Magic

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?