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The Prophet of Berkeley Square

by Robert Hichens · English · Gutenberg #2463 · 482,113 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Prophet of Berkeley Square

Author: Robert Hichens


        
Release date: April 4, 2006 [eBook #2463]
                Most recently updated: September 24, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2463

Credits: Produced by Dagny; Emma Dudding; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROPHET OF BERKELEY SQUARE ***




Produced by Dagny; Emma Dudding





THE PROPHET OF BERKELEY SQUARE

By Robert Hichens




CHAPTER I

MRS. MERILLIA IS CARRIED TO BED

The great telescope of the Prophet was carefully adjusted upon its
lofty, brass-bound stand in the bow window of Number One Thousand
Berkeley Square. It pointed towards the remarkably bright stars which
twinkled in the December sky over frosty London, those guardian stars
which always seemed to the Prophet to watch with peculiar solicitude
over the most respectable neighbourhood in which he resided. The
polestar had its eye even now upon the mansion of an adjacent
ex-premier, the belt of Orion was not oblivious of a belted earl’s cosy
red-brick home just opposite, and the house of a certain famous actor
and actress close by had been taken by the Great Bear under its special
protection.

The Prophet’s butler, Mr. Ferdinand--that bulky and veracious
gentleman--threw open the latticed windows of the drawing-room and
let the cold air rush blithely in. Then he made up the fire carefully,
placed a copy of Mr. Malkiel’s _Almanac_, bound in dull pink and silver
brocade by Miss Clorinda Dolbrett of the Cromwell Road, upon a
small tulip-wood table near the telescope, patted a sofa cushion
affectionately on the head, glanced around with the meditative eye of
the butler born not made, and quitted the comfortable apartment with a
salaried, but soft, footstep.

It was a pleasant chamber, this drawing-room of Number One Thousand. It
spoke respectfully of the generations that were past and seemed serenely
certain of a comfortable future. There was no too modern uneasiness
about it, no trifling, gim-crack furniture constructed to catch the eye
and the angles of any one venturing to seek repose upon it, no unmeaning
rubbish of ornaments or hectic flummery of second-rate pictures. Above
the high oaken mantel-piece was a little pure bust in marble of the
Prophet when a small boy. To right and left were pretty miniatures in
golden frames of the Prophet’s delightfully numerous grandmothers. Here
might be seen Mrs. Prothero, the great ship-builder’s faithful wife, in
blue brocade, and Lady Camptown, who reigned at Bath, in grey tabinet
and diamond buckles, when Miss Jane Austen was writing her first
romance; Mrs. Susan Burlington, who knew Lord Byron--a remarkable
fact--and Lady Sophia Green, who knew her own mind, a fact still more
remarkable. The last-named lady wore black with a Roman nose, and the
combination was admirably convincing. Here might also be observed Mrs.
Stuefitt, Mistress of the Mazurka, and the Lady Jane Follington, of
whom George the Second had spoken openly in terms of approbation. She
affected plum colour and had eyes like sloes--the fashionable hue in
the neat-foot-and-pretty-ankle period. The flames of the fire twinkled
brightly over this battalion of deuced fine women, who were all, without
one exception, the grandmothers--in various degrees--of the Prophet.
When speaking of them, in the highest terms, he never differentiated
them by the adjectives great, or great-great. They were all kind and
condescending enough to be his grandmothers. For a man of his sensitive,
delicate and grateful disposition this was enough. He thought them all
quite perfect, and took them all under the protection of his soft and
beaming eyes.

Of Mrs. Merillia, the live grandmother with whom he had the great
felicity to dwell in Berkeley Square, he seldom said anything in
public praise. The incense he offered at her shrine rose, most sweetly
perfumed, from his daily life. The hearth of this agreeable and
grandmotherly chamber was attractive with dogs, the silver cage beside
it with green love-birds. Upon the floor was a heavy, dull-blue carpet
over which--as has been intimated--even a butler so heavy as Mr.
Ferdinand could go softly. The walls were dressed with a dull blue paper
that looked like velvet.

Here and there upon them hung a picture: a landscape of George Morland,
lustily English, a Cotman, a Cuyp--cows in twilight--a Reynolds, faded
but exquisitely genteel. A lovely little harpsichord--meditating on
Scarlatti--stood in one angle, a harp, tied with most delicate ribands
of ivory satin powdered with pimpernels, in another. Many waxen
candles shed a tender and unostentatious radiance above their careful
grease-catchers. Upon pretty tables lay neat books by Fanny Burney,
Beatrice Harraden, Mary Wilkins, and Max Beerbohm, also the poems of
Lord Byron and of Lord de Tabley. Near the hearth was a sofa on which an
emperor might have laid an easy head that wore a crown, and before every
low and seductive chair was set a low and seductive footstool.

A grandmother’s clock pronounced the hour of ten in a frail and
elegant voice as the finely-carved oak door was opened, and the
Prophet seriously entered this peaceful room, carrying a copy of the
_Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_ in his hand.

He was a neatly-made little man of fashionable, even of modish, cut,
spare, smart and whimsical, with a clean-shaved, small-featured face,
large, shining brown eyes, abundant and slightly-waving brown hair, that
could only be parted, with the sweetest sorrow, in the centre of
his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and
temperate as those of a meditative squirrel. Having just dined he was
naturally in evening dress, with a butterfly tie, gleaming pumps, and
a buttonhole of violets. He shut the door gently, glanced at his
nice-looking grandmothers, and, walking forward very quietly and
demurely, applied his eye to the telescope, lowering himself slightly
by a Sandow exercise, which he had practised before he became a prophet.
Having remained in this position of astronomical observation for some
minutes, he deviated into the upright, closed the window, and tinkled
a small silver bell that stood on the tulip-wood table beside Malkiel’s
_Almanac_.

Mr. Ferdinand appeared, looking respectfully buoyant.

“Has Mr. Malkiel sent any reply to my inquiry, Mr. Ferdinand?” asked the
Prophet.

“He has not, sir,” replied Mr. Ferdinand, sympathetically.

“Did the boy messenger say he delivered my note?”

“He said so, sir, on his Bible oath, sir.”

“And do you believe him?”

“Oh, sir!” responded Mr. Ferdinand, in a shocked voice, “surely a London
lad would not be found to tell a lie!”

“I hope not, Mr. Ferdinand. Still--did he look a nervous sort of lad?”

“He was a trifle pale, sir, about the gills--but a heart of gold, sir, I
feel sure. He wore four medals, sir.”

“Four medals! Nevertheless, he may have been frightened to go to Mr.
Malkiel’s door. That will do, Mr. Ferdinand.”

Mr. Ferdinand was about to bow and retire when the Prophet, after a
moment of hesitation, added,--

“Stay, Mr. Ferdinand. Mrs. Merillia has gone to the Gaiety Theatre
to-night. I expect her back at half-past eleven. She may need assistance
on her return.”

“Assistance, sir! Mrs. Merillia, sir!”

Mr. Ferdinand’s luminous eyes shone with amazement.

“She may--I say she _may_--have to be carried to bed.”

Mr. Ferdinand’s jaw dropped. He gave at the knees and was obliged to
cling to a Chippendale cabinet for support.

“Have an armchair ready in the hall in case of necessity and tell
Gustavus to sit up. Mrs. Merillia must not be dropped. You understand.
That will do, Mr. Ferdinand.”

Mr. Ferdinand endeavoured to bow, and ultimately succeeded in retiring.
When his tremulous shoulders were no longer visible, the Prophet opened
Marcus Aurelius, and, seating himself in a corner of the big couch by
the fire, crossed his legs one over the other and began to read that
timid Ancient’s consolatory, but unconvincing, remarks. Occasionally he
paused, however, murmured doubtfully, “Will she have to be carried to
bed?” shook his head mournfully and then resumed his reading.

While he thus employs his time, we must say a word or two about him.

Mr. Hennessey Vivian was now a man of thirty-eight, of excellent
fortune, of fine connections, and of admirable disposition. He had
become an orphan as soon as it was in his power to do so, having lost
his father--Captain Vivian of Her Majesty’s Tenth Lancers--some months
before, and his mother--who had been a Merillia of Chipping Sudbury--a
few minutes after his birth. In these unfortunate circumstances, over
which he, poor infant, had absolutely no control--whatever unkind people
might say!--he devolved upon his mother’s mother, the handsome and
popular Mrs. Merillia, who assumed his charge with the rosy alacrity
characteristic of her in all her undertakings. With her the little
Hennessey had passed his infantine years, blowing happy bubbles,
presiding over the voyages of his own private Noah--from the Army
and Navy Stores, with two hundred animals of both sexes!--eating pap
prepared by Mrs. Merillia’s own _chef_, and sleeping in a cot hung with
sunny silk that might have curtained Venus or have shaken about Aurora
as she rose in the first morning of the world. From her he had acquired
the alphabet and many a ginger-nut and decorative bonbon. And from her,
too, he had set forth, with tears, in his new Eton jacket and broad
white collar, to go to Mr. Chapman’s preparatory school for little boys
at Slough. Here he remained for several years, acquiring a respect for
the poet Gray and a love of Slough peppermint that could only cease
with life. Here too he made friends with Robert Green, son of Lord
Churchmore, who was afterwards to be a certain influence in his life.
His existence at Slough was happy. Indeed, so great was his affection
for the place that his removal to Eton cost him suffering scarcely less
acute than that which presently attended his departure from Eton to
Christchurch. Over his sensations on leaving Oxford we prefer to draw a
veil, only saying that his last outlook--as an undergraduate--over her
immemorial towers was as hazy as the average Cabinet Minister’s outlook
over the events of the day and the desires of the community.

But if the moisture of the Prophet did him credit at that painful period
of his life, it must be allowed that his behaviour on being formally
introduced into London Society showed no puling regret, no backward
longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no
more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched
contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the
young gentlemen accustomed to “the High.”

Mrs. Merillia, who had been a widow ever since she could remember,
possessed the lease of the house in Berkeley Square in which the
Prophet was now sitting. It was an excellent mansion, with everything
comfortable about it, a duke on one side, a Chancellor of the Exchequer
on the other, electric light, several bathrooms and the gramophone.
There was never any question of the Prophet setting up house by himself.
On leaving Oxford he joined his ample fortune to Mrs. Merillia’s as
a matter of course, and they settled down together with the greatest
alacrity and hopefulness. Nor were their pleasant relations once
disturbed during the fifteen years that elapsed before the Prophet
applied his eye to the telescope in the bow window and gave Mr.
Ferdinand the instructions which have just been recorded.

These fifteen years had not gone by without leaving their mark upon our
hero. He had done several things during their passage. For instance,
he had written a play, very nearly proposed to the third daughter of
a London clergyman and twice been to the Derby. Such events had, not
unnaturally, had their effect upon the formation of his character and
even upon the expression of his intelligent face. The writing of
the play--and, perhaps, its refusal by all the actor-managers of the
town--had traced a tiny line at each corner of his mobile mouth. The
third daughter of the London clergyman--his sentiment for her--had
taught his hand the slightly episcopal gesture which was so admired at
the Lambeth Palace Garden Party in the summer of 1892. And the great
race meeting was responsible for the rather tight trousers and the
gentleman-jockey smile which he was wont to assume when he set out for a
canter in the Row. From all this it will be guessed that our Prophet was
exceedingly amenable to the influences that throng at the heels of the
human destiny. Indeed, he was. And some few months before this story
opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact,
the primary cause of this story being true. Who was this gentleman? you
will say. Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of
the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science,
Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet,
“Star-Gazers,” and the brochure, “An investigation into the psychical
condition of those who see stars,” C.B.F.R.S. and popular member of the
Colley Cibber Club in Long Acre.

The Prophet was introduced to Sir Tiglath at the Colley Cibber Club, and
though Sir Tiglath, who was of a freakish disposition and much addicted
to his joke declined to speak to him, on the ground that he (Sir
Tiglath) had lost his voice and was unlikely to find it in conversation,
the Prophet was greatly impressed by the astronomer’s enormous brick-red
face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for
drinking port-wine--so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he
hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for
several days to a minute investigation of the Milky Way.

As there is a fascination of the earth, so is there a fascination of the
heavens. Along the dim, empurpled highways that lead from star to star,
from meteorite to comet, the imagination travels wakefully by night, and
the heart leaps as it draws near to the silver bosses of the moon.
Mrs. Merillia was soon obliged to permit the intrusion of a gigantic
telescope into her pretty drawing-room, and found herself expected to
converse at the dinner-table on the eight moons of Saturn, the belts of
Jupiter, the asteroids of Mars and the phases of Venus. These last
she at first declined to discuss with a man, even though he were her
grandson. But she was won over by the Prophet’s innocent persuasiveness,
and drawn on until she spoke almost as readily of the movements of the
stars as formerly she had spoken of the movements of the Court from
Windsor to London, and from London to Balmoral. In truth, she expected
that Hennessey’s passion for the comets would cease as had ceased his
passion for the clergyman’s daughter; that his ardour for astronomy
would die as had died his ardour for play-writing; that he would give up
going to _Corona Borealis_ and to the Southern Fish as he had given up
going to the Derby. Time proved her wrong. As the days flew Hennessey
became increasingly impassioned. He was more often at the telescope than
at the Bachelors’, and seemed on the way to become almost as gibbous as
the planet Mars. Even he slightly neglected his social duties; and on
one terrible occasion forgot that he was engaged to dine at Cambridge
House because he was assisting at a transit of Mercury.

Now all this began to weigh upon the mind of Mrs. Merillia, despite the
amazing cheerfulness of disposition which she had inherited from two
long lines of confirmed optimists--her ancestors on the paternal and
maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she
might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been
reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the
evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the
Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented
those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful
melodramas, or those ironic pieces called farces, in which the ultimate
misery of which human nature is capable is drawn to its farthest point.

In the beginning of this new dejection of hers, Mrs. Merillia was now
seated in a stage box at the “Gaiety,” with an elderly General of Life
Guards, a Mistress of the Robes, and the grandfather of the Central
American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, and all four of them
were smiling at a neat little low comedian, who was singing, without any
voice and with the utmost precision, a pathetic romance entitled, “De
Coon Wot Got de Chuck.”

