Magic: A Fantastic ComedyChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Science
Magic: A Fantastic Comedy
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English drama (Comedy)
DUKE. Well, as old Buffle used to say, what is a man?
MORRIS. [_With a strong rise of the American accent._] With your
permission, Duke, I eliminate old Buffle. Do you mean that anybody has
had the tarnation coolness to suggest that some man....
DUKE. Oh, not a _man_, you know. A magician, something mythical, you
know.
SMITH. Not a _man_, but a medicine man.
DOCTOR. [_Grimly._] I am a medicine man.
MORRIS. And you don't look mythical, Doc.
[_He bites his finger and begins to pace restlessly up and down the
room._
DUKE. Well, you know, the artistic temperament....
MORRIS. [_Turning suddenly._] See here, Duke! In most commercial ways
we're a pretty forward country. In these moral ways we're content to be
a pretty backward country. And if you ask me whether I like my sister
walking about the woods on a night like this! Well, I don't.
DUKE. I am afraid you Americans aren't so advanced as I'd hoped. Why! as
old Buffle used to say....
[_As he speaks a distant voice is heard singing in the garden; it
comes nearer and nearer, and_ SMITH _turns suddenly to the_ DOCTOR.
SMITH. Whose voice is that?
DOCTOR. It is no business of mine to decide!
MORRIS. [_Walking to the window._] You need not trouble. I know who it
is.
_Enter_ PATRICIA CARLEON
[_Still agitated._] Patricia, where have you been?
PATRICIA. [_Rather wearily._] Oh! in Fairyland.
DOCTOR. [_Genially._] And whereabouts is that?
PATRICIA. It's rather different from other places. It's either nowhere
or it's wherever you are.
MORRIS. [_Sharply._] Has it any inhabitants?
PATRICIA. Generally only two. Oneself and one's shadow. But whether he
is my shadow or I am his shadow is never found out.
MORRIS. He? Who?
PATRICIA. [_Seeming to understand his annoyance for the first time, and
smiling._] Oh, you needn't get conventional about it, Morris. He is not
a mortal.
MORRIS. What's his name?
PATRICIA. We have no names there. You never really know anybody if you
know his name.
MORRIS. What does he look like?
PATRICIA. I have only met him in the twilight. He seems robed in a long
cloak, with a peaked cap or hood like the elves in my nursery stories.
Sometimes when I look out of the window here, I see him passing round
this house like a shadow; and see his pointed hood, dark against the
sunset or the rising of the moon.
SMITH. What does he talk about?
PATRICIA. He tells me the truth. Very many true things. He is a wizard.
MORRIS. How do you know he's a wizard? I suppose he plays some tricks on
you.
PATRICIA. I should know he was a wizard if he played no tricks. But once
he stooped and picked up a stone and cast it into the air, and it flew
up into God's heaven like a bird.
MORRIS. Was that what first made you think he was a wizard?
PATRICIA. Oh, no. When I first saw him he was tracing circles and
pentacles in the grass and talking the language of the elves.
MORRIS. [_Sceptically._] Do you know the language of the elves?
PATRICIA. Not until I heard it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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