 | CHAPTER VIII.
Robin Day meets an astonishing reverse of fortune, and plays the
Magian on his own account. The adventures of Robin Day |  |
8. CHAPTER VIII.
Robin Day meets an astonishing reverse of fortune, and plays the
Magian on his own account.
I was called up by the same negro who had ushered
me to bed, and now motioned me to follow him
down stairs to his master, whom I found no longer
alone, but surrounded by quite a family—his wife
and children—who, it seemed, had been away at a
ball, or other merrymaking, at a neighbouring estate,
and had either just returned, or had arrived late in
the night, while I was sound asleep. I was greatly
abashed to find myself in such good company, particularly
as two of the children were young women
grown, and extremely handsome and genteel, and
another a young gentleman of nineteen or twenty:
besides these, there were three or four smaller children.
“Here he comes!” cried Mr. Feverage, with
great exultation, as I entered the room: “don't understand
a word of English, but is the most astonishing
fellow ever brought to America. Never could
have believed in such things, but for the actual
proof; cured lazy Jim of the apoplexy without physic;
and as for me—Ah! my dear Mrs. Feverage
—ah! my dear children,” he added, pathetically,
“you never knew what was the matter with me;—
I could not find the heart to tell you any thing so
truth is, it was a palsy beginning in my leg”—
“Ah, lauk!” said Mrs. Feverage.—“Yes, my dear,”
quoth Mr. Feverage, “a palsy; but the Lord be
thanked, Chowder Chow (for that is his name,)
cleared it out with one single dose of physic, and I
am now free of it for ever. A most surprising fellow,
by G—!—begging your pardon, my dear!
—worth his weight in gold.”
“Dear me!” cried one of the Misses Feverage,
who, like the rest, surveyed me with curiosity,
“what an ugly, awkward looking wretch it is!”
“Quite ridiculous,” said the other.
“All the East Indians,” quoth the brother, with
the air of one conscious of superior learning, “the
Hindoos, Chinese, and all, are of the Tartar race,
which is a kind of half-man, half-monkey family:
but I don't think the fellow is so ill-looking; only
he looks to me more like a sheep than a philosopher.”
“I don't care one curse—I beg your pardon, my
dear!—about his looks,” quoth Mr. Feverage, apparently
disturbed (but by no means so deeply as myself)
by these disparaging remarks: “it is commonly
the case that your wise people, your men of
genius and learning, your Tullies and Mirabeaus,
your æsops, Socrateses, and Alexander Popes, are
born scarecrows: but who thinks the worse of them
for their want of beauty?”
“Oh, dear!” said Miss Feverage senior, “I'm
sure he may be wise enough for me; but I thought
all the Oriental people were handsome, like the
princes we read of in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.”
I looked round for Captain Brown to help me
out of my difficulties, but he was not present; and
remarks, of which I was the object, but
which, of course, I was not supposed to understand,
that I was rejoiced, notwithstanding my great repugnance
to the Magian practice, when I heard Mr.
Feverage say he was going to conduct me immediately
to the hospital, to cure all his sick negroes at
a blow.
But I did not thereby, as I had fondly hoped,
escape from those unamiable young ladies, (for unamiable
enough they now appeared in my eyes,) in
whose regards I had found so little favour: moved
by curiosity, they, with their mother, brother, and
even the little children, declared they would go
with papa, to witness the miracles I was expected
to perform. “Come along, Chowder Chow,” said
Mr. Feverage, making me a sign to follow him to
the hospital; which I found was nothing more than
a row of log cabins, though kept pretty clean and
comfortable, among which the sick were distributed.
Here I had no doubt I should find Captain Brown,
whose absence in the parlour had previously caused
me some surprise; but no Captain Brown was there,
nor did he even seem to be expected by any body
but myself. Mr. Feverage took me by the elbow
and marched me up to a form, on which lay a poor
negro man in what I judged was the last stage of
consumption: “If he can cure him,” quoth Mr.
Feverage, with a look of confident expectation, “he
can cure any body. So, Chowder Chow, boy, begin
—I wish to G—!—I beg your pardon, my dear!—I
knew something of his lingo.”
I looked around me again, and with uneasiness,
for Captain Brown; without whose powerful assistance
and encouraging audacity, I felt no great confidence
in my Magian abilities.
“What is the scoundrel gaping after?” quoth Mr.
Feverage, waxing impatient; when, perceiving I
must play my part, whether Brown came or not, I
put on the look of wisdom, and pronounced the
Magian “Holly-golly-wow.”
“Hang your holly-golly-wow,” said Mr. Feverage;
“why don't you give him the physic?”
I give the physic, indeed! That was the province
of Captain Brown; who, moreover, carried the Mermaids'
Eggs and Holy Sand of the Ganges in his
own pockets, I not having about me so much as a
single dose.
“Holly-golly-wow,” repeated I, in great perplexity.
“Curse your gibberish, I tell you!” reiterated
Mr. Feverage, begging his wife to excuse him for
swearing; “it's the physic I want, you numskull—
can't you understand me?”
“Dear me!” cried Miss Feverage, junior, “how
can he, pa, when he don't understand English? You
should have asked the sailor-man how you were to
do things.”