Meanwhile the Prophet was engaged for the twentieth time in considering
whether Mrs. Merillia, on her return from this festival, would have to
be carried to bed by hired menials.

Why?

This brings us to the great turning point in our hero’s life, to the
point when first he began to respect the strange powers stirring within
him.

Until he encountered Sir Tiglath Butt in the dining-room of the Colley
Cibber Club Hennessey had been but a dilettante fellow. He had written a
play, but airily, and without the twenty years of arduous and persistent
study declared by the dramatic critics to be absolutely necessary before
any intelligent man can learn how to get a bishop on, or a chambermaid
off, the stage. He had nearly proposed to a clergyman’s daughter, but
thoughtlessly, and without any previous examination into the clericalism
of rectory females, any first-hand knowledge of mothers’ meetings,
devoid of which he must be a stout-hearted gentleman who would rush in
where even curates often fear to tread. He had been to the Derby, but
without wearing a bottle-green veil or carrying a betting-book. In fact,
he had not taken life very seriously, or fully appreciated the solemn
duties it brings to all who bear its yoke. Only when the plump red hand
of Sir Tiglath--holding a bumper of thirty-four port--pointed the way
to the heavens, did Hennessey begin--through his telescope--to see the
great possibilities that foot it about the existence of even the meanest
man who eats, drinks and suffers. For through his telescope he saw that
he might be a prophet. Malkiel read the future in the stars. Why not he?

He endeavoured to do so. He sought an intimacy with the benefic
_Jupiter_, and found it--perhaps by a secret kowtowing to
_Sagittarius_. He made up openly to _Canis Major_ and was shortly on
what might almost be considered terms of affection with _Venus_. And
he was, moreover, presently quite fearless in the presence of _Saturn_,
quite unabashed beneath the glittering eye of _Mercury_. Then, as the
neophyte growing bold by familiarity with the circle of the great ones,
he ventured on his first prophecy, a discreet and even humble forecast
of the weather. He predicted a heavy fall of snow for a certain evening,
and so distrusted his own prediction that when the evening came, mild
and benign, he sallied forth to the Empire Palace of Varieties, and
stayed till near midnight, laughing at the sallies of French clowns, and
applauding the frail antics of cockatoos on motor bicycles. When, on the
stroke of twelve, he came airily forth wrapped in the lightest of dust
coats, he was obliged to endure the greatest of man’s amazements--the
knowledge that there was a well of truth within him. Leicester Square
was swathed in an ivory fleece, and he was obliged to gain Berkeley
Square on foot, treading gingerly in pumps, escorted by linkmen with
flaring golden torches, and preceded by tipsy but assiduous ruffians
armed with shovels, who, with many a lusty oath and horrid imprecation,
cleared a thin thread of path between the towering walls of snow that
sparkled faintly in the gaslight.

This experience fired him. He rose up early, lay down late, and, quite
with her assent, cast the horoscope of Mrs. Merillia in the sweat of his
brow. He cast, we say, her horoscope and, from a certain conjunction of
the planets, he gathered, to his horror, that upon the fifteenth day of
the month of January she would suffer an accident while on an evening
jaunt. We find him now, on this fifteenth day of the first month, aware
of his revered grandmother’s intrepid expedition to the Gaiety Theatre,
waiting her return to Berkeley Square with mingled feelings which we
might analyse for pages, but which we prefer baldly to state.

He longed to be proved indeed a prophet, and he longed also to see his
beloved relative return from her sheaf of pleasures in the free and
unconstrained use of all her graceful limbs. He was, therefore, torn
by foes in a mental conflict, and was in no case to sip the philosophic
honey of Marcus Aurelius as he sat between the telescope and the fire in
the comfortable drawing-room awaiting his grandmother’s return.

“Gustavus,” said Mr. Ferdinand in the servants’ hall to the flushed
footman who lay upon a what-not, sipping a glass of ale and reading a
new and unabridged farthing edition of Carlyle’s _French Revolution_,
“Gustavus, Mrs. Merillia has been and gone to the Gaiety Theatre
to-night. We expect her back at eleven-thirty sharp. She may need
assistance on her return, Gustavus.”

The footman put down the tumbler which he was in the act of raising to
his pouted lips.

“Assistance, Mr. Ferdinand!” he ejaculated. “Mrs. Merillia, Mr.
Ferdinand!”

“She may--we say she _may_--have to be carried to bed, Gustavus.”

Gustavus’s jaw dropped, and the _French Revolution_ fluttered in his
startled hands.

“Good lawks, Mr. Ferdinand!” he exclaimed (not quoting from Carlyle).

“Have an armchair ready in the hall, Gustavus. Mrs. Merillia must not be
dropped. You understand? That will do, Gustavus.”

And Mr. Ferdinand passed to the adjacent supper-table, to join the upper
housemaid in a discussion of two subjects that were very near to their
hearts, a round of beef and a tureen of pickled cabbage, while Gustavus
got up from the what-not in a bemused manner, and proceeded to search
dreamily for an armchair. He came upon one by chance in the dining-room,
and wheeled it out into the hall just as the clocks in the house rang
out the half-hour after eleven.

The Prophet above sprang up from the couch by the fire, Mr. Ferdinand
below closed his discussion with the upper housemaid, and the former
rapidly came down, the latter up, stairs as the roll of wheels broke
through the silence of the square.

Gustavus, in an attitude of bridled curiosity, was posed beneath a polar
bear that held an electric lamp. His hand was laid upon the back of the
armchair, and his round hazel eyes were turned expectantly towards the
hall as his two masters joined him.

“Is all ready, Mr. Ferdinand?” said the Prophet, anxiously.

“All is ready, sir,” replied the butler.

“Wheel the chair forward, Gustavus, if you please,” said the Prophet.
“Mrs. Merillia must not be dropped. Remember that.”

“Not be dropped, sir--no.”

The chair ran forward on its amicable castors as a carriage was heard
to stop outside. Mr. Ferdinand flung open the portal, and the Prophet
glided out excitedly upon the step.

“Well?” he cried, “well?”

A footman, in a long drab coat with red facings, was preparing to get
off the box of a smart brougham, but before he could reach the pavement,
a charming head, covered with a lace cap, was thrust out of the window,
and a musical and almost girlish voice cried,--

“All nonsense, Hennessey, all rubbish! Saturn don’t know what he’s
talkin’ about. Look!”

The carriage door was vivaciously opened from the inside and a
delightful little old lady, dressed in brown silk, with a long, cheerful
pointed nose, rosy cheeks, and chestnut hair--that almost mightn’t have
been a wig in certain lights--prepared to leap forth without waiting for
the reverent assistance that the Prophet, flanked by Mr. Ferdinand and
Gustavus, was in waiting to afford.

As she jumped, she began to cry, “Not much wrong with me, is there,
Hennessey?” but before the sentence was completed she had caught her
neat foot in her brown silk gown, had stumbled from the step of the
carriage to the pavement, had twisted her pretty ankle, had reeled and
almost fallen, had been caught by the Prophet and Mr. Ferdinand, borne
tenderly into the hall, and placed in the armchair which the terrified
Gustavus, with almost enraged ardour, drove forward to receive her. As
she sank down in it, helpless, Mrs. Merillia exclaimed, with unabated
vivacity,--

“It’s happened, Hennessey, it’s happened! But it was my own doin’ and
yours. You shouldn’t have prophesied at your age, and I shouldn’t have
jumped at mine.

“Dearest grannie!” cried the Prophet, on his knees beside her, “how
grieved, how shocked I am! Is it--is it--”

“Sprained, Hennessey?”

He nodded. Mechanically Mr. Ferdinand nodded. Gustavus let his powdered
head drop, too, in imitation of his superiors.

“I’ll tell you in the drawin’--room.”

She placed her pretty, mittened hands upon the arms of the chair, and
gave a little wriggle, trying to get up. Then she cried out musically,--

“No, I must be carried up. Mr. Ferdinand!”

“Ma’am!”

“Is Gustavus to be trusted?”

“Trusted, ma’am!” cried Mr. Ferdinand, looking at Gustavus, who had
assumed an expression of pale and pathetic dignity. “Trusted--a London
footman! Oh, ma’am!”

His voice failed. He choked and began to rummage in the pocket of his
black tail coat for his perfumed handkerchief.

“T’st, t’st! I mean his arms,” said Mrs. Merillia, patting her delicate
hands quickly on the chair. “Can he carry me?”

The countenance of Mr. Ferdinand cleared, while Gustavus eagerly
extended his right arm, bent it sharply, and allowed his magnificent
biceps to rise up in sudden majesty. Mrs. Merillia was reassured.

“Hoist me to the drawin’-room, then,” she said. “Hennessey, will you
walk behind?”

The procession was formed, and the little old lady proceeded by a
succession of jerks to the upper floor, her silk gown rustling against
the balusters, and her tiny feet dangling loosely in mid-air, while
her long and elegant head nodded each time Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus
pranced carefully sideways to a higher step. The Prophet followed
solicitously behind, with hands outstretched to check any dangerous
recoil. His face was very grave, but not entirely unhappy.

“Set me down by the fire,” said Mrs. Merillia, when she found herself
being smoothly propelled through the atmosphere of the drawing-room.

The menials obeyed with breathless assiduity.

“And now bring me a sandwich, a glass of toast and water and a fan, if
you please. Yes, put the footstool well under me.”

“Dearest grannie,” said the Prophet, when the men had retired, “are you
in great pain?”

“No, Hennessey. Are you?”

Mrs. Merillia’s green eyes twinkled.

“I!”

“Yes, at my accident. For my ankle is sprained, I’m almost sure, and I
shall have to lie up presently in wet bandages. Tell me, are you really
pained that I have had the accident you prophesied?”

She glanced from her grandson to the telescope that pointed toward the
stars and back again.

“I am, indeed, sincerely grieved,” the Prophet answered with genuine
emotion.

“Yes. But if I’d jumped out all right, and was sittin’ here now in a
perfect condition of health, you’d have been sincerely grieved, too.”

“I hope not, grannie,” said the Prophet. But he looked meditative.

Mr. Ferdinand brought the toast and water, the sandwich and the fan.
When he had trodden across the carpet out of the room Mrs. Merillia
continued,--

“Hennessey, you see where this prophetic business is leadin’ you. It has
made you charmed at my accident. Yes, it has.”

She spoke without any pathos, humorously indeed, in a bright tone full
of common sense. And she nodded at him over her toast and water with a
chaffing, demure smile. But the Prophet winced and put his hand to his
thick brown hair.

“No, no,” he cried quickly. “That’s impossible. It can’t be.” But the
statements sounded like perturbed questions.

“Think!” said his grandmother, looking down at her poor, helpless foot
as it lay on the velvet stool. “If I hadn’t had an accident to-night,
you’d have been obliged to think ill of--of--which of them was it that
had the impertinence to talk my affairs over with you?”

“Mercury and Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus,” said the Prophet with
almost terrible gravity.

“Exactly. I always have thought ill of the last, but that’s nothin’ to
do with it. Weigh me in the balance against five planets--are they all
planets?--and how do the scales go? You see, Hennessey!”

The Prophet looked much distressed. He saw his beloved grandmother by
the fire and the bright stars twinkling through the frosty window-panes.
He thought of his telescope, of Sir Tiglath, of Mr. Malkiel, and of the
future, and the velvety blue walls of the drawing-room seemed to spin
round him.

“Prophecy,” continued Mrs. Merillia, fanning herself till the lace
lappets of her priceless cap fluttered above her orderly and clasping
wig, “is dangerous, for often it can cause its own fulfilment. If
you hadn’t said that because of a certain conjunction of planets--or
whatever it was--in my horoscope, I should have an accident to-night, I
shouldn’t have jumped out of the brougham. I should have waited for Mr.
Ferdinand to assist me, as befits a gentlewoman.”

“But, grannie, I assure you I was most anxious to save you. I hoped I
had made a mistake in your horoscope. I did, really. I was so nervous
that I sent to Mr. Malkiel while you were at the theatre and implored
him to look into the matter as an expert.”

“Mr. Malkiel! Who is he? Do we know him?”

“No. But we know his marvellous _Almanac_.”

“The _Almanac_ person! Why, Malkiel is surely a myth, Hennessey, a
number of people, a company, a syndicate, or something of that kind.”

“So I thought, grannie. But I have made inquiries--through a detective
agency--and I have discovered that he is one person; in fact, a man,
just like you and me.”

“Rather an odd man then! Is he in the Red Book?”

“No. He is, I understand, of a very retiring and secretive disposition.
In fact, I have had great difficulty in learning anything about him. But
at length I have discovered that he receives and answers letters at an
address in London.”

“Indeed. Where is it?”

“Jellybrand’s Library, Eleven Hundred Z, Shaftesbury Avenue. I sent a
boy messenger there to-day.”

“Did you receive a reply?”

“No. I think the boy--although Mr. Ferdinand tells me he wore four
medals, I presume for courage--must have become nervous on perceiving
Mr. Malkiel’s name on the envelope, have thrown the note down a grating,
and bolted before he reached the place, though he said--on his Bible
oath, I understand from Mr. Ferdinand--he delivered the note. In any
case I got no answer. How are you feeling?”

“Twisted, but prophetic. I foretell that my ankle will be swelled beyond
recognition to-morrow. Help me to bed, Hennessey.”

The Prophet flew to his dear relative’s assistance, and Mrs. Merillia
endeavoured to rise and to lean upon his anxious arm. After a struggle,
however, in which the Prophet took part and two chairs were overset, she
was obliged to desist.

“You must ring the bell, Hennessey,” she said. “Mr. Ferdinand and
Gustavus must carry me to bed in the chair.”

The Prophet sprang tragically to the bell. It was answered. The
procession was re-formed, and Mrs. Merillia was carried to bed, still
smiling, nodding at each stair and bearing herself with admirable
courage.

As Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus descended to the basement after the
completion of their unusual task, the latter said solemnly,--

“However should master have come to know as the missis wouldn’t be able
to put foot to floor this night, Mr. Ferdinand? However?”

