The Brass Bottle Part 11

"Oh no," said Ventimore; "but I shan't give him either a Gothic castle or plenty of plate-gla.s.s. I venture to think he'll be pleased with the general idea as I'm working it out."

"Let's hope so," said Beevor. "If you get into any difficulty, you know," he added, with a touch of patronage, "just you come to me."

"Thanks," said Horace, "I will. But I'm getting on very fairly at present."

"I should rather like to see what you've made of it. I might be able to give you a wrinkle here and there."

"It's awfully good of you, but I think I'd rather you didn't see the plans till they're quite finished," said Horace. The truth was that he was perfectly aware that the other would not be in sympathy with his ideas; and Horace, who had just been suffering from a cold fit of depression about his work, rather shrank from any kind of criticism.

"Oh, just as you please!" said Beevor, a little stiffly; "you always _were_ an obstinate beggar. I've had a certain amount of experience, you know, in my poor little pottering way, and I thought I might possibly have saved you a cropper or two. But if you think you can manage better alone--only don't get bolted with by one of those architectural hobbies of yours, that's all."

"All right, old fellow. I'll ride my hobby on the curb," said Horace, laughing, as he went back to his own office, where he found that all his former certainty and enjoyment of his work had returned to him, and by the end of the day he had made so much progress that his designs needed only a few finis.h.i.+ng touches to be complete enough for his client's inspection.

Better still, on returning to his rooms that evening to change before going to Kensington, he found that the admirable Fakrash had kept his promise--every chest, sack, and bale had been cleared away.

"Them camels come back for the things this afternoon, sir," said Mrs.

Rapkin, "and it put me in a fl.u.s.ter at first, for I made sure you'd locked your door and took the key. But I must have been mistook--leastways, them Arabs got in somehow. I hope you meant everything to go back?"

"Quite," said Horace; "I saw the--the person who sent them this morning, and told him there was nothing I cared for enough to keep."

"And like his impidence sending you a lot o' rubbish like that on approval--and on camels, too!" declared Mrs. Rapkin. "I'm sure I don't know what them advertising firms will try next--pus.h.i.+ng, _I_ call it."

Now that everything was gone, Horace felt a little natural regret and doubt whether he need have been quite so uncompromising in his refusal of the treasures. "I might have kept some of those tissues and things for Sylvia," he thought; "and she loves pearls. And a prayer-carpet would have pleased the Professor tremendously. But no, after all, it wouldn't have done. Sylvia couldn't go about in pearls the size of new potatoes, and the Professor would only have ragged me for more reckless extravagance. Besides, if I'd taken any of the Jinnee's gifts, he might keep on pouring more in, till I should be just where I was before--or worse off, really, because I couldn't decently refuse them, then. So it's best as it is."

And really, considering his temperament and the peculiar nature of his position, it is not easy to see how he could have arrived at any other conclusion.

CHAPTER VIII

BACHELOR'S QUARTERS

Horace was feeling particularly happy as he walked back the next evening to Vincent Square. He had the consciousness of having done a good day's work, for the sketch-plans for Mr. Wackerbath's mansion were actually completed and despatched to his business address, while Ventimore now felt a comfortable a.s.surance that his designs would more than satisfy his client.

But it was not that which made him so light of heart. That night his rooms were to be honoured for the first time by Sylvia's presence. She would tread upon his carpet, sit in his chairs, comment upon, and perhaps even handle, his books and ornaments--and all of them would retain something of her charm for ever after. If she only came! For even now he could not quite believe that she really would; that some untoward event would not make a point of happening to prevent her, as he sometimes doubted whether his engagement was not too sweet and wonderful to be true--or, at all events, to last.

As to the dinner, his mind was tolerably easy, for he had settled the remaining details of the _menu_ with his landlady that morning, and he could hope that without being so sumptuous as to excite the Professor's wrath, it would still be not altogether unworthy--and what goods could be rare and dainty enough?--to be set before Sylvia.

He would have liked to provide champagne, but he knew that wine would savour of ostentation in the Professor's judgment, so he had contented himself instead with claret, a sound vintage which he knew he could depend upon. Flowers, he thought, were clearly permissible, and he had called at a florist's on his way and got some chrysanthemums of palest yellow and deepest terra-cotta, the finest he could see. Some of them would look well on the centre of the table in an old Nankin blue-and-white bowl he had; the rest he could arrange about the room: there would just be time to see to all that before dressing.

Occupied with these thoughts, he turned into Vincent Square, which looked vaster than ever with the murky haze, enclosed by its high railings, and under a wide expanse of steel-blue sky, across which the clouds were driving fast like s.h.i.+ps in full sail scudding for harbour before a storm. Against the mist below, the young and nearly leafless trees showed flat, black profiles as of pressed seaweed, and the sky immediately above the house-tops was tinged with a sullen red from miles of lighted streets; from the river came the long-drawn tooting of tugs, mingled with the more distant wail and hysterical shrieks of railway engines on the Lambeth lines.

And now he reached the old semi-detached house in which he lodged, and noticed for the first time how the trellis-work of the veranda made, with the bared creepers and hanging baskets, a kind of decorative pattern against the windows, which were suffused with a roseate glow that looked warm and comfortable and hospitable. He wondered whether Sylvia would notice it when she arrived.

He pa.s.sed under the old wrought-iron arch that once held an oil-lamp, and up a short but rather steep flight of steps, which led to a brick porch built out at the side. Then he let himself in, and stood spellbound with perplexed amazement,--for he was in a strange house.