“D—n the sailor-man—pray, my dear, excuse
me!—he told me all about it,” said Mr. Feverage,
growing hotter than ever; “he told me, all that was
to be done, was to put the staring jackanapes before
the sick man, and that he would cure him in from
seven minutes to seven days, and no mistake about
it.”
I was frightened at the violence of my worthy
host, but still more at what he said of Captain
Brown, who—But could it be? Had he, afraid, as
I might well suppose, of the difficulty of making
good his impudent boasts, afraid of the responsibility
of practice among so many really sick persons—
had he deserted me, sneaked away, left me to cure
without Mermaids' Eggs or the Holy Sand of the
Ganges? Certainly he had—I could no longer
doubt it; how otherwise was I to understand the
fact of his having instructed Mr. Feverage how he
was “to do things,” how he was “to put the jackanapes
before the sick man,” coupled with his extraordinary
absence at such a time of need? My
heart died within me to think of his baseness and
duplicity; my blood ran cold, as I thought of the
scrape he had left me in. How was I to get out of
it? But the intemperance of Mr. Feverage left me
little time for reflection; and so I acted upon
instinct.
“Holly-golly-wow!” I cried again: then turning
upon Mr. Feverage, before he could vent another
volley of abuse, which I saw him preparing, I resorted
to the Magian language, (for, of course, I
knew no other,) and demanded, with the looks of
one asking the most important question in the
world, “Willy-whary-gonny-doggy-Brown?”
“What is the infernal rascal jabbering about now?”
quoth Mr. Feverage: “do you suppose I understand
your diabolical jargon?”
“Willy-whary-gonny-doggy-Brown?” I repeated.
“He says Brown!” cried Miss Feverage; who,
notwithstanding her want of judgment and taste, was
the shrewdest person present: “he says Brown;
and that was the name of the sailor-man: and perhaps
he is asking for him.”
“Are you, you baboon!” said Feverage: “why,
he went off at daylight. But what has that to do
with our business? why don't you physic the sick
man?”
“Willy-whary-gonny Holly-golly-wow? willy
hoping the gentleman would understand I was
asking for the Magian physic; which, however, he
did not, until I had expended a great deal of ingenuity
in explanatory gesticulation, and then hit upon
the device of putting my finger into my mouth, by
which I meant physic, and next of turning a pocket
wrongside out, to indicate that I had none.
Miss Feverage again penetrated my meaning; and
nothing could exceed the mingled consternation and
rage of the parent, when the conception first flashed
upon his mind that I had no medicines to administer
to his tenants of the hospital.
“Oh! that infernal villain!” he cried, “that swindling
Brown! He has gone off with the Mermaids'
Eggs and the Holy Sand of the Ganges! And what
is the doctor good for without them? Bitten, swindled,
most atrociously swindled! No wonder the
rascal was willing to trade so reasonably; for what's
the doctor without his physic?”
It was now my turn to be struck with consternation;
and the reader may judge the horror into
which I was thrown by finding from the expressions
of the gentleman, that Captain Brown, my villanous
confederate, had not merely deserted me, but had
actually sold me, sold me as a slave, for—but I do
not know what sum it was he got for me—to my
present master, Mr. Fabius Maximus Feverage; having
also disposed of my nag, which he represented
as being a Tartar pony from some royal stable in the
East Indies.
Yes! it was true!—astounding, horrifying as it
was, it was true; the intolerable villain has sold me,
and gone off with the money.
What was the difficulty I had previously lamented,
of being left to play the doctor alone, compared with
was now plunged? It was fortunate, perhaps, that
my agitation, which was for a moment inexpressibly
great—and how could it be otherwise?—was, in a
manner, lost and unnoticed in the tumult of my master's
(my master's!) rage; and after that had blown
itself away, and the family could again turn their
eyes upon Chowder Chow, his confusion was most
naturally and charitably attributed to the loss of his
Magian medicines, the infallible Mermaids' Eggs and
the panaceal Holy Sand of the Ganges.
But not a thought, or a care, gave Chowder Chow,
at that moment to his medicines. I had more important
matters to excruciate my mind; which, at
first overwhelmed by the greatness of my predicaments,
was next filled by a whirl of hurrying projects
to escape them.
My first idea was to tell the truth—to unlock my
lips, and in plain English, expose the fraud that had
been practised upon Mr. Feverage and my unfortunate
self, and assert my freedom as a freeman
should.
But alas! my fears (not to give the credit to my
common-sense,) told me, that expedient could only
serve to translate me from the culinary vessel, in
which I may well say I was frying, to the fire
wherein I must suffer the equal pangs of broiling.
To tell the truth, would be to confess myself an accomplice
in fraud, the confederate of a swindler who
had been cheating the good people of the district
for more than a week; and whether I (to prove that
hard necessity, and not my own will, had forced
me into the reluctant complicity,) should reveal the
cause of my submission, or keep that secret to myself,
I must encounter a similar danger;—in the one
treason, in the other, before a court-civil for felony.
