The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy

by Brian Stableford

  But he was to have another and as rude a lesson in the activity of his slave. He awoke in the middle of the night, with a sort of nightmare, in which Caroline was lecturing him and saying, “I am to be your companion all your life. You will never cease listening to the voice of instruction.” The weight of his horrible blunder became intolerable to him. He threw off the clothes and sat up in the bed. “I wish,” he gasped, “I wish I was dead.” Something seized him by the throat. He could not breathe. He sprang from the bed and rushed to the window for air. He was choking. He battled with the fit, or whatever it was, which held him for three or four minutes and left him purple in the face and trembling in the limbs.

  “It is spasmodic asthma,” he said, when he had recovered a little. “My father had it, and his father had it. I knew it would come some day.” At the same time, it was odd that it should come just when he was wishing to be dead. And the constriction of the pipes did seem astonishingly like the fingers of some one trying to throttle him.

  VII

  “Dear Sir Jocelyn” (it was a note from Mrs Staunton), - “I shall be very glad to see you to-day at twelve. Caroline tells me you have something important - may I guess what it is? - to say to me. - Yours very sincerely,

  “Julia Staunton”

  Jocelyn received this note with the cup of tea which he took in bed, according to vicious morning usage. He read it and groaned. It meant, this harmless note, nothing short of a life-long lecture from a female philosopher; and he a perfectly frivolous young man!

  He fell back upon his pillow and groaned. Then he foolishly began to wish, forgetting his Cap, “I wish the confounded letter could be washed out of existence,” he said, and with an impatient gesture threw out his arms and upset the cup of tea over the paper. It would take ten minutes to get another cup. “It’s that accursed Cap,” he said; “it always takes one up wrong. I’ve a good mind to burn it.” He dressed himself in the vilest temper. Had he heard the conversation at that moment going on between Caroline and her mother, he would have been more angry still.

  “I do not pretend,” said the young lady, “to feel any violent attachment for him - that kind of thing is over for me. There was a time as you know -”

  “My dear,” said her mother, “that is so long ago, and you were so very young, and it was before your uncle died.”

  “Yes, it is so long ago”, said Caroline “I am seven-and-twenty now - two years older than Jocelyn. Poor boy! he is weak, but I think I shall have a docile husband; unless, to be sure, he turns stubborn, as weak men sometimes do. In that case -” Her face hardened, and her mother felt that if Caroline’s husband should prove stubborn, there would be a game of “Pull devil, pull baker.”

  There was, Jocelyn felt, no way out of it at all, unless the way of flight, which is always open to everybody. And then, what a tremendous fool he would seem! As for the truth it could not possibly be told. That, at any rate, must be concealed; and at this point he began to understand some of the inconveniences, besides that of being misunderstood, in keeping a private demon. It is not, nowadays, that you would be burned if it were found out. Quite the contrary: all the clergymen in the world would be delighted at finding an argument so irrefragable against atheists and rationalists. The thing was wrong, of course, but beautifully opportune. But it would be so supremely ridiculous. A Slave of the Cap, Jinn, or Afreet, who could only find his master money by stealing the housekeeper’s purse; who interpreted a wish, without the least regard to consequences, literally and blindly; who led his master into the most ridiculous scrapes, even to getting him engaged to the wrong girl: a blundering, stupid slave - this, if you please, would be simply ridiculous. As for Nelly, his chance with her was hopelessly gone, even if, by any accident, he could break off with her sister. Yet, he thought, he should like to know if there was any truth in the report about her and Annesley. “I wish,” he said, “I wish now, that I had never know her.”

  Then it became apparent to him that he really never had known her at all. She could not suspect his intentions because she had no opportunity of guessing them; and he remembered that though he had known the Stauntons a good while, he had never once got an opportunity of talking with her alone, except at a dance, and then her card was always filled up for the whole time she stayed. Sympathetic eyes are very sweet, but they do not mean an understanding without being told that a man is in love with one. To do Nelly justice, she had never thought of Jocelyn in this way. He was an agreeable young man to dance with; he came to afternoon tea and talked with Caroline, or rather listened; she thought he was not very clever, but he seemed nice.

