A CHOICE OF EVILS
Not even his morning tub could brace
Ventimore’s spirits to their usual cheerfulness.
After sending away his breakfast almost untasted he
stood at his window, looking drearily out over the
crude green turf of Vincent Square at the indigo masses
of the Abbey and the Victoria Tower and the huge gasometers
to the right which loomed faintly through a dun-coloured
haze.
He felt a positive loathing for his
office, to which he had gone with such high hopes
and enthusiasm of late. There was no work for
him to do there any longer, and the sight of his drawing-table
and materials would, he knew, be intolerable in their
mute mockery.
Nor could he with any decency present
himself again at Cottesmore Gardens while the situation
still remained unchanged, as it must do until he had
seen Fakrash.
When would the Jinnee return, or horrible
suspicion! did he never intend to return
at all?
“Fakrash!” he groaned
aloud, “you can’t really mean to
leave me in such a regular deuce of a hole as this?”
“At thy service!” said
a well-known voice behind him, and he turned to see
the Jinnee standing smiling on the hearthrug and
at this accomplishment of his dearest desire all his
indignation surged back.
“Oh, there you are!”
he said irritably. “Where on earth have
you been all this time?”
“Nowhere on earth,” was
the bland reply; “but in the regions of the air,
seeking to promote thy welfare.”
“If you have been as brilliantly
successful up there as you have down here,”
retorted Horace, “I have much to thank you for.”
“I am more than repaid,”
answered the Jinnee, who, like many highly estimable
persons, was almost impervious to irony, “by
such assurances of thy gratitude.”
“I’m not grateful,”
said Horace, fuming. “I’m devilish
annoyed!”
“Well hath it been written,” replied the
Jinnee:
“’Be disregardful
of thine affairs, and commit them to the course
of Fate,
For often a thing that enrages
thee may eventually be to thee
pleasing.’”
“I don’t see the remotest
chance of that, in my case,” said Horace.
“Why is thy countenance thus
troubled, and what new complaint hast thou against
me?”
“What the devil do you mean
by turning a distinguished and perfectly inoffensive
scholar into a wall-eyed mule?” Horace broke
out. “If that is your idea of a practical
joke !”
“It is one of the easiest affairs
possible,” said the Jinnee, complacently running
his fingers through the thin strands of his beard.
“I have accomplished such transformations on
several occasions.”
“Then you ought to be ashamed
of yourself, that’s all. The question is
now how do you propose to restore him again?”
“Far from undoing be that which
is accomplished!” was the sententious answer.
“What?” cried Horace,
hardly believing his ears; “you surely don’t
mean to allow that unhappy Professor to remain like
that for ever, do you?”
“None can alter what is predestined.”
“Very likely not. But it
wasn’t decreed that a learned man should be
suddenly degraded to a beastly mule for the rest of
his life. Destiny wouldn’t be such a fool!”
“Despise not mules, for they
are useful and valuable animals in the household.”
“But, confound it all, have
you no imagination? Can’t you enter at
all into the feelings of a man a man of
wide learning and reputation suddenly plunged
into such a humiliating condition?”
“Upon his own head be it,”
said Fakrash, coldly. “For he hath brought
this fate upon himself.”
“Well, how do you suppose that
you have helped me by this performance?
Will it make him any the more disposed to consent to
my marrying his daughter? Is that all you know
of the world?”
“It is not my intention that
thou shouldst take his daughter to wife.”
“Whether you approve or not,
it’s my intention to marry her.”
“Assuredly she will not marry
thee so long as her father remaineth a mule.”
“There I agree with you.
But is that your notion of doing me a good turn?”
“I did not consider thy interest in this matter.”
“Then will you be good enough
to consider it now? I have pledged my word that
he shall be restored to his original form. Not
only my happiness is at stake, but my honour.”
“By failure to perform the impossible
none can lose honour. And this is a thing that
cannot be undone.”
