The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy: 19th Century (European Literary Fantasy Anthologies)

by Brian Stableford

"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 recherche 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 selfassertive 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 ninepencefarthing? 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. 10'/,d. "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 tripup 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.

  "I give him in charge," he cried, as a policeman came up. "I give him in charge - robbery with violence."

  "But my dear sir," explained Jocelyn, "it is a mistake. You have got the wrong man."

  "Dessay," said the policeman. "You can explain that little matter at the station, where you are a-going to."

  "Little matter?" repeated the man who had been robbed. "You call it a little matter to be robbed of watch and chain in Piccadilly, by a fellow who asks you for a light to his cigar, and then plants as neat a left-hander between your eyes as you can -"

  "Why!" cried Jocelyn. "It's Annesley!"

  It was.

  "Well," said the policeman, when he understood, and ceased to suspect; "as for him, he's got safe enough off, this journey. And as for you, sir," he addressed Jocelyn, "you couldn't have done a better turn to that fellow - I know who he is - than to let him chuck you into the other gentleman's arms."

  Again Jocelyn had obtained the wish of his heart. He had, thanks to the Cap, done something to help one of "these poor wretches."

  V

  Jocelyn reserved his final trial of his power for Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, he thought he would let the Cap rest. But one thing happened which troubled him greatly. His housekeeper's daughter - she was a girl of fourteen or so, all knuckles and elbows - brought up his breakfast crying.

  "What is the matter?" he asked.

  "Please, Sir Jocelyn, mother's had a terrible loss."

  "What has she lost?"

  "She's lost her purse, Sir Jocelyn, sir, with three pound fourteen and ninepence farthing in it. I don't know what we shall do. And I've lost my lucky sixpence. And Bobby, he's lost his ha'penny."

  Jocelyn turned crimson with wrath and shame. His house-keeper's purse! The girl's lucky sixpence! And the child's half-penny! His Jinn had placed them all in his pocket!

  "I am very sorry , " he stammered. "As for your purse, I can't restore - I mean - find that for you. But - have you looked everywhere?"

  "Oh, everywhere, sir."

  "Look here, Eliza. Here are four pounds," - he would have handed over the exact sum, but he remembered in time that the lucky sixpence was among the coins in his pocket, and would certainly be identified - "here are four sovereigns. TO your mother to buy herself a new purse, and if she loses her money again, I shall not find it for her. Turn your lucky sixpence into a shilling, and Bobby's halfpenny into a sixpence."

  When she was gone he pulled out the Cap, and set it before him on the table. "You are a common thief," he said, shaking his forefinger. "You are so lazy that, when I ask for money, you go to the housekeeper's room and steal - steal her purse. You are a disgraceful sneak and thief. Another such action, and I will - " here he remembered that he wanted the services of the Cap for Wednesday, and said no more. But he was profoundly disgusted. If money could only be had by stealing, how could he accept any money at all? Then he reflected. There is so much money and no more in the world. All this money has owners. The owners do not part with their money except as pay for services done. How, then, can money be got by any servants of a Wishing Cap except by stealing it? But to steal a poor housekeeper's money! Mean! - mean! Yet for a Baronet to accept money stolen from anybody! Impossible. And
so vanished at one blow his income of £13,477 8s 10 '/,d. The matter opened a large field for inquiry, which he "argued out" as before. That is to say, he got hopelessly fogged over it.

  This matter caused him a good deal of annoyance. There were other things too, which made him suspect the power, or the intelligence, of the Cap. Thus, it was vexatious, when he had merely wished, as so many wellmeaning people do sometimes wish, that he was able to send to certain cases of distress, coals or help in other ways, to be told by the housekeeper that the ton of coals he had ordered was come, "and please, here is the bill." He paid it silently. Again, he was in his dressing-room, thinking of Nelly Staunton. "The case is as hopeless," he said to himself, "as if seas divided us. I wish," he added gloomily, "seas did divide us". Was it by accident, or was it by the meddlesome and mistaken action of the Cap - he always called it the Cap, to avoid the somewhat invidious phrase, Slave, or Demon of the Cap - that at this moment he kicked over the can containing his bath water, and made, of course, a great and horrible pool? He sat down and considered. As for the ton of coals, he had ordered them; but then they came at the very moment when he was wishing that he had coals to send. He had himself kicked over the can; but then, could it have been zeal on the part of the Cap to carry out, however imperfectly, even impossible orders?

  On the Monday evening he met a lot of people who had all at some time or other gone in for spiritualistic business. This was indeed their bond of union. After dinner a good many wonderful stories were told, and there was talk about Volition, Magnetism, Clairvoyance, and the like.

  "I am sometimes interested," said a lady, who was present, one of those who believe everything, "in the old stories about Slaves of the Lamp, the Ring, or the Jewel. They seem to me illustrative of the supreme power which the Will of man has been known to achieve in rare cases; that namely, when he can command even senseless matter and make it obey him."

  "As, for instance," said Jocelyn, waking up, for this seemed likely to interest him, "if I was to order this glass to be upset. Pardon me, but I did not ask Mr Andersen to upset it."