  Mrs Staunton received Jocelyn with great cordiality. “Let me,” she said, “hear at once, my dear Jocelyn, what you wish to say to me.” It was a sign of the very worst that she addressed him by his Christian name, without the handle, for the first time.

  “Caroline has told me that last night -”

  “Yes,” said Jocelyn. “I wish she hadn’t.” The last words sotto voce.

  “She did not tell me all,” replied Mrs. Staunton. “In fact, very little; but I gathered. -”

  “I told her,” said Jocelyn, in a tone most melancholy and even sepulchral - “I told her that I loved her.”

  “Yes - I gathered so much - and indeed, I was not surprised. To love my Caroline betrays, as well as becomes, a liberal education. Yet I need not disguise from you, Jocelyn,” the young lady’s mamma continued, “that from one point of view - the only one, I am bound to confess - the match is undesirable. You are of ancient family; you have rank; you have, I am assured, excellent morals and the best principles; but, my dear boy, you have - pardon me for reminding you of it - so scanty a fortune.”

  “It is true,” Jocelyn said briskly, and plucking up a little hope; “and if you think that obstacle insurmountable - if, I say, Mrs. Staunton, that fact stands in the way - I will at once withdraw.” He half rose, as if to withdraw at once.

  “It would have been insurmountable in Nelly’s case,” said Mrs. Staunton, “because my poor Nelly will have but a slender portion. With Caroline the case is different. The dear girl is provided for by her uncle’s bequest; and though you will not be really rich, there will be enough. No, Jocelyn, the objection is not insurmountable, but I feel it my duty to state its existence and its nature. I want you to understand entirely my feelings. And, in fact, my dear Jocelyn,” she gave him her hand, which he pressed, but languidly, “you have my full permission to go on with your suit, and my very best wishes for your success; because I think - nay, I am sure - that you already appreciate Caroline at her true value, and will make her happiness your only study.”

  Jocelyn murmured something.

  “It is not often that two sisters get engaged on the same day,” Mrs. Staunton continued, smiling; “yet it will please you to hear that I have this morning already consented to Nelly’s engagement with Mr. Annesley.”

  “With Annesley?” It was true, then. All was indeed over now. Yes: when one is already hopelessly crushed, one more wheel may go over without materially increasing the agony.

  “We have not known him long, but he bears, so far as we can learn, as good a character as one can desire. He is an intimate friend of your own, Jocelyn, is he not?”

  “He is,” said Jocelyn gloomily. “He nearly poisoned me last Saturday.”

  “That is indeed a proof of sincere friendship,” the lady replied, laughing. “He and Nelly have been attached to each other, it seems, for some time, though the foolish couple said nothing to me about it; and at last - Well I hope they will be happy. In addition to other advantages, he has a large private income.”

  “He has, I believe, about four thousand a year. Frillings did it, in Coventry.”

  “Yes - yes - so many of our best families have made their fortune in trade. We must not think too much of these things. And he certainly has as good a manner as one would expect in an Earl.” Then a smile, doubtless at the thought of the four thousand a year, stole over her motherly face. �
��It is certainly pleasant to think that the dear girl will have everything that a reasonable person can desire. His principles, too, are excellent. And he is, I am assured, a remarkably clever man.”

  Jocelyn said nothing; he had, in fact, nothing to say, except that all young men with four thousand a year are believed to possess excellent principles.

  “And now,” she said, ”’ you may go to Caroline. My dear boy, why - why did not your uncle, or your father, make money in frillings at Coventry?”

  He went to Caroline; but it was with creeping feet, as a schoolboy goes to school, and with hanging head, as that boy goes on his way to certain punishment.

  “What on earth am I to say to her?” he thought. “Am I to kiss her? Will she expect me to kiss Nelly instead.”

  Just then Nelly herself ran out.

