone. One evening this man found he was not alone. He found a very beautiful child
was watching him.

  PATRICIA. A child?

  CONJURER. Yes. That was his first impression. He is an intimate friend of mine. I have known him all my life. He tells me he has since discovered she is not a child. She does not fulfil the definition.

  PATRICIA. What is the definition of a child?

  CONJURER. Somebody you can play with.

  PATRICIA. [_Abruptly._] Why did you wear that cloak with the hood up?

  CONJURER. [_Smiling._] I think it escaped your notice that it was raining.

  PATRICIA. [_Smiling faintly._] And what did this friend of yours do?

  CONJURER. You have already told me what he did. He destroyed a fairy tale, for he created a fairy tale that he was bound to destroy. [_Swinging round suddenly on the table._] But do you blame a man very much, Miss Carleon, if he enjoyed the only fairy tale he had had in his life? Suppose he said the silly circles he was drawing for practice were really magic circles? Suppose he said the bosh he was talking was the language of the elves? Remember, he has read fairy tales as much as you have. Fairy tales are the only democratic institutions. All the classes have heard all the fairy tales. Do you blame him very much if he, too, tried to have a holiday in fairyland?

  PATRICIA. [_Simply._] I blame him less than I did. But I still say there can be nothing worse than false magic. And, after all, it was he who brought the false magic.

  CONJURER. [_Rising from his seat._] Yes. It was she who brought the real magic.

  [_Enter_ MORRIS, _in evening-dress. He walks straight up to the conjuring-table; and picks up one article after another, putting each down with a comment._

  MORRIS. I know that one. I know that. I know that. Let's see, that's the false bottom, I think. That works with a wire. I know that; it goes up the sleeve. That's the false bottom again. That's the substituted pack of cards--that....

  PATRICIA. Really, Morris, you mustn't talk as if you knew everything.

  CONJURER. Oh, I don't mind anyone knowing everything, Miss Carleon. There is something that is much more important than knowing how a thing is done.

  MORRIS. And what's that?

  CONJURER. Knowing how to do it.

  MORRIS. [_Becoming nasal again in anger._] That's so, eh? Being the high-toned conjurer because you can't any longer take all the sidewalk as a fairy.

  PATRICIA. [_Crossing the room and speaking seriously to her brother._] Really, Morris, you are very rude. And it's quite ridiculous to be rude. This gentleman was only practising some tricks by himself in the garden. [_With a certain dignity._] If there was any mistake, it was mine. Come, shake hands, or whatever men do when they apologize. Don't be silly. He won't turn you into a bowl of goldfish.

  MORRIS. [_Reluctantly._] Well, I guess that's so. [_Offering his hand._] Shake. [_They shake hands._] And you won't turn me into a bowl of goldfish anyhow, Professor. I understand that when you do produce a bowl of goldfish, they are generally slips of carrot. That is so, Professor?

  CONJURER. [_Sharply._] Yes. [_Produces a bowl of goldfish from his tail pockets and holds it under the other's nose._] Judge for yourself.

  MORRIS. [_In monstrous excitement._] Very good! Very good! But I know how that's done--I know how that's done. You have an india-rubber cap, you know, or cover....

  CONJURER. Yes.

  [_Goes back gloomily to his table and sits on it, picking up a pack of cards and balancing it in his hand._

  MORRIS. Ah, most mysteries are tolerably plain if you know the apparatus. [_Enter_ DOCTOR _and_ SMITH, _talking with grave faces, but growing silent as they reach the group._] I guess I wish we had all the old apparatus of all the old Priests and Prophets since the beginning of the world. I guess most of the old miracles and that were a matter of just panel and wires.

  CONJURER. I don't quite understand you. What old apparatus do you want so much?

  MORRIS. [_Breaking out with all the frenzy of the young free-thinker._] Well, sir, I just want that old apparatus that turned rods into snakes. I want those smart appliances, sir, that brought water out of a rock when old man Moses chose to hit it. I guess it's a pity we've lost the machinery. I would like to have those old conjurers here that called themselves Patriarchs and Prophets in your precious Bible....

  PATRICIA. Morris, you mustn't talk like that.

  MORRIS. Well, I don't believe in religion....

  DOCTOR. [_Aside._] Hush, hush. Nobody but women believe in religion.

  PATRICIA. [_Humorously._] I think this is a fitting opportunity to show you another ancient conjuring trick.

  DOCTOR. Which one is that?

  PATRICIA. The Vanishing Lady!

  [_Exit_ PATRICIA.

  SMITH. There is one part of their old apparatus I regret especially being lost.

  MORRIS. [_Still excited._] Yes!

  SMITH. The apparatus for writing the Book of Job.

  MORRIS. Well, well, they didn't know everything in those old times.

  SMITH. No, and in those old times they knew they didn't. [_Dreamily._] Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding?

  CONJURER. Somewhere in America, I believe.

  SMITH. [_Still dreamily._] Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The deep sayeth it is not in me, the sea sayeth it is not with me. Death and destruction say we have heard tell of it. God understandeth the way thereof and He knoweth the place thereof. For He looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole Heaven. But to man He hath said: Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding. [_Turns suddenly to the_ DOCTOR.] How's that for Agnosticism, Dr. Grimthorpe? What a pity that apparatus is lost.

  MORRIS. Well, you may just smile how you choose, I reckon. But I say the Conjurer here could be the biggest man in the big blessed centuries if he could just show us how the Holy old tricks were done. We must say this for old man Moses, that he was in advance of his time. When he did the old tricks they were new tricks. He got the pull on the public. He could do his tricks before grown men, great bearded fighting men who could win battles and sing Psalms. But this modern conjuring is all behind the times. That's why they only do it with schoolboys. There isn't a trick on that table I don't know. The whole trade's as dead as mutton; and not half so satisfying. Why he [_pointing to the_ CONJURER] brought out a bowl of goldfish just now--an old trick that anybody could do.

  CONJURER. Oh, I quite agree. The apparatus is perfectly simple. By the way, let me have a look at those goldfish of yours, will you?

  MORRIS. [_Angrily._] I'm not a paid play-actor come here to conjure. I'm not here to do stale tricks; I'm here to see through 'em. I say it's an old trick and....

  CONJURER. True. But as you said, we never show it except to schoolboys.

  MORRIS. And may I ask you, Professor Hocus Pocus, or whatever your name is, whom you are calling a schoolboy?

  CONJURER. I beg your pardon. Your sister will tell you I am sometimes mistaken about children.

  MORRIS. I forbid you to appeal to my sister.

  CONJURER. That is exactly what a schoolboy would do.

  MORRIS. [_With abrupt and dangerous calm._] I am not a schoolboy, Professor. I am a quiet business man. But I tell you in the country I come from, the hand of a quiet business man goes to his hip pocket at an insult like that.

  CONJURER. [_Fiercely._] Let it go to his pocket! I thought the hand of a quiet business man more often went to someone else's pocket.