“I cannot answer you, Gustavus,” Mr. Ferdinand replied, shaking his
broad and globe-like head, round whose bald cupola the jet-black hair
was brushed in two half moons decorated with a renowned “butler’s own
special pomade.”

“Well, Mr. Ferdinand,” rejoined Gustavus, stretching out one hand for
pale ale, the other for _French Revolution_, “I don’t like it.”

“Why, Gustavus?” inquired Mr. Ferdinand, preparing to resume his
discussion with the accommodating upper housemaid. “Why?”

“Because it seems strange like, Mr. Ferdinand,” said Gustavus, lifting
the glass to his lips, the _French Revolution_ to his eyes.

“It do seem strange, Gustavus,” answered Mr. Ferdinand, leaving out the
“like” in a cultivated manner. “It do.”

In the drawing-room the Prophet stood, with clenched hands, gazing
through the telescope at Mercury and Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn and
Venus, while, on the second floor, Mrs. Fancy Quinglet, Mrs. Merillia’s
devoted, but occasionally disconcerting, maid, swathed her mistress’s
ankle in bandages previously steeped in cold water and in vinegar.



CHAPTER II

MALKIEL THE SECOND IS BETRAYED BY THE YOUNG LIBRARIAN

Mrs. Merillia’s accident made a very deep impression upon the Prophet’s
mind. He thought it over carefully, and desired to discuss it in all its
bearings with Mrs. Fancy Quinglet, who had been his confidante for full
thirty years. Mrs. Fancy--who had not been married--was no longer a
pretty girl. Indeed it was possible that she had never, even in her
heyday, been otherwise than moderately plain. Now, at the age of
fifty-one and a half, she was a faithful creature with a thin,
pendulous nose, a pale, hysteric eye, a tendency to cold in the head
and chilblains in the autumn of the year, and a somewhat incoherent and
occasionally frenzied turn of mind. Argument could never at any time
have had much effect upon her nature, and as she grew towards maturity
its power over her most markedly decreased. This fact was recognised
by everybody, last of all by Mrs. Merillia, who was at length fully
convinced of the existence of certain depths in her maid’s peculiar
character by the following circumstance.

Mrs. Merillia had a bandy-legged dachshund called Beau, whose name was
for many years often affectionately, and quite correctly, pronounced
by Fancy Quinglet. One day, however, she chanced to see it written upon
paper--B.E.A.U.

“Whatever does that mean, ma’am?” she asked of Mrs. Merillia.

“Why, Beau, of course, Beau--the dog. What should it mean?”

“Bow?” cried Fancy. “Is he writ so?”

“Of course, silly girl. It is written Beau, and you can pronounce it as
you would pronounce a bow of ribbon.”

Fancy said no more, though it was easy to see that she was much shaken
by this circumstance. But she could never afterwards be induced to utter
her favourite’s name. She was physically unable to speak the word so
strangely, so almost impiously, spelt. This she declared with tears.
Persuasion and argument were unavailing. Henceforth Beau was always
called by her “the dog,” and it was obvious that, had she been led
out to the stake, she must have burned rather than save herself by a
pronouncing of the combination of letters by which she had been so long
deceived.

Such an inflexible mind had Mrs. Fancy, to whom the Prophet now applied
himself with gestures almost Sinaic.

She was dressed in mouse-coloured grenadine, and was seated in a small
chamber opening out of Mrs. Merillia’s bedroom, engaged in what she
called “plain tatting.”

“Fancy,” said the Prophet, entering and closing the door carefully, “you
know me well.”

“From the bottle, sir,” she answered, darting the bone implements in and
out.

“Have you ever thought--has it ever occurred to you--”

“I can’t say it has, sir,” Fancy replied, with the weak decision
peculiar to her.

She was ever prone thus to answer questions before they were fully
asked, or could be properly understood by her, and from such premature
decisions as she hastened to give she could never afterwards be
persuaded to retreat. Knowing this the Prophet said rapidly,--

“Fancy, if a man finds out that he is a prophet what ought he to do?”

The lady’s-maid rattled her bones.

“Let it alone, sir,” she answered. “Let it alone, Master Hennessey.”

“Well, but what d’you mean by that?”

“What I say sir. I can’t speak different, nor mean other.”

“But can’t you explain, Fancy?”

“Oh, Master Hennessey, the lives that have been wrecked, the homes that
have been broke up by explainings!”

Her eye seemed suddenly lit from within by some fever of sad, worldly
knowledge.

“Well, but--” the Prophet began.

“I know it, Master Hennessey, and I can’t know other.”

She sighed, and her gaze became fixed like that of a typhoid patient in
a dream.

“Them that knows other let them declare it,” she ejaculated. “I
say again, as I did afore--the homes that have been broken up by
explainings!”

She tatted. The Prophet bowed before her decision and left the apartment
feeling rather hungry. Fancy Quinglet’s crumbs were not always crumbs
of comfort. He resolved to apply again to Mr. Malkiel, and this time to
make the application in person. But before he did so he thought it
right to tell Mrs. Merillia, who was still steeped in bandages, of his
intention. He therefore went straight to her room from Fancy Quinglet’s.
Mrs. Merillia was lying upon a couch reading a Russian novel. A cup of
tea stood beside her upon a table near a bowl of red and yellow tulips,
a canary was singing in its cage amid a shower of bird-seed, and “the
dog” lay stretched before the blazing fire upon a milk-white rug, over
which a pale ray of winter sunshine fell. As the Prophet came in Mrs.
Merillia glanced up.

“Hennessey,” she said, “you are growin’ to look like Lord Brandling,
when he combined the Premiership with the Foreign Office and we had that
dreadful complication with Iceland. My dear boy, you are corrugated with
thought and care. What is the matter? My ankle is much better. You
need not be anxious about me. Has Venus been playing you another jade’s
trick?”

The Prophet sat down and stroked Beau’s sable back with his forefinger.

“I have scarcely looked at Venus since you were injured, grannie,” he
answered. “I have scarcely dared to.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Since the days of Adonis she has always had a
dangerous influence on young men. If you want to look at anybody, look
at that pretty, sensible cousin of Robert Green’s.”

“Lady Enid. Yes, she is sensible. I believe she is in Hampshire staying
with the Churchmores.”

He looked calmer for a moment, but the corrugated expression quickly
returned.

“Grannie,” he said, “I think it my duty to make an effort to see Mr.
Malkiel.”

“The _Almanac_ man. What do you want with him?”

She tapped one of her small, mittened hands over the other and slightly
twisted her long and pointed nose.

“I want to learn his views on this strange faculty of prophecy. Has it
ever occurred to you that among all our immense acquaintance we don’t
number a single prophet?”

“One can’t know everybody, Hennessey. And I believe that prophets always
spring from the lower classes. The line must be drawn somewhere even in
these days.”

“Why not draw it at millionaires then?”

“I should like to. Somethin’ will have to be done. If the nobodies
continue to go everywhere the very few somebodies that are left will
soon go nowhere.

“Perhaps they do go nowhere. Perhaps that is why we have never met a
prophet.”

Mrs. Merillia looked up sharply, with her wide, cheerful mouth set awry
in a shrewd smile that seemed to say “So ho!” She recognised a strange,
new note of profound, though not arrogant, self-respect in her grandson.

“Prophets,” Hennessey added more gently, “have always been inclined to
dwell in the wilderness.”

“But where can you find a wilderness in these days?” asked Mrs.
Merillia, still smiling. “Even Hammersmith is becomin’ quite a
fashionable neighbourhood. And you say that the _Almanac_ man lives in
Shaftesbury Avenue, only half a minute from Piccadilly Circus.”

“My dear grannie,” he corrected her, “I said he received letters there.
I don’t know where he lives.”

“How are you goin’ to find him then?”

“I shall call this afternoon at eleven hundred Z.”

“To see if he has run in for a postcard! And what sort of person do you
expect him to be?”

“Something quite out of the common.”

Mrs. Merillia screwed up her eyes doubtfully.

“I hope you won’t be disappointed. How many editions have there been of
the _Almanac_?”

“Seventy yearly editions.”

“Then Malkiel must be a very old man.”

“But this Mr. Malkiel is Malkiel the Second.”

“One of a dynasty! That alters the case. Perhaps he’s a young man about
town. There are young men about town, I believe, who have addresses
at clubs and libraries, and sleep on doorsteps, or in the Park. Well,
Hennessey, I see you are getting fidgety. You had better be off. Buy me
some roses for my room on your way home. I’m expectin’ someone to have
tea with the poor victim of prophecy this afternoon.”

The Prophet kissed his grandmother, put on his overcoat and stepped into
the square.

It was a bright, frosty, genial day, and he resolved to walk to
Jellybrand’s Library.

London was looking quite light-hearted in the dry, cold air, which set a
bloom even upon the cheeks of the ambassadors who were about, and caused
the butcher boys to appear like peonies. The crossing-sweepers swept
nothing vigorously, and were rewarded with showers of pence from
pedestrians delighting in the absence of mud. Crystal as some garden
of an eternal city seemed the green Park, wrapped in its frosty mantle
embroidered with sunbeams. Even the drivers of the “growlers” were
moderately cheerful--a very rare occurrence--and the blind man of
Piccadilly smiled as he roared along the highway, striking the feet of
the charitable with the wand which was the emblem of his profession.

Only the Prophet was solemn on this delicious afternoon. People looked
at him and thought that he must surely be the richest man of the town.
His face was so sad.

He wound across the whirlpool, where the green image postures to the
human streams that riot below it. He saw beneath their rooves of ostrich
feathers the girls shake their long earrings above sweet violets and
roses fainting with desire to be bought by country cousins.

“Where is eleven hundred Z, if you please?” he asked the Shaftesbury
Avenue policeman.

“Jellybrand’s sir? On the right between the cream shop and the engine
warehouse, just opposite the place where they sell parrots, after that
there patent medicine depot.”

The Prophet bowed, thinking of the blessings of knowledge. In a moment
he stood before the library and glanced at its dirty window. He saw
several letters lying against the glass. One was addressed to “Miss
Minerva Partridge.” He stepped in, wondering what she was like.

Jellybrand’s Library was a small, square room containing a letter rack,
a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter. It was fitted up with
letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head. The
last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with
one hand, and throwing a box of J nibs into the air and catching it with
the other. Upon the Prophet’s entrance this youth obligingly dropped the
nibs accidentally upon the floor, and arranged his sharp and anemic
face in an expression of consumptive inquiry. The Prophet approached the
counter softly, and allowed the sable with which his coat was trimmed to
rest against it.

“Did a boy messenger call here a few days ago with a note for Mr.
Malkiel?” he asked.

The young librarian assumed an attitude of vital suspicion and the
expression of a lynx.

“For Malkiel the Second, sir?” he replied in a piercing soprano voice.

“Yes,” said the Prophet. “A boy messenger with four medals. There was
a crest on the envelope--an elephant rampant surrounded by a swarm of
bees.”

A dogged look of combined terror and resolution overspread the young
librarian’s countenance.

“There’s been no elephant and no swarm of bees in here,” he said with
trembling curtness.

“You are sure you would have remembered the circumstance if there had
been?”

“Rather! What do you think? We don’t allow things of them sort in here,
I can tell you.”

The Prophet drew out half a sovereign, upon which a ray of sunshine
immediately fell as if in benediction.

“Does Mr. Malkiel--?

“Malkiel the Second,” interrupted the young librarian, whose pinkish
eyes winked at the illumination of the gold.

“Malkiel the Second ever call here--in person?”

“In person?” said the young librarian, very suspiciously.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know about in person. He calls here.”

“Ah,” said the Prophet, recognising in the youth a literary sense that
instinctively rejected superfluity. “He does call. May I ask when?”

“When he chooses,” said the young librarian, and he winked again.

“Does he choose often?”

“He’s got his day, like Miss Partridge and lots of ‘em.”

“I see. Is his day--by chance--a Thursday?”

It was a Thursday afternoon.

“I don’t know about by chance,” rejoined the young librarian, his
literary sense again coming into play. “But it’s--”

At this moment the library door opened, and a tall, thin, middle-aged
man walked in sideways with his feet very much turned out to right and
left of him.

“Any letters, Frederick Smith?” he said in a hollow voice, on reaching
the counter.

“Two, Mr. Sagittarius, I believe,” replied the young librarian, moving
with respectful celerity towards the letter rack.

The Prophet started and looked eagerly at the newcomer. His eyes rested
upon an individual whose face was comic in outline with a serious
expression, and whose form suggested tragic farce dressed to represent
commonplace, as seen at Margate and elsewhere. A top hat, a spotted
collar, a pink shirt, a white satin tie, a chocolate brown frock coat,
brown trousers and boots, and a black overcoat thrown open from top to
bottom--these appurtenances, clerkly in their adherence to a certain
convention, could not wholly disguise the emotional expression that
seems sometimes to lurk in shape. The lines of Mr. Sagittarius defied
their clothing. His shoulders gave the lie to the chocolate brown frock
coat. His legs breathed defiance to the trousers that sheathed them.
One could, in fancy, see the former shrugged in all the abandonment
of third-act despair, behold the latter darting wildly for the cover
afforded by a copper, a cupboard, or any other friendly refuge of those
poor victims of ludicrous and terrific circumstance who are so sorely
smitten and afflicted upon the funny stage.

Mr. Sagittarius, in fine, seemed a man dressed in a mask that was unable
to deceive. His lean face was almost absurd in its irregularity, its
high cheek-bones and deep depressions, its sharp nose, extensive mouth
and nervous chin. But the pale blue eyes that were its soul shone
plaintively beneath their shaggy, blonde eyebrows, and even an
application of pomade almost hysterically lavish could not entirely
conceal the curling gloom of the heavy, matted hair.

“Yes, two, Mr. Sagittarius,” cried the young librarian, approaching from
the rack.

The gentleman held out a hand covered with a yellow dogskin glove.

“Thank you, Frederick Smith,” he said.

And he turned to leave the building. But the Prophet intercepted him.

“Excuse me,” said the Prophet. “I beg your pardon, but--but--” he looked
at the young librarian and accidentally let the half sovereign fall on
the counter. It gave the true ring. “I believe I heard you mention--let
drop the name Mr. Sagittarius.”