In place of the modest pa.s.sage with the yellow marble wall-paper, the mahogany hat-stand, and the elderly barometer in a state of chronic depression which he knew so well, he found an arched octagonal entrance-hall with arabesques of blue, crimson, and gold, and richly-embroidered hangings; the floor was marble, and from a shallow basin of alabaster in the centre a perfumed fountain rose and fell with a lulling patter.

"I must have mistaken the number," he thought, quite forgetting that his latch-key had fitted, and he was just about to retreat before his intrusion was discovered, when the hangings parted, and Mrs. Rapkin presented herself, making so deplorably incongruous a figure in such surroundings, and looking so bewildered and woebegone, that Horace, in spite of his own increasing uneasiness, had some difficulty in keeping his gravity.

"Oh, Mr. Ventimore, sir," she lamented; "whatever _will_ you go and do next, I wonder? To think of your going and having the whole place done up and altered out of knowledge like this, without a word of warning! If any halterations were required, I _do_ think as me and Rapkin had the right to be consulted."

Horace let all his chrysanthemums drop unheeded into the fountain. He understood now: indeed, he seemed in some way to have understood almost from the first, only he would not admit it even to himself.

The irrepressible Jinnee was at the bottom of this, of course. He remembered now having made that unfortunate remark the day before about the limited accommodation his rooms afforded.

Clearly Fakrash must have taken a mental note of it, and, with that insatiable munificence which was one of his worst failings, had determined, by way of a pleasant surprise, to entirely refurnish and redecorate the apartments according to his own ideas.

It was extremely kind of him; it showed a truly grateful disposition--"but, oh!" as Horace thought, in the bitterness of his soul, "if he would only learn to let well alone and mind his own business!"

However, the thing was done now, and he must accept the responsibility for it, since he could hardly disclose the truth. "Didn't I mention I was having some alterations made?" he said carelessly. "They've got the work done rather sooner than I expected. Were--were they long over it?"

"I'm sure I can't tell you, sir, having stepped out to get some things I wanted in for to-night; and Rapkin, he was round the corner at his reading-room; and when I come back it was all done and the workmen gone 'ome; and how they could have finished such a job in the time beats me altogether, for when we 'ad the men in to do the back kitchen they took ten days over it."

"Well," said Horace, evading this point, "however they've done this, they've done it remarkably well--you'll admit that, Mrs. Rapkin?"

"That's as may be sir," said Mrs. Rapkin, with a sniff, "but it ain't _my_ taste, nor yet I don't think it will be Rapkin's taste when he comes to see it."

It was not Ventimore's taste either, though he was not going to confess it. "Sorry for that, Mrs. Rapkin," he said, "but I've no time to talk about it now. I must rush upstairs and dress."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but that's a total unpossibility--for they've been and took away the staircase.'

"Taken away the staircase? Nonsense!" cried Horace.

"So _I_ think, Mr. Ventimore--but it's what them men have done, and if you don't believe me, come and see for yourself!"

She drew the hangings aside, and revealed to Ventimore's astonished gaze a vast pillared hall with a lofty domed roof, from which hung several lamps, diffusing a subdued radiance. High up in the wall, on his left, were the two windows which he judged to have formerly belonged to his sitting-room (for either from delicacy or inability, or simply because it had not occurred to him, the Jinnee had not interfered with the external structure), but the windows were now masked by a perforated and gilded lattice, which accounted for the pattern Horace had noticed from without. The walls were covered with blue-and-white Oriental tiles, and a raised platform of alabaster on which were divans ran round two sides of the hall, while the side opposite to him was pierced with horseshoe-shaped arches, apparently leading to other apartments. The centre of the marble floor was spread with costly rugs and piles of cus.h.i.+ons, their rich hues glowing through the gold with which they were intricately embroidered.

"Well," said the unhappy Horace, scarcely knowing what he was saying, "it--it all looks very _cosy_, Mrs. Rapkin."

"It's not for me to say, sir; but I should like to know where you thought of dining?"

"Where?" said Horace. "Why, here, of course. There's plenty of room."

"There isn't a table left in the house," said Mrs. Rapkin; "so, unless you'd wish the cloth laid on the floor----"

"Oh, there must be a table somewhere," said Horace, impatiently, "or you can borrow one. Don't _make_ difficulties, Mrs. Rapkin. Rig up anything you like.... Now I must be off and dress."

He got rid of her, and, on entering one of the archways, discovered a smaller room, in cedar-wood encrusted with ivory and mother-o'-pearl, which was evidently his bedroom. A gorgeous robe, stiff with gold and glittering with ancient gems, was laid out for him--for the Jinnee had thought of everything--but Ventimore, naturally, preferred his own evening clothes.

"Mr. Rapkin!" he shouted, going to another arch that seemed to communicate with the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Sir?" replied his landlord, who had just returned from his "reading-room," and now appeared, without a tie and in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, looking pale and wild, as was, perhaps, intelligible in the circ.u.mstances. As he entered his unfamiliar marble halls he staggered, and his red eyes rolled and his mouth gaped in a cod-like fas.h.i.+on. "They've been at it 'ere, too, seemin'ly," he remarked huskily.

"There have been a few changes," said Horace, quietly, "as you can see.

You don't happen to know where they've put my dress-clothes, do you?"