The Brass Bottle Part 22

"He's a mule," sobbed Sylvia, breaking down entirely. "I could bear it better if he had been a _nice_ mule.... B--but he isn't!"

"Whatever he may be," declared Horace, as he knelt by her chair endeavouring to comfort her, "nothing can alter my profound respect for him. And you must let me see him, Sylvia; because I fully believe I shall be able to cheer him up."

"If you imagine you can persuade him to--to laugh it off!" said Sylvia, tearfully.

"I wasn't proposing to try to make him see the humorous side of his situation," Horace mildly explained. "I trust I have more tact than that. But he may be glad to know that, at the worst, it is only a temporary inconvenience. I'll take care that he's all right again before very long."

She started up and looked at him, her eyes widened with dawning dread and mistrust.

"If you can speak like that," she said, "it must have been _you_ who--no, I can't believe it--that would be too horrible!"

"I who did _what_, Sylvia? Weren't you there when--when it happened?"

"No," she replied. "I was only told of it afterwards. Mother heard papa talking loudly in his study this morning, as if he was angry with somebody, and at last she grew so uneasy she couldn't bear it any longer, and went in to see what was the matter with him. Dad was quite alone and looked as usual, only a little excited; and then, without the slightest warning, just as she entered the room, he--he changed slowly into a mule before her eyes! Anybody but mamma would have lost her head and roused the whole house."

"Thank Heaven she didn't!" said Horace, fervently. "That was what I was most afraid of."

"Then--oh, Horace, it _was_ you! It's no use denying it. I feel more certain of it every moment!"

"Now, Sylvia!" he protested, still anxious, if possible, to keep the worst from her, "what could have put such an idea as that into your head?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "Several things last night. No one who was really nice, and like everybody else, would live in such queer rooms like those, and dine on cushions, with dreadful black slaves, and--and dancing-girls and things. You pretended you were quite poor."

"So I am, darling. And as for my rooms, and--and the rest, they're all gone, Sylvia. If you went to Vincent Square to-day, you wouldn't find a trace of them!"

"That only shows!" said Sylvia. "But why should you play such a cruel, and--and ungentlemanly trick on poor dad? If you had ever really loved me----!"

"But I do, Sylvia, you can't really believe me capable of such an outrage! Look at me and tell me so."

"No, Horace," said Sylvia frankly. "I don't believe _you_ did it. But I believe you know who _did_. And you had better tell me at once!"

"If you're quite sure you can stand it," he replied, "I'll tell you everything." And, as briefly as possible, he told her how he had unsealed the bra.s.s bottle, and all that had come of it.

She bore it, on the whole, better than he had expected; perhaps, being a woman, it was some consolation to her to remind him that she had foretold something of this kind from the very first.

"But, of course, I never really thought it would be so awful as this!"

she said. "Horace, how _could_ you be so careless as to let a great wicked thing like that escape out of its bottle?"

"I had a notion it was a ma.n.u.script," said Horace--"till he came out.

But he isn't a great wicked thing, Sylvia. He's an amiable old Jinnee enough. And he'd do anything for me. n.o.body could be more grateful and generous than he has been."

"Do you call it generous to change the poor, dear dad into a mule?"

inquired Sylvia, with a little curl of her upper lip.

"That was an oversight," said Horace; "he meant no harm by it. In Arabia they do these things--or used to in his day. Not that that's much excuse for him. Still, he's not so young as he was, and besides, being bottled up for all those centuries must have narrowed him rather. You must try and make allowances for him, darling."

"I shan't," said Sylvia, "unless he apologises to poor father, and puts him right at once."

"Why, of course, he'll do that," Horace answered confidently. "I'll see that he does. I don't mean to stand any more of his nonsense. I'm afraid I've been just a little too slack for fear of hurting his feelings; but this time he's gone too far, and I shall talk to him like a Dutch uncle.

He's always ready to do the right thing when he's once shown where he has gone wrong--only he takes such a lot of showing, poor old chap!"

"But when do you think he'll--do the right thing?"

"Oh, as soon as I see him again."

"Yes; but when _will_ you see him again?"

"That's more than I can say. He's away just now--in China, or Peru, or somewhere."

"Horace! Then he won't be back for months and months!"

"Oh yes, he will. He can do the whole trip, _aller et retour_, you know, in a few hours. He's an active old beggar for his age. In the meantime, dearest, the chief thing is to keep up your father's spirits. So I think I'd better---- I was just telling Sylvia, Mrs. Futvoye," he said, as that lady re-entered the room, "that I should like to see the Professor at once."

