by Mike Ashley
The odd thing was that nobody but myself seemed in the least to realize how poor the performance was; the Mandrake had got round them all, grown-ups and children alike, and deluded them into accepting its bungling efforts as a quite marvellous display of dexterity. Why, even when, after borrowing Dudlow’s gold watch, it coolly handed it back smashed to fragments, he merely swept all the loose wheels and springs into his waist-coat pocket, and said that it was “Capital – uncommonly clever.” And not out of politeness, mind you; I could see he really thought so!
After the conjuring there were games, which were entirely organized by the Mandrake. Nobody consulted me; if I hadn’t joined in by way of asserting myself, I should have been completely out of it. I tried to behave as if I didn’t know the Mandrake was in the room; but this was not easy, as the little brute made a point of barging into me and rumpling my hair and pommelling me all over, as if to induce me to take some notice of it.
People only remarked on its high spirits, but I couldn’t help saying that there was a considerable difference between high spirits and downright horseplay; and really, to hear little Joy Hammond (a special pal of mine) coming up with flushed face and sparkling eyes when I was gasping on the carpet, trying to recover my wind and one or two of my enamel and mother-of-pearl waistcoat buttons, and asking me, “Isn’t Ferdie a lovely toy-fellow?” was enough to put anyone a little out of temper!
The children all called it “Ferdie”. Bobbie Clint, another intimate friend of mine, informed me proudly that it had “partickerily asked them to.” It was simply maddening to see them all hanging about it, and making such a ridiculous fuss over that little horror, while Casbird looked on smiling, with all the airs of a public benefactor!
I felt it was almost too hard to bear when my beloved Violet reproved me privately for my stiffness, and added that, if there was one quality more than another she detested in a man, it was a sulky disposition!
I did not defend myself – my pride kept me silent; if she chose to misunderstand me, she must. But I was determined to have it out with the Mandrake privately at the very first opportunity – and I contrived to inveigle it out of the room on some pretext – “Dumb Crambo,” I think it was.
It skipped into the hall with me readily enough; I fancy it flattered itself that I was coming round at last. But I very soon undeceived it: I told it that it knew as well as I did it had no business there, and I insisted on its leaving the house instantly, offering, if it did so, to save its face by explaining that it had been suddenly called away.
I can see it now as it sat perched on an oak chest, looking up at me with an assumption of injured innocence. It protested that it didn’t want to go yet – why should it, when it was having the time of its life, and everybody, except me, was being so kind to it? It had the impertinence to add that it was sorry to see a character so fine in many respects as mine disfigured by so mean a passion as jealousy – which made me furious.
I replied that I was hardly likely to be jealous under the circumstances, and it could leave my character alone. All I had to say was that, if the Mandrake remained, I should be compelled to speak out.
“Oh no!” it said, “you will not do that, because, if you remember, you gave me your word of honour that you would never betray the secret of my birth!”
“When I gave that,” I retorted, “I never imagined you would have the audacity to push yourself in here – and at a children’s party too!”
It said it had always been its dream to be invited to a real children’s party, and now it had come true and I must have seen how popular it was making itself. It was sure I would not be so cruel as to expose it – I was too honourable a gentleman to break my word.
It had found my weak point there and knew it – but I stood firm. “I don’t consider myself bound by that any longer,” I said. “It’s my duty to say what I know – and, if you leave me no other alternative, I mean to do it.”
“Listen to me,” it said, with a soft but deadly earnestness, and I thought I could read in its little eyes, as they glittered in the rays of the hall lantern, a certain veiled and sinister menace. “I warn you, for your own sake, because I should like to spare you if possible. If you insist on denouncing me, you little know the consequences you will bring upon yourself! You will be the chief sufferer from your rashness.”
I can’t deny that this warning had some effect on me; so much so, in fact, that I am afraid I climbed down to some extent. I said that I was as anxious as itself to avoid a scandal, and that I should take no steps so long as it behaved itself. And then we went in and played “Dumb Crambo,” or whatever it was, and I got mauled about by the Mandrake more severely than ever!
