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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41125 ***
+
+                              MR. JACOBS
+
+
+                                A TALE
+
+                                  OF
+
+                       THE DRUMMER THE REPORTER
+
+                       AND THE PRESTIDIGITATEUR
+
+
+
+                           SEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+
+
+                                BOSTON
+
+                        W. B. CLARKE & CARRUTH
+
+                                 1883
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MR. JACOBS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+In spite of Jean-Jacques and his school, men are not everywhere,
+especially in countries where excessive liberty or excessive tiffin
+favors the growth of that class of adventurers most usually designated
+as drummers, or by a still more potent servility, the ruthless
+predatory instinct of certain bold and unscrupulous persons may and
+almost certainly will; and in those more numerous and certainly more
+happy countries where the travelling show is discouraged, the
+unwearying flatterer, patient under abstemious high-feeding, will
+assuredly become a roving sleight-of-hand man.
+
+Without doubt the Eastern portion of the world, when an hereditary,
+or, at least, a traditional, if not customary, or, perhaps,
+conservative, not to say legendary, or, more correctly speaking,
+historic, despotism has never ceased to ingrain the blood of Russia,
+Chinese, Ottoman, Persia, India, British, or Nantasket, in a perfect
+instance of a ruthless military tiffin, where neither blood nor
+stratagem have been spared.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The editor was here obliged to omit a score of pages, in
+which the only thing worth preserving was a carcanet of sulphur
+springs.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was at tiffin. A man sat opposite whose servant brought him water
+in a large goblet cut from a single emerald. I observed him closely. A
+water-drinker is always a phenomenon to me; but a water-drinker who
+did the thing so artistically, and could swallow the fluid without
+wincing, was such a manifestation as I had never seen.
+
+I contrasted him with our neighbors at the lunch-counter, who seemed
+to be vying, like the captives of Circe, to ascertain by trial who
+could swallow the most free lunch, and pay for the fewest
+"pegs,"--those vile concoctions of spirits, ice, and soda-water, which
+have destroyed so many splendid resolutions on the part of the
+Temperance Alliance,--and an impression came over me that he must be
+the most innocent man on the road.
+
+Before I go farther let me try and describe him. His peculiarity was
+that, instead of eyes, he had jewels composed of six precious stones.
+There was a depth of life and vital light in them that told of the
+pent-up force of a hundred, or, at least, of ninety-nine generations
+of Persian magi. They blazed with the splendor of a god-like nature,
+needing neither tiffin nor brandy and soda to feed their power.
+
+My mind was made up. I addressed him in Gaelic. To my surprise, and
+somewhat to my confusion, he answered in two words of modern Hebrew.
+We fell into a polyglot but refined conversation.
+
+"Come and smoke," he said, at length.
+
+Slipping into the office of the hotel, and ascertaining that there was
+no danger, I followed to his room.
+
+"I am known as Mr. Jacobs," he said. "My lawful name is Abdallah
+Hafiz-ben-butler-Jacobi."
+
+The apartment, I soon saw, was small,--for India at least,--and every
+available space, nook, and cranny, were filled with innumerable
+show-cases of Attleboro' jewelry.
+
+"Pretty showy?" he remarked familiarly. "I am a drummer."
+
+"My name is Peter Briggs," I replied. "I am a correspondent of the
+_Calcutta Jackal_."
+
+"My star!" he said. "That is the dog-star. A sudden thought strikes
+me," he added. "Let us swear an eternal friendship."
+
+He thereupon told me his entire history, from childhood up. It was
+interesting to the last degree, as I had thought often before, when I
+read it in various dime novels.
+
+He ceased speaking, and the waning moon rose pathetically, with a
+curiously doleful look, expressive of quiet, but deep contempt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The next morning I had tiffin.
+
+I speculated in regard to Mr. Jacobs. A long and eventful experience
+with three-card monte men had made me extremely shy of persons who
+begin an acquaintance by making confidences; and I wondered why he had
+taken the trouble to make up the story of his life, to relate to an
+entire stranger. Still, there was something about the man that seemed
+to promise an item for the _Calcutta Jackal_, and therefore, when
+Jacobs appeared, looking like the sunflower, for all his wild dress
+and his knee-breeches, I felt the "little thrill of pleasure," so
+aptly compared by Swinburne to the clutch of a hand in the hair.
+
+"Are you married?" queried Mr. Jacobs.
+
+"Thank heavens, no!" I replied, convulsively. "Are you?"
+
+"Some," returned he, gloomily. "I have three. They do not agree. Do
+you think a fourth wife would calm them?"
