CHAPTER IV - AT LARGE
"So you were inside that bottle, were
you?" said Horace, blandly. "How singular!" He began to realise
that he had to deal with an Oriental lunatic, and must humour him to some extent.
Fortunately he did not seem at all dangerous, though undeniably
eccentric-looking. His hair fell in disorderly profusion from under his high
turban about his cheeks, which were of a uniform pale rhubarb tint; his grey
beard streamed out in three thin strands, and his long, narrow eyes, opal in
hue, and set rather wide apart and at a slight angle, had a curious expression,
part slyness and part childlike simplicity.
"Dost thou doubt that I speak truth? I tell
thee that I have been confined in that accursed vessel for countless
centuries—how long, I know not, for it is beyond calculation."
"I should hardly have thought from your
appearance, sir, that you had been so many years in bottle as all that,"
said Horace, politely, "but it's certainly time you had a change. May I,
if it isn't indiscreet, ask how you came into such a very uncomfortable
position? But probably you have forgotten by this time."
"Forgotten!" said the other, with a
sombre red glow in his opal eyes. "Wisely was it written: 'Let him that desireth
oblivion confer benefits—but the memory of an injury endureth for ever.' I
forget neither benefits nor injuries."
"An old gentleman with a grievance,"
thought Ventimore. "And mad into the bargain. Nice person to have staying
in the same house with one!"
"Know, O best of mankind," continued the
stranger, "that he who now addresses thee is Fakrash-el-Aamash, one of the
Green Jinn. And I dwelt in the Palace of the Mountain of the Clouds above the
City of Babel in the Garden of Irem, which thou doubtless knowest by
repute?"
"I fancy I have heard of it," said
Horace, as if it were an address in the Court Directory. "Delightful
neighbourhood."
"I had a kinswoman, Bedeea-el-Jemal, who
possessed incomparable beauty and manifold accomplishments. And seeing that,
though a Jinneeyeh, she was of the believing Jinn, I despatched messengers to
Suleyman the Great, the son of Daood, offering him her hand in marriage. But a
certain Jarjarees, the son of Rejmoos, the son of Iblees—may he be for ever
accursed!—looked with favour upon the maiden, and, going secretly unto
Suleyman, persuaded him that I was preparing a crafty snare for the King's
undoing."
"And, of course, you never thought of such a
thing?" said Ventimore.
"By a venomous tongue the fairest motives may
be rendered foul," was the somewhat evasive reply. "Thus it came to
pass that Suleyman—on whom be peace!—listened unto the voice of Jarjarees and
refused to receive the maiden. Moreover, he commanded that I should be seized
and imprisoned in a bottle of brass and cast into the Sea of El-Karkar, there
to abide the Day of Doom."
"Too bad—really too bad!" murmured
Horace, in a tone that he could only hope was sufficiently sympathetic.
"But now, by thy means, O thou of noble
ancestors and gentle disposition, my deliverance hath been accomplished; and if
I were to serve thee for a thousand years, regarding nothing else, even thus
could I not requite thee, and my so doing would be a small thing according to
thy desserts!"
"Pray don't mention it," said Horace;
"only too pleased if I've been of any use to you."
"In the sky it is written upon the pages of
the air: 'He who doth kind actions shall experience the like.' Am I not an
Efreet of the Jinn? Demand, therefore, and thou shalt receive."
"Poor old chap!" thought Horace,
"he's very cracked indeed. He'll be wanting to give me a present of some
sort soon—and of course I can't have that.... My dear Mr. Fakrash," he
said aloud, "I've done nothing—nothing at all—and if I had, I couldn't
possibly accept any reward for it."
"What are thy names, and what calling dost
thou follow?"
"I ought to have introduced myself before—let
me give you my card;" and Ventimore gave him one, which the other took and
placed in his girdle. "That's my business address. I'm an architect, if
you know what that is—a man who builds houses and churches—mosques, you know—in
fact, anything, when he can get it to build."
"A useful calling indeed—and one to be
rewarded with fine gold."
"In my case," Horace confessed,
"the reward has been too fine to be perceived. In other words, I've never
been rewarded, because I've never yet had the luck to get a client."
"And what is this client of whom thou
speakest?"
"Oh, well, some well-to-do merchant who wants
a house built for him and doesn't care how much he spends on it. There must be
lots of them about—but they never seem to come in my direction."