But I was beginning to have enough of it, and I took the curate aside and hinted that his friend struck me as a bit of a bounder, and that as he was already getting above himself, it would be as well to get him away before supper. Casbird was indignant; he said that “Ferdie” was the life and soul of the party, and he couldn’t understand my attitude, especially when the dear little fellow had taken such a decided fancy to me! He had always thought, he said, that I was above these petty prejudices. So I didn’t press it, and soon afterwards we went in to supper.
It made me feel positively ill to see all those nice kiddies almost fighting for the privilege of sitting next that little fraud, and then to watch it making an absolute hog of itself with sausage-rolls and lemon sponge! And the way they pulled crackers with it, too, and pressed the rings out of them on it as keepsakes, till its little claws were loaded with cheap jewellery. I sat between Violet and Peggy – but neither of them offered to pull a cracker with me!
Still, I bore it all without murmuring until towards the end, when Dudlow suddenly got up and asked us to charge our glasses and drink to the health of the new friend who had contributed so enormously to the general enjoyment that evening.
I knew what was coming, and so did the Mandrake, though it cast down its eyes with a self-conscious smirk, as if it could not think to whom its host was referring!
And then, all at once, I felt I could not stand any more. It was my duty to speak. Whatever it might cost me, I must prevent poor Dudlow – whom I liked and respected for his own sake as well as because he was Violet’s father – from making such an irreparable mistake as proposing the health of a Mandrake at his own table!
So I rose, and implored him to sit down and leave the rest of his speech unspoken; I said I had reasons which I would explain privately later on.
He replied rather heatedly that he would have no hole-and-corner business under his roof; if I had anything to say, I had better say it then and there, or sit down and hold my tongue.
The Mandrake sat perfectly calm, with its beady eyes fixed warningly on me, but I saw its complexion slowly change from coal-black to an awful grey-green shade that made the blue-and-pink fool’s cap it was wearing seem even more hideously incongruous.
But I had gone too far to stop now; I was no longer afraid of its vengeance. It might blast me to death where I stood – I didn’t care. It would only reveal its true character – and then, perhaps, Violet would be sorry for having misjudged me so!
“If that – that thing over there,” I said, pointing to it, “had not cast some cursed spell over you all, so far from drinking its unwholesome health, you would shrink from it in horror!”
There was a general outcry, amidst which Casbird sprang to his feet. “Let us have no more of these dastardly insinuations!” he shouted. “Tell us, if you can, what you accuse our Ferdie of having done!”
“It’s not what it’s done,” I said, “it’s what it is! Are you blind, that you cannot see that it’s nothing more or less than a Mandrake?” I was going on to explain how I had bought it by mistake in a bag of mixed anemone roots, when Dudlow brought me up with a round turn that almost took my breath away.
“And if he is a Mandrake, sir,” he said, “what of it?”
“What of it?” I could only gasp feebly. “I should have
thought myself that that was quite enough to make him impossible – at a party like this!”
“And who are you,” thundered the curate, “that you presume to sit in judgement on a fellow creature? Let me tell you that you might have some reason for this superciliousness if you were half as good a man as poor dear little Ferdie here is a Mandrake!” He patted it affectionately on the shoulder as he spoke, and I saw Violet’s lovely eyes first shine on him in admiration of his chivalry, and then blaze on me with scorn and contempt.
Indeed, they all seemed to consider my conduct snobbish in the extreme, and the Mandrake was the object of universal sympathy as it endeavoured to squeeze out a crocodile tear or two.
“All right!” I said. “Pitch into me if you like! But you will see presently. It threatened me only half an hour ago with the most awful consequences if I dared to expose it. Now let it do its worst!”
But little did I foresee the fiendish revenge it was preparing. It got up on its chair and began to make a speech. Such a speech – every sentence of it reeking with the cheapest sentiment, the most maudlin claptrap! But clever – diabolically clever, even I could not help acknowledging that.
