While dressing, in a pretty bad temper, he began to “argue it out” again. Why, after all, he had got his wishes in the most remarkable manner. About the reality of his power there could be no doubt. He had wished for water: it was at his elbow. No doubt, if he had said drinking-water, the Cap would not have brought water in which flowers had been standing for a week. He had wished for a new hat, and his hat suddenly blossomed into such glossiness as is acquired by a coup de fer at the hatter’s; for new gloves, and his gloves became - not new certainly, but newish. He had foolishly wished that his uncle had left him the smallest coin, and there was a sixpence; he had wished for a new and original dinner, and there had come Annesley’s invitation; he had wished to see the Stauntons, and he had seen them.
It was with a feeling of great elation that he went to the dinner. Anybody would feel elated at the acquisition of such a strange and wonderful power.
“You shall have,” said Annesley, as if he had actually heard Jocelyn’s wish, “you shall have something perfectly new and original for dinner. It is an experiment which will, I think, please you.”
The table was laid with the exquisite attractiveness and skill which belonged to all of Annesley’s entertainments. He was a young man who had ideas and a considerable fortune to carry them out with. Life is only really interesting when one has both ideas and a fortune. As for Courtland, he was a critic. Not a failure in art and letters, but a critic born: one of the men who are critics of everything, from a picture to a slice of bread and cheese, and from Château-Lafitte to bitter beer.
“I see,” said Annesley, with a gratified smile, “I see, my dear fellow, that you are surprised at seeing oysters. It is not the season for oysters, certainly,” yet there were six on each man’s plate. “But these are Chinese sun-dried oysters. They came to me by a singular chance, in a state resembling shrivelled rags. You put them into salt water for an hour or two, and then, as you observe, they turn out as plump and as fresh as natives. By the Chinese they are esteemed a great delicacy.”
Jocelyn tasted one, though with misgiving. Probably he did not share the Chinese opinion of sun-dried oysters, for he turned pale, gasped, and hastily drank a glass of lacryma, which had been chosen by Annesley to accompany the oysters. The other man, observing the effect of the sun-dried oysters upon Jocelyn, prudently abstained from tasting them at all, but began a stream of conversation, under cover of which the oysters got carried away, while Annesley’s delight in his experiment prevented him from observing its failure. Indeed, he went on to talk with complacent assurance of the foolish and ignorant prejudices with which many admirable forms of food are regarded.
“I shall proceed,” he said, “to give you presently a remarkable illustration of this.” Jocelyn shuddered. “Meantime, here is a soup which I can highly recommend; it is a purée of cuttle-fish.”
It really was an excellent soup, could Jocelyn have rid himself of the horrible imagination of a poulpe flinging hideous gelatinous arms about from the middle of the plate, and fixing its suckers on the hand that grasped the spoon.
“The cuttle-fish,” said Annesley, who, besides being a man of ideas, was also somewhat of a prig, “the cuttle-fish, which is the actual type of the legendary Kraken - though, by the way, the Kraken is not so very legendary, since the great Squid -”
“That will do Annesley,” said Courtland. “We know all about the Squid. Fellow wrote a book about him. Model at the Fisheries.”
“The cuttle-fish,” continued Annesley, “is a much maligned creature. Not more so, however, than the fish which Williams is now putting on the table - the dog-fish.”
“Oh! I say!” cried Jocelyn,
“Dog-fish,” said Courtland. “Beasts when alive. Take all your bait. Fishermen roll ’em up and scrub the gunwhale with ’em. Think it will encourage the others.”
“My pet fisherman,” said Jocelyn, “used to do that till I begged him not to. He told me, I remember, that some people eat them.”
“Did he eat them himself?” asked Courtland.
“No, he did not.”
“Cooked like this,” interrupted Annesley, with a reassuring smile, “he would have eaten them with enthusiasm. They are stuffed with tinned shrimps.”
“Lead poisoning,” Courtland murmured in his beard.
The two guests, however, struggled manfully with the dog-fish.
With it, Annesley insisted, must be taken Catalan wine. Little was done with either. Nor was the next course, which consisted of iced potatoes with mulled Moselle, much more successful. It was one of Annesley’s whims to find for each course its one peculiar drink: thus with the edible fungus he gave iced negus; and though he provided a sufficiency of dry champagne, he begged his guests so pathetically to try his fancies, that they could not refuse. Long before the unnatural dinner came to an end, all three were excited by the mixture of drinks and the correspondingly small supply of food. By the time when the curried kingfishers - a rare and recherché dish - arrived, they were tired of talking about cuisine, and were arguing hotly, especially Courtland and Annesley, about things of which they knew nothing: such as the proper method of riding a steeplechase - a thing which none of them had ever tried; the locality of “Swells’ Corner” at Eton - all three had been at Harrow - and so forth. At last, Jocelyn, weary of the babble, and perhaps more than a little cross with the terrible failure of the dinner, cried out, “Oh, don’t let us wrangle in this way! I wish we had a little harmony!”
He had hardly spoken when a German band, brazen beyond all belief, broke out at the end of Sackville Street, and a piano-organ below their window.