“Cannot be undone?” repeated
Horace, feeling a cold clutch at his heart. “Why?”
“Because,” said the Jinnee,
sullenly, “I have forgotten the way.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Horace;
“I don’t believe it. Why,” he
urged, descending to flattery, “you’re
such a clever old Johnny I beg your pardon,
I meant such a clever old Jinnee you
can do anything, if you only give your mind to it.
Just look at the way you changed this house back again
to what it was. Marvellous!”
“That was the veriest trifle,”
said Fakrash, though he was obviously pleased by this
tribute to his talent; “this would be a different
affair altogether.”
“But child’s play to you!”
insinuated Horace. “Come, you know very
well you can do it if you only choose.”
“It may be as thou sayest. But I do not
choose.”
“Then I think,” said Horace,
“that, considering the obligation you admit
yourself you are under to me, I have a right to know
the reason the real reason why
you refuse.”
“Thy claim is not without justice,”
answered the Jinnee, after a pause, “nor can
I decline to gratify thee.”
“That’s right,”
cried Horace; “I knew you’d see it in the
proper light when it was once put to you. Now,
don’t lose any more time, but restore that unfortunate
man at once, as you’ve promised.”
“Not so,” said the Jinnee;
“I promised thee a reason for my refusal and
that thou shalt have. Know then, O my son, that
this indiscreet one had, by some vile and unhallowed
arts, divined the hidden meaning of what was written
upon the seal of the bottle wherein I was confined,
and was preparing to reveal the same unto all men.”
“What would it matter to you if he did?”
“Much for the writing
contained a false and lying record of my actions.”
“If it is all lies, it can’t
do you any harm. Why not treat them with the
contempt they deserve?”
“They are not all lies,”
the Jinnee admitted reluctantly.
“Well, never mind. Whatever
you’ve done, you’ve expiated it by this
time.”
“Now that Suleyman is no more,
it is my desire to seek out my kinsmen of the Green
Jinn, and live out my days in amity and honour.
How can that be if they hear my name execrated by
all mortals?”
“Nobody would think of execrating
you about an affair three thousand years old.
It’s too stale a scandal.”
“Thou speakest without understanding.
I tell thee that if men knew but the half of my misdoings,”
said Fakrash, in a tone not altogether free from a
kind of sombre complacency, “the noise of them
would rise even unto the uppermost regions, and scorn
and loathing would be my portion.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad as
all that,” said Horace, who had a private impression
that the Jinnee’s “past” would probably
turn out to be chiefly made up of peccadilloes.
“But, anyway, I’m sure the Professor will
readily agree to keep silence about it; and, as you
have of course, got the seal in your own possession
again ”
“Nay; the seal is still in his
possession, and it is naught to me where it is deposited,”
said Fakrash, “since the only mortal who hath
deciphered it is now a dumb animal.”
“Not at all,” said Horace.
“There are several friends of his who could
decipher that inscription quite as easily as he did.”
“Is this the truth?” said the Jinnee,
in visible alarm.
“Certainly,” said Horace.
“Within the last quarter of a century archaeology
has made great strides. Our learned men can now
read Babylonian bricks and Chaldean tablets as easily
as if they were advertisements on galvanised iron.
You may think you’ve been extremely clever in
turning the Professor into an animal, but you’ll
probably find you’ve only made another mistake.”
“How so?” inquired Fakrash.
“Well,” said Horace, seeing
his advantage, and pushing it unscrupulously, “now,
that, in your infinite wisdom, you have ordained that
he should be a mule, he naturally can’t possess
property. Therefore all his effects will have
to be sold, and amongst them will be that seal of
yours, which, like many other things in his collection,
will probably be bought up by the British Museum,
where it will be examined and commented upon by every
Orientalist in Europe. I suppose you’ve
thought of all that?”
“O young man of marvellous sagacity!”
said the Jinnee; “truly I had omitted to consider
these things, and thou hast opened my eyes in time.