“I don’t know about let drop,” began the youth in his usual revising
manner. “But I--”

At this point the gentleman in question began to move rather hastily
sideways towards the door. The Prophet followed him up and got before
him near the letter rack, while the young librarian retrieved the half
sovereign and bit it with his teeth.

“I really beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, while Mr. Sagittarius
stood still in the violent attitude of one determined to dodge so long
as he has breath. “I am not at all in the habit of”--Mr. Sagittarius
dodged--“of intruding upon strangers--” Mr. Sagittarius dodged again
with such extraordinary abruptness and determination that he nearly
caused the young librarian to swallow the Prophet’s golden bribe. “I see
you don’t believe me,” the Prophet continued, flushing pink but still
holding his ground, and indeed trying to turn Mr. Sagittarius’s flank by
a strategic movement of almost military precision. “I see that plainly,
but--” Mr. Sagittarius ducked to the left, endeavouring to cover the
manoeuvre by an almost simultaneous and extremely passionate feint
towards the Prophet’s centre, which was immediately withdrawn in good
order--“but your remark--arkable name, Saag--itt-ittarius, suggested to
me that you are rea-eally the man I seek.”

He had now got Mr. Sagittarius into a very awkward bit of country
between the letter P. in the rack, under which reposed Miss Partridge’s
correspondence, and the newspaper bureau, with the counter immediately
on his rear, and taking advantage of this circumstance, he continued
rapidly:

“May I ask whether you recently received a letter--one
moment!--envelope--crest--I only want to know if you have
received--only--an elephant rampant--swarm of--of bees--”

“I have never received a rampant elephant and a swarm of bees,” cried
Mr. Sagittarius with every symptom of unbridled terror. “Help, Frederick
Smith!”

“Right you are, Malkiel the Second!” cried the young librarian, hastily
pocketing the half sovereign and making a feverish lunge at nothing in
particular over the counter. “Right you are!”

“Malkiel the Second!” ejaculated the Prophet. “Then you are the man I
seek.”

Malkiel the Second--for it was indeed he--sank back against the counter
in an attitude of abandoned prostration that would have made a fortune
of a comic actor.

“I trusted to Jellybrand’s,” he said, drawing from his tail pocket a
white handkerchief covered with a pattern of pink storks in flight. “I
trusted to Jellybrand’s and Jellybrand’s has betrayed me. Oh, Frederick
Smith!”

He put a stork to each eye. The young librarian assumed an injured air.

“It was the agitation did it, Mr. Sagittarius,” he said. “If you hadn’t
a-kep’ dodging I shouldn’t have lost my memory.”

And he looked avariciously at the Prophet, who smiled at him
reassuringly and drew forth a card case.

“I feel sure, Mr. Sag--Malkiel--”

“Malkiel the Second, sir, is my name if it is betrayed by Jellybrand’s,”
 said that gentleman with sudden dignity. “There is no need of any
mister.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, handing his card. “That is my
name and address. May I beg you to forgive my apparent anxiety to make
your acquaintance, and implore you to grant me a few moments of private
conversation on a matter of the utmost importance?”

Malkiel the Second read the card.

“Berkeley Square,” he said. “_The_ Berkeley Square?”

“Exactly, the Berkeley Square,” said the Prophet, modestly.

“Not the one at Brixton Rise behind the Kimmins’s mews?” said Malkiel
the Second, suspiciously.

“Certainly not. The one near Grosvenor Square.”

“That’s better,” said Malkiel, upon whom the Prophet’s address had
evidently made a good impression. “Kimmins’s is no class at all. Had you
come from there, I--but what may you want with me?”

The Prophet glanced significantly at the young librarian, who was
leaning upon the counter in a tense, keyhole position, with his private
ear turned somewhat ostentatiously towards the two speakers.

“I can tell you in an inner room,” he murmured, in his most ingratiating
manner.

“You’re certain it’s not Berkeley Square behind Kimmins’s?” said
Malkiel, with a last flicker of suspicion.

“Quite certain--quite.”

“Frederick Smith,” said Malkiel the Second, “since Jellybrand’s
has betrayed me Jellybrand’s must abide the consequences. Show this
gentleman and me to the parlour.”

“Right, Mr. Sagittarius,” replied the young librarian whose memory had
again become excellent. “But Miss Minerva is coming at three-thirty.”

“Has she bespoke the parlour, Frederick Smith?”

“Yes, Mr. Sagittarius.”

“Then she can’t have it. That’s all. Jellybrand’s must abide the full
consequences of my betrayal. Go forward, Frederick Smith.”

The young librarian went forward towards a door of deal and ground glass
which he threw open with some ceremony.

“The parlour, gents,” he said.

“After you, sir, after you,” said Malkiel the Second, making a side step
and bringing his feet together in the first position.

“No, no,” rejoined the Prophet, gently drawing the sage to the front,
and inserting him into the parlour in such an ingenious manner that he
did not perceive the journey of a second half sovereign from the person
of the Prophet to that of the young librarian, who thereafter closed the
deal and ground glass door, and returned to the counter, whistling in an
absent-minded manner, “I’m a Happy Millionaire from Colorado.”



CHAPTER III

THE TWO PROPHETS PARTAKE OF “CREAMING FOAM.”

“And now, sir,” said Malkiel the Second, pointing to a couple of cane
chairs which, with the table, endeavoured, rather unsuccessfully, to
furnish forth the parlour at Jellybrand’s, “now sir, what do you want
with me?”

As he spoke he threw his black overcoat wide open, seated himself on
the edge of one of the chairs in a dignified attitude, and crossed his
feet--which were not innocent of spats--one over the other.

The Prophet was resolved to dare all, and he, therefore, answered
boldly,--

“Malkiel the Second, I wish to speak to you as one prophet to another.”

At this remark Malkiel started violently, and darted a searching glance
from beneath his blonde eyebrows at Hennessey.

“Do you live in the Berkeley Square, sir,” he said, “and claim to be a
prophet?”

“I do,” said Hennessey, with modest determination.

Malkiel smiled, a long and wreathed smile that was full of luscious
melancholy and tragic sweetness.

“The assumption seems rather ridiculous--forgive me,” he exclaimed. “The
Berkeley Square! Whatever would Madame say?”

“Madame?” said the Prophet, inquiringly.

“Madame Malkiel, or Madame Sagittarius, as she always passes.”

“Your wife?”

“My honoured lady,” said Malkiel, with pride. “More to me almost than
any lunar guide or starry monitor. What, oh, what would she say to a
prophet from the Berkeley Square?”

He burst into hollow laughter, shaking upon the cane chair till its very
foundations seemed threatened as by an earthquake, and was obliged to
apply the flight of storks to his eyes before he could in any degree
recover his equanimity. At length he glanced up with tears rolling down
his cheeks.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “But what can you know of prophecy in such a
fashionable neighbourhood, close to Grosvenor Square and within sight,
as one may say, of Piccadilly? Oh, dear, oh, dear!”

“But really,” said the Prophet, who had flushed red, but who still spoke
with pleasant mildness, “what influence can neighbourhood have upon such
a superterrestrial matter?”

“Did Isaiah reside in the Berkeley Square, sir?”

“I fancy not. Still--”

“I fancy not, too,” rejoined Malkiel. “Nor Bernard Wilkins either,
or any prophet that ever I heard of. Why, even Jesse Jones lives off
Perkin’s Road, Wandsworth Common, though he does keep a sitting-room in
Berners Street just to see his clients in, and he is a very low-class
person, even for a prophet. No, no, sir, Madame is quite right. She
married me despite the damning--yes, I say, sir, the damning fact that I
was a prophet--” here Malkiel the Second brought down one of the dogskin
gloves with violence upon the rickety parlour table--“but before ever we
went to the Registrar’s she made me take a solemn oath. What was it, do
you say?”

“Yes, I do,” said Hennessey, leaning forward and gazing into Malkiel’s
long and excited face round which the heavy mat of pomaded hair
vibrated.

“It was this, sir--to mix with no prophets so long as we both should
live. Prophets, she truly said, are low-class, even dirty, persons.
Their parties, their ‘at homes’ are shoddy. They live in fourth-rate
neighbourhoods. They burn gas and sit on horsehair. Only in rare cases
do they have any bathroom in their houses. Their influence would be bad
for the children when they begin to grow up. How could Corona make her
_debut_”--Malkiel pronounced it debbew--“in prophetic circles? How could
she come out in Drakeman’s Villas, Tooting, or dance with such young
fellers as frequent Hagglin’s Buildings, Clapham Rise? How could she do
it, sir?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” gasped the Prophet.

“Nor I, sir, nor I,” continued Malkiel, with unabated fervour. “And it’s
the same with Capricornus. My boy shall not be thrown in with prophets.
Did Malkiel the First start the _Almanac_ for that? Did he foster
it till it went from the poor servant girl’s attic into the gilded
apartments of the aristocracy and lay even upon Royal tables for that?
Did he, I say?”

“I haven’t an idea,” said the Prophet.

“He did not, sir. And I--I myself”--he arranged the diamond pin in his
white satin tie with an almost imperial gesture--“have not followed upon
the lines he laid down without imbibing, as I may truly say, the lofty
spirit that guided him, the lofty social spirit, as Madame calls it.
There have been other prophets, I know. There are other prophets. I
do not attempt to deny it. But where else than here, sir”--the dogskin
glove lay upon the breast of the chocolate brown frock coat--“where
else than here will you find a prophet who hides his identity beneath an
_alias_, who remains, as Madame always says, _perdew_, and who conducts
his profession on honourable and business-like lines? Am I dressed like
a prophet?” He suddenly brought his doubled fist down upon the Prophet’s
knee.

“No,” cried Hennessey. “Certainly not!”

“Why, sir, how can I be when I tell you that Merriman & Saxster of
Regent Street are my tailors, and have been since my first pair of
trouserings? Do I bear myself prophetically? I think you will agree
that I do not when you know that I am frequently mistaken for an outside
broker--yes, sir, and that this has even happened upon the pier at
Margate. You have seen my demeanour at Jellybrand’s. You saw me come
into the library. You saw my manner with Frederick Smith. Was it
assuming? Did I lord it over the lad?”

“Certainly not.”

“No. I might have been anybody, any ordinary person living in Grosvenor
Place, or, like yourself, in the Berkeley Square. And so it ever is.
Other prophets there are--possibly men of a certain ability even in that
direction--but there is only one Malkiel, only one who attends strictly
to business, who draws a good income from the stars, sir, and satisfies
the public month in, month out, without making a fuss about it. Wait a
few years, sir, only wait!”

“Certainly,” said the Prophet. “I will.”

“Wait till the children are grown up. Wait till Capricornus has got his
Latin by heart and gone to Oxford. Then, and only then, you will know
whether Malkiel the Second is the exception to the rule of prophets.
Yes, and Madame shall know it, too. She trusted me, sir, as only a woman
can. She knew I was a prophet and had a prophet for a father before me.
And yet she trusted me. It was a daring thing to do. Many would call it
foolhardy. Wouldn’t they, sir?”

The dogskin glove was raised. The Prophet hastened to reply,--

“I daresay they would.”

“But she was not afraid, and she shall have her reward. Corona shall
never set foot in Drakeman’s Villas, nor breathe the air of Hagglin’s. I
must have a glass of water, I must, sir, indeed.”

He gasped heavily and was about to rise, when the Prophet said:

“Join me in a glass of wine.”

“I should be delighted,” Malkiel answered. “Delighted, I’m sure, but I
doubt whether Jellybrand’s--”

“Could not Frederick Smith go out and fetch us a--a pint bottle of
champagne?” said the Prophet, playing a desperate card in the prophetic
game.

An expression almost of joviality overspread the tragic farce of
Malkiel’s appearance.

“We’ll see,” he answered, opening the deal door. “Frederick Smith!”

“Here, Mr. Sagittarius,” cried the soprano voice of the young librarian.

“Can you leave the library for a moment, Frederick Smith?”

The Prophet held up a sovereign over Malkiel the Second’s narrow
shoulder.

“Yes, Mr. Sagittarius, for half a mo!”

“Ah! Where is the nearest champagne, Frederick Smith?”

“The nearest--”

“Champagne, I said, Frederick Smith.”

“I daresay I could get a dozen at Gillow’s next the rabbit shop,”
 replied the young librarian, thoughtfully.

The Prophet shuddered to the depths of his being, but he was now
embarked upon his enterprise and must crowd all sail.

“Go to Gillow’s,” he exclaimed, with an assumption of feverish
geniality, “and bring back a couple of rabbits--I mean bottles. They
must be dry. You understand?”

The young librarian looked out of the window.

“Oh, I’ll manage that, sir. It ain’t raining,” he replied carelessly.

The Prophet stifled a cry of horror as he pressed the sovereign into the
young librarian’s hand.

“You can keep the change,” he whispered, adding in a tremulous voice,
“Tell me--tell me frankly--do you think in your own mind that there will
be any?”

“I don’t know about in my own mind,” rejoined the young librarian,
drawing a tweed cap from some hidden recess beneath the counter. “But if
you only want two bottles I expect there’ll be ten bob over.”

The Prophet turned as pale as ashes and had some difficulty in
sustaining himself to the parlour, where he and Malkiel the Second sat
down in silence to await the young librarian’s return. Frederick Smith
came back in about five minutes, with an ostentatious-looking bottle
smothered in gold leaf under each arm.

“There was four shillings apiece to pay, sir,” he remarked to the
Prophet as he placed them upon the table. “I got the ‘our own make’
brand with the ‘creaming foam’ upon the corks.”

The Prophet bent his head. He was quite unable to speak, but he signed
to the young librarian to open one of the bottles and pour its contents
into the two tumblers of thick and rather dusty glass that Jellybrand’s
kept for its moments of conviviality. Malkiel the Second lifted the
goblet to the window and eyed the beaded nectar with an air of almost
rakish anticipation.

“Ready, sir?” he said, turning to the Prophet, who, with a trembling
hand, followed his example.

“Quite--ready,” said the Prophet, shutting his eyes.

“Then,” rejoined Malkiel the Second in a formal voice, “here’s luck!”