“This is the work” - Jocelyn banged his fist upon the table - “of my ancestor’s amazing fool of a devil!”
The others stopped and looked at him. They only half heard the words, but Jocelyn hastily fled.
Everything had gone wrong - the dinner more than anything else. A terrible thought struck him. Could his devil by any chance have gone stupid, or was he inattentive? And, if the latter, how to correct him? Suppose, for instance, Ariel had refused to obey Prospero, and his master had no spells to compel obedience! Now this seemed exactly Jocelyn’s case. He sat down and took a cigar. “The dinner,” he said, “was the most infernal mess ever set before a man. I’ve taken too much wine, and mixed it; and I’ve eaten next to nothing. To-morrow morning I shall have a very self-assertive head; and all through that fool of a Cap.” He remembered, however, that he had as yet asked nothing serious of the Cap, and went to bed hopeful.
IV
Perhaps the wine he had taken made Jocelyn sleep, in spite of the many and exciting adventures of the day, without thinking of the Cap, or being disturbed by the thought of the invisible servant who sat beside his pillow. In the morning, which happened to be Sunday, he did think of the Cap when he awoke, but with a sleepy comfortable satisfaction in having got what promised to be a good thing. It was eight o’clock. “Too early to get up,” he said; “wish I could go to sleep again.”
His eyes instantly closed. When he awoke again it was eleven and he proceeded to get up. It would be wrong to say that he did not think about the Cap; in fact, his mind was brimful of it; but Jocelyn was not one of those who work themselves up to an agony point of nervousness because they cannot understand a thing. On the contrary, once having realized that the thing was - an unmistakable and undeniable fact - he was ready to accept it, a thing as difficult to understand as the law of attraction.
“Heigho! he said; “I wish I was dressed.”
He then perceived that he had already put on his socks, though he couldn’t remember having done so. And, besides, you cannot tub in your socks; so he had to take them off again. He wished for nothing more while he was dressing except once, and that at a most unlucky moment: it was in the process of shaving. He was thinking of the battles round Suakim, and his young heart, like that of his crusading ancestor, glowed within him. “I wish,” he said, with enthusiasm, “that I had a chance of shedding my blood for my country.�
�� He forgot that his razor was at that moment executing its functions upon his chin; there was an awful gash - and an interval of ten minutes for temper and court-plaister.
He then began to comprehend that, with an attendant ready to carry out every wish, it is as well not to wish for things that you do not want. But no one knows, save those who have had a similar experience, how many things are wished for, carelessly and without thought. Jocelyn had to learn the lesson of prudence by many more accidents.
When his landlady, for instance, brought him his breakfast, she began, being a garrulous old creature, to talk about old Sir Jocelyn and the flight of time, and what she remembered; and presently mentioned casually, that it was her birthday.
“Indeed!” said Jocelyn, with effusion; “then Mrs Watts, I wish you many happy returns of the day and all such anniversaries.”
He accompanied the wish with a substantial gift, but was hardly prepared, when the good woman’s daughter came up to clear away, to hear that it was also the anniversary of her wedding-day. In fact, in a short time the housekeeper’s anniversaries rained, and all of them demanded recognition. Like the clerk who accounted for absence three times in one year by the funeral of his mother, so this good lady multiplied her own birthdays and those of her children as long as their announcement drew half-a-crown from her lodger. After breakfast Jocelyn prepared to sally forth. He could not find his umbrella. “Devil take the thing!” he cried impatiently. It is to the credit of the Cap that the umbrella has never since been found. Therefore the wish was granted, and the devil did take the umbrella. Jocelyn says that he must have left it at the Club, but he knows otherwise.
He knew the church where the Stauntons had sittings, and he proposed to meet them as they came out, and to walk in the gardens with them - perhaps to have luncheon with them. Nelly would be there, he knew, in the sweetest of early summer costumes - an ethereal creature made up of smiles, bright eyes, flowers, and airy colour. She would smile upon him; but then, hang it! she would smile upon another fellow just as sweetly. Would the time come, he thought, when she would promise to smile on no one but himself? Could one ever grow tired of her smiles? Caroline would be there, too, much more beautifully dressed, cold, superior, and ready to lecture. Fancy marrying Caroline! But as for Nelly - “Oh!” he sighed, thinking of his empty lockers; “I do wish I had some money!”
He instantly felt something hard in his pocket. It was a shabby old leather purse full of money. He took out the contents and counted the money: three pounds, fourteen shillings, ninepence and a farthing in coppers. Jocelyn sat down, bewildered.
“It’s the Cap!” he said. “I wished for money. The fool of a Cap brings me three pounds fourteen shillings and ninepence farthing!” He threw the purse into the fireplace. “What can you do with three pounds fourteen and ninepence-farthing? It would not do much more than buy a bonnet for Nelly.”
Yet he remembered it was money. If he could get, any time he wished, just such a sum, he could get on. Almost mechanically he made a little calculation. Three pounds fourteen shillings and ninepence-farthing every half-hour, or say only ten times a day, comes to thirty-seven pounds seven shillings and eightpence-half-penny; that multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five, come to £13,477 8s. 101/2d. “It is,” said Jocelyn, “a very respectable income.”