For I will present myself unto this man-mule and adjure
him to reveal where he hath bestowed this seal, so
that I may regain it.”
“He can’t do that, you
know, so long as he remains a mule.”
“I will endow him with speech for the purpose.”
“Let me tell you this,”
said Horace: “he’s in a very nasty
temper just now, naturally enough, and you won’t
get anything out of him until you have restored him
to human form. If you do that, he’ll agree
to anything.”
“Whether I restore him or not
will depend not on me, but on the damsel who is his
daughter, and to whom thou art contracted in marriage.
For first of all I must speak with her.”
“So long as I am present and
you promise not to play any tricks,” said Horace,
“I’ve no objection, for I believe, if you
once saw her and heard her plead for her poor father,
you wouldn’t have the heart to hold out any
longer. But you must give me your word that you’ll
behave yourself.”
“Thou hast it,” said the
Jinnee; “I do but desire to see her on thine
account.”
“Very well,” agreed Horace;
“but I really can’t introduce you in that
turban she’d be terrified. Couldn’t
you contrive to get yourself up in commonplace English
clothes, just for once something that wouldn’t
attract so much attention?”
“Will this satisfy thee?”
inquired the Jinnee, as his green turban and flowing
robes suddenly resolved themselves into the conventional
chimney-pot hat, frock-coat, and trousers of modern
civilisation.
He bore a painful resemblance in them
to the kind of elderly gentleman who comes on in the
harlequinade to be bonneted by the clown; but Horace
was in no mood to be critical just then.
“That’s better,”
he said encouragingly; “much better. Now,”
he added, as he led the way to the hall and put on
his own hat and overcoat, “we’ll go out
and find a hansom and be at Kensington in less than
twenty minutes.”
“We shall be there in less than
twenty seconds,” said the Jinnee, seizing him
by the arm above the elbow; and Horace found himself
suddenly carried up into the air and set down, gasping
with surprise and want of breath, on the pavement
opposite the Futvoyes’ door.
“I should just like to observe,”
he said, as soon as he could speak, “that if
we’ve been seen, we shall probably cause a sensation.
Londoners are not accustomed to seeing people skimming
over the chimney-pots like amateur rooks.”
“Trouble not for that,”
said Fakrash, “for no mortal eyes are capable
of following our flight.”
“I hope not,” said Horace,
“or I shall lose any reputation I have left.
I think,” he added, “I’d better go
in alone first and prepare them, if you don’t
mind waiting outside. I’ll come to the window
and wave my pocket-handkerchief when they’re
ready. And do come in by the door like
an ordinary person, and ask the maidservant if you
may see me.”
“I will bear it in mind,”
answered the Jinnee, and suddenly sank, or seemed
to sink, through a chink in the pavement.
Horace, after ringing at the Futvoyes’
door, was admitted and shown into the drawing-room,
where Sylvia presently came to him, looking as lovely
as ever, in spite of the pallor due to sleeplessness
and anxiety. “It is kind of you to call
and inquire,” she said, with the unnatural calm
of suppressed hysteria. “Dad is much the
same this morning. He had a fairly good night,
and was able to take part of a carrot for breakfast but
I’m afraid he has just remembered that he has
to read a paper on ‘Oriental Occultism’
before the Asiatic Society this evening, and it’s
worrying him a little.... Oh, Horace,” she
broke out, unexpectedly, “how perfectly awful
all this is! How are we to bear it?”
“Don’t give way, darling!”
said Horace; “you will not have to bear it much
longer.”
“It’s all very well, Horace,
but unless something is done soon it will be
too late. We can’t go on keeping
a mule in the study without the servants suspecting
something, and where are we to put poor, dear papa?
It’s too ghastly to think of his having to be
sent away to to a Home of Rest for Horses and
yet what is to be done with him?... Why
do you come if you can’t do anything?”
