Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee MagicQuick, Herbert
General
Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
Quick, Herbert
Fiction
The music of the orchestra soon told that the pavilion had been cleared
for dancing. I heard Giddings urging upon Miss Addison that it would be
much better for them to walk in the moonlight than to encourage by their
presence such a worldly amusement, and one in which he had never been
able to do anything better than fail, anyhow. Sighing her pain at the
frivolity of the world, she took his arm and strolled away. I noticed
that she clung closely to him, frightened, I suppose, at the mysterious
rustlings in the trees, or something.
They made up the dances in such a way as to leave me out. I rather
wanted to dance with Antonia; but Mr. Cecil was just leaving her in
disappointment, in the possession of Mr. Elkins, when I went for her. I
decided that a cigar and solitude were rather to be chosen than anything
else which presented itself, and accordingly I took possession of one of
the hammocks, in which I lay and smoked, and watched the towering
thunder-head, as it stood like a mighty and marvelous mountain in the
northern sky, its rounded and convoluted summits serenely white in the
moonlight, its mysterious caves palpitant with incessant lightning. The
soothing of the cigar; the new-made lake reflecting the gleam of
hundreds of lanterns; the illuminated pavilion, its whirling company of
dancers seen under the uprolled walls; the night, with its strange
contrast of a calm southern sky on the one hand pouring down its flood
of moonlight, and in the north the great mother-of-pearl dome with its
core of vibrant fire; the dance-music throbbing through the lindens; and
all this growing out of the unwonted and curious life of the past few
months, bore to me again that feeling of being yoked with some
thaumaturge of wondrous power for the working of enchantments. Again I
seemed in a partnership with Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan
paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold
and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to
the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at
Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, with no sense of
incongruity.
Two figures came from the tent and walked toward me. As I looked at
them, myself in darkness, they in the light, I had again that feeling of
having seen them in some similar way before. That same old sensation,
thought I, that the analytic novelist made trite ages ago. Then I saw
that it was Mr. Cornish and Miss Trescott. I could hear them talking;
but lay still, because I was loth to have my reveries disturbed. And
besides, to speak would seem an unwarranted assumption of confidential
relations on their part. They stopped near me.
"Your memory is not so good as mine," said he. "I knew you at once. Knew
you! Why--"
"I'm not very good at keeping names and faces in mind," she replied,
"unless they belong to people I have known very well."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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