He held the tumbler to his lips, waiting for the Prophet’s reply to give
the signal for a unanimous swallowing of the priceless wine.

“Luck,” echoed the Prophet in a faltering voice.

As he gradually recovered his faculties, he heard Malkiel the Second
say, with an almost debauched accent,--

“That puts heart into a man. I shall give Gillows an order. Leave us,
Frederick Smith, and remember that Miss Minerva is on no account to be
let in here till this gentleman and I have finished the second bottle.”

The Prophet could not resist a wild movement of protest, which was
apparently taken by the young librarian as a passionate gesture of
dismissal. For he left the room rapidly and closed the door with
decision behind him.

“And now, sir, I am at your service,” said Malkiel the Second,
courteously. “Let me pour you another glass of wine.”

The Prophet assented mechanically. It seemed strange to have to die
so young, and with so many plans unfulfilled, but he felt that it was
useless to struggle against destiny and he drank again. Then he heard a
voice say,--

“And now, sir, I am all attention.”

He looked up. He saw the parlour, the ground glass of the door, the
tumblers and bottles on the table, the sharp features and strained,
farcical eyes of Malkiel framed in the matted, curling hair. Then all
was not over yet. There was something still in store for him. He sat up,
pushed the creaming four-shilling foam out of his sight, turned to his
interlocutor, and with a great effort collected himself.

“I want to consult you,” he began, “about my strange powers.”

Malkiel smiled with easy irony.

“Strange powers in Berkeley Square!” he ejaculated. “The Berkeley
Square! But go on, sir. What are they?”

“Having been led to study the stars,” continued the Prophet with more
composure and growing earnestness, “I felt myself moved to make a
prophecy.”

“Weather forecast, I suppose,” remarked Malkiel, laconically.

“How did you know that?”

“The easiest kind, sir, the number one beginner’s prophecy. Capricornus
used to tell Madame what the weather’d be as soon as he could talk. But
go on, sir, go on, I beg.”

The Prophet began to feel rather less like Isaiah, but he continued,
with some determination,--

“If that had been all, I daresay I should have thought very little of
the matter.”

“No, you wouldn’t sir. Who thinks their first baby a little one? Can you
tell me that?”

The Prophet considered the question for a moment. Then he answered,--

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Perhaps so,” rejoined Malkiel, indulgently. “Well, sir, what was your
next attempt--in the Berkeley Square?”

The Prophet’s sensitive nature winced under the obvious irony of
the interrogation, but either the “creaming foam” had rendered him
desperate, or he was to some extent steeled against the satire by the
awful self-respect which had invaded him since Mrs. Merillia’s accident.
In any case he answered firmly,--

“Malkiel the Second, in Berkeley Square I had a relation--an honoured
grandmother.”

“You’ve the better of me there, sir. My parents and Madame’s are all in
Brompton Cemetery. Well, sir, you’d got an honoured grandmother in the
Berkeley Square. What of it?”

“She was naturally elderly.”

“And you predicted her death and she passed over. Very natural too, sir.
The number two beginner’s prophecy. Why, Corona--”

But at this point the Prophet broke in.

“Excuse me,” he said in a scandalised voice, “excuse me, Malkiel the
Second, she did nothing of the kind. Whatever my faults may be--and they
are many, I am aware--I--I--”

He was greatly moved.

“Take another sup of wine, sir. You need it,” said Malkiel.

The Prophet mechanically drank once more, grasping the edge of the table
for support in the endurance of the four-bob ecstasy.

“You prophesied it and she didn’t pass over, sir,” continued Malkiel,
with unaffected sympathy. “I understand the blow. It’s cruel hard when a
prophecy goes wrong. Why, even Madame--”

But at this point the Prophet broke in.

“You are mistaken,” he cried. “Utterly mistaken.”

Malkiel the Second drew himself up with dignity.

“In that case I will say no more,” he remarked, pursing up his lengthy
mouth and assuming a cast-iron attitude.

The Prophet perceived his mistake.

“Forgive me,” he exclaimed. “It is my fault.”

“Oh, no, sir. Not at all,” rejoined Malkiel, with icy formality. “Pray
let the fault be mine.”

“I will not indeed. But let me explain. My beloved grandmother still
lives, although I cast her horoscope and--”

“Indeed! very remarkable!”

“I mean--not although--but I thought I would cast her horoscope. And I
did so.”

“In the square?” asked Malkiel, with quiet, but piercing, irony.

“Yes,” said the Prophet, with sudden heat. “Why not?”

Malkiel smiled with an almost paternal pity, as of a thoughtful father
gazing upon the quaint and inappropriate antics of his vacant child.

“Why not, sir--if you prefer it?” he rejoined. “Pray proceed.”

The Prophet’s face was flushed, either by the “creaming foam,” or by
irritation, or by both.

“Surely,” he began, in a choking voice, “surely the stars are the
same whether they are looked at from Berkeley Square or from--from--or
from”--he sought passionately for a violent contrast--“from Newington
Butts,” he concluded triumphantly.

“I have not the pleasure to have ever observed my guides from the
neighbourhood of the Butts,” said Malkiel, serenely. “But pray
proceed, sir. I am all attention. You cast your honoured grandmother’s
horoscope--in the Berkeley Square.”

The Prophet seized his glass, but some remnants of his tattered
self-control still clung to him, and he put it down without seeking
further madness from its contents.

“I did,” he said firmly, even obstinately. “And I discovered--I say
discovered that she was going to have an accident while on an evening
expedition--or jaunt as you might perhaps prefer to call it.”

“I should certainly call it so--in the case of a lady who was an
honoured grandmother,” said Malkiel the Second in assent.

“Well, Malkiel the Second,” continued the Prophet, recovering his
composure as he approached his _coup_, “my grandmother did have an
accident, as I foretold.”

“Did she have it in the square, sir?” asked Malkiel.

“And what if she did?” cried the Prophet with considerable testiness.

He was beginning to conceive a perfect hatred of the admirable
neighbourhood, which he had loved so well.

“I merely ask for information, sir.”

“The accident did take place in the square certainly, and on the very
night for which I predicted it.”

Malkiel the Second looked very thoughtful, even morose. He poured out
another glass of champagne, drank it slowly in sips, and when the glass
was empty ran the forefinger of his right hand slowly round and round
its edge.

“Can Madame be wrong?” he ejaculated at length, in a muffled voice of
meditation. “Can Madame be wrong?”

The Prophet gazed at him with profound curiosity, fascinated by the
circular movement of the yellow dogskin finger, and by the inward
murmur--so acutely mental--that accompanied it.

“Madame?” whispered the Prophet, drawing his cane chair noiselessly
forward.

“Ah!” rejoined Malkiel, gazing upon him with an eye whose pupil seemed
suddenly dilated to a most preternatural size. “Can she have been wrong
all these many years?”

“What--what about?” murmured the Prophet.

Malkiel the Second leaned his matted head in his hands and replied, as
if to himself,--

“Can it be that a prophet should live in Berkeley Square--not
Kimmins’s”--here he raised his head, and raked his companion with a
glance that was almost fierce in its fervour of inquiry--“not Kimmins’s
but--the Berkeley Square?”



CHAPTER IV

THE SECRET WATERS OF THE RIVER MOUSE

To this question the Prophet could offer no answer other than a bodily
one. He silently presented himself to the gaze of Malkiel, instinctively
squaring his shoulders, opening out his chest, and expanding his
nostrils in an effort to fill as large a space in the atmosphere of
the parlour as possible. And Malkiel continued to regard him with the
staring eyes of one whose mind is seething with strange, upheaving
thoughts and alarming apprehensions. Mutely the Prophet swelled and
mutely Malkiel observed him swell, till a point was reached from which
further progress--at least on the Prophet’s part--was impossible. The
Prophet was now as big as the structure of his frame permitted him to
be, and apparently Malkiel realised the fact, for he suddenly dropped
his eyes and exclaimed,--

“This matter must be threshed out thoroughly, Madame herself would wish
it so.”

He paused, drew his chair nearer to the Prophet’s, took off a glove and
continued,--

“Sir, you may be a prophet. You may have prophesied correctly in the
Berkeley Square. But if you are, and if you have, remember this--that
you have proved the self-sacrifice, the privation, the denial, the
subterfuge, the _mask_, and the position of Sagittarius Lodge in its own
grounds beside the River Mouse at Crampton St. Peter, N.--N., I said,
sir--totally and entirely unnecessary. I will go further, sir, and I
will say more. You have not only done that. You have also proved the
sacred instinct of a woman, a respectable married woman--such as we
must all reverence--false and deceived. Remember this, sir, remember all
this, then search yourself thoroughly and say whether what you have told
me is strictly true.”

“I assure you--” began the Prophet, hastily.

But Malkiel sternly interrupted him.

“Search yourself, sir, I beg!” he cried.

“But upon my honour--”

“Hush, sir, hush! I beg, nay, I insist, that you search yourself
thoroughly before you answer this momentous question.”

The Prophet felt rather disposed to ask whether Malkiel expected him to
examine his pockets and turn out his boots. However, he sat still while
Malkiel drew out a large gold watch, held it solemnly in his hand for a
couple of minutes and then returned it to the waistcoat.

“Now, sir,” he said.

“I assure you,” said the Prophet, “on my honour that all I have said is
strictly true.”

“And took place in the Berkeley Square?”

“And took place in the Berkeley Square.”

Malkiel nodded morosely.

“It may have been chance,” he said. “A weather forecast and an honoured
grandmother may have been mere luck. Still it looks bad--very bad.”

He sighed heavily, and seemed about to fall into a mournful reverie when
the Prophet cried sharply,--

“Explain yourself, Malkiel the Second. You owe it to me to explain
yourself. Why should my strange gift--”

“If you have it, sir,” interrupted Malkiel, quickly.

“If I have it, very well--affect you? Why should it render the
self-sacrifice and--and the position of--of Sagittarius Lodge on the
river--the river--what river did you say--?”

“The River Mouse,” rejoined Malkiel in a muffled voice, and shaking his
head sadly.

“Exactly--on the River Mouse at Crompton--”

“Crampton.”

“Crampton St. Peter total--”

“N.!”

“What?”

“Crampton St. Peter. N. That is the point.”

“Very well--Crampton St. Peteren, totally and entirely unnecessary?”

“You desire my revelation, sir? You desire to enter into the bosom of
a family that hitherto has dwelt apart, has lain as I may say _perdew_
beside the secret waters of the River Mouse? Is it indeed so?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” cried the Prophet, hastily. “I would not for
the world intrude upon--”

“Those hallowed precincts! Well, perhaps you have the right.
Jellybrand’s has betrayed me to you. You know my name, my profession.
Why should you not know more? Perhaps it is better so.”

With the sudden energy of a man who is reckless of fate he seized his
goblet, poured into it at least a shilling’s worth of “creaming foam,”
 drained it to the dregs and, shaking back his matted hair with a leonine
movement of the head, exclaimed,--

“Malkiel the First, who founded the _Almanac_, lay _perdew_ all his
life.”

“Beside the secret waters of the River Mouse?” the Prophet could not
help interposing.

“No, sir. He would never have gone so far as that. But he lived and died
in Susan Road beside the gas-works. He was a great man.”

“I’m sure he was,” said the Prophet, heartily.

“He wished me to live and die there too,” said Malkiel. “But there are
limits, sir, even to the forbearance of women. Madame was affected,
painfully affected, by the gas, sir. It stank in her nostrils--to use
a figure. And then there was another drawback that she could not get
over.”

“Indeed!”

“The sweeps, sir.”

“I beg your pardon!” said the Prophet.

“I said--the sweeps.”

“I heard you--well?”

“Being the only people that were not, in the whole road, made for
loneliness, sir.”

The Prophet was entirely _bouleverse_.

“I’m afraid I’m very stupid, but really I--” he began.

“Is it possible that you live in London, sir, and are not aware
that Susan Road lies in the most sought-after portion of the sweeps’
quarter?” said Malkiel, with pitying amazement.

The Prophet blushed with shame.

“I beg your pardon. Of course--I understand. Pray go on.”

“It made for loneliness, sir.”

“Naturally.”

“Their hours were not our hours. And then the professional colour!
Madame said it was like living among the Sandwich Islanders. And so, to
an extent, it was. My father had left a very tidy bit of money--a
very tidy bit indeed, and we resolved to move. But where? That was the
problem. For I was not as other men. I could not live like them--in the
Berkeley Square.”

He smiled with mournful superiority and continued,--

“At least I thought so then, and have done till to-day. Prophets--so my
father believed, and so Madame--must be connected with the suburbs or
with outlying districts. They must not, indeed they cannot, be properly
prophetic within the radius. A central atmosphere would reduce them to
the level of the conjuror or the muscular suggestionist. Malkiel the
First, my father, was born himself in Peckham, and met my mother when
coming through the rye.”

He brushed aside a tear that flowed at this almost rustic recollection,
and continued,--

“Yet Madame was wishful, and I was wishful too, that the children--if
we had any--should not grow up Eastern. It was a natural and a beautiful
desire, sir, was it not?”

“Oh, very,” replied the Prophet, considerably confused.

“The habits and manners of the East, you see, sir, are not always in
strict accordance with propriety. Are they?”

Before the Prophet had time to realise that this question was merely
rhetorical, he began,--

“From what Professor Seligman says in his _The Inner History of
Baghdad_, I feel sure--”

“Nor are the customs of the East quite what many a clergyman would
approve of,” continued Malkiel. “Yet even this was not what weighed most
with Madame.”

“What was it then?” inquired the Prophet, deeply interested.

“Sir, it was the Eastern language.”

“Ah!”

“Could we let our children learn to speak it? Could we bear to launch
them in life, handicapped, weighed down by such a tongue? Could we do
this?”

Again the Prophet mistook the nature of the question, and was led to
reply,--

“Certainly English children speaking only Arabic might well be at some
loss in ordinary conver--”

“We could not, sir. It was impossible. So we resolved to go to the north
of London and to avoid Whitechapel at whatever cost.”

“Whitechapel!” almost cried the Prophet.

“This determination it was, sir, that eventually led our steps to the
borders of the River Mouse.”

“Oh, really!”

“You know it, sir?”

“Not personally.”