“I shouldn’t be here unless
I could bring you good news. You remember what
I told you about the Jinnee?”
“Remember!” cried Sylvia.
“As if I could forget! Has he really come
back, Horace?”
“Yes. I think I have brought
him to see that he has made a foolish mistake in enchanting
your unfortunate father, and he seems willing to undo
it on certain conditions. He is somewhere within
call at this moment, and will come in whenever I give
the signal. But he wishes to speak to you first.”
“To me? Oh, no,
Horace!” exclaimed Sylvia, recoiling. “I’d
so much rather not. I don’t like things
that have come out of brass bottles. I shouldn’t
know what to say, and it would frighten me horribly.”
“You must be brave, darling!”
said Horace. “Remember that it depends on
you whether the Professor is to be restored or not.
And there’s nothing alarming about old Fakrash,
either, I’ve got him to put on ordinary things,
and he really doesn’t look so bad in them.
He’s quite a mild, amiable old noodle, and he’ll
do anything for you, if you’ll only stroke him
down the right way. You will see him, won’t
you, for your father’s sake?”
“If I must,” said Sylvia,
with a shudder, “I I’ll be as
nice to him as I can.”
Horace went to the window and gave
the signal, though there was no one in sight.
However, it was evidently seen, for the next moment
there was a resounding blow at the front door, and
a little later Jessie, the parlour-maid, announced
“Mr. Fatrasher Larmash to see Mr.
Ventimore,” and the Jinnee stalked gravely in,
with his tall hat on his head.
“You are probably not aware
of it, sir,” said Horace, “but it is the
custom here to uncover in the presence of a lady.”
The Jinnee removed his hat with both hands, and stood
silent and impassive.
“Let me present you to Miss
Sylvia Futvoye,” Ventimore continued, “the
lady whose name you have already heard.”
There was a momentary gleam in Fakrash’s
odd, slanting eyes as they lighted on Sylvia’s
shrinking figure, but he made no acknowledgment of
the introduction.
“The damsel is not without comeliness,”
he remarked to Horace; “but there are lovelier
far than she.”
“I didn’t ask you for
either criticisms or comparisons,” said Ventimore,
sharply; “there is nobody in the world equal
to Miss Futvoye, in my opinion, and you will be good
enough to remember that fact. She is exceedingly
distressed (as any dutiful daughter would be) by the
cruel and senseless trick you have played her father,
and she begs that you will rectify it at once.
Don’t you, Sylvia?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Sylvia,
almost in a whisper, “if if it isn’t
troubling you too much!”
“I have been turning over thy
words in my mind,” said Fakrash to Horace, still
ignoring Sylvia, “and I am convinced that thou
art right. Even if the contents of the seal were
known of all men, they would raise no clamour about
affairs that concern them not. Therefore it is
nothing to me in whose hands the seal may be.
Dost thou not agree with me in this?”
“Of course I do,” said
Horace. “And it naturally follows that ”
“It naturally follows, as thou
sayest,” said the Jinnee, with a cunning assumption
of indifference, “that I have naught to gain
by demanding back the seal as the price of restoring
this damsel’s father to his original form.
Wherefore, so far as I am concerned, let him remain
a mule for ever; unless, indeed, thou art ready to
comply with my conditions.”
“Conditions!” cried Horace,
utterly unprepared for this conclusion. “What
can you possibly want from me? But state them.
I’ll agree to anything, in reason!”
“I demand that thou shouldst
renounce the hand of this damsel.”
“That’s out of all reason,”
said Horace, “and you know it. I will never
give her up, so long as she is willing to keep me.”
“Maiden,” said the Jinnee,
addressing Sylvia for the first time, “the matter
rests with thee. Wilt thou release this my son
from his contract, since thou art no fit wife for
such as he?”
“How can I,” cried Sylvia,
“when I love him and he loves me? What a
wicked tyrannical old thing you must be to expect it!
I can’t give him up.”
