The juggler was out of countenance. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with indignation coloring his face to the roots of his hair, “these things are done for amusement. If they fail to amuse, they fail altogether. I will go on, or, if you desire, your money will be refunded at the door.”
“Lawd, naw, bub!” exclaimed a toothless old fellow, bent nearly double as he sat on a front bench, his clasped hands between his knees. “We-uns want ter view all ye know how ter do,—all ye know how ter do, son.”
Here and there reassuring voices confirmed the spokesman, and as the discomfited juggler turned to the table drawer, resolving on something less bloody-minded, he heard a vague titter from that portion of the building in which, being young, he had already observed that the greater number of personable maidens were seated.
None so dread ridicule as the satirist. He whirled around, his heart swelling indignantly, his eyes flashing fire, to perceive, advancing down the aisle, a fat woman in a gigantic sunbonnet, which, however, hardly obscured her broad, creased, dimpled face, a brown calico dress wherein the waist-line must ever be a matter of conjecture, and a little shoulder-shawl of bright red-and-yellow plaid. She slowly approached him with something of steel glittering in her hands, and at his amazed and dumfounded expression of countenance the girlish cachinnation which he so resented broke forth afresh.
“Beg pardon?” he said more than once, as from his elevation he sought to catch her request. A single tooth of the upper register, so to speak, however ornamental, did not serve to render more distinct the fat woman’s wheeze, in which she sought to articulate her desire that he should forthwith swallow her big shears, so fascinated was she by the evidence he had given of his proficiency in the arts of the impossible.
“Certainly, with pleasure,—always anxious to oblige the ladies,” he protested, with a return of his covert mockery, as he bowed after a dancing-class fashion, and received from her fat creased hands the great domestic implement with its dangling steel chain. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he declared, with his hand upon his heart, as she subsided, shaking with laughter, on the front bench, “I cannot refrain from expressing my flattered sense of this mark of the confidence reposed in me by this distinguished audience, as well as by the estimable lady who is so willing to offer her shears on the altar of science. She is not satisfied with the warlike bayonet. She desires to see the same experiment, mutatis mutandis, on a pair of shears, which are devoted to the tender-hearted and affable uses of the work-basket, filled with the love of home and gentle fireside associations, and—and—and other domestic scraps. The rivet is a trifle loose, and I hope I may not be forced to disgorge the blades separately.”
He was holding up the scissors as he spoke these words, so that all could see them; the next moment they had disappeared down his throat, as it were, and the astounded audience sat as if resolved into eyes, staring spellbound.
When, a few minutes later, with his cabalistic phrase, “Hey! Presto!” he drew from his open red mouth the shears dangling at the end of the rattling steel chain, which the audience had just seen him swallow, the clamor of exclamations again arose, for the accepted methods of applause had not yet penetrated to the seclusions of Etowah Cove; but there was in this manifestation of surprise so definite a quaver of fear that certain lines of irritation and anxiety corrugated the smooth brow of the young prestidigitator. The tumultuous amazement of the spectators seemed as if it were too great to be realized all at once, and with the sight of the performance anew of the impossible feat, which should have served as reassurance, it degenerated into downright terror which held the possibilities of panic. The idea of panic suggested other possibilities. Albeit their unsophisticated state was highly favorable to the development of emotions of boundless astonishment and absolute credulity, he realized that it was not unattended by some personal danger. After the suggestion of being bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, the juggler was more than once unpleasantly reminded—for he was a man of some reading—of certain fellow craftsmen in the mists of centuries agone, whose wondrous skill in the powers of air, earth, and fire, though great enough to be deemed unlawful traffic with the devil, could not avail to prevent their own earthly elements from going up in smoke and flame, and thus contributing ethereally to the great reserves of material nature. He was here alone, far from help, among the most ignorant and lawless people he had ever seen; and if their dislocated ideas of necromancy and unlawful dealing with the devil should take a definite hold upon them, he might be summarily dealt with as an act of religion, and the world none the wiser. Such disaster had befallen better jugglers, sooth to say, in more civilized communities than Etowah Cove. He sought to put this thought from him, for his heart was sufficiently stout of fibre, but determined that he would not again be diverted from his intention of substituting less blood-curdling feats for the usual experiments with knives and swords. He preserved a calm face and debonair manner, as he carefully wiped the shears free from supposititious moisture on a folded white table-cloth that lay on the platform, and stepped down, and with an elaborate bow presented them to their chuckling and gratified owner.
“Jane Ann Sims wouldn’t keer if the Old Nick hisself war ter set up his staff in the Cove, ef he hed some news ter tell or a joke ter crack, or some sorter gamesome new goin’s-on that she hed never hearn tell on afore,” whispered a lean, towering, limp sunbonnet to its starch and squatty neighbor.
“An’ she hard on ter fifty odd years old!” said the squatty sunbonnet, malignantly accurate.