  “Oh, Jocelyn!” she said; “you have seen mamma? Of course it is all right. I am so glad! You are going to Caroline? - poor Caroline! You are going to be my brother! I am so glad, and I am so happy - we are all so happy! Did mamma tell you about me as well? Wish me joy, brother Jocelyn!”

  “My dear Nelly,” he said, with a little sob in his voice - “I suppose I may call you Nelly now, and my dear Nelly as well - I sincerely wish you all the joy that the world has to give.”

  She put up her face and smiled. He stooped and kissed her forehead.

  “Be happy, sister Nelly,” he whispered, and left her.

  Nelly wondered why there was a tear in his eye. Her own lover certainly had not shed one tear since he first came a-courting; but then men are different.

  Caroline was calmly expecting her wooer. She half-rose when he opened the door, and her cheek flushed. She wished the business over.

  “Caroline,” he said. But he could say no more; his voice and his speech failed him.

  “Jocelyn,” she replied. And then, because in another moment the situation would have become strained - and, besides, he was a gentleman, and would not give her pain - and, again, if there was any mistake, it was his own folly that had done it - he took both her hands, and drew her gently towards him and kissed her lips, without another word of love or of protestation.

  Then he sat beside her, keeping her hand in his, and she began to talk of marriage and its duties, especially the duty of the husband, from a lofty philosophical point of view. It was agreed that she was to have absolute freedom: to take up any opinion, to advocate any cause, that she pleased. At that moment, because she varied a good deal, she was thinking what a splendid field was open to anyone, especially any woman who would preach Buddhism and the Great Renunciation. She made no allusion at all to her fortune, but Jocelyn perfectly understood that she meant to manage her house in her own way. As for himself, she designed, she said, a career for him. Of course, he would give up the F.O.; and so on. He mildly acquiesced in everything. His own slave had landed him in a slavery worse than anything ever imagined or described. He was to spend his life under the rule of a strong-minded woman of advanced opinions.

  VIII

  Then followed two or three weeks, of which Jocelyn thinks now with a kind of wondering horror. He was expected to be continually in attendance. He was expected to listen diligently. He was even expected to read a great many books, lists of which were prepared for him. Everything, he clearly perceived, was to be arranged for him. Very well: nothing mattered now. Let things go on in their own way.

  The worst of all was the abominable selfish rapture with which Annesley, of whom he now, very naturally, saw a great deal, treated him. The man could talk of nothing but the perfections of Nelly. As poor Jocelyn knew these perfections, and had every opportunity of studying them daily, the words of the accepted suitor went into his heart like a knife. Yet he could not object to listen, or contradict his friend, or show any weariness. To be sure, he might have conversed about Caroline, but it seemed ridiculous. Everybody knew that she was regularly and faultlessly beautiful; everybody also knew that she was strong-minded and held all kinds of views. Besides, he could not trust himself to speak of her. It was bad enough every day to speak with her.

  The two weddings were to take place on the same day, which was already fixed for the first week in July. It was arranged where the brides should spend their honeymoon - Caroline and Jocelyn in Germany; Nelly with her bridegroom at the Lakes. Meantime it was impossible not to perceive that Jocelyn, who ought to have been dancing, singing, and laughing, grew daily more silent and melancholy. Caroline, however, either did not or would not see this. Nelly, who did, wondered what it meant, and even taxed Jocelyn with the thing.

  “What does it mean?” she said. “You get your heart’s desire, and then you hang your head and sit mum. Why, I haven’t heard you laugh once since your engagement; and as for your smile, you smile as if you were going to have a tooth out.”

  “Nonsense!” said Jocelyn. “I suppose men are always quiet when they are most happy.”

  “Then Jack” - this was Annesley - “must be miserable indeed, for he is always laughing and singing and making a noise. Come, Jocelyn, tell me all about it. Are you in debt?”

  “No.”