It began by saying how hurt it felt that I could imagine it would ever harm a hair of my head. Never, no, not even when I had driven it from my door last Christmas Eve, out into the bitter night and the falling snow (which was sheer melodrama, for Christmas Eve had been rather warmer and muggier than usual!), not even then had it had any sentiments towards me but the humblest devotion and affection! It did not blame me for resenting its intrusion among them that evening. Perhaps I could not be expected to understand what a temptation it had been to a lonely wanderer like itself to forget the inferiority of its position, and share for a few too fleeting hours in the innocent revelry of happy children, at a season, too, when it had fondly hoped that charity and goodwill might be shown to all alike. But I had made it realize its mistake – and now it could only implore our pardon and assure us that it would trouble us but a very little while longer.
At this its voice quavered, and it broke down, most artis tically. There was not a dry eye – except mine – round the supper-table. As for Dudlow, he was blubbering quite openly, while Peggy, Joan, Joy Hammond, and all the other children entreated “darling Ferdie” not to leave them, and I heard myself described by Bobbie Clint as a “beastly beast,” and Tommy Dickson passionately declared that I was a sneak!
All this was unpleasant enough – but nothing to what followed. That devilish little imp was keeping an even higher card up its sleeve for the climax. After mastering its emotion, it thanked all its dear young playmates for still desiring to keep it with them, but said that, alas, it was not to be! The sudden shock of learning that I, whose affection it had striven so hard to win, regarded it with such bitter antipathy had been too much for its high-strung, sensitive nature – it felt that its end was very near. One last request it had to make of me, and that was that I would accept the beautiful emerald ring it had on (off a cracker, if you please!), and wear it always as a remembrance, and in token that it forgave me, fully and freely!
And then, to my unspeakable horror, it collapsed in a heap on its chair, and shrivelled slowly away inside its dress-clothes until it was once more the wizened object it had been when I first saw it!
You may have seen those “dying roosters” they sell in the streets – well, it went down exactly like one of those. And up to the time its head fell over in a final droop, its evil little eyes were fixed on me with vindictive triumph.
It had scored off me thoroughly, and was jolly well aware of it.
I knew perfectly well that the little wretch wasn’t really dead – but though I assured them all it was merely shamming, they only turned away in horror at what they called my “cold-blooded brutality.”
It was like some horrible nightmare. I was in the right and they were all wrong – but I couldn’t get anybody to see it. I would rather not dwell on the scene that followed: the wailing of those poor deluded little kiddies, Louisa’s hysterical refusal to consider me any longer a brother of hers, Casbird’s manly sorrow over the departed Ferdie, and Violet’s gentle, loving efforts to console him. I had no time to observe more, for just then Dudlow ordered me out of the house and forbade me ever again to cross his threshold . . .
I must have got back to “Ullswater” somehow, but I have no recollection of doing so. Everything was a blank until I found myself in our drawing room, lying groaning in an armchair, with my head pressed against its side.
And then, as the incidents of that disastrous party came back to me, one by one, I shivered in an agony of shame. I really do not think I have ever felt so utterly miserable in all my life!
I had done for myself, hopelessly, irretrievably. I had lost Violet for ever. Louisa would tell me, the moment she came home, that we must arrange to live apart. Casbird would cut me dead in future. Even the little kiddies would refuse to be friends with me any longer! . . . And why had all this happened? Because I had not had the sense to hold my tongue! What earthly business was it of mine if the Dudlows chose to invite a Mandrake to “Ingleholme”? Why need I have been so down on the poor little brute? At Christmas-time, too, when any ordinarily decent fellow would have taken a more Dickensy view of things! I couldn’t understand my having behaved so outrageously – it did not seem like me . . .
And yet, hang it all! I had only done the right thing. True, I might have been more tactful over it. I could see now, when it was too late, that to go and make a scene at supper like that was scarcely good form. I might have thought more of the children’s feelings.