"Grant me a period of delay, and, if it be
possible, I will procure thee such a client."
Horace could not help thinking that any
recommendation from such a quarter would hardly carry much weight; but, as the
poor old man evidently imagined himself under an obligation, which he was
anxious to discharge, it would have been unkind to throw cold water on his good
intentions.
"My dear sir," he said lightly, "if
you should come across that particular type of client, and can contrive to
impress him with the belief that I'm just the architect he's looking out
for—which, between ourselves, I am, though nobody's discovered it yet—if you
can get him to come to me, you will do me the very greatest service I could
ever hope for. But don't give yourself any trouble over it."
"It will be one of the easiest things that
can be," said his visitor, "that is" (and here a shade of rather
pathetic doubt crossed his face) "provided that anything of my former
power yet remains unto me."
"Well, never mind, sir," said Horace;
"if you can't, I shall take the will for the deed."
"First of all, it will be prudent to learn
where Suleyman is, that I may humble myself before him and make my peace."
"Yes," said Horace, gently, "I
would. I should make a point of that, sir. Not now, you know. He might be in
bed. To-morrow morning."
"This is a strange place that I am in, and I
know not yet in what direction I should seek him. But till I have found him,
and justified myself in his sight, and had my revenge upon Jarjarees, mine
enemy, I shall know no rest."
"Well, but go to bed now, like a sensible old
chap," said Horace, soothingly, anxious to prevent this poor demented
Asiatic from falling into the hands of the police. "Plenty of time to go
and call on Suleyman to-morrow."
"I will search for him, even unto the
uttermost ends of the earth!"
"That's right—you're sure to find him in one
of them. Only, don't you see, it's no use starting to-night—the last trains
have gone long ago." As he spoke, the night wind bore across the square
the sound of Big Ben striking the quarters in Westminster Clock Tower, and
then, after a pause, the solemn boom that announced the first of the small
hours. "To-morrow," thought Ventimore, "I'll speak to Mrs.
Rapkin, and get her to send for a doctor and have him put under proper care—the
poor old boy really isn't fit to go about alone!"
"I will start now—at once," insisted the
stranger "for there is no time to be lost."
"Oh, come!" said Horace, "after so
many thousand years, a few hours more or less won't make any serious
difference. And you can't go out now—they've shut up the house. Do let me take
you upstairs to your room, sir."
"Not so, for I must leave thee for a season,
O young man of kind conduct. But may thy days be fortunate, and the gate never
cease to be repaired, and the nose of him that envieth thee be rubbed in the
dust, for love for thee hath entered into my heart, and if it be permitted unto
me, I will cover thee with the veils of my protection!"
As he finished this harangue the speaker seemed,
to Ventimore's speechless amazement, to slip through the wall behind him. At
all events, he had left the room somehow—and Horace found himself alone.
He rubbed the back of his head, which began to be
painful. "He can't really have vanished through the wall," he said to
himself. "That's too absurd. The fact is, I'm over-excited this
evening—and no wonder, after all that's happened. The best thing I can do is to
go to bed at once."
Which he accordingly proceeded to do.
CHAPTER V - CARTE BLANCHE
When Ventimore woke next morning his headache had
gone, and with it the recollection of everything but the wondrous and
delightful fact that Sylvia loved him and had promised to be his some day. Her
mother, too, was on his side; why should he despair of anything after that?
There was the Professor, to be sure—but even he might be brought to consent to
an engagement, especially if it turned out that the brass bottle ... and here
Horace began to recall an extraordinary dream in connection with that extremely
speculative purchase of his. He had dreamed that he had forced the bottle open,
and that it proved to contain, not manuscripts, but an elderly Jinnee who
alleged that he had been imprisoned there by the order of King Solomon!
What, he wondered, could have put so grotesque a
fancy into his head? and then he smiled as he traced it to Sylvia's playful
suggestion that the bottle might contain a "genie," as did the famous
jar in the "Arabian Nights," and to her father's pedantic correction
of the word to "Jinnee." Upon that slight foundation his sleeping
brain had built up all that elaborate fabric—a scene so vivid and a story so
circumstantial and plausible that, in spite of its extravagance, he could
hardly even now persuade himself that it was entirely imaginary. The psychology
of dreams is a subject which has a fascinating mystery, even for the least
serious student.