“But by repute, of course?”

“No doubt, no doubt,” stammered the Prophet, who had in fact never
before heard of this celebrated flood.

“That poor governess, sir, last August--you recollect?”

“Ah, indeed!” murmured the Prophet, a trifle incoherently.

“And then the mad undertaker in the autumn,” continued Malkiel, with
conscious pride; “he floated past our very door.”

“Did he really?”

“Singing his swan song, no doubt, poor feller, as Madame said after she
read about it in the paper. There were the grocer’s twins as well, just
lately. But they will be fresh in your memory.”

Before the Prophet had time to state whether this was so or not Malkiel
proceeded,--

“Well, sir, as soon as Madame and I had come to the Mouse we resolved
that we could do no better than that. It was salubrious, it was retired,
and it was N.”

“You said--?”

“N., sir.”

“But what is en?”

“Sir?”

The Prophet had grown very red, but he was seized by the desperation
that occasionally attacks ignorance, and renders it, for a moment,
determinedly explicit.

“I ask you what does en mean? I am, I fear, a very ill-informed person,
and I really don’t know.”

“Think of an envelope, sir,” said Malkiel, with gentle commiseration.
“Well, are you thinking?”

The Prophet grew purple.

“I am--but it is no use. Besides, why on earth should I think of an
envelope? I beg you to explain.”

“North, sir, the northern postal district of the metropolis. Fairly
simple that--I think, sir.”

“N.!” cried the illuminated Prophet. “I see. I was thinking of en all
the time. I beg your pardon. Please go on. N.--of course!”

Malkiel concealed a smile, just sufficiently to make its existence for
an instant vitally prominent, and continued,--

“By the Mouse we resolved to build a detached residence such as would
influence suitably the minds of the children--should we have any. For
we had resolved, sir, by that time that with me the _Almanac_ should
cease.”

Here Malkiel leaned forward upon the deal table and lowered his voice to
an impressive whisper.

“Yes, sir, it had come to that. We all have our ambitions and that was
mine.”

“Good Heavens!” said the Prophet. “Malkiel’s _Almanac_ cease! But why?
Such a very useful institution!”

“Useful! More than that, sir, sublime! There’s nothing like it.”

“Then why let it cease?”

“Because the social status of the prophet, sir, is not agreeable to
myself or Madame. I’ve had enough of it, sir, already, and I’m barely
turned of fifty. Besides, my father would have wished it, I feel sure,
had he lived in these days. Had he seen Sagittarius Lodge, the children,
and how Madame comports herself, he would have recognised that the
family was destined to rise into a higher sphere than that occupied by
any prophet, however efficient. Besides, I will not deceive you, I have
made money. In another ten years’ time, when I have laid by sufficient,
I tell you straight, sir, that I shall go out of prophecy, right out of
it.”

“Then your Capricor--that is your son--will not carry on the--”

“Capricornus a prophet, sir!” cried Malkiel. “Not if Madame and I know
it. No, sir, Capricornus is to be an architect.”

As Malkiel pronounced the last words he flung his black overcoat wide
open with an ample gesture, thrust one hand into his breast, and assumed
the fixed and far-seeing gaze of a man in a cabinet photograph. He
seemed lost to his surroundings, and rapt by some great vision of
enchanted architects, busy in drawing plans of the magic buildings of
the future ages. The Prophet felt that it would be impious to disturb
him. Malkiel’s reverie was long, and indeed the two prophets might well
have been sitting in Jellybrand’s parlour now, had not a violent sneeze
called for the pink assistance of the flight of storks, and brought the
sneezer down to the level of ordinary humanity.

“Yes, sir--I give you my word Capricornus is to be an architect,”
 repeated Malkiel. “What do you say to that?”

“Is it--is it really a better profession than that of prophecy?” asked
the Prophet, rather nervously.

Malkiel smiled mournfully.

“Sir, it may not be more lucrative, but it is more select. Madame will
not mix with prophets, but she has a ‘day,’ sir, on the banks of the
Mouse, and she has gathered around her a very pleasant and select little
circle.”

“Indeed.”

“Yes, sir. Architects and their wives. You understand?”

“Quite,” rejoined the Prophet, “quite.”

Under the mesmeric influence of Malkiel he began to feel as if
architects were some strange race of sacred beings set apart, denizens
of some holy isle or blessed nook of mediaeval legend. Would he ever
meet them? Would he ever encounter one ranging unfettered where flowed
the waters of the River Mouse?

“They do not know who we are, sir,” continued Malkiel, furtively. “To
them and to the whole world--excepting Jellybrand’s and you--we are the
Sagittariuses of Sagittarius Lodge, people at ease, sir, living upon our
competence beside the Mouse. They do not see the telescope, sir, in the
locked studio at the top of the lodge. They do not know why sometimes,
on Madame’s ‘Wednesdays,’ I am pale--with sitting up on behalf of the
_Almanac_. For Capricornus’s sake and for Corona’s all this is hid from
the world. Madame and I are the victims of a double life. Yes, sir, for
the children’s sake we have never dared to let it be known what I really
am.”

Suddenly he began to grow excited.

“And now,” he cried, “after all these years of secrecy, after all
these years of avoiding the central districts--in which Madame longs
to live--after all these years of seclusion beyond the beat even of the
buses, do you come here to me, and search yourself and say upon your
oath that a prophet can live and be a prophet in the Berkeley Square,
that he can read the stars with Gunter’s just opposite, ay, and bring
out an almanac if he likes within a shilling fare of the Circus? If this
is so”--he struck the deal table violently with his clenched fist--“of
what use are the sacrifices of myself and Madame? Of what use is it to
live under a modest name such as Sagittarius, when I might be Malkiel
the Second to the whole world? Of what use to flee from W. and dwell
perpetually in N.? Why, if what you say is true, we might leave the
Mouse to-morrow and Madame could pop in and out of the Stores just like
any lady of pleasure.”

At the thought of this so long foregone enchantment Malkiel’s emotion
completely overcame him, his voice died away, overborne by a violent fit
of choking, and he sat back in his cane chair trembling in every limb.
The Prophet was deeply moved by his emotion, and longed most sincerely
to assuage it. But his deep and growing conviction of his own power
rendered him useless as a comforter. He could not lie. He could not deny
that he was a prophet. He could only say, in his firmest voice,--

“Malkiel the Second, be brave. You must see this thing through.”

On hearing these original and noble words Malkiel lifted up his marred
countenance.

“I know it, sir, I know it,” he answered. “One moment. The thought of
Madame--the Stores--I--of all that might perhaps have been--”

He choked again. The Prophet looked away. A strong man’s emotion is
always very scared and very terrible. Three minutes swept by, then the
Prophet heard a calm and hollow voice say,--

“And now, sir, to business.”

The Prophet looked up, and perceived that Malkiel’s overcoat was
tightly buttoned and that his mouth was tightly set in an expression of
indomitable, though tragic, resolution.

“What business?” asked the Prophet.

“Mine,” replied Malkiel. “Mine, sir, and yours. You have chosen to enter
my life. You cannot deny that. You cannot deny that I sought to avoid--I
might even say to dodge you.”

With the remembrance of the recent circus performance in the library
still strong upon him the Prophet could not. He bowed his head.

“Very well, sir. You have chosen to enter my life. That act has given me
the right to enter yours. Am I correct?”

“I suppose--I mean--yes, you are,” answered the Prophet, overwhelmed by
the pitiless logic of his companion, and wondering what was coming next.

“I have been forced--I think I may say that--to reveal myself to you,
sir. Nothing can ever alter that. Nothing can ever take from you the
knowledge--denied by Madame to the very architects--of who I really am.
You have told me, sir, that I must see this thing through. I tell
you now, at this table, in this parlour, that I intend to see it
through--and through.”

As Malkiel said the last words he gazed at the Prophet with eyes that
seemed suddenly to have taken on the peculiar properties of the gimlet.
The Prophet began to feel extremely uneasy. But he said nothing. He felt
that there was more to come. And he was right.

“It is my duty,” continued Malkiel, in a louder voice, “my sacred duty
to Madame--to say nothing of Corona and Capricornus--to probe you to
the core”--here the Prophet could not resist a startled movement of
protest--“and to search you to the quick.”

“Oh, really!” cried the Prophet.

“This duty I shall carry out unflinchingly,” pursued Malkiel, “at
whatever cost to myself. This will not be our last interview. Do not
think it.”

“I assure you,” inserted the Prophet, endeavouring vainly to seem at
ease, “I do not wish to think it.”

“It matters little whether you wish to do so or not,” continued Malkiel,
with an increasingly Juggernaut air. “The son of Malkiel the First is
not a man to be trifled with or dodged. Moreover, much more than the
future of myself and family depends upon what you really are. From this
day forth you will be bound up with the _Almanac_.”

“Merciful Heavens!” ejaculated the Prophet, unable, intrepid as he was,
to avoid recoiling when he found himself thus suddenly confronted with
the fate of an appendix.

“For why should it ever cease?” proceeded Malkiel, with growing passion.
“Why--if a prophet can live, as you declare, freely and openly in the
Berkeley Square? If this is so, why should I not remove, along with
Madame and family, from the borders of the Mouse and reside henceforth
in a central situation such as I should wish to reside in? Why should
not Capricornus eventually succeed me in the _Almanac_ as I succeeded
Malkiel the First? Already the boy shows the leanings of a prophet.
Hitherto Madame and I have endeavoured to stifle them, to turn them in
an architectural direction. You understand?”

“I am trying to,” stammered the Prophet.

“Hitherto we have corrected the boy’s table manners when they have
become too like those of the average prophet--as they often have--for
hitherto we have had reason to believe that all prophets--with the
exception of myself--were dirty, deceitful and essentially suburban
persons. But if you are a prophet we have been deceived. Trust me, sir,
I shall find speedy means to pierce you to the very marrow.”

The Prophet began mechanically to feel for his hat.

“Are you desirous of anything, sir?” said Malkiel, sharply.

“No,” said the Prophet, wondering whether the moment had arrived to
throw off all further pretence of bravery and to shout boldly for the
assistance of the young librarian.

“Then why are you feeling about, sir? Why are you feeling about?”

“Was I?” faltered the Prophet.

“You are looking for another glass of wine, perhaps?”

“No, indeed,” said the Prophet, desperately. “For anything but that.”

But Malkiel, moved by some abruptly formed resolution, called suddenly
in a powerful voice,--

“Frederick Smith!”

“Here, Mr. Sagittarius!” cried the young librarian, appearing with
suspicious celerity upon the parlour threshold.

“Draw the cork of the second bottle, Frederick Smith,” said Malkiel,
impressively. “This gentleman is about to take the pledge”--on hearing
this ironic paradox the Prophet stood up, very much in the attitude
formerly assumed by Malkiel when about to dodge in the library--“that I
shall put to him,” concluded Malkiel, also standing up, and assuming the
library posture of the Prophet.

Indeed the situation of the library seemed about to be accurately
reversed in the parlour of Jellybrand’s.

The young librarian assisted the cork to emerge phlegmatically from the
neck of the second bottle of champagne, mechanically smacking his lips
the while.

“Now pour, and leave us, Frederick Smith.”

The young librarian helped the fatigued-looking wine into the two
glasses, where it lay as if thoroughly exhausted by the effort of
getting there, and then languidly left the parlour, turning his bulging
head over his shoulder to indulge in a pathetic _oeillade_ ere he
vanished.

The Prophet watched him go.

“Close the door, Frederick Smith,” cried Malkiel, in a meaning manner.

The Prophet blushed a guilty red, and the young librarian obeyed with a
bang.

“And now, sir, I must request you to take a solemn pledge in this
vintage,” said Malkiel, placing one of the tumblers in the Prophet’s
trembling hand.

“Really,” said the Prophet, “I am not at all thirsty.”

“Why should you be, sir? What has that got to do with it?” retorted
Malkiel. “Lift your glass, sir.”

The Prophet obeyed.

“And now take this pledge--that, till the last day--”

“What day?”

“The last day, sir, you will reveal to no living person that there is
such an individual as Malkiel, that you have ever met him, who he is, or
who Madame and family are, unless I give the word. You have surprised my
secret. You have forced yourself upon me. You owe me this. Drink!”

Mechanically the Prophet drank.

“Swear!”

Mechanically--indeed almost like a British working man--the Prophet
swore.

Malkiel drained his tumbler, and drew on the dogskin glove which, in the
agitation of a previous moment, he had thrown aside.

“I have your card, sir, here is mine. I shall now take the train to the
River Mouse, on whose banks I shall confer at once with Madame. Till
I have done this I cannot tell you what form the tests I shall have to
apply to you will take. When I have done it you will hear from me. Your
servant, sir.”

He bowed majestically, and was turning towards the door when it was
hastily opened and a lady appeared frantically in the aperture.



CHAPTER V

MALKIEL THE SECOND POISONS MISS MINERVA

“Miss Minerva!” exclaimed Malkiel the Second.

“Lady Enid!” cried the Prophet, at the same moment.

“You can’t go in there, Miss Partridge!” ejaculated the young librarian,
simultaneously, from the further room.

The lady, a tall girl of twenty-two, with grey eyes, dark smooth hair,
and a very agreeable, though slightly Scottish, mouth, began to behave
rather like a stag at bay. She panted, and looked wildly round as if
meditating how, and in what direction, she could best bolt.

“What’s the matter?” cried the Prophet, his voice becoming not a little
piercing from surprise and his previous stress of agitation.

“You can’t go in there, Miss Minerva,” requested the young librarian,
who had now gained the parlour threshold, and who seemed about to take
up a very determined stand thereon.

“I must go in--I must,” said the lady, in a mellow, but again slightly
Scottish, voice. “Don’t tell anybody I’m here, or you’ll be sorry.”

And, with these words, she bounded into the parlour and banged the door
on the young librarian. The Prophet opened his lips preparatory to a
third wild exclamation.

“Hush!” the lady hissed aristocratically.