“It is but giving up what can
never be thine,” said Fakrash. “And
be not anxious for him, for I will reward and console
him a thousandfold for the loss of thy society.
A little while, and he shall remember thee no more.”
“Don’t believe him, darling,”
said Horace; “you know me better than that.”
“Remember,” said the Jinnee,
“that by thy refusal thou wilt condemn thy parent
to remain a mule throughout all his days. Art
thou so unnatural and hard-hearted a daughter as to
do this thing?”
“Oh, I couldn’t!”
cried Sylvia. “I can’t let poor father
remain a mule all his life when one word and
yet what am I to do? Horace, what shall
I say? Advise me.... Advise me!”
“Heaven help us both!”
groaned Ventimore. “If I could only see
the right thing to do. Look here, Mr. Fakrash,”
he added, “this is a matter that requires consideration.
Will you relieve us of your presence for a short time,
while we talk it over?”
“With all my heart,” said
the Jinnee, in the most obliging manner in the world,
and vanished instantly.
“Now, darling,” began
Horace, after he had gone, “if that unspeakable
old scoundrel is really in earnest, there’s no
denying that he’s got us in an extremely tight
place. But I can’t bring myself to believe
that he does mean it. I fancy he’s
only trying us. And what I want you to do is
not to consider me in the matter at all.”
“How can I help it?” said
poor Sylvia. “Horace, you you
don’t want to be released, do you?”
“I?” said Horace, “when
you are all I have in the world! That’s
so likely, Sylvia! But we are bound to look facts
in the face. To begin with, even if this hadn’t
happened, your people wouldn’t let our engagement
continue. For my prospects have changed again,
dearest. I’m even worse off than when we
first met, for that confounded Jinnee has contrived
to lose my first and only client for me the
one thing worth having he ever gave me.”
And he told her the story of the mushroom palace and
Mr. Wackerbath’s withdrawal. “So you
see, darling,” he concluded, “I haven’t
even a home to offer you; and if I had, it would be
miserably uncomfortable for you with that old Marplot
continually dropping in on us especially
if, as I’m afraid he has, he’s taken some
unreasonable dislike to you.”
“But surely you can talk him
over?” said Sylvia; “you said you could
do anything you liked with him.”
“I’m beginning to find,”
he replied, ruefully enough, “that he’s
not so easily managed as I thought. And for the
present, I’m afraid, if we are to get the Professor
out of this, that there’s nothing for it but
to humour old Fakrash.”
“Then you actually advise me
to to break it off?” she cried; “I
never thought you would do that!”
“For your own sake,” said
Horace; “for your father’s sake. If
you won’t, Sylvia, I must.
And you will spare me that? Let us both agree
to part and and trust that we shall be united
some day.”
“Don’t try to deceive
me or yourself, Horace,” she said; “if
we part now, it will be for ever.”
He had a dismal conviction that she
was right. “We must hope for the best,”
he said drearily; “Fakrash may have some motive
in all this we don’t understand. Or he
may relent. But part we must, for the present.”
“Very well,” she said.
“If he restores dad, I will give you up.
But not unless.”
“Hath the damsel decided?”
asked the Jinnee, suddenly re-appearing; “for
the period of deliberation is past.”
“Miss Futvoye and I,”
Horace answered for her, “are willing to consider
our engagement at an end, until you approve of its
renewal, on condition that you restore her father
at once.”
“Agreed!” said Fakrash.
“Conduct me to him, and we will arrange the
matter without delay.”
Outside they met Mrs. Futvoye on her
way from the study. “You here, Horace?”
she exclaimed. “And who is this gentleman?”
“This,” said Horace, “is
the er author of the Professor’s
misfortunes, and he had come here at my request to
undo his work.”
“It would be so kind
of him!” exclaimed the distressed lady, who was
by this time far beyond either surprise or resentment.
“I’m sure, if he knew all we have gone
through !” and she led the way
to her husband’s room.