As he entered the sitting-room, where his
breakfast awaited him, he looked round, half expecting to find the bottle lying
with its lid off in the corner, as he had last seen it in his dream.
Of course, it was not there, and he felt an odd
relief. The auction-room people had not delivered it yet, and so much the
better, for he had still to ascertain if it had anything inside it; and who
knew that it might not contain something more to his advantage than a
maundering old Jinnee with a grievance several thousands of years old?
Breakfast over, he rang for his landlady, who
presently appeared. Mrs. Rapkin was a superior type of her much-abused class.
She was scrupulously clean and neat in her person; her sandy hair was so smooth
and tightly knotted that it gave her head the colour and shape of a Barcelona
nut; she had sharp, beady eyes, nostrils that seemed to smell battle afar off,
a wide, thin mouth that apparently closed with a snap, and a dry, whity-brown
complexion suggestive of bran.
But if somewhat grim of aspect, she was a good
soul and devoted to Horace, in whom she took almost a maternal interest, while
regretting that he was not what she called "serious-minded enough" to
get on in the world. Rapkin had wooed and married her when they were both in
service, and he still took occasional jobs as an outdoor butler, though Horace
suspected that his more staple form of industry was the consumption of
gin-and-water and remarkably full-flavoured cigars in the basement parlour.
"Shall you be dining in this evening,
sir?" inquired Mrs. Rapkin.
"I don't know. Don't get anything in for me;
I shall most probably dine at the club," said Horace; and Mrs. Rapkin, who
had a confirmed belief that all clubs were hotbeds of vice and extravagance,
sniffed disapproval. "By the way," he added, "if a kind of brass
pot is sent here, it's all right. I bought it at a sale yesterday. Be careful
how you handle it—it's rather old."
"There was a vawse come late last night, sir;
I don't know if it's that, it's old-fashioned enough."
"Then will you bring it up at once, please? I
want to see it."
Mrs. Rapkin retired, to reappear presently with
the brass bottle. "I thought you'd have noticed it when you come in last
night, sir," she explained, "for I stood it in the corner, and when I
see it this morning it was layin' o' one side and looking that dirty and
disrespectable I took it down to give it a good clean, which it wanted
it."
It certainly looked rather the better for it, and
the marks or scratches on the cap were more distinguishable, but Horace was
somewhat disconcerted to find that part of his dream was true—the bottle had been
there.
"I hope I've done nothing wrong," said
Mrs. Rapkin, observing his expression; "I only used a little warm ale to
it, which is a capital thing for brass-work, and gave it a scrub with
'Vitrolia' soap—but it would take more than that to get all the muck off of
it."
"It is all right, so long as you didn't try
to get the top off," said Horace.
"Why, the top was off it, sir. I thought
you'd done it with the 'ammer and chisel when you got 'ome," said his
landlady, staring. "I found them 'ere on the carpet."
Horace started. Then that part was true, too!
"Oh, ah," he said, "I believe I did. I'd forgotten. That reminds
me. Haven't you let the room above to—to an Oriental gentleman—a native, you
know—wears a green turban?"
"That I most certainly 'ave not, Mr.
Ventimore," said Mrs. Rapkin, with emphasis, "nor wouldn't. Not if
his turbin was all the colours of the rainbow—for I don't 'old with such. Why,
there was Rapkin's own sister-in-law let her parlour floor to a Horiental—a
Parsee he was, or one o' them Hafrican tribes—and reason she 'ad to repent of
it, for all his gold spectacles! Whatever made you fancy I should let to a
blackamoor?"
"Oh, I thought I saw somebody
about—er—answering that description, and I wondered if—"
"Never in this 'ouse, sir. Mrs. Steggars,
next door but one, might let to such, for all I can say to the contrary, not
being what you might call particular, and her rooms more suitable to savage
notions—but I've enough on my hands, Mr. Ventimore, attending to you—not
keeping a girl to do the waiting, as why should I while I'm well able to do it
better myself?"
As soon as she relieved him of her presence, he
examined the bottle: there was nothing whatever inside it, which disposed of
all the hopes he had entertained from that quarter.
It was not difficult to account for the visionary
Oriental as an hallucination probably inspired by the heavy fumes (for he now
believed in the fumes) which had doubtless resulted from the rapid
decomposition of some long-buried spices or similar substances suddenly exposed
to the air.
