Sure of Success
I am sure of success. I imitate the performer’s patronizing complacency perfectly. I smile and sneer politely with all his evil suavity, and then I fire my pistol, shatter the glass of the threepenny, and my aunt rises from her chair with a piercing shriek.
“Tom, you little wretch, what have you done?”
With an airy smile I bid her be calm, and from the rear part of my person produce with a deft movement her precious belonging.
“Your watch, madam,” I say, with all the superior pleasantry of the “bunkum” performer.
Then the smile freezes on my face, the timepiece feels strangely light in my clammy hand. I gaze at it in horror. My eyeballs distend, my heart swings backwards and forwards between my ribs. I have bungled! The good watch is shattered beyond hope of redemption. The disc of paper and glass cowers up at me, its hands stretched confusedly across its impudent face.
Disgrace and ignominy descend swiftly upon me. My maiden aunt prepares to leave the house, declaring she will never enter it again. My parents, who expect great things at her demise, beseech her forgiveness in vain. I am banished from the firelit circle to my own room, up to which a step presently approaches, striding away from the disorder and hysterics downstairs. My father enters with a long slender implement behind his back—an implement which, from former experience, I know portends woe terrific.
I draw the curtain—I am chastised and broken in body and spirit. For a whole week I keep severely aloof from the awful bunkum tyrant, and then, alas! I am drawn again to the hall, where he is performing as remorselessly as the silly fly is drawn to enmesh himself in the spider’s web.
The next time I played a trick on my family I took good care it should be of a kind that would do no one—not even the most hypersensitive individual—any harm. Needless to say, my aunt was not of the circle.