Here a dreadful doubt took hold of me. Suppose I had been mistaken all along in the Mandrake’s character? I knew very little about the creatures, after all – only what I had read in Sir Thomas Browne, and even he seemed to hold that the stories to their discredit were either exaggerations or vulgar or common errors.
And, repulsive as I had found “Ferdie”, I could not remember anything in his conduct that would seem very reprehensible, even in a choir-boy. And all his sentiments had been exemplary. Had I been guilty of a “vulgar error”? Had I really, as Casbird put it, “broken a loving little heart by my stupid cruelty”? Was I, as he had called me, a “moral murderer”? They might hold an inquest on the thing. I should be called on to give my evidence – the jury would add a rider to their verdict censuring me for my conduct, and the coroner would endorse their opinion with some severe remarks! It would get into all the papers; the fellows at the bank would send me to Coventry; I should be lucky if I did not get the sack! . . .
But stop – would they really make such a fuss as all that about a mere Mandrake? If they only made a few inquiries, when they calmed down, surely they would find out something shady about it. How did it get hold of those evening clothes, for instance, when all the shops were shut? It must have made a burglarious entry somewhere – I remembered how coolly it had appropriated the Golliwogg’s . . . and at this point I shuddered and started, as, once again, that long shrill scream rang out into the night! Great heavens! Had Togo pulled up another of them? I felt I could not go through it all a second time. But this time the sound really was much more like a railway engine. What if, after all – I could settle it in a moment; I had only to turn my head – and, if I saw the Golliwogg lying there on the table with nothing on, I should know!
For some seconds I could not summon up courage enough to look.
And then, slowly, in deadly terror of finding my worst fears confirmed, I turned round . . .
What my feelings were on discovering that the Golliwogg was fully clothed I can’t express – I could have sobbed with relief and joy on its blue shoulder.
I glanced at the old brown book which lay face downwards on the floor. It was still open at Chapter VI., “Of sundry tenents concerning vegetables or plants, which examined, prove either false or dubious.” And then it occurred to me that, if I must dream any more about Mandrakes, it would on the whole be more comfort
able to do so in bed.
* * *
The Dudlows’ children’s party was a very cheery affair, although there was no Mandrake to keep things going. And I did get an opportunity of speaking to Violet, and it was all right. At least, it will be, as soon as I get my next rise.
THE QUEEN’S TRIPLETS
Israel Zangwill
Here’s another pretty-much-forgotten writer. If he’s remembered at all these days it’s because of The Big Bow Mystery (1895), the first great locked-room mystery. But in his day his reputation rested on his efforts for the recognition of the Jewish poor in east London, through the powerful novel Children of the Ghetto (1892), which earned him the nickname of “the Dickens of the Ghetto”. What does seem forgotten is that Zangwill (1864-1926) was a noted humorist. He founded the comic paper Ariel in 1890 and he traded aphorisms and quips with Oscar Wilde (in fact, he looked a bit like Wilde) and Jerome K. Jerome (of Three Men in a Boat fame). The best of his early light fantasies were collected as The King of the Schnorrers (1894) from which the following story comes.
ONCE upon a time there was a Queen who unexpectedly gave birth to three Princes. They were all so exactly alike that after a moment or two it was impossible to remember which was the eldest or which was the youngest. Any two of them, sort them how you pleased, were always twins. They all cried in the same key and with the same comic grimaces. In short, there was not a hair’s-breadth of difference between them – not that they had a hair’s-breadth between them, for, like most babies, they were prematurely bald.
The King was very much put out. He did not mind the expense of keeping three Heir Apparents, for that fell on the country, and was defrayed by an impost called “The Queen’s Tax”. But it was the consecrated custom of the kingdom that the crown should pass over to the eldest son, and the absence of accurate knowledge upon this point was perplexing. A triumvirate was out of the question; the multiplication of monarchs would be vexation to the people, and the rule of three would drive them mad.