If any further explanation were needed, the
accidental blow to the back of his head, together with the latent suggestion
from the "Arabian Nights," would amply provide it.
So, having settled these points to his entire
satisfaction, he went to his office in Great Cloister Street, which he now had
entirely to himself, and was soon engaged in drafting the specification for
Beevor on which he had been working when so fortunately interrupted the day
before by the Professor.
The work was more or less mechanical, and could
bring him no credit and little thanks, but Horace had the happy faculty of
doing thoroughly whatever he undertook, and as he sat there by his wide-open
window he soon became entirely oblivious of all but the task before him.
So much so that, even when the light became
obscured for a moment, as if by some large and opaque body in passing, he did
not look up immediately, and, when he did, was surprised to find the only
armchair occupied by a portly person, who seemed to be trying to recover his
breath.
"I beg your pardon," said Ventimore;
"I never heard you come in."
His visitor could only wave his head in courteous
deprecation, under which there seemed a suspicion of bewildered embarrassment.
He was a rosy-gilled, spotlessly clean, elderly gentleman, with white whiskers;
his eyes, just then slightly protuberant, were shrewd, but genial; he had a
wide, jolly mouth and a double chin. He was dressed like a man who is above
disguising his prosperity; he wore a large, pear-shaped pearl in his crimson
scarf, and had probably only lately discarded his summer white hat and white
waistcoat.
"My dear sir," he began, in a rich,
throaty voice, as soon as he could speak; "my dear sir, you must think
this is a most unceremonious way of—ah!—dropping in on you—of invading your
privacy."
"Not at all," said Horace, wondering
whether he could possibly intend him to understand that he had come in by the
window. "I'm afraid there was no one to show you in—my clerk is away just
now."
"No matter, sir, no matter. I found my way
up, as you perceive. The important, I may say the essential, fact is that I am
here."
"Quite so," said Horace, "and may I
ask what brought you?"
"What brought—" The stranger's eyes grew
fish-like for the moment. "Allow me, I—I shall come to that—in good time.
I am still a little—as you can see." He glanced round the room. "You
are, I think, an architect, Mr. ah—Mr. um—?"
"Ventimore is my name," said Horace,
"and I am an architect."
"Ventimore, to be sure!" he put his hand
in his pocket and produced a card: "Yes, it's all quite correct: I see I
have the name here. And an architect, Mr. Ventimore, so I—I am given to
understand, of immense ability."
"I'm afraid I can't claim to be that,"
said Horace, "but I may call myself fairly competent."
"Competent? Why, of course you're competent.
Do you suppose, sir, that I, a practical business man, should come to any one
who was not competent?" he said, with exactly the air of a man trying to
convince himself—against his own judgment—that he was acting with the utmost
prudence.
"Am I to understand that some one has been
good enough to recommend me to you?" inquired Horace.
"Certainly not, sir, certainly not. I need no
recommendation but my own judgment. I—ah—have a tolerable acquaintance with all
that is going on in the art world, and I have come to the conclusion,
Mr.—eh—ah—Ventimore, I repeat, the deliberate and unassisted conclusion, that
you are the one man living who can do what I want."
"Delighted to hear it," said Horace,
genuinely gratified. "When did you see any of my designs?"
"Never mind, sir. I don't decide without very
good grounds. It doesn't take me long to make up my mind, and when my mind is
made up, I act, sir, I act. And, to come to the point, I have a small
commission—unworthy, I am quite aware, of your—ah—distinguished talent—which I
should like to put in your hands."
"Is he going to ask me to attend a sale for
him?" thought Horace. "I'm hanged if I do."
"I'm rather busy at present," he said
dubiously, "as you may see. I'm not sure whether—"
"I'll put the matter in a nutshell, sir—in a
nutshell. My name is Wackerbath, Samuel Wackerbath—tolerably well known, if I
may say so, in City circles." Horace, of course, concealed the fact that
his visitor's name and fame were unfamiliar to him. "I've lately bought a
few acres on the Hampshire border, near the house I'm living in just now; and
I've been thinking—as I was saying to a friend only just now, as we were
crossing Westminster Bridge—I've been thinking of building myself a little
place there, just a humble, unpretentious home, where I could run down for the
weekend and entertain a friend or two in a quiet way, and perhaps live some
part of the year. Hitherto I've rented places as I wanted 'em—old family seats
and ancestral mansions and so forth: very nice in their way, but I want to feel
under a roof of my own. I want to surround myself with the simple comforts,
the—ah—unassuming elegance of an English country home. And you're the man—I
feel more convinced of it with every word you say—you're the man to do the job
in style—ah—to execute the work as it should be done."