He hesitated, being in fact, a little afraid of testing his new power. Then he said boldly, “I want more money.”
There was a click among the coins on the table. Jocelyn counted them again. He found another sixpence and a halfpenny more than he had at first observed.
“The Cap,” he said “is a fool.”
He remembered the advice given by the Ox Goad of Religion to the first Sir Jocelyn to exercise moderation. The reason for that advice, however, existed no longer. He would not now be burnt if all the bishops and clergy of the Established Church knew to a man that he had such a Cap. On the contrary, it would be regarded as a very interesting fact, and useful for religion in many ways. He must try, however, he said, to instruct his servant in larger ideas. No doubt, in the latter days of his uncle, the tendency to moderate or even penurious ways had been suffered to grow and to develop. It must be checked. Money must be had, and in amounts worth naming. Three pounds odd! and then sixpence halfpenny!
He met his friends coming out of the church - Nelly, as he expected, as sweet as a rose in June; Caroline, perhaps more resembling a full-blown dahlia. He walked through the Park to their house in Craven Gardens; Nelly, however, walked with her mother and Annesley, who also happened to be on the spot, while he walked with Caroline, who developed at some length the newest ideas in natural selection. He was asked to luncheon, and sat beside Caroline, who continued her discourse, while Nelly and Annesley were talking all kinds of delightful and frivolous things. After luncheon Caroline said that, as Sir Jocelyn took so much interest in these things, she would show him some papers on the subject which contained her ideas. She did; and the afternoon passed like a bad dream, with the vision of an unattainable Nelly at the other end of the room, as a mirage in the desert shows springs and wells to the thirsty traveller. He might have wished, but he was afraid. He could not trust his Cap; something horrible might be done; something stupid would certainly be done. The servant might be zealous, but as yet he had not shown that he was intelligent.
He came away melancholy.
“My dear,” said Mrs Staunton to Caroline, when he had gone, “Sir Jocelyn seems to improve. He is quiet and - well - amenable, I should say. He comes of a good family, and his title is as old as a baronetcy can be. There is, I know, a place in the country, but I am told there is no money. The last baronet spent it all.”
Caroline reflected.
“If a woman must marry,” she said, “and, perhaps, as things are, it is better that she should for her own independence - a docile husband with a good social position - But perhaps he is not thinking of such a thing at all.”
“My dear, he comes here constantly. It is not for Nelly, who cannot afford to marry a poor man. Therefore -”
She was silent, and Caroline made no reply. There comes a time even to the coldest of women, when the married condition appears desirable in some respects. She had not always been the coldest of women, and now the thought of a possible wooer brought back to her mind that memory of a former lover in the days when she, alas! was as poor as her sister Nelly. A warm flush came upon her cheek, and her eye softened, as she thought of the brave boy who loved her when she was eighteen, and he one-and-twenty; and how they had to part. He was gone. But things might have been so different.
“I shall meet them again on Wednesday,” Sir Jocelyn thought. “They are going to Lady Hambledon’s. If that Cap of mine has any power at all, it shall be brought into use on that evening. I must have - let me see - first of all, opportunity of speaking to her; next, I suppose, I can ask for eloquence, or persuasive power - the opportunity must not be thrown away. And she must be well disposed - do you hear?” he addressed the invisible servant. “No fooling on Wednesday, or -” He left the consequences to the imagination of his menial, perhaps because he did not himself quite see his way to producing any consequences. What are you to do, in fact, with an invisible, impalpable servant - the laws of whose being you know not - whom you cannot kick, or discharge, or cut down in wages, or anything?
In the evening a thing happened which helped to confirm him in the reality of his Cap, and at the same time made him distrustful of himself as well as of his slave.
It was rather late, in fact about twelve o’clock. Jocelyn was walking quietly home from the Club along the safest thoroughfare in Europe - at least the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department said so. They used to call it the Detective Department, but changed the name because nothing was ever detected, and the term investigation does not imply the arrival at any practical result. There were still a few passengers in the street. One of them, a shambling, miserable-looking creature, besought alms of Jocelyn, who gave him something, and then
fell a-moralizing on the mysteries of the criminal and pauper class in London. “That man,” he said to himself, “is, I suppose, a vagrant; a person without any visible means of existence. Fill him with beef and beer, or gin, and he will become pot-valiant enough to think of obtaining more of such things by force or fraud instead of by begging. Then he will become one of the dangerous class. Poor beggar! I wish I could do something to help one of these poor wretches.” Immediately afterwards he heard the sound of personal altercation. Two men, both in overcoats and evening dress, were struggling together, and one of them raised the cry of “Police!” Then there was the sound of a well-planted blow, and one of the men broke away and ran as hard as he could towards Jocelyn. The other man, knocked for the moment out of time, quickly gathered himself together and ran in pursuit. Jocelyn, by instinct, tried to stop the first man, who, by a dexterous trip-up with his foot, flung him straight into the arms of the second, his pursuer. He, somewhat groggy with the blow he had received, collared Jocelyn, and rolled over with him.
The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy Page 33