The Brass Bottle, F. Anstey [e book reader for pc TXT] 📗

in the Professor, "that hitherto you have not been telling the truth?"

"Not as invariably as I could have wished," Horace confessed.

"So I suspected. Then, unless you can bring yourself to be perfectly candid, you can hardly wonder at our asking you to consider your engagement as broken off?"

"Broken off!" echoed Horace. "Sylvia, you won't give me up! You know I wouldn't do anything unworthy of you!"

"I'm certain that you can't have done anything which would make me love you one bit the less if I knew it. So why not be quite open with us?"

"Because, darling," said Horace, "I'm in such a fix that it would only make matters worse."

"In that case," said the Professor, "and as it is[Pg 100] already rather late, perhaps you will allow one of your numerous retinue to call a four-wheeler?"

Horace clapped his hands, but no one answered the summons, and he could not find any of the slaves in the antechamber.

"I'm afraid all the servants have left," he explained; and it is to be feared he would have added that they were all obliged to return to the contractor by eleven, only he caught the Professor's eye and decided that he had better refrain. "If you will wait here, I'll go out and fetch a cab," he added.

"There is no occasion to trouble you," said the Professor; "my wife and daughter have already got their things on, and we will walk until we find a cab. Now, Mr. Ventimore, we will bid you good-night and good-bye. For, after what has happened, you will, I trust, have the good taste to discontinue your visits and make no attempt to see Sylvia again."

"Upon my honour," protested Horace, "I have done nothing to warrant you in shutting your doors against me."

"I am unable to agree with you. I have never thoroughly approved of your engagement, because, as I told you at the time, I suspected you of recklessness in money matters. Even in accepting your invitation to-night I warned you, as you may remember, not to make the occasion an excuse for foolish extravagance. I come here, and find you in apartments furnished and decorated (as you informed us) by yourself, and on a scale which would be prodigal in a millionaire. You have a suite of retainers which (except for their nationality and imperfect discipline) a prince might envy. You provide a banquet of—hem!—delicacies which must have cost you infinite trouble and unlimited expense—this, after I had expressly stipulated for a quiet family dinner! Not content with that, you procure for our diversion Arab music and dancing of a—of a highly recondite character. I should be unworthy of the name[Pg 101] of father, sir, if I were to entrust my only daughter's happiness to a young man with so little common sense, so little self-restraint. And she will understand my motives and obey my wishes."

"You're right, Professor, according to your lights," admitted Horace. "And yet—confound it all!—you're utterly wrong, too!"

"Oh, Horace," cried Sylvia; "if you had only listened to dad, and not gone to all this foolish, foolish expense, we might have been so happy!"

"But I have gone to no expense. All this hasn't cost me a penny!"

"Ah, there is some mystery! Horace, if you love me, you will explain—here, now, before it's too late!"

"My darling," groaned Horace, "I would, like a shot, if I thought it would be of the least use!"

"Hitherto," said the Professor, "you cannot be said to have been happy in your explanations—and I should advise you not to venture on any more. Good-night, once more. I only wish it were possible, without needless irony, to make the customary acknowledgments for a pleasant evening."

Mrs. Futvoye had already hurried her daughter away, and, though she had left her husband to express his sentiments unaided, she made it sufficiently clear that she entirely agreed with them.

Horace stood in the outer hall by the fountain, in which his drowned chrysanthemums were still floating, and gazed in stupefied despair after his guests as they went down the path to the gate. He knew only too well that they would never cross his threshold, nor he theirs, again.

Suddenly he came to himself with a start. "I'll try it!" he cried. "I can't and won't stand this!" And he rushed after them bareheaded.

"Professor!" he said breathlessly, as he caught him up, "one moment. On second thoughts, I will tell you my secret, if you will promise me a patient hearing."

[Pg 102]

"The pavement is hardly the place for confidences," replied the Professor, "and, if it were, your costume is calculated to attract more remark than is desirable. My wife and daughter have gone on—if you will permit me, I will overtake them—I shall be at home to-morrow morning, should you wish to see me."

"No—to-night, to-night!" urged Horace. "I can't sleep in that infernal place with this on my mind. Put Mrs. Futvoye and Sylvia into a cab, Professor, and come back. It's not late, and I won't keep you long—but for Heaven's sake, let me tell you my story at once."

Probably the Professor was not without some curiosity on the subject; at all events he yielded. "Very well," he said, "go into the house and I will rejoin you presently. Only remember," he added, "that I shall accept no statement without the fullest proof. Otherwise you will merely be wasting your time and mine."

"Proof!" thought Horace, gloomily, as he returned to his Arabian halls, "The only decent proof I could produce would be old Fakrash, and he's not likely to turn up again—especially now I want him."

A little later the Professor returned, having found a cab and despatched his women-folk home. "Now, young man," he said, as he unwound his wrapper and seated himself on the divan by Horace's side, "I can give you just ten minutes to tell your story in, so let me beg you to make it as brief and as comprehensible as you can."

It was not exactly an encouraging invitation in the circumstances, but Horace took his courage in both hands and told him everything, just as it had happened.

"And that's your story?" said the Professor, after listening to the narrative with the utmost attention, when Horace came to the end.

"That's my story, sir," said Horace. "And I hope it has altered your opinion of me."

"It has," replied the Professor, in an altered tone;[Pg 103] "it has indeed. Yours is a sad case—a very sad case."