Here was the long-wished-for client at last! And
it was satisfactory to feel that he had arrived in the most ordinary and
commonplace course, for no one could look at Mr. Samuel Wackerbath and believe
for a moment that he was capable of floating through an upper window; he was
not in the least that kind of person.
"I shall be happy to do my best," said
Horace, with a calmness that surprised himself. "Could you give me some
idea of the amount you are prepared to spend?"
"Well, I'm no Crœsus—though I won't say I'm a
pauper precisely—and, as I remarked before, I prefer comfort to splendour. I
don't think I should be justified in going beyond—well, say sixty
thousand."
"Sixty thousand!" exclaimed Horace, who
had expected about a tenth of that sum. "Oh, not more than sixty thousand?
I see."
"I mean, on the house itself," explained
Mr. Wackerbath; "there will be outbuildings, lodges, cottages, and so
forth, and then some of the rooms I should want specially decorated.
Altogether, before we are finished, it may work out at about a hundred
thousand. I take it that, with such a margin, you could—ah—run me up something
that in a modest way would take the shine out of—I mean to say eclipse—anything
in the adjoining counties?"
"I certainly think," said Horace,
"that for such a sum as that I can undertake that you shall have a home
which will satisfy you." And he proceeded to put the usual questions as to
site, soil, available building materials, the accommodation that would be
required, and so on.
"You're young, sir," said Mr.
Wackerbath, at the end of the interview, "but I perceive you are up to all
the tricks of the—I should say, versed in the minutiæ of your profession. You
would like to run down and look at the ground, eh? Well, that's only
reasonable; and my wife and daughters will want to have their say in the
matter—no getting on without pleasing the ladies, hey? Now, let me see.
To-morrow's Sunday. Why not come down by the 8.45 a.m. to Lipsfield? I'll have
a trap, or a brougham and pair, or something, waiting for you—take you over the
ground myself, bring you back to lunch with us at Oriel Court, and talk the
whole thing thoroughly over. Then we'll send you up to town in the evening, and
you can start work the first thing on Monday. That suit you? Very well, then.
We'll expect you to-morrow."
With this Mr. Wackerbath departed, leaving Horace,
as may be imagined, absolutely overwhelmed by the suddenness and completeness of
his good fortune. He was no longer one of the unemployed: he had work to do,
and, better still, work that would interest him, give him all the scope and
opportunity he could wish for. With a client who seemed tractable, and to whom
money was clearly no object, he might carry out some of his most ambitious
ideas.
Moreover, he would now be in a position to speak
to Sylvia's father without fear of a repulse. His commission on £60,000 would
be £3,000, and that on the decorations and other work at least as much
again—probably more. In a year he could marry without imprudence; in two or
three years he might be making a handsome income, for he felt confident that,
with such a start, he would soon have as much work as he could undertake.
He was ashamed of himself for ever having lost
heart. What were the last few years of weary waiting but probation and
preparation for this splendid chance, which had come just when he really needed
it, and in the most simple and natural manner?
He loyally completed the work he had promised to
do for Beevor, who would have to dispense with his assistance in future, and
then he felt too excited and restless to stay in the office, and, after
lunching at his club as usual, he promised himself the pleasure of going to
Cottesmore Gardens and telling Sylvia his good news.
It was still early, and he walked the whole way,
as some vent for his high spirits, enjoying everything with a new zest—the
dappled grey and salmon sky before him, the amber, russet, and yellow of the
scanty foliage in Kensington Gardens, the pungent scent of fallen chestnuts and
acorns and burning leaves, the blue-grey mist stealing between the distant
tree-trunks, and then the cheery bustle and brilliancy of the High Street.
Finally came the joy of finding Sylvia all alone, and witnessing her frank
delight at what he had come to tell her, of feeling her hands on his shoulders,
and holding her in his arms, as their lips met for the first time. If on that
Saturday afternoon there was a happier man than Horace Ventimore, he would have
done well to dissemble his felicity, for fear of incurring the jealousy of the
high gods.
