The juggler

by Charles Egbert Craddock

The juggler was hardly disposed to felicitate himself upon this feat of simulation which had served to deceive the whole of his native city, and to bury a stranger, as it were, in his own grave. He began to pity the plight of the dead if they could so yearningly remember the life they had left. Return for him was impossible. Glimpses of the moon might shadow forth spirits revenant, but for him memory only must serve. He wondered that he could not accept conclusions so evidently final, for over and again, in the deep watches of the night, he would argue anew within himself the chances pro and con of transforming these immutable fictions into fact, of overcoming the appearance of crime by his previous high character, of relying on the good feeling of the firm, and the futility of the proceeding, to save him from prosecution. Then always, when he would reach this point, and his heart would begin to beat fast with the hope of restoration to life, it would stand still with a sudden paralysis and sink like lead; for there were interests other than those of revenge or justice, or preserving the public morals by enforcing penalties for the infringement of the law to be served by his incarceration in a good strong safe prison. There existed a certain corporation, the Gerault Bonley Marble Company, that he knew would give much money to be able to lay hands upon him now, and that had doubtless grieved for his demise like unto Rachel mourning for her children. The Gerault Bonley Marble Company had, in the past few years, been greatly enriched by the discovery of beds of a very fine marble in a large body of Tennessee land, in which, however, they merely held an estate per autre vie,—limited to the duration of Lucien Royce’s natural existence. In this unique position of a cestui que vie he had at first felt a certain glow of pride. It was characteristic of his knack of achieving importance and prominence with so slight effort that he seemed, as it were, born to a certain preëminence. He recollected the prestige it added to his personality at the time when it was discovered that there were great beds of marble in the almost worthless tract, and the sensation of pleased notoriety he had experienced when Mr. Gerault Bonley, the president of the company, a well-known broker, had dropped in at the office to look at him—he had never taken the trouble before—and have a word with him. “Remember your business is to live, young man,” he had said in leaving, flushed and elated with success. “That’s all you have to do. And if you ever find any hitch about doing it pleasantly, come to us, and we will help you eke it out. You are the one who lives, you understand.” And he walked out, portly and rubicund, his eye kindling as he went.

Lucien Royce had ridden up town on the cable car one evening, a day or two afterward, and he had noticed with new interest a man, forlorn, shabby, chewing the end of a five-cent cigar so hard between his teeth as he talked that he was unaware that its light had died out, who railed at life and his luck in unmeasured terms that astonished the passengers precariously perched on the platform of the rear car. This was the unsuccessful speculator who, some years earlier, had sought to mortgage the land in question to Mr. Gerault Bonley, the broker, who had bought up his paper and was disposed toward thumbscrews. It was not a good day for mortgages, somehow, but, with the desperation of a man already pressed to the wall, about as badly broken as he was likely to be, the debtor would not consent to an absolute transfer of the title.

“The land will be sold under execution, then,” he of the thumbscrews had said.

“The law allows two years for redemption, in Tennessee,” the owner had retorted, with the expectation of better times in his face.

Perhaps because of the resistance,—the broker always said he did not know why he had wanted the land, for although he was aware that a little marble quarry had once been worked there, it had been abandoned as not worth the labor,—still protesting that he could not avail himself of the property unless for a term of years, at least, he finally offered the bait of enough ready money to extricate the speculator, and give him another show amongst the bulls and bears, and the conveyance was made for the uncertain term of the life of another. Lucien Royce had chanced to drop in on some business for Greenhalge, Gould & Fife, the cotton commission firm, a lithe, muscular young fellow, the ideal of an athlete, and the thought suggested itself to the broker that the estate should be limited to the duration of his life. The proposition was carelessly acceded to by the young man, attracted for the moment by the novelty of the proceeding, apprehending in the matter the merest formality. This was the conclusion.

“And now you’ll live forever!” cried the disappointed speculator, suddenly recognizing, in the uncertain light on the platform of the car, the features of the stalwart cestui que vie. Once more he was chewing hard on his cigar, once more inveighing against his accursed luck, as he stretched the newspaper toward the dull lamp of the car, indicating with a trembling hand the big head-lines chronicling the discovery, while the cumbrous vehicle went gliding along through the blue haze of the dusk and the smoke and the dust,—the medium through which the looming blocks of buildings and the long double file of electric lights were visible down the avenue. “You’ll live forever, while those men make millions on the tract they euchred me out of at ten dollars an acre! It would be a charity for you to fall off the car and break your backbone. They tell me concussion of the brain is painless. I’ll swear I’d feel justified if I should hide in a dark alley, some night, and garrote you as you go by to the club.”

“There’s another case of garroting in the paper,” observed a mutual acquaintance by way of diversion.

“I noticed it. That’s what reminded me of it. It’s like lassoing. I lived a long time in Texas,” he said, as he swung himself off at a side-street, and disappeared in the closing haze that baffled the incandescent lights showing upon its density in yellow blurs without illuminating it.

“You’d better look out for that man, sure enough,” the literal-minded mutual acquaintance warned Lucien Royce. “He feels mighty sore. This company is going to make ‘big money’ on his land.”

But Royce laughed it off. “I am the one who lives,” he boasted.