She shook her head vigourously at him, sank down on one of the cane
chairs, held up her right hand, and leant towards the door. It was
obvious that she was listening for something with strained attention,
and so eloquent was her attitude that the two prophets were infected
with her desire. They turned their eyes mechanically towards the deal
door and listened too. For a moment there was silence. Then a heavy
footstep resounded upon the library floor, accompanied by the sharp tap
of a walking stick. The lady’s attitude became more tense and the pupils
of her handsome grey eyes dilated.

“Has a young female just entered this shop?” said a very heavy and
rumbling voice.

“This ain’t a shop, sir,” replied the high soprano of the young
librarian, indignantly.

“Bandy no words with me, thou infamous malapert!” returned the first
voice. “But answer my question. Have you a young female concealed within
these loathsome precincts?”

Under ordinary circumstances it is very possible that the young
librarian might have betrayed the lady as he had already betrayed
Malkiel the Second. But it happened that there existed upon the earth
one object, and one object only, towards which he felt a sense of
chivalry. This object was Jellybrand’s Library. His reply to the voice
was therefore as follows, and was delivered in his highest key and with
extreme volubility and passion:--

“Loathsome precincts yourself! You’re a nice one, you are, chasing
respectable ladies about at your age. There ain’t no young females in
the library, and if there was I shouldn’t trot ‘em out for you to clap
your ugly old eyes on. Now then, out yer go. No more words about it. Out
yer go!”

A prolonged sound of hard breathing and of feet scraping violently upon
bare boards followed upon this deliverance, complicated by the sharp
snap of a breaking walking stick, the thump of a falling chair, a bang
as of a heavy body encountering firm resistance from some inflexible
article of furniture--probably a bookcase--and finally a tremendous
thundering, as of the hoofs of a squadron of cavalry charging over
a parquet floor, the crash of a door, the grinding of a key swiftly
turning in a lock, and--silence.

The lady, Malkiel the Second and the Prophet looked at one another, and
the lady opened her mouth.

“D’you think he’s killed him?” she whispered with considerable
curiosity.

There came a distant noise of a torrent of knocks upon a door.

“No, he hasn’t,” added the lady, arranging her dress. “That’s a good
thing.”

The two prophets nodded. The torrent of knocks roared louder, slightly
failed upon the ear, made a crescendo, emulated Niagara, surpassed that
very American effort of nature, wavered, faltered to Lodore, died away
to a feeble tittup like water dropping from a tap to flagstones, rose
again in a final spurt that would have made Southey open his dictionary
for adjectives, and drained away to death.

The lady leaned back. For the first time her composure seemed about
to desert her entirely. That fatal sign in woman, a working throat,
swallowing nothing with extreme rapidity and persistence, became
apparent.

“A glass of wine, Miss Minerva?” cried Malkiel, gallantly.

He placed a tumbler to her lips. She feebly sipped, than sprang to her
feet with a cry.

“I’m poisoned!”

“You never spoke a truer word,” said the Prophet, solemnly.

“What is it?” continued the lady, frantically. “What has he given me?”

“Champagne at four shillings a bottle brought fresh from next door to
a rabbit shop,” answered the Prophet, looking at Malkiel with almost
malignant satisfaction.

The lady, who had gone white as chalk, darted to the door and flung it
open.

“A glass of water!” she cried. “Get me a glass of water.”

The young librarian came forward with a black eye.

“It’s all right, ma’am. The gentleman’s gone,” he piped.

“What gentleman? Give me a glass of water or I shall die!”

The young librarian, who had already an injured air, proceeded from a
positive to a comparative condition of appearance.

“Well, I never! What gentleman!” he exclaimed. “And me blue and black
all over, to say nothing of the bookcase and the new paint that’ll be
wanted for the door!”

“Can you chatter about trifles at such a moment?” cried the Prophet.
“Don’t you see the lady’s been poisoned?”

“What--by the old gent?” returned the young librarian. “Then what does
she come to a library for? Why don’t she go to a chemist?”

The lady turned her agonised eyes upon the Prophet.

“Take me to one,” she whispered through pale lips.

She tottered towards him and leaned upon his arm.

“Trust me, trust me, I will,” said the Prophet. “Direct me!” he added to
the young librarian.

“There’s one on the other side of the rabbit shop,” said that worthy,
who had suddenly become exceedingly glum in manner and morose in
appearance.

“Thank you. Kindly unlock the door.”

The young librarian did so, lethargically, and the lady and the Prophet
began to move slowly into the street. Just as they were gaining it
Malkiel the Second cried out,--

“One moment, sir!”

“Not one,” retorted the Prophet, firmly. “Not one till this lady has had
an antidote.”

He walked on with determination. Supporting the lady. But ere he got
quite out of earshot he caught these fragments of a shattered speech,
hurtling through the symphony of London noises:--

“Banks of the Mouse--Madame--sake of Capricor--be
sure I--probe--quick--search--the very core--hear from
me--architects--marrow--almanac--the last day--the Berkeley square--”

The final ejaculation melted away into the somewhat powerful discord
produced by the impact of a brewer’s dray with a runaway omnibus at the
corner of Greek Street, which was eventually resolved by the bursting
of a motor car--containing two bookmakers and an acting manager--which
mingled with them at the rate of perhaps forty miles an hour.

“Yes, please, a hansom,” said Lady Enid Thistle, some five minutes
later, as she and the Prophet stood together upon the kerb in front of
the rabbit shop. “I feel much better now.”

The Prophet hailed a hansom and handed her into it.

“Which way are you going?” he asked.

Lady Enid looked doubtful.

“I ought to be going back to Jellybrand’s,” she said. “I had an
appointment. But really--you see Mr. Sagittarius is there, and
altogether--I don’t know.”

She was obviously still upset by the “creaming foam,” and the other
incidents of the afternoon.

“Come to tea with grannie,” said the Prophet.

“She’s at home?”

“Yes. She’s twisted her ankle.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Let me escort you.”

“Thanks. I think I will.”

“You won’t mind stopping for a moment at Hollings’s?” said the Prophet,
in Piccadilly Circus. “I promised to buy some roses. Somebody is coming
in to tea.”

“On, no. But who is it?”

“I don’t know. Only one person, I think. An old friend, no doubt.
Probably the Central American Ambassador’s grandfather.”

“Oh, if that’s all! I feel a little shaky still.”

“Naturally.”

The Prophet bought the roses and they drove on.

“It’s very nice of you not to ask any questions,” observed Lady Enid,
presently.

The Prophet had been thinking it was, but he only said,--

“Oh, not at all.”

“I’m a woman,” promised Lady Enid, “and I don’t know whether I can be so
nice.”

The Prophet glanced at her and met her curious grey eyes.

“Try--please,” he replied very gently, thinking of the oath which he had
just taken.

Lady Enid was silent for two minutes, then she remarked,--

“I have tried, but I can’t succeed. Why on earth were you closeted in
the parlour--at my time, too--with Mr. Sagittarius this afternoon?”

“Then you really are Miss Minerva Partridge? And it was really you who
had--had--well, ‘bespoke’ the parlour at half-past three?”

“Certainly. Now we are neither of us nice, but we’re both of us human.”

“There were some letters for you,” said the Prophet.

Lady Enid wrinkled her smooth, young, healthy-looking forehead.

“How stupid of me! I’ll fetch them to-morrow. Well?”

She looked at the Prophet with obvious expectation.

“I’m so sorry I can’t tell you,” he replied with gentle firmness.

“Oh, all right,” she rejoined. “But now I’m at a disadvantage. You know
I’m Miss Minerva.”

“Yes. But I don’t know why you are, or why you go to Jellybrand’s, or
why you rushed into the parlour, or who the old gentleman was that--”

The cab stopped before Mrs. Merillia’s house.

In the hall, upon an oaken bench, they perceived a very broad-brimmed
top hat standing on its head. Beside it lay two pieces of a stout and
knobbly walking stick which had been broken in half. Lady Enid started
violently.

“Good Heavens!” she cried.

She picked up the walking stick, examined it, and laid it down.

“I don’t think I want any tea,” she murmured.

“I’m sure you do,” said the Prophet, with some pressure.

She stood still for a moment. Then, catching the attentive round eye of
Gustavus, who was waiting by the hall door, she shrugged her shoulders
and walked towards the staircase.

“It’s very hard lines,” she murmured as she began to ascend: “all
the questions you wanted to ask are being answered. You know I’m Miss
Minerva already. In another minute you’ll know who the old gentleman was
that--”

The Prophet could tell from the expression of her straight, slightly
Scottish, back that she was pouting as she entered the drawing-room
where Mrs. Merillia was having tea with--somebody.



CHAPTER VI

THE OLD ASTRONOMER DISCOURSETH OF THE STARS

Never before had the Prophet felt so alive with curiosity as he did when
he followed Lady Enid into Mrs. Merillia’s presence, for he knew that he
was about to see the venerable victim of the young librarian’s
indignant chivalry, the “old gent” who had come to intimate terms with
Jellybrand’s bookcase, and who had kicked and knocked at least a pint
of paint off Jellybrand’s door. His eyes were large and staring as he
glanced swiftly from his grandmother’s sofa to the huge telescope, under
whose very shadow was seated no less a personage than Sir Tiglath Butt,
holding a cup of tea on one hand and a large-sized muffin in the other.

No wonder the Prophet jumped. No wonder Mrs. Merillia cried out, in her
pretty, clear voice,--

“Take care of Beau, Hennessey! You’re treading on him.”

The dachshund’s pathetic shriek of outrage made the rafters ring. Mrs.
Merillia put her mittens to her ears, and Sir Tiglath dropped his muffin
into a jar of pot-pourri.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, earnestly. “Sir Tiglath--this is
indeed a sur--a pleasure.”

Lady Enid was being embraced by Mrs. Merillia. The Prophet extended his
hand to the astronomer, who, however, turned his back to the company
and, diving one of his enormous hands into the pot-pourri jar, began to
rummage violently for his vanished meal.

“What is it?” said the Prophet, who had not seen the muffin go. “Can I
help you?”

Still presenting his huge back and the purple nape of his fat neck to
the assemblage, the astronomer, after trying in vain to extract the lost
dainty in a legitimate manner, turned the jar upside down, and poured
the rose-leaves and the muffin in a heterogeneous libation upon the
Chippendale table. After a close examination of it he turned around,
holding up the food to whose buttered surface several leaves adhered in
a disordered, but determined, manner.

“Only a Persian could devour this muffin now,” he said, in his rumbling,
sing-song and strangely theatrical voice, which always suggested that he
was about to deliver a couple of hundred or so lengths of blank verse.
“Omar beneath his tree perchance, or Gurustu who to Baghdad came with
steed a-foam and eyes a-flame. Wherefore do you trample upon hapless
animals that are not dumb, young man, and cause the poor astronomer to
cast his muffin upon the roses, where, mayhap, the housemaid might find
it after many days? Oh-h-h-h!”

He uttered a tremulous bass cry of mingled reproach and despair, that
sounded rather like the wail of some deplorable watchman upon a city
wall, shaking his enormous head at the Prophet the while, and flapping
his red hands slowly in the air.

“How d’you do, Sir Tiglath?” said Lady Enid, coming up to him with light
carelessness.

Sir Tiglath bowed.

“Very ill, very ill,” he rumbled, looking at her furtively with his
glassy eyes. “One has had an afternoon of tragedy, an afternoon of
brawling and of disturbance, in an avenue that shall henceforth be
called accursed.”

He sat down upon his armchair, with his short legs stuck straight out
and resting upon his heels alone, his hands folded across his stomach,
and his purple triple chin sunk in his elaborate, but very dusty,
cravat. Wagging his head to and fro, he added, with the heavy,
concluding tremolo that decorated most of his vocal efforts, “Thrice
accursed. Oh-h-h-h!”

Lady Enid, who seemed to have quite recovered her self-possession, sat
down by Mrs. Merillia, while the Prophet, in some confusion, offered to
his grandmother the bunch of roses he had bought at Hollings’s.

“They’re a little late, grannie, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I was
unavoidably detained.”

Mrs. Merillia glanced at him sharply.

“Detained, Hennessey! Then you found what you were seeking?”

The Prophet remembered his oath and turned scarlet.

“No, no, grannie,” he murmured hastily, and looking like a criminal. “I
met Lady Enid,” he added.

“Where did you meet the lady, young man?” said Sir Tiglath. “Was it in
the accursed avenue?”

Lady Enid shot a hasty glance of warning at the Prophet. Mrs. Merillia
intercepted it, and began to form fresh ideas of that young person, whom
she had formerly called sensible, but whom she now began to think of as
crafty.

“Which avenue is that, Sir Tiglath?” asked the Prophet, with a rather
inadequate assumption of innocence.

“The Avenue in which one beholds the perfidy darting into hidden places,
young man, in which the defenders of foolish virgins are buffeted and
browbeaten by counter-jumpers with craniums as big as the great nebula
of Orion. The avenue named after a crumbled philanthropist, who could
walk, sheeted, through the atrocious night could his sacred dust awake
to the abominations that are perpetrated under the protection of his
shadow. Let dragons lay it waste like the highways of Babylon.”

He gathered up a crumpet, and blinked at Lady Enid, who was airily
sipping her tea with a slightly detached air of calm and maidenly
dignity.

“I think Sir Tiglath must be describing Shaftesbury Avenue,” remarked
Mrs. Merillia, rather mischievously.

“Oh, really,” stammered the Prophet, “I had no idea that it was such an
evil neighbourhood.”

“Where is Shaftesbury Avenue?” asked Lady Enid, gently folding a
fragment of thin bread and butter and nibbling it with her pretty mouth.

Sir Tiglath elevated his hands and rolled his eyes.

“Where partridges are to be found in January, oh-h-h-h!” was his very
unexpected reply.

The Prophet started violently, and even Lady Enid looked disconcerted
for a moment.

“What do you mean, Sir Tiglath?” she said, recovering herself.

She turned to Mrs. Merillia.

“I wonder what he means,” she said. “He never talks sensibly unless
he is in his observatory, or lecturing to the Royal Society on the
‘Regularity of Heavenly Bodies,’ or--”

“The irregularities of earthly ones,” interposed Sir Tiglath. “In the
accursed avenue--oh-h-h!”

“I fear, Sir Tiglath, you must be a member of the Vigilance Society,”
 said Mrs. Merillia.

