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The Brass Bottle, a novel by F. Anstey |
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Chapter 17. High Words |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. HIGH WORDS Once outside in the open air, the Jinnee "towered" like a pheasant shot through the breast, and Horace closed his eyes with a combined swing-switchback-and-Channel-passage sensation during a flight which apparently continued for hours, although in reality it probably did not occupy more than a very few seconds. His uneasiness was still further increased by his inability to guess where he was being taken to--for he felt instinctively that they were not travelling in the direction of home. At last he felt himself set down on some hard, firm surface, and ventured to open his eyes once more. When he realised where he actually was, his knees gave way under him, and he was seized with a sudden giddiness that very nearly made him lose his balance. For he found himself standing on a sort of narrow ledge or cornice immediately under the ball at the top of St. Paul's. Many feet beneath him spread the dull, leaden summit of the dome, its raised ridges stretching, like huge serpents over the curve, beyond which was a glimpse of the green roof of the nave and the two west towers, with their grey columns and urn-topped buttresses and gilded pineapples, which shone ruddily in the sun. He had an impression of Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street as a deep, winding ravine, steeped in partial shadow; of long sierras of roofs and chimney-pots, showing their sharp outlines above mouse-coloured smoke-wreaths; of the broad, pearl-tinted river, with oily ripples and a golden glitter where the sunlight touched it; of the gleaming slope of mud under the wharves and warehouses on the Surrey side; of barges and steamers moored in black clusters; of a small tug fussing noisily down the river, leaving a broadening arrow-head in its wake. Cautiously he moved round towards the east, where the houses formed a blurred mosaic of cream, slate, indigo, and dull reds and browns, above which slender rose-flushed spires and towers pierced the haze, stained in countless places by pillars of black, grey, and amber smoke, and lightened by plumes and jets of silvery steam, till all blended by imperceptible gradations into a sky of tenderest gold slashed with translucent blue. It was a magnificent view, and none the less so because the indistinctness of all beyond a limited radius made the huge City seem not only mystical, but absolutely boundless in extent. But although Ventimore was distinctly conscious of all this, he was scarcely in a state to appreciate its grandeur just then. He was much too concerned with wondering why Fakrash had chosen to plant him up there in so insecure a position, and how he was ever to be rescued from it, since the Jinnee had apparently disappeared. He was not far off, however, for presently Horace saw him stalk round the narrow cornice with an air of being perfectly at home on it. "So there you are!" said Ventimore; "I thought you'd deserted me again. What have you brought me up here for?" "Because I desired to have speech with thee in private," replied the Jinnee. "We're not likely to be intruded on here, certainly," said Horace. "But isn't it rather exposed, rather public? If we're seen up here, you know, it will cause a decided sensation." "I have laid a spell on all below that they should not raise their eyes. Be seated, therefore, and hear my words." Horace lowered himself carefully to a sitting position, so that his legs dangled in space, and Fakrash took a seat by his side. "O, most indiscreet of mankind!" he began, in an aggrieved tone; "thou hast been near the committal of a great blunder, and doing ill to thyself and to me!" "Well, I do like that!" retorted Horace; "when you let me in for all that freedom of the City business, and then sneaked off, leaving me to get out of it the best way I could, and only came back just as I was about to explain matters, and carried me up through the roof like a sack of flour. Do you consider that tactful on your part?" "Thou hadst drunk wine and permitted it to creep as far as the place of secrets." "Only one glass," said Horace; "and I wanted it, I can assure you. I was obliged to make a speech to them, and, thanks to you, I was in such a hole that I saw nothing for it but to tell the truth." "Veracity, as thou wilt learn," answered the Jinnee, "is not invariably the Ship of Safety. Thou wert about to betray the benefactor who procured for thee such glory and honour as might well cause the gall-bladder of lions to burst with envy!" "If any lion with the least sense of humour could have witnessed the proceedings," said Ventimore, "he might have burst with laughter--certainly not envy. Good Lord! Fakrash," he cried, in his indignation, "I've never felt such an absolute ass in my whole life! If nothing would satisfy you but my receiving the freedom