"It's rather awkward, isn't it? But I don't mind so long as you understand. And you'll tell Sylvia—as much as you think proper?"

"Yes—yes; I must tell Sylvia."

"And I may go on seeing her as usual?"

"Well—will you be guided by my advice—the advice of one who has lived more than double your years?"

"Certainly," said Horace.

"Then, if I were you, I should go away at once, for a complete change of air and scene."

"That's impossible, sir—you forget my work!"

"Never mind your work, my boy: leave it for a while, try a sea-voyage, go round the world, get quite away from these associations."

"But I might come across the Jinnee again," objected Horace; "he's travelling, as I told you."

"Yes, yes, to be sure. Still, I should go away. Consult any doctor, and he'll tell you the same thing."

"Consult any—— Good God!" cried Horace; "I see what it is—you think I'm mad!"

"No, no, my dear boy," said the Professor, soothingly, "not mad—nothing of the sort; perhaps your mental equilibrium is just a trifle—it's quite intelligible. You see, the sudden turn in your professional prospects, coupled with your engagement to Sylvia—I've known stronger minds than yours thrown off their balance—temporarily, of course, quite temporarily—by less than that."

"You believe I am suffering from delusions?"

"I don't say that. I think you may see ordinary things in a distorted light."

"Anyhow, you don't believe there really was a Jinnee inside that bottle?"

"Remember, you yourself assured me at the time you opened it that you found nothing whatever inside it. Isn't it more credible that you were right then than that you should be right now?"

[Pg 104]

"Well," said Horace, "you saw all those black slaves; you ate, or tried to eat, that unutterably beastly banquet; you heard that music—and then there was the dancing-girl. And this hall we're in, this robe I've got on—are they delusions? Because if they are, I'm afraid you will have to admit that you're mad too."

"Ingeniously put," said the Professor. "I fear it is unwise to argue with you. Still, I will venture to assert that a strong imagination like yours, over-heated and saturated with Oriental ideas—to which I fear I may have contributed—is not incapable of unconsciously assisting in its own deception. In other words, I think that you may have provided all this yourself from various quarters without any clear recollection of the fact."

"That's very scientific and satisfactory as far as it goes, my dear Professor," said Horace; "but there's one piece of evidence which may upset your theory—and that's this brass bottle."

"If your reasoning powers were in their normal condition," said the Professor, compassionately, "you would see that the mere production of an empty bottle can be no proof of what it contained—or, for that matter, that it ever contained anything at all!"

"Oh, I see that," said Horace; "but this bottle has a stopper with what you yourself admit to be an inscription of some sort. Suppose that inscription confirms my story—what then? All I ask you to do is to make it out for yourself before you decide that I'm either a liar or a lunatic."

"I warn you," said the Professor, "that if you are trusting to my being unable to decipher the inscription, you are deceiving yourself. You represent that this bottle belongs to the period of Solomon—that is, about a thousand years B.C. Probably you are not aware that the earliest specimens of Oriental metal-work in existence are not older than the tenth century of our era. But, granting that it is as old as you allege, I shall[Pg 105] certainly be able to read any inscription there may be on it. I have made out clay tablets in Cuneiform which were certainly written a thousand years before Solomon's time."

"So much the better," said Horace. "I'm as certain as I can be that, whatever is written on that lid—whether it's Phœnician, or Cuneiform, or anything else—must have some reference to a Jinnee confined in the bottle, or at least bear the seal of Solomon. But there the thing is—examine it for yourself."

"Not now," said the Professor; "it's too late, and the light here is not strong enough. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll take this stopper thing home with me, and examine it carefully to-morrow—on one condition."

"You have only to name it," said Horace.

"My condition is, that if I, and one or two other Orientalists to whom I may submit it, come to the conclusion that there is no real inscription at all—or, if any, that a date and meaning must be assigned to it totally inconsistent with your story—you will accept our finding and acknowledge that you have been under a delusion, and dismiss the whole affair from your mind."

"Oh, I don't mind agreeing to that," said Horace, "particularly as it's my only chance."

"Very well, then," said the Professor, as he removed the metal cap and put it in his pocket; "you may depend upon hearing from me in a day or two. Meantime, my boy," he continued, almost affectionately, "why not try a short bicycle tour somewhere, hey? You're a cyclist, I know—anything but allow yourself to dwell on Oriental subjects."

"It's not so easy to avoid dwelling on them as you think!" said Horace, with rather a dreary laugh. "And I fancy, Professor, that—whether you like it or not—you'll have to believe in that Jinnee of mine sooner or later."

[Pg 106]

"I can scarcely conceive," replied the Professor, who was by this time at the outer door, "any degree of evidence which could succeed in convincing me that your brass bottle had ever contained an Arabian Jinnee. However, I shall endeavour to preserve an open mind on the subject. Good evening to you."

As soon as he was alone, Horace paced up and down his deserted halls in a state of simmering rage as he thought how eagerly he had looked forward to his little dinner-party; how intimate and delightful it might have been, and what a monstrous and prolonged nightmare it had actually proved. And at the end of it there he was—in a fantastic, impossible dwelling, deserted by every one, his chances of setting himself right with Sylvia hanging on the slenderest thread; unknown difficulties and complications threatening him from every side!

He owed all this to Fakrash. Yes, that incorrigibly grateful