"It's quite, _quite_ impossible!" was the nervous reply. "He's in such a state that he's unable to see any one. You don't know how fractious gout makes him!"

"Dear Mrs. Futvoye," said Horace, "believe me, I know more than you suppose."

"Yes, mother, dear," put in Sylvia, "he knows everything--_really_ everything. And perhaps it might do dad good to see him."

Mrs. Futvoye sank helplessly down on a settee. "Oh, dear me!" she said.

"I don't know _what_ to say. I really don't. If you had seen him plunge at the mere suggestion of a doctor!"

Privately, though naturally he could not say so, Horace thought a vet.

might be more appropriate, but eventually he persuaded Mrs. Futvoye to conduct him to her husband's study.

"Anthony, love," she said, as she knocked gently at the door, "I've brought Horace Ventimore to see you for a few moments, if he may."

It seemed from the sounds of furious snorting and stamping within, that the Professor resented this intrusion on his privacy. "My dear Anthony,"

said his devoted wife, as she unlocked the door and turned the key on the inside after admitting Horace, "try to be calm. Think of the servants downstairs. Horace is _so_ anxious to help."

As for Ventimore, he was speechless--so inexpressibly shocked was he by the alteration in the Professor's appearance. He had never seen a mule in sorrier condition or in so vicious a temper. Most of the lighter furniture had been already reduced to matchwood; the gla.s.s doors of the bookcase were starred or shivered; precious Egyptian pottery and gla.s.s were strewn in fragments on the carpets, and even the mummy, though it still smiled with the same enigmatic cheerfulness, seemed to have suffered severely from the Professorial hoofs.

Horace instinctively felt that any words of conventional sympathy would jar here; indeed, the Professor's att.i.tude and expression reminded him irresistibly of a certain "Blondin Donkey" he had seen enacted by music-hall artists, at the point where it becomes sullen and defiant.

Only, he had laughed helplessly at the Blondin Donkey, and somehow he felt no inclination to laugh now.

"Believe me, sir," he began, "I would not disturb you like this unless--steady there, for Heaven's sake Professor, don't kick till you've heard me out!" For, the mule, in a clumsy, shambling way which betrayed the novice, was slowly revolving on his own axis so as to bring his hind-quarters into action, while still keeping his only serviceable eye upon his unwelcome visitor.

"Listen to me, sir," said Horace, manoeuvring in his turn. "I'm not to blame for this, and if you brain me, as you seem to be endeavouring to do, you'll simply destroy the only living man who can get you out of this."

The mule appeared impressed by this, and backed c.u.mbrously into a corner, from which he regarded Horace with a mistrustful, but attentive, eye. "If, as I imagine, sir," continued Horace, "you are, though temporarily deprived of speech, perfectly capable of following an argument, will you kindly signify it by raising your right ear?" The mule's right ear rose with a sharp twitch.

"Now we can get on," said Horace. "First let me tell you that I repudiate all responsibility for the proceedings of that infernal Jinnee.... I wouldn't stamp like that--you might go through the floor, you know.... Now, if you will only exercise a little patience----"

At this the exasperated animal made a sudden run at him with his mouth open, which obliged Horace to shelter himself behind a large leather arm-chair. "You really _must_ keep cool, sir," he remonstrated; "your nerves are naturally upset. If I might suggest a little champagne--you could manage it in--in a bucket, and it would help you to pull yourself together. A whisk of your--er--tail would imply consent." The Professor's tail instantly swept some rare Arabian gla.s.s lamps and vases from a shelf at his rear, whereupon Mrs. Futvoye went out, and returned presently with a bottle of champagne and a large china _jardiniere_, as the best subst.i.tute she could find for a bucket.

When the mule had drained the flower-pot greedily and appeared refreshed, Horace proceeded: "I have every hope, sir," he said, "that before many hours you will be smiling--pray don't prance like that, I mean what I say--smiling over what now seems to you, very justly, a most annoying and serious catastrophe. I shall speak seriously to Fakrash (the Jinnee, you know), and I am sure that, as soon as he realises what a frightful blunder he has made, he will be the first to offer you every reparation in his power. For, old foozle as he is, he's thoroughly good-hearted."

The Professor drooped his ears at this, and shook his head with a doleful incredulity that made him look more like the Pantomime Donkey than ever.