When Mrs. Futvoye returned, as she did only too
soon, to find her daughter and Horace seated on the same sofa, she did not
pretend to be gratified. "This is taking a most unfair advantage of what I
was weak enough to say last night, Mr. Ventimore," she began. "I
thought I could have trusted you!"
"I shouldn't have come so soon," he
said, "if my position were what it was only yesterday. But it's changed
since then, and I venture to hope that even the Professor won't object now to
our being regularly engaged." And he told her of the sudden alteration in
his prospects.
"Well," said Mrs. Futvoye, "you had
better speak to my husband about it."
The Professor came in shortly afterwards, and
Horace immediately requested a few minutes' conversation with him in the study,
which was readily granted.
The study to which the Professor led the way was
built out at the back of the house, and crowded with Oriental curios of every
age and kind; the furniture had been made by Cairene cabinet-makers, and along
the cornices of the book-cases were texts from the Koran, while every chair
bore the Arabic for "Welcome" in a gilded firework on its leather
back; the lamp was a perforated mosque lantern with long pendent glass tubes
like hyacinth glasses; a mummy-case smiled from a corner with laboured
bonhomie.
"Well," began the Professor, as soon as
they were seated, "so I was not mistaken—there was something in the brass
bottle after all, then? Let's have a look at it, whatever it is."
For the moment Horace had almost forgotten the
bottle. "Oh!" he said, "I—I got it open; but there was nothing
in it."
"Just as I anticipated, sir," said the
Professor. "I told you there couldn't be anything in a bottle of that
description; it was simply throwing money away to buy it."
"I dare say it was, but I wished to speak to
you on a much more important matter;" and Horace briefly explained his
object.
"Dear me," said the Professor, rubbing
up his hair irritably, "dear me! I'd no idea of this—no idea at all. I was
under the impression that you volunteered to act as escort to my wife and
daughter at St. Luc purely out of good nature to relieve me from what—to a man
of my habits in that extreme heat—would have been an arduous and distasteful
duty."
"I was not wholly unselfish, I admit,"
said Horace. "I fell in love with your daughter, sir, the first day I met
her—only I felt I had no right, as a poor man with no prospects, to speak to
her or you at that time."
"A very creditable feeling—but I've yet to
learn why you should have overcome it."
So, for the third time, Ventimore told the story
of the sudden turn in his fortunes.
"I know this Mr. Samuel Wackerbath by
name," said the Professor; "one of the chief partners in the firm of
Akers and Coverdale, the great estate agents—a most influential man, if you can
only succeed in satisfying him."
"Oh, I don't feel any misgivings about that,
sir," said Horace. "I mean to build him a house that will be beyond
his wildest expectations, and you see that in a year I shall have earned
several thousands, and I need not say that I will make any settlement you think
proper when I marry—"
"When you are in possession of those
thousands," remarked the Professor, dryly, "it will be time enough to
talk of marrying and making settlements. Meanwhile, if you and Sylvia choose to
consider yourselves engaged, I won't object—only I must insist on having your
promise that you won't persuade her to marry you without her mother's and my
consent."
Ventimore gave this undertaking willingly enough,
and they returned to the drawing-room. Mrs. Futvoye could hardly avoid asking
Horace, in his new character of fiancé, to stay and dine, which it need not be
said he was only too delighted to do.
"There is one thing, my dear—er—Horace,"
said the Professor, solemnly, after dinner, when the neat parlourmaid had left
them at dessert, "one thing on which I think it my duty to caution you. If
you are to justify the confidence we have shown in sanctioning your engagement
to Sylvia, you must curb this propensity of yours to needless
extravagance."
"Papa!" cried Sylvia. "What could
have made you think Horace extravagant?"
"Really," said Horace, "I shouldn't
have called myself particularly so."
"Nobody ever does call himself particularly
extravagant," retorted the Professor; "but I observed at St. Luc that
you habitually gave fifty centimes as a pourboire when twopence, or even a
penny, would have been handsome. And no one with any regard for the value of
money would have given a guinea for a worthless brass vessel on the bare chance
that it might contain manuscripts, which (as any one could have foreseen) it
did not."
"But it's not a bad sort of bottle,
sir," pleaded Horace. "If you remember, you said yourself the shape
was unusual. Why shouldn't it be worth all the money, and more?"