+
+"A man," I observed, sententiously, "is better off with no wife at all
+than with three."
+
+His subtle mind caught the flaw instantly.
+
+"Negative happiness," he murmured; "very negative. Oh, I would I could
+marry all the sweet creatures!"
+
+Having our tiffins saddled, we rode off at a breakneck pace, and
+cleverly managed to ride down the uncle of the heroine.
+
+"Dear uncle," casually remarked that young lady, riding up, "I hope
+you are not hurt."
+
+"What an original remark!" exclaimed Jacobs, with rapture. "Miss
+Eastinhoe is beautiful and sensible. I like her. What do you suppose
+she is worth?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Having tiffined, we reclined upon a divan.
+
+"My father," said Mr. Jacobs, "had but one wife; I have already raised
+him two, as I told you, and mean to go him one better."
+
+I smoked in silence.
+
+"A hint for the _Calcutta Jackal_," I thought, with satisfaction.
+"Bigamy raised to the third power."
+
+"You are right," he said, slowly, his half-closed eyes fixed on his
+feet; "yes, you are right. But why not?"
+
+I shook myself, drank some sherbert, and kicked off one shoe
+impatiently. This reading of a gentleman's private thoughts seemed to
+me an unwarrantable impertinence; but a sudden light flashed over my
+obscured intellect, and, observing that he was in a trance, I felt it
+would be indelicate to argue the matter. I fired my shoe at him, to
+assure myself of his condition, and then held a free pass towards him.
+He instantly recovered, and stretched out his hand to take it.
+
+"I must have been dreaming," he said, a look of annoyance shading his
+features as I drew the pass away. "But I am in love."
+
+It was near midnight, and the ever-decreasing moon was dragging
+herself up, as if ashamed of her waning beauty and tearful look.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+We called upon Miss Eastinhoe the following day. She was playing with
+a half-tamed young tiffin, a charming little beast, with long gray fur
+and bright twinkling eye, mischievous and merry as a gnome's. He was a
+gift of Mr. Jacobs to the lady. He cost nothing.
+
+"Are you spoken for?" Miss Eastinhoe asked, her eyes opening a moment
+and meeting his, but falling again instantly with a change of
+color.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: The editor had his doubts about this; but as it so stands
+in the original MS. (p. 69), concludes that in low latitudes, eyes do
+change color on slight provocation.]
+
+"Miss Eastinhoe," he said, quietly, "you know I am a man of muscle,
+and that I have three wives."
+
+"Oh, I had forgotten!" she said; "I forgot about your wives."
+
+"Among primitive people, and persons in pinafores," I interposed,
+"marriage is a social law."
+
+"You surprise me, Mr. Briggs," she said, with an air of childlike
+simplicity.
+
+I felt that I had put a plug into my end of the conversation.
+
+"We will play polo next week," said Mr. Jacobs. "Meanwhile, let us
+visit a Certain Mighty Personage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+"We will go at four," said Jacobs, coming into my room after tiffin.
+"I said three this morning, but it is not a bad plan to keep natives
+waiting."
+
+"Why do we go?" I inquired, languidly.
+
+"The Certain Mighty Personage has a prisoner whom I wish to purchase."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+Leaning over until his mouth almost touched my ear, he whispered
+quietly:
+
+"Number One."
+
+"The devil, you say!" I ejaculated, surprised out of grammar and
+decorum by the startling news.
+
+"Are you thinking of marrying Miss Eastinhoe?" I demanded, after a
+pause of some tiffins.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "if her settlements are satisfactory."
+
+Arrived at the residence of the Certain Mighty Personage, we were
+received in a jemadar where a sahib charpoyed the sowans and tiffined
+the maharajah.
+
+"I'll have you exposed in the newspapers," said Jacobs, sternly, to
+the Certain Mighty Personage, "if you do not deliver into my hands,
+before the dark half of the next moon, the man Number One."
+
+The Uncertain Mighty Personage signed a contract to that effect, with
+extreme reluctance, and with many forcible remarks disrespectful to
+both the ancestors and posterity of Jacobs.
+
+"What do you want of Number One?" I inquired, as we rode away.
+
+"He is the only man alive that can keep a plated watch from turning
+black in this accursed climate."
+
+"But why did you bring me along, when you didn't need me?"
+
+"To frighten him with the threat of the _Calcutta Jackal_. Besides,
+how else could you tell the story?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+We rode our tiffins back and met Miss Eastinhoe with her friends.
+
+"Let us go on a tiger-hunt," we all remarked, casually.