To tell, moreover, to a man who was already
raging over the loss of the Mermaids' Eggs and the
Holy Sand of the Ganges, a truth which must add
to that the loss of the money he had paid for me,
was, even of itself, an undertaking of highly questionable
expediency; and when I reflected, that to
the indignation at the loss of his money must be
added the mortification, of having been so grossly
played upon, in the matter of the palsy, I shrank
from the dangers of confession.
“No, no,” thought I to myself; “honesty is undoubtedly
the best policy in the main; but it won't
do in this case.”—I have since learned to put another
interpretation upon the old saw of the copybooks,
which is, that honesty is the best policy,
where one wishes to go to heaven; but where earthly
prosperity—the attainment of wealth, and honour,
and power—is the only thing aimed at, it may be
often very conveniently dispensed with.
What then—since I durst not claim my freedom,
by telling the truth—remained for me to do? Must
I remain a slave, because the unparalleled Captain
Brown had thought fit to sell, and the unsuspicious
Mr. Feverage had deemed proper, to buy me for
one? No, by mine honour, I had no idea of that.
There were but two ways I could think of, in
which my liberty was to be retrieved; and one
having been considered and rejected, I was compelled
to place all my reliance upon the other, which
was considered and adopted during that brief period
of agitation which the rage and fury of Mr. Feverage
gave me leisure to indulge. I resolved to submit
—that is, to allow myself to be considered a slave
freedom by running away, at the very first opportunity.
And this, all things considered, was perhaps
the wisest resolution I could have adopted.
But I had been bought as a Magus—a dispenser
of life and health—and it was necessary I should
continue to preserve the character. The difficulty
was how I was to do it, being robbed by Captain
Brown of what Mr. Feverage seemed to consider
the most important part of his purchase, the Mermaids'
Eggs and the Holy Sand of the Ganges.
And this difficulty, which was now the main source
of grief to my master (fortunately, as I could not
speak English, I was not obliged to call him so,)
might have continued a long time, had it not been
removed by the sagacity of `young missus,' (I have
less shame in giving her the title, though I shall
never forgive her reflections upon my good looks,)
who said, that “if I was a good doctor, my knowledge
could not certainly be confined to but two
medicines;” and therefore recommended I should
have the family medicine-chest brought me, to see
what I could do with it.
The father caught at the idea; the medicine-chest
was brought; and signs made that I should select
from it such drugs as were suitable to my purpose.
I select, indeed! My knowledge of the Materia
Medica was somewhat too limited for selection; but
I affected to do so. I tumbled over the bottles of
potions and powders, taking good care to appear not
to read or understand the labels, but to judge of
their qualities by smelling. Some I rejected with
a learned contempt, others with frowns of knowing
detestation; until coming upon a bottle of salts,
thinks I to myself, “Salts can't hurt any body,”
and was going to administer a dose to my patient,
acted the whole of the preliminary play. His ghastly
looks fortunately frightened me into a doubt of the
propriety of giving him such a medicine; and the
same reason deterred me from a dose of calomel and
jalap, which association presented as the next most
natural, because best known remedies; when my
eye fell upon a bottle of laudanum, of which I immediately
gave the poor fellow a dose, taking care,
as I did so, to look round upon my master with a
melancholy shake of the head, as if to inform him
I had but little confidence in the medicine, and only
gave it because I could find nothing better.
“He knows what he is about, after all!” said my
master, returning the melancholy shake: “he means
to say, poor Joe is beyond all common remedies—
(May the devil seize that rascal Brown, for carrying
off the Mermaids' Eggs! for who knows but that
one of them might have cured him?)—and that all
that can be done for him is to give him laudanum,
and let him die easy.”
Of my next patient, all that I can say, is, that he
was sick, and I did not know what was the matter
with him; but as he was a robust young fellow, I
thought no harm could come of giving him a dose
of salts, which I accordingly administered. And
this prescription had also the merit of meeting my
master's approbation which he expressed by saying,
“After all, I believe the rascal is worth the money,
and sees through a disease with a look.—What a
pity we had not some of his own Indian medicines!”
To the third patient, whose case was as mysterious
to me as that of the second, and who appeared
to be neither particularly strong nor particularly
weak, I ventured to administer a little calomel and
jalap; upon which my master observed, “My practice
was plain there was no quackery about me;” and
he ended by a hearty execration upon Brown for
not leaving some of the Holy Sand of the Ganges,
which was undoubtedly of greater efficacy than all
the regular physic in his drug-box.
In short, (for I have no design to record my experimental
essays upon the lives of all the sick in
the hospital,) I went through my task the best way
I could; and my hap-hazard practice quite contented
my master, who seemed, since I had no Magian
medicines to administer, not to expect any very
miraculous cures of me; and I heard him afterwards
assure his wife, who, with all her children had left
the hospital as soon as they found I was to do
nothing astonishing, that “he believed he would
have his money's worth of me, as I would save him
two or three hundred dollars a year in doctors' bills;
but he never would forgive that cursed sailor-man,
Brown, (begging her pardon,) for having cheated
him out of the Mermaids' Eggs.”
| CHAPTER VIII.
Robin Day meets an astonishing reverse of fortune, and plays the
Magian on his own account. The adventures of Robin Day | |