"To a collector, perhaps," said the
Professor, with his wonted amiability, "which you are not. No, I can only
call it a senseless and reprehensible waste of money."
"Well, the truth is," said Horace,
"I bought it with some idea that it might interest you."
"Then you were mistaken, sir. It does not
interest me. Why should I be interested in a metal jar which, for anything that
appears to the contrary, may have been cast the other day at Birmingham?"
"But there is something," said Horace;
"a seal or inscription of some sort engraved on the cap. Didn't I mention
it?"
"You said nothing about an inscription
before," replied the Professor, with rather more interest. "What is
the character—Arabic? Persian? Kufic?"
"I really couldn't say—it's almost rubbed
out—queer little triangular marks, something like birds' footprints."
"That sounds like Cuneiform," said the
Professor, "which would seem to point to a Phœnician origin. And, as I am
acquainted with no Oriental brass earlier than the ninth century of our era, I
should regard your description as, à priori, distinctly unlikely. However, I
should certainly like to have an opportunity of examining the bottle for myself
some day."
"Whenever you please, Professor. When can you
come?"
"Why, I'm so much occupied all day that I
can't say for certain when I can get up to your office again."
"My own days will be fairly full now,"
said Horace; "and the thing's not at the office, but in my rooms at
Vincent Square. Why shouldn't you all come and dine quietly there some evening
next week, and then you could examine the inscription comfortably afterwards,
you know, Professor, and find out what it really is? Do say you will." He
was eager to have the privilege of entertaining Sylvia in his own rooms for the
first time.
"No, no," said the Professor; "I
see no reason why you should be troubled with the entire family. I may drop in
alone some evening and take the luck of the pot, sir."
"Thank you, papa," put in Sylvia;
"but I should like to come too, please, and hear what you think of
Horace's bottle. And I'm dying to see his rooms. I believe they're fearfully
luxurious."
"I trust," observed her father,
"that they are far indeed from answering that description. If they did, I
should consider it a most unsatisfactory indication of Horace's
character."
"There's nothing magnificent about them, I
assure you," said Horace. "Though it's true I've had them done up,
and all that sort of thing, at my own expense—but quite simply. I couldn't
afford to spend much on them. But do come and see them. I must have a little
dinner, to celebrate my good fortune—it will be so jolly if you'll all three
come."
"If we do come," stipulated the
Professor, "it must be on the distinct understanding that you don't
provide an elaborate banquet. Plain, simple, wholesome food, well cooked, such
as we have had this evening, is all that is necessary. More would be
ostentatious."
"My dear dad!" protested Sylvia, in
distress at this somewhat dictatorial speech. "Surely you can leave all
that to Horace!"
"Horace, my dear, understands that, in
speaking as I did, I was simply treating him as a potential member of my
family." Here Sylvia made a private little grimace. "No young man who
contemplates marrying should allow himself to launch into extravagance on the
strength of prospects which, for all he can tell," said the Professor,
genially, "may prove fallacious. On the contrary, if his affection is
sincere, he will incur as little expense as possible, put by every penny he can
save, rather than subject the girl he professes to love to the ordeal of a long
engagement. In other words, the truest lover is the best economist."
"I quite understand, sir," said Horace,
good-temperedly; "it would be foolish of me to attempt any ambitious form
of entertainment—especially as my landlady, though an excellent plain cook, is
not exactly a cordon bleu. So you can come to my modest board without
misgivings."
Before he left, a provisional date for the dinner
was fixed for an evening towards the end of the next week, and Horace walked
home, treading on air rather than hard paving-stones, and "striking the
stars with his uplifted head."
The next day he went down to Lipsfield and made
the acquaintance of the whole Wackerbath family, who were all enthusiastic
about the proposed country house. The site was everything that the most
exacting architect could desire, and he came back to town the same evening, having
spent a pleasant day and learnt enough of his client's requirements, and—what
was even more important—those of his client's wife and daughters, to enable him
to begin work upon the sketch-plans the next morning.
He had not been long in his rooms at Vincent
Square, and was still agreeably engaged in recalling the docility and ready
appreciation with which the Wackerbaths had received his suggestions and rough
sketches, their compliments and absolute confidence in his skill, when he had a
shock which was as disagreeable as it was certainly unexpected.
For the wall before him parted like a film, and
through it stepped, smiling benignantly, the green-robed figure of
Fakrash-el-Aamash, the Jinnee.
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