+
+As we drove home a voice suddenly broke on the darkness.[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: Another curious Oriental phenomenon, not sufficiently
+explained by the author.]
+
+"Peace, Abdallah Hafiz," it said.
+
+"By the holy poker, the Jibena-inosay!" answered Jacobs, who had
+recognized the broken voice.
+
+"I have business with thee," continued the voice; "I will be with
+thee, anon."
+
+"It is Lamb Ral," my companion explained, as the voice faded away.
+"Facetious as ever; now you have him, and then again you don't have
+him. We call him the Little Joker, for short."
+
+"Isn't he difficult to explain?" I ventured.
+
+"Very," he said. "But who has ever explained how a man could keep his
+family up for years with no visible means of support; or how a person
+can promenade on his ear; or crawl into a hole and pull the hole in
+after him. And yet you have seen those things, I have seen them,
+everybody has seen them, and most of us have done them ourselves."
+
+Later in the evening we were visited by Lamb Ral.
+
+"Do not go tiger-hunting," he said. "It will take you out of the lines
+of the jewellery trade."
+
+"Still I shall go," persisted Jacobs.
+
+"What a singular piece of workmanship is that ytaghan!" observed Lamb
+Ral, waving one delicate hand towards the wall behind us.
+
+When we turned back from seeing that there was no ytaghan there, the
+magician had disappeared, leaving a strong smell of lucifer matches
+behind him, but taking a number of triple-plated watches.
+
+"Singular man," said Jacobs, musingly. "I wish I knew how he does it.
+It must be profitable."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+We had tiffin with Miss Eastinhoe. Mr. Jacobs, in evening dress,
+looked surpassingly lovely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+In the third game of polo a clumsy player struck Mr. Jacobs on the
+back of his head, laying open his skull. The wounded man fell from his
+saddle, but his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged several
+miles by the infuriated Arab pony.
+
+"Don't give him brandy," remarked Miss Eastinhoe, calmly. "Water will
+do quite as well. It is cheaper, and, as he is insensible, he will not
+know the difference."
+
+"Thank you," replied Jacobs, gracefully tying his head together with
+a white woollen shawl. "We will start on the tiger hunt to-morrow."
+
+He carefully lighted a cigarette and rode home.
+
+"Briggs," Jacobs said, producing a mysterious trick bottle, "do as I
+tell you or you are a dead man. Stuff this wax into your nose, and
+bathe the back of my neck with this powerful remedy unknown to your
+Western medicine. I shall then fall asleep. If I do not wake before
+midnight, I shall sleep until breakfast time. You can easily arouse me
+by pressing the little silver knob behind my left ear. If you cannot
+remember, write it down."
+
+Being a newspaper man, I naturally took out an old letter upon which
+to jot down his instructions. I faithfully carried out all his
+directions, and it is to be remarked in passing that on removing the
+wax from my nostrils, I was conscious of a strong odor of Scotch
+whiskey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+We started on our tiger-hunt. Miss Eastinhoe rode on an elephant,
+about which Jacobs, who loved the saddle, circled gayly, keeping up a
+fire of little compliments and pretty speeches of which he had
+thoughtfully brought a tiffinful with him, but to which the lady very
+fortunately soon became inured. He had also taken the precaution to
+have relay's of runners bring fresh roses half-way across India every
+morning for Miss Eastinhoe, whom he amused meantime by playing
+beautifully on the tiffin and warbling Persian love-songs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Guided only by a native tiffin, upon whom he showered an astonishing
+profusion of opprobrious epithets, Mr. Jacobs went forth in the dark
+and stilly night, and slaughtered a huge man-eating tiger, for whose
+ears Miss Eastinhoe had expressed a singular, but well-defined
+longing. The beast measured twenty-four feet, and, by stretching the
+story a little, I was able to say twenty-seven.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said, "I am sincerely glad to see you back alive."
+
+"Thank you, old man," he said, falling easily into English slang. "Do
+you know I have a superstition that I must fulfil every wish of hers.
+Besides, the skin will fetch a capital price."
+
+"I adore you," murmured Miss Eastinhoe. "I shall have the ears
+pickled."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+An old yogi stood near an older well. He put a stone in the bucket,
+and the slave could not draw it up. Suddenly the bottom came out, and
+the stout water-carrier fell headlong backwards on the grass.
+
+"Did you ever see anything of that kind before, Miss Eastinhoe?" I
+inquired.
+
+"No, indeed," she replied. "I always before supposed that to fall
+headlong a man must go forwards."