of the City, you might at least have contrived some decent excuse for it! But you left out the only point there was in the whole thing--and all for what?" "What doth it signify why the whole populace should come forth to acclaim thee and do thee honour, so long as they did so?" said Fakrash, sullenly. "For the report of thy fame would reach Bedeea-el-Jemal." "That's just where you're mistaken," said Horace. "If you had not been in too desperate a hurry to make a few inquiries, you would have found out that you were taking all this trouble for nothing." "How sayest thou?" "Well, you would have discovered that the Princess is spared all temptation to marry beneath her by the fact that she became the bride of somebody else about thirty centuries ago. She married a mortal, one Seyf-el-Mulook, a King's son, and they've both been dead a considerable time--another obstacle to your plans." "It is a lie," declared Fakrash. "If you will take me back to Vincent Square, I shall be happy to show you the evidence in your national records," said Horace. "And you may be glad to know that your old enemy, Mr. Jarjarees, came to a violent end, after a very sporting encounter with a King's daughter, who, though proficient in advanced magic, unfortunately perished herself, poor lady, in the final round." "I had intended thee to accomplish his downfall," said Fakrash. "I know," said Horace. "It was most thoughtful of you. But I doubt if I should have done it half as well--and it would have probably cost me an eye, at the very least. It's better as it is." "And how long hast thou known of these things?" "Only since last night." "Since last night? And thou didst not unfold them unto me till this instant?" "I've had such a busy morning, you see," explained Horace. "There's been no time." "Silly-bearded fool that I was to bring this misbegotten dog into the august presence of the great Lord Mayor himself (on whom be peace!)," cried the Jinnee. "I object to being referred to as a misbegotten dog," said Horace, "but with the rest of your remark I entirely concur. I'm afraid the Lord Mayor is very far from being at peace just now." He pointed to the steep roof of the Guildhall, with its dormers and fretted pinnacles, and the slender lantern through which he had so lately made his inglorious exit. "There's the devil of a row going on under that lantern just now, Mr. Fakrash, you may depend upon that. They've locked the doors till they can decide what to do next--which will take them some time. And it's all your fault!" "It was thy doing. Why didst thou dare to inform the Lord Mayor that he was deceived?" "Why? Because I thought he ought to know. Because I was bound, particularly after my oath of allegiance, to warn him of any conspiracy against him. Because I was in such a hat. He'll understand all that--he won't blame me for this business." "It is fortunate," observed the Jinnee, "that I flew away with thee before thou couldst pronounce my name." "You gave yourself away," said Horace. "They all saw you, you know. You weren't flying so particularly fast. They'll recognise you again. If you will carry off a man from under the Lord Mayor's very nose, and shoot up through the roof like a rocket with him, you can't expect to escape some notice. You see, you happen to be the only unbottled Jinnee in this City." Fakrash shifted his seat on the cornice. "I have committed no act of disrespect unto the Lord Mayor," he said, "therefore he can have no just cause of anger against me." Horace perceived that the Jinnee was not altogether at ease, and pushed his advantage accordingly. "My dear good old friend," he said, "you don't seem to realise yet what an awful thing you've done. For your own mistaken purposes, you have compelled the Chief Magistrate and the Corporation of the greatest City in the world to make themselves hopelessly ridiculous. They'll never hear the last of this affair. Just look at the crowds waiting patiently below there. Look at the flags. Think of that gorgeous conveyance of yours standing outside the Guildhall. Think of the assembly inside--all the most aristocratic, noble, and distinguished personages in the land," continued Horace, piling it on as he proceeded; "all collected for what? To be made fools of by a Jinnee out of a brass bottle!" "For their own sakes they will preserve silence," said Fakrash, with a gleam of unwonted shrewdness. "Probably they would hush it up, if they only could," conceded Horace. "But how can they? What are they to say? What plausible explanation can they give? Besides, there's the Press: you don't know what the Press is; but I assure you its power is tremendous--it's simply impossible to keep anything secret from it nowadays. It has eyes and ears everywhere, and a thousand tongues. Five minutes after the doors in that hall are unlocked (and they can't keep them locked much longer) the reporters will be handing in their special descriptions of you and your latest vagaries to their respective journals. Within half an hour bills will be carried through every quarter of London--bills with enormous letters: 'Extraordinary Scene at the Guildhall.' 