"I think I understand him fairly well by this time, sir," said Horace, "and I'll answer for it that there's no real harm in him. I give you my word of honour that, if you'll only remain quiet and leave everything to me, you shall very soon be released from this absurd position. That's all I came to tell you, and now I won't trouble you any longer. If you _could_ bring yourself, as a sign that you bear me no ill-feeling, to give me your--your off-foreleg at parting, I----"

But the Professor turned his back in so pointed and ominous a manner that Horace judged it better to withdraw without insisting further. "I'm afraid," he said to Mrs. Futvoye, after they had rejoined Sylvia in the drawing-room--"I'm afraid your husband is still a little sore with me about this miserable business."

"I don't know what else you can expect," replied the lady, rather tartly; "he can't help feeling--as we all must and do, after what you said just now--that, but for you, this would never have happened!"

"If you mean it was all through my attending that sale," said Horace, "you might remember that I only went there at the Professor's request.

You know that, Sylvia."

"Yes, Horace," said Sylvia; "but papa never asked you to buy a hideous bra.s.s bottle with a nasty Genius in it. And any one with ordinary common sense would have kept it properly corked!"

"What, you against me too, Sylvia!" cried Horace, cut to the quick.

"No, Horace, never against you. I didn't mean to say what I did. Only it _is_ such a relief to put the blame on somebody. I know, I _know_ you feel it almost as much as we do. But so long as poor, dear papa remains as he is, we can never be anything to one another. You must see that, Horace!"

"Yes, I see that," he said; "but trust me, Sylvia, he shall _not_ remain as he is. I swear he shall not. In another day or two, at the outside, you will see him his own self once more. And then--oh, darling, darling, you won't let anything or anybody separate us? Promise me that!"

He would have held her in his arms, but she kept him at a distance.

"When papa is himself again," she said, "I shall know better what to say. I can't promise anything now, Horace."

Horace recognised that no appeal would draw a more definite answer from her just then; so he took his leave, with the feeling that, after all, matters must improve before very long, and in the meantime he must bear the suspense with patience.

He got through dinner as well as he could in his own rooms, for he did not like to go to his club lest the Jinnee should suddenly return during his absence.

"If he wants me he'd be quite equal to coming on to the club after me,"

he reflected, "for he has about as much sense of the fitness of things as Mary's lamb. I shouldn't care about seeing him suddenly bursting through the floor of the smoking-room. Nor would the committee."

He sat up late, in the hope that Fakrash would appear; but the Jinnee made no sign, and Horace began to get uneasy. "I wish there was some way of ringing him up," he thought. "If he were only the slave of a ring or a lamp, I'd rub it; but it wouldn't be any use to rub that bottle--and, besides, he isn't a slave. Probably he has a suspicion that he has not exactly distinguished himself over his latest feat, and thinks it prudent to keep out of my way for the present. But if he fancies he'll make things any better for himself by that he'll find himself mistaken."

It was maddening to think of the unhappy Professor still fretting away hour after hour in the uncongenial form of a mule, waiting impatiently for the relief that never came. If it lingered much longer, he might actually starve, unless his family thought of getting in some oats for him, and he could be prevailed upon to touch them. And how much longer could they succeed in concealing the nature of his affliction? How long before all Kensington, and the whole civilised world, would know that one of the leading Orientalists in Europe was restlessly prancing on four legs around his study in Cottesmore Gardens?

Racked by speculations such as these, Ventimore lay awake till well into the small hours, when he dropped off into troubled dreams that, wild as they were, could not be more grotesquely fantastic than the realities to which they were the alternative.

CHAPTER XIII

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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.surances of thy grat.i.tude."

"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."