“Yes. He looks at the morals of the stars through his telescope,” said
Lady Enid. “By the way--do you, too?” she added to the Prophet, for the
first time observing the instrument in the bow window.

Mrs. Merillia and Sir Tiglath exchanged a glance. An earnest expression
came into the Prophet’s face.

“I confess,” he said, with becoming modesty in the presence of the
great master of modern astronomy, “that I do watch the heavens from that
window.”

“And for what purpose, young man?” rumbled Sir Tiglath, for the first
time dropping his theatrical manner of an old barn-stormer, and speaking
like any ordinary fogey, such as you may see at a meeting on behalf of
the North Pole, or at a dinner of the Odde Volumes.

“For--for purposes of research, Sir Tiglath,” answered the Prophet, with
some diplomacy.

“The young man trieth to put off the old astronomer with fair words,”
 bellowed Sir Tiglath. “The thief inserteth his thumb into the tail
pocket of the unobservant archbishop for purposes of research. The young
man playeth merrily forsooth with the old astronomer.”

Mrs. Merillia nodded her lace cap at him encouragingly. It was evident
that there was an understanding between them. Lady Enid began to wonder
what was its nature. The Prophet seemed rather disconcerted at the
reception given to his not wholly artless ambiguity.

“Grannie,” he said, turning to Mrs. Merillia, “you know how deeply the
stars interest me.”

“For their own sake, young man?” said Sir Tiglath. “Or as the accursed
avenue interests the foolish virgins--for the sake of frivolity, idle
curiosity, or dark doings which could not support the light even of a
star of the sixth magnitude? Can you tell your admirable and revered
granddam that?”

This time, underneath his preposterous manner and fantastic speech, both
Lady Enid and the Prophet fancied that they could detect an element of
real gravity, even perhaps a hint of weighty censure which made them
both feel very young--rising two, or thereabouts.

“I was originally led to study stars, Sir Tiglath, because I had the
honour to meet you and make your acquaintance,” said the Prophet,
valiantly.

The astronomer lapsed at once into his first manner.

“In what fair company did the old astronomer converse with the young
man?” he cried. “His memory faileth him. He doteth and cannot recall the
great occasion.”

“It was at the Colley Cibber Club, Sir Tiglath,” said the
Prophet, firmly. “But we--we did not converse. You had a--a slight
indisposition.”

“Would you venture to imply--in the presence of your notable
granddam--that one had looked upon the wine when it was red, young man?”

“You had a glass of port by you certainly, Sir Tiglath. But you also
had a cold which, you gave me to understand--by signs--had affected your
throat and prevented you from carrying on conversation.

“Then was it the vision of the old astronomer’s personal and starry
beauty that led you, hot foot, to Venus through yonder telescope?
Oh-h-h-h!”

“I did not take observations of Venus first,” answered the Prophet,
with a certain proud reserve. “I began by an examination into ‘The Milky
Way.’”

Sir Tiglath impounded another crumpet.

“Go on, young man,” he cried. “The old astronomer lendeth ear.”

The Prophet, who felt very much like a nervous undergraduate undergoing
a _viva-voce_ examination, continued,--

“I became deeply interested, strongly attracted by the--the heavenly
bodies. They fascinated me. I could think of nothing else.”

Lady Enid’s Scottish lips tightened almost imperceptibly.

“I could talk of nothing else,” proceeded the Prophet. “Could I,
grannie?”

“No, indeed, Hennessey,” assented Mrs. Merillia. “All other topics were
banished from discussion.”

“All,” cried the Prophet, with increasing fervour and lack of
self-consciousness. “I could not tear myself from the telescope. I
longed for a perpetual night and found the day almost intolerably
irksome.”

Sir Tiglath’s brick-red countenance was irradiated with a smile that did
not lack geniality.

“The old astronomer lendeth attentive ear to the young man’s epic,” he
roared, through the crumpet. “He approveth the young man’s admiration
for the heavenly bodies. Go on.”

But at the last command the Prophet seemed suddenly to jib. The reserved
expression returned to his face.

“That’s all, Sir Tiglath,” he said.

The astronomer and Mrs. Merillia again exchanged a glance which was not
unobserved by Lady Enid. Then Sir Tiglath, with an abrupt and portentous
gravity, exclaimed in thunderous tones,--

“Sir, are you a man of science or have you the brain of a charlatan
enclosed in the fleshy envelope of a conjurer and a sinner? Do you study
the noble and beautiful stars for their own sakes to find out what they
are, and what they are doing, what is their nature and what their place
in the great scheme, or do you peek and pry at them through the keyhole
of a contemptible curiosity in order to discover what you think they
can do for you, to set you on high, to puff you out into a personage
and cause you to be noticed of the foolish ones of this world? Which are
you, sir, a young man of parts whose hand I can grasp fraternally, or
an insulter of planets, sir, a Peeping Tom upon the glorious nudity of
Venus, a Paul Pry squinting at the mysteries of Mercury for an unholy
and, what is more, an idiotic purpose? What do you ask of the stars,
sir? Tell the old astronomer that!”

The Prophet was considerably taken aback by this tirade, which caused
the many ornaments in the pretty room to tremble. He gazed at his
grandmother, and found her nodding approval of Sir Tiglath. He glanced
at Lady Enid. She was leaning back in her chair and looking amused, like
a person at an entertainment.

“What do I ask, Sir Tiglath?” he murmured in some confusion.

“Do you ask about your reverent granddam’s hallowed ankles, sir? Do
you afflict the stars with inquiries about the state of the ridiculous
weather? Is that it?”

The Prophet understood that Mrs. Merillia had been frank with the
astronomer. He cast upon her a glance of respectful reproach.

“Yes, Hennessey,” she answered, “I have. My dear child, I thought it for
the best. This prophetic business would soon have been turning the
house upside down, and at my age I’m really not equal to living at
close quarters with a determined young prophet. To do so would upset the
habits of a lifetime. So Sir Tiglath knows all about it.”

There was a moment of silence, which was broken by the agreeable voice
of Lady Enid saying,--

“All about what? Remember, please, that I’m a young woman and that all
young women share one quality. All about what, please?”

Mrs. Merillia looked at the Prophet. The Prophet looked at Sir Tiglath,
who wagged his great head and cried, with rolling pathos and rebuke,--

“Oh-h-h-h!”

“Please--Mr. Vivian!” repeated Lady Enid, with considerable
determination.

“Grannie means that I--that--well, that I have been enabled by the stars
to foretell certain future events,” said the Prophet, glancing rather
furtively at Sir Tiglath while he spoke, to note the effect of the
desperate declaration.

“Oh-h-h-h!” bellowed the distressed astronomer, shaking like a jelly in
his wrath.

“What?” cried Lady Enid, in an almost piercing voice, and with a manner
that had suddenly become most animated. “What--like Malkiel’s _Almanac_
does?”

This remark had a very striking effect upon Sir Tiglath, an effect
indeed so striking that it held Mrs. Merillia, Lady Enid and the Prophet
in a condition of paralytic expectation for at least three minutes by
the grandmother’s clock in the corner of the drawing-room.

The venerable astronomer was already very stout in person and very
inflamed in appearance. But at this point in the discourse he suddenly
became so very much stouter and so very much more inflamed, that his
audience of three gazed upon him rather as little children gaze upon
dough which has been set by the cook to “rise” and which is fulfilling
its mission with an unexpected, and indeed intemperate, vivacity.
Their eyes grew round, their features rigid, their hands tense, their
attitudes expectant. Leaning forward, they stared upon Sir Tiglath with
an unwinking fixity and preternatural determination that was almost
entirely infantine. And while they did so he continued slowly to expand
in size and to deepen in colour until mortality seemed to drop from
him. He ceased to be a man and became a phenomenon, a purple thing that
journeyed towards some unutterable end, portentous as marching judgment,
tragic as fate, searching as epidemic, and yet heavily painted and
generally touched up by the brush of some humorous demon, such as lays
about him in preparation for Christmas pantomime, sworn to provide the
giants’ faces and the ogres’ heads for Drury Lane.

“Don’t!” at last cried a young voice. “Don’t, Sir Tiglath!”

A peal of laughter followed the remark, of that laughter which is loud
and yet entirely without the saving grace of merriment, a mere sudden
demonstration of hysteria.

“Oh, Sir Tiglath--don’t!”

A second laugh joined the first and rang up with it, older, but also
hysterical--Mrs. Merillia’s.

“No, no--please don’t, Sir Tig--Tig--”

A third laugh burst into the ring, seeming to complete it fatally--the
Prophet’s.

“Sir Tiglath--for Heaven’s sake--don’t!”

The adjuration came from a trio of choked voices, and might have given
pause even to a descending lift or other inflexible and blind machine.

But still the astronomer grew steadily more gigantic in person and more
like the god of wine in hue. The three voices failed, and the terrible,
united laughter was just upon the point of breaking forth again when a
diversion occurred. The door of the drawing-room was softly opened, and
Mrs. Fancy Quinglet appeared upon the threshold, holding in her hands an
ice-wool shawl for the comfort of her mistress. It chanced that as the
phenomenon of the astronomer was based upon a large elbow chair exactly
facing the door she was instantly and fully confronted by it. She did
not drop the shawl, as any ordinary maid would most probably have done.
Mrs. Fancy was not of that kidney. She did not even turn tail, or give a
month’s warning or a scream. She was of those women who, when they meet
the inevitable, instinctively seem to recognise that it demands courage
as a manner and truth as a greeting. She, therefore, stared straight at
Sir Tiglath--much as she stared at Mrs. Merillia when she was about to
arrange that lady’s wig for an assembly--and remarked in a decisive,
though very respectful, tone of voice,--

“The gentleman’s about to burst, ma’am. I can’t speak different nor mean
other.”

Upon finding their thoughts thus deftly gathered up and woven into
a moderately grammatical sentence, Mrs. Merillia, Lady Enid and the
Prophet experienced a sense of extraordinary relief, and no longer felt
the stern necessity of laughing. But this was not the miracle worked
by Mrs. Fancy. Had she, even then, rested satisfied with her acumen,
maintained silence and awaited the immediate fulfilment of her
prediction, what must have happened can hardly be in doubt. But she
was seized by that excess of bravery which is called foolhardiness, and
driven by it to that peculiar and thoughtless vehemence of action which
sometimes wins V.C.’s for men who, in later days, conceal amazement
under the cherished decoration. She suddenly laid down the ice-wool
shawl upon a neighbouring sociable, walked up to the phenomenon of the
astronomer, and remarked to it with great distinctness,--

“You’re about to burst, sir. I know it, sir, and I can’t know other.”

At this point the miracle happened, for, instead of responding to the
lady’s-maid’s appeal, and promptly disintegrating into his respective
atoms, Sir Tiglath suddenly became comparatively small and comparatively
pale, sat forward, wagged his head at Mrs. Fancy, and rumbled out in his
ordinary voice,--

“Have you never heard where liars go to, woman? Oh-h-h-h!”

On finding that nothing of supreme horror was about to happen, Mrs.
Fancy’s courage--as is the way of woman’s courage--forsook her, she
broke into tears, and had to be immediately led forth to the servant’s
hall by the Prophet, exclaiming persistently with every step they
took,--

“I can’t help it, Master Hennessey. I say again as I said afore--the
gentleman’s about to burst. Them that knows other let them declare it.”

“Yes, yes. It’s all right, Fancy, it’s all right. We all agree with you.
Now, now, you mustn’t cry.”

“I can’t--know--other, Master Hennessey, nor--mean different. I can’t
indeed, Master Hennessey, I can’t--know other--nor--”

“No, no. Of course not. There, sit down and compose yourself.”

He gave the poor, afflicted liar tenderly into the care of the upper
housemaid, and retraced his steps quickly to the drawing-room. As he
entered it he heard Sir Tiglath saying,--

“The stars in their courses tremble when the accursed name of Malkiel is
mentioned, and the old astronomer is dissolved in wrath at sound of the
pernicious word. Oh-h-h-h!”

“There, Hennessey!” cried Mrs. Merillia, turning swiftly to her grandson
with all her cap ribands fluttering. “You hear what Sir Tiglath says?”

“If that accursed name belonged to an individual,” continued the
astronomer, waving his hands frantically over the last remaining
crumpet, “instead of representing a syndicate of ruffianly underground
criminals, the old astronomer, well stricken in years though he be,
would hunt him out of his hiding-place and slay him with his own feeble
and scientific hands.”

So saying, he grasped the crumpet as if it had been an assegai, and
assailed himself with it so violently that it entirely disappeared.

“But Malkiel is an--” began Mrs. Merillia.

The Prophet stopped her with a glance, whose almost terror-stricken
authority surprised her into silence.

“But I thought Malkiel was a man,” cried Lady Enid, looking towards the
Prophet.

“He--for I will not foul my lips with the accursed name--is not a
man,” roared Sir Tiglath. “He is a syndicate. He is a company. He meets
together, doubtless, in some low den of the city. He reads reports to
himself of the ill-gotten gains accruing from his repeated insults to
the heavens round some abominable table covered with green cloth. He
quotes the prices of the shares in him, and declares dividends, and
carries balances forward, and some day will wind himself up or cast
himself anew upon the mercy of the market. Part of him is probably
Jew, part South African and part America. The whole of him is thrice
accursed.”

He began to expand once more, but Mrs. Merillia perceived the tendency
and checked it in time.

“Pray, Sir Tiglath,” she said almost severely, “don’t. With my sprained
ankle I am really not equal to it.”

Sir Tiglath had enough chivalry to stop, and Lady Enid once again
chipped in.

“But, really, I’m almost sure Malkiel is a--”

She caught the Prophet’s eye, as Mrs. Merillia had, and paused. He
turned to the astronomer.

“But how can a company make itself into a prophet?” he asked.

“Young man, you talk idly! What are companies formed for if not to make
profits?” retorted Sir Tiglath. “Every one is a company nowadays. Don’t
you know that? Murchison, the famous writer of novels, is a company.
Jeremy, the actor-manager, is a company. So is Bynion the quack doctor,
and the Rev. Mr. Kinnimer who supplies tracts to the upper classes, and
Upton the artist, whose pictures make tours like Sarah