Читать книгу: «Mr. Jacobs: A Tale of the Drummer, the Reporter, and the Prestidigitateur», страница 2

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.