Magic | Page 8

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