'Strange End to a Civic Function.' 'Startling Appearance of an Oriental Genie in the City.' 'Abduction of a Guest of the Lord Mayor.' 'Intense Excitement.' 'Full Particulars!' And by that time the story will have flashed round the whole world. 'Keep silence,' indeed! Do you imagine for a moment that the Lord Mayor, or anybody else concerned, however remotely, will ever forget, or be allowed to forget, such an outrageous incident as this? If you do, believe me, you're mistaken." "Truly, it would be a terrible thing to incur the wrath of the Lord Mayor," said the Jinnee, in troubled accents. "Awful!" said Horace. "But you seem to have managed it." "He weareth round his neck a magic jewel, which giveth him dominion over devils--is it not so?" "You know best," said Horace. "It was the splendour of that jewel and the majesty of his countenance that rendered me afraid to enter his presence, lest he should recognise me for what I am and command me to obey him, for verily his might is greater even than Suleyman's, and his hand heavier upon such of the Jinn as fall into his power!" "If that's so," said Horace, "I should strongly advise you to find some way of putting things straight before it's too late--you've no time to lose." "Thou sayest well," said Fakrash, springing to his feet, and turning his face towards Cheapside. Horace shuffled himself along the ledge in a seated position after the Jinnee, and, looking down between his feet, could just see the tops of the thin and rusty trees in the churchyard, the black and serried swarms of foreshortened people in the street, and the scarlet-rimmed mouths of chimney-pots on the tiled roofs below. "There is but one remedy I know," said the Jinnee, "and it may be that I have lost power to perform it. Yet will I make the endeavour." And, stretching forth his right hand towards the east, he muttered some kind of command or invocation. Horace almost fell off the cornice with apprehension of what might follow. Would it be a thunderbolt, a plague, some frightful convulsion of Nature? He felt sure that Fakrash would hesitate at no means, however violent, of burying all traces of his blunder in oblivion, and very little hope that, whatever he did, it would prove anything but some worse indiscretion than his previous performances. Happily none of these extreme measures seemed to have occurred to the Jinnee, though what followed was strange and striking enough. For presently, as if in obedience to the Jinnee's weird gesticulations, a lurid belt of fog came rolling up from the direction of the Royal Exchange, swallowing up building after building in its rapid course; one by one the Guildhall, Bow Church, Cheapside itself, and the churchyard disappeared, and Horace, turning his head to the left, saw the murky tide sweeping on westward, blotting out Ludgate Hill, the Strand, Charing Cross, and Westminster--till at last he and Fakrash were alone above a limitless plain of bituminous cloud, the only living beings left, as it seemed, in a blank and silent universe. "Look again!" said Fakrash, and Horace, looking eastward, saw the spire of Bow Church, rosy once more, the Guildhall standing clear and intact, and the streets and house-tops gradually reappearing. Only the flags, with their unrestful shiver and ripple of colour, had disappeared, and, with them, the waiting crowds and the mounted constables. The ordinary traffic of vans, omnibuses, and cabs was proceeding as though it had never been interrupted--the clank and jingle of harness chains, the cries and whip-crackings of drivers, rose with curious distinctness above the incessant trampling roar which is the ground-swell of the human ocean. "That cloud which thou sawest," said Fakrash, "hath swept away with it all memory of this affair from the minds of every mortal assembled to do thee honour. See, they go about their several businesses, and all the past incidents are to them as though they had never been." It was not often that Horace could honestly commend any performance of the Jinnee's, but at this he could not restrain his admiration. "By Jove!" he said, "that certainly gets the Lord Mayor and everybody else out of the mess as neatly as possible. I must say, Mr. Fakrash, it's much the best thing I've seen you do yet." "Wait," said the Jinnee, "for presently thou shalt see me perform a yet more excellent thing." There was a most unpleasant green glow in his eyes and a bristle in his thin beard as he spoke, which suddenly made Horace feel uncomfortable. He did not like the look of the Jinnee at all. "I really think you've done enough for to-day," he said. "And this wind up here is rather searching. I shan't be sorry to find myself on the ground again." "That," replied the Jinnee, "thou shalt assuredly do before long, O impudent and deceitful wretch!" And he laid a long, lean hand on Horace's shoulder. "He is put out about