+
+"I am off to see a Certain Mighty Personage," Mr. Jacobs remarked,
+stooping casually from his saddle to kiss Miss Eastinhoe on her white
+gold hair, which shone so that it made the moon look, on the whole,
+rather sickly, as an electric light pales the gas-jet. "If I want you,
+I'll send for you. Lamb Ral has a Star Route contract and will bring
+you word."
+
+He rode away, and I pensively smoked my tiffin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+The afternoon mail brought me a postal-card:
+
+"I shall want you after all. Please ride night and day for a week. It
+is a matter of life and death."
+
+Changing horses every five or six miles, I rode over the greater part
+of Asia, subsisting on a light but elegant diet of chocolate caramels.
+Then I stopped to take tiffin with a striking-looking fellow in a
+dirty brown cloth _caftan_ Jacobs' face changed when I gave him a
+silver box Miss Eastinhoe sent him.
+
+"I gave her this myself;" he said; "it is only plated."
+
+"Mr. Briggs," interposed Lamb Ral, with decision, "we are about to go
+down into the valley. If you see any man attacking Mr. Jacobs, knock
+him down. If you cannot do that, shoot him under the arm. At any rate
+dispose of him. I am not Wiggins, but I predict a storm."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+After tiffin we went down into the valley to meet the emissary of a
+Certain Mighty Person and Number One. The emissary advanced with a
+scroll so illegible that Jacobs bent over it in despair. Taking
+advantage of his absorption, the villain put his hand upon my friend's
+shoulder. I sprang upon him like a bull-dog.
+
+Meanwhile Lamb Ral created a pleasant diversion by drawing down from
+the sky a blood-curdling fog, heavier than the after-dinner speech of
+an alderman, more dense than the public taste, more paralyzing than
+the philosophy of the last popular novel. Dread and cottony, like a
+curtain, descended the awful cloud into the uplifted arms of the
+sleight-of-hand man, until I could not see an inch before my nose.
+Nevertheless I was able to observe that he had stretched himself,
+probably by an arrangement of crossed levers, to an incalculable
+height, and I distinctly observed him wink with one eye as I kneaded
+my adversary.
+
+As I had just snapped the arm of the emissary like a pipe-stem and the
+rest had each killed somebody, the mist was opportune and our party
+skulked back to camp, where we all drank a good deal of tiffin. The
+result of our imbibing was that Jacobs clapped Number One on the
+shoulder.
+
+"You're a bully good fellow," he observed, thickly. "Git!"
+
+Lamb Ral and Number One disappeared in a red light, with plaintive
+music from the orchestra.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+We returned home.
+
+"Miss Eastinhoe is dead!" I said to Mr. Jacobs.
+
+"It is really better," remarked Lamb Ral, who chanced to be astrally
+present, being also in Ireland with Number One at the same moment.
+"There was absolutely no other way of concluding the story. She
+wouldn't be a fourth wife; besides, she was so shadowy a personage
+that nobody cared anything about her."
+
+"No," said Mr. Jacobs. "I had wholly forgotten that."
+
+"You had better go and be a nun," Lamb Ral continued, reclining upon
+a tiffin. "Trade is dull, and your last trick in glass emeralds has
+been discovered."
+
+"On the whole I think I will," replied Jacobs. "Briggs, I have given
+my fortune to Miss Eastinhoe's brother, who rescued me from the
+gutter. To you I give this diamond. I know you too well to trust you
+with anything else. Nay," he added, seeing my inquiring look, "do not
+ask its price or try it with a file until I am gone."
+
+"You won't come and be a nun yourself, Mr. Briggs?" Lamb Ral inquired,
+with some apprehension.
+
+"Thanks, no," I answered, drawing my tiffin over my shoulders, "I'll
+write the thing up."
+
+"Thank you, noble friend," Jacobs said, grasping my hand with emotion.
+"You have been the instructor and the genius of my love. I go to be a
+nun. Be yourself what you have made me."
+
+One last, loving look,--one more pressure of the reluctant fingers,
+and those two went out, hand in hand, under the clear stars, and I saw
+them no more.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+I afterwards ascertained that the fortune left to Mr. Eastinhoe
+consisted chiefly of the three discarded wives of Mr. Jacobs.
+
+"I had no means of supporting them," Mr. Eastinhoe remarked,
+gravely,--he was from Bombay, and Bombay men never smile,--"so I was
+forced to have them served for tiffin. What will you take?"
+
+"A peg of tiffin," I replied, with a pensive sigh.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Jacobs, by Arlo Bates
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41125 ***