  “Are you - have you -” She blushed but insisted, “have you got any kind of previous engagement? Oh! I know young men sometimes entangle themselves foolishly” - what a wise Nelly! - “and then have trouble in breaking off.”

  “It isn’t that, Nelly. It really is nothing.”

  “Then laugh and hold up your head. Or I will pinch you: I will indeed. You are going to marry Caroline, who is the most beautiful girl in London and the cleverest; and you go about as if you wanted to sit in a corner and cry.”

  Jocelyn obeyed her, and laughed as cheerfully as a starving clown. When he went home, however, it was with a stern resolve. He would have it out with the Cap.

  In taking it out of the cabinet, however, he took with it his uncle’s letter and read it again. The latter part he read with new understanding: “moderation,” “failure to comprehend,” “want of obedience.” Yes, there was something wrong with this Slave of the Cap. As for the Cap itself, it looked surprisingly shabby - far worse than it had appeared when he first got possession of it.

  “Now,” he said - the time was midnight, and he was alone in his chamber - “let us understand this.” He took the Cap in his hand. “If you can appear to me, Slave or Demon, show yourself to me and answer for your blunders if you can.”

  The same sensation of faintness which he had before experienced came over him again. When he opened his eyes, he saw before him the same vision of a tottering, battered old creature, with fiery bright eyes.

  “I have done my best, Excellency,” said the Slave of the Cap, in a tremulous quavering pipe.

  “Your best! You have done everything that is stupid, blundering and feeble. What does it mean? What the devil, I say, does it mean?”

  “I beg your Excellency’s pardon. If you had mentioned which young lady -”

  “Jinn! You knocked me head-over-heels down the back stairs.”

  “It was the only way out of it. You wished to be out of it.”

  “Slave of the Ox Goad of Religion! you stole the housekeeper’s money.”

  “I have always stolen money for your Excellency’s ancestors. You cannot have other people’s money without stealing it. This was the nearest money, and I was anxious not to keep your Excellency waiting.”

  “You have covered me with disappointment and shame.”

  “I am old, sir. The Cap is falling to pieces. I have slaved for it for five hundred years. After five hundred years of work no Cap is at his best.” He looked, indeed, at his very worst, so feeble and tottering was he. “In love matters,” he went on, “I am still, however, excellent, as the late Sir Jocelyn always found me. Up to the very last I managed all his affairs for him. If I can do anything for your Excellency now -”

  “You have already done enough for me. Stay -” a thought struck Jocelyn. “You would like your liberty.”

  “Surely, sir.”

  “You
shall have it. I will throw this Cap into the fire - understand that - on one condition: it is that you undo what you have already done. It is by your blundering and stupidity that I have become engaged to Caroline Staunton. Get me out of the engagement. But mind, nothing dishonourable: nothing that will affect her reputation or mine: the thing must be broken off by her, for some good reason of her own, and one which will do neither of us any harm. For my own part, I don’t in the least understand how it is to be done. That is your look-out.”

  “Excellency, it shall be done. It shall be done immediately.”

  He vanished, and Jocelyn replaced the Cap in the cabinet. It was with anxious heart that he lay down to sleep, nor did sleep come readily. He was quite sure, now, that the engagement would be broken off somehow, but he could not possibly understand how or why. There had been between them no quarrel nor the slightest disagreement - in fact, Jocelyn always agreed to everything: there was nothing, on either side, that was not perfectly well known; nothing, that is, as sometimes happens with young, men, which might “come out and have to be explained.” How - But, after all, it was the business of his servant to find out the way. He went asleep.

  In the afternoon, next day, a note came to him at the Foreign Office. It was from Caroline, begging him to call upon her as soon as possible.

  “I have,” she said,” a very important communication to make to you - a confession - an apology if you please. Pray come to me.”

  He received this strange note with a feeling of the greatest relief. He knew that she was going to release him. Why or with what excuse he neither knew nor cared.

  Caroline was in her own room, her study. She gave him her hand with some constraint, and when he would have kissed her, she refused. “No Jocelyn,” she said, “that is all over.”