As soon as the door was opened the
Professor seemed to recognise his tormentor in spite
of his changed raiment, and was so powerfully agitated
that he actually reeled on his four legs, and “stood
over” in a lamentable fashion.
“O man of distinguished attainments!”
began the Jinnee, “whom I have caused, for reasons
that are known unto thee, to assume the shape of a
mule, speak, I adjure thee, and tell me where thou
hast deposited the inscribed seal which is in thy
possession.”
The Professor spoke; and the effect
of articulate speech proceeding from the mouth of
what was to all outward seeming an ordinary mule was
strange beyond description. “I’ll
see you damned first,” he said sullenly.
“You can’t do worse to me than you’ve
done already!”
“As thou wilt,” said Fakrash;
“but unless I regain it, I will not restore
thee to what thou wast.”
“Well, then,” said the
mule, savagely, “you’ll find it in the
top right-hand drawer of my writing-table: the
key is in that diorite bowl on the mantelpiece.”
The Jinnee unlocked the drawer, and
took out the metal cap, which he placed in the breast
pocket of his incongruous frock-coat. “So
far, well,” he said; “next thou must deliver
up to me the transcription thou hast made, and swear
to preserve an inviolable secrecy regarding the meaning
thereof.”
“Do you know what you’re
asking, sir?” said the mule, laying back his
ears viciously. “Do you think that to oblige
you I’m going to suppress one of the most remarkable
discoveries of my whole scientific career? Never,
sir never!”
“Since if thou refusest I shall
assuredly deprive thee of speech once more and leave
thee a mule, as thou art now, of hideous appearance,”
said the Jinnee, “thou art like to gain little
by a discovery which thou wilt be unable to impart.
However, the choice rests with thee.”
The mule rolled his one eye, and showed
all his teeth in a vicious snarl. “You’ve
got the whip-hand of me,” he said, “and
I may as well give in. There’s a transcript
inside my blotting-case it’s the only
copy I’ve made.”
Fakrash found the paper, which he
rubbed into invisibility between his palms, as any
ordinary conjurer might do.
“Now raise thy right forefoot,”
he said, “and swear by all thou holdest sacred
never to divulge what thou hast learnt” which
oath the Professor, in the vilest of tempers, took,
clumsily enough.
“Good,” said the Jinnee,
with a grim smile. “Now let one of thy women
bring me a cup of fair water.”
Sylvia went out, and came back with
a cup of water. “It’s filtered,”
she said anxiously; “I don’t know if that
will do?”
“It will suffice,” said
Fakrash. “Let both the women withdraw.”
“Surely,” remonstrated
Mrs. Futvoye, “you don’t mean to turn his
wife and daughter out of the room at such a moment
as this? We shall be perfectly quiet, and we
may even be of some help.”
“Do as you’re told, my
dear!” snapped the ungrateful mule; “do
as you’re told. You’ll only be in
the way here. Do you suppose he doesn’t
know his own beastly business?”
They left accordingly; whereupon Fakrash
took the cup an ordinary breakfast cup
with a Greek key-border pattern in pale blue round
the top and, drenching the mule with the
contents, exclaimed, “Quit this form and return
to the form in which thou wast!”
For a dreadful moment or two it seemed
as if no effect was to be produced; the animal simply
stood and shivered, and Ventimore began to feel an
agonising suspicion that the Jinnee really had, as
he had first asserted, forgotten how to perform this
particular incantation.
All at once the mule reared, and began
to beat the air frantically with his fore-hoofs; after
which he fell heavily backward into the nearest armchair
(which was, fortunately, a solid and capacious piece
of furniture) with his fore-legs hanging limply at
his side, in a semi-human fashion. There was
a brief convulsion, and then, by some gradual process
unspeakably impressive to witness, the man seemed to
break through the mule, the mule became merged in the
man and Professor Futvoye, restored to
his own natural form and habit, sat gasping and trembling
in the chair before them.