something!" thought Ventimore. "But what?" "My dear sir," he said aloud, "I don't understand this tone of yours. What have I done to offend you?" "Divinely gifted was he who said: 'Beware of losing hearts in consequence of injury, for the bringing them back after flight is difficult.'" "Excellent!" said Horace. "But I don't quite see the application." "The application," explained the Jinnee, "is that I am determined to cast thee down from here with my own hand!" Horace turned faint and dizzy for a moment. Then, by a strong effort of will, he pulled himself together. "Oh, come now," he said, "you don't really mean that, you know. After all your kindness! You're much too good-natured to be capable of anything so atrocious." "All pity hath been eradicated from my heart," returned Fakrash. "Therefore prepare to die, for thou art presently about to perish in the most unfortunate manner." Ventimore could not repress a shudder. Hitherto he had never been able to take Fakrash quite seriously, in spite of all his supernatural powers; he had treated him with a half-kindly, half-contemptuous tolerance, as a well-meaning, but hopelessly incompetent, old foozle. That the Jinnee should ever become malevolent towards him had never entered his head till now--and yet he undoubtedly had. How was he to cajole and disarm this formidable being? He must keep cool and act promptly, or he would never see Sylvia again. As he sat there on the narrow ledge, with a faint and not unpleasant smell of hops saluting his nostrils from some distant brewery, he tried hard to collect his thoughts, but could not. He found himself, instead, idly watching the busy, jostling crowd below, who were all unconscious of the impending drama so high above them. Just over the rim of the dome he could see the opaque white top of a lamp on a shelter, where a pigmy constable stood, directing the traffic. Would he look up if Horace called for help? Even if he could, what help could he render? All he could do would be to keep the crowd back and send for a covered stretcher. No, he would not dwell on these horrors; he must fix his mind on some way of circumventing Fakrash. How did the people in "The Arabian Nights" manage? The fisherman, for instance? He persuaded his Jinnee to return to the bottle by pretending to doubt whether he had ever really been inside it. But Fakrash, though simple enough in some respects, was not quite such a fool as that. Sometimes the Jinn could be mollified and induced to grant a reprieve by being told stories, one inside the other, like a nest of Oriental boxes. Unfortunately Fakrash did not seem in the humour for listening to apologues, and, even if he were, Horace could not think of or improvise any just then. "Besides," he thought, "I can't sit up here telling him anecdotes for ever. I'd almost sooner die!" Still, he remembered that it was generally possible to draw an Arabian Efreet into discussion: they all loved argument, and had a rough conception of justice. "I think, Mr. Fakrash," he said, "that, in common fairness, I have a right to know what offence I have committed." "To recite thy misdeeds," replied the Jinnee, "would occupy much time." "I don't mind that," said Horace, affably. "I can give you as long as you like. I'm in no sort of a hurry." "With me it is otherwise," retorted Fakrash, making a stride towards him. "Therefore court not life, for thy death hath become unavoidable.' "Before we part," said Horace, "you won't refuse to answer one or two questions?" "Didst thou not undertake never to ask any further favour of me? Moreover, it will avail thee nought. For I am positively determined to slay thee." "I demand it," said Horace, "in the most great name of the Lord Mayor (on whom be peace!)" It was a desperate shot--but it took effect. The Jinnee quailed visibly. "Ask, then," he said; "but briefly, for the time groweth short." Horace determined to make one last appeal to Fakrash's sense of gratitude, since it had always seemed the dominant trait in his character. "Well," he said, "but for me, wouldn't you be still in that brass bottle?" "That," replied the Jinnee, "is the very reason why I purpose to destroy thee!" "Oh!" was all Horace could find to say at this most unlooked-for answer. His sheet anchor, in which he had trusted implicitly, had suddenly dragged--and he was drifting fast to destruction. "Are there any other questions which thou wouldst ask?" inquired the Jinnee, with grim indulgence; "or wilt thou encounter thy doom without further procrastination?" Horace was determined not to give in just yet; he had a very bad hand, but he might as well play the game out and trust to luck to gain a stray trick. "I haven't nearly done yet," he said. "And, remember, you've promised to answer me--in the name of the Lord Mayor!" "I will answer one other question, and no more," said the Jinnee, in an inflexible tone; and Ventimore realised that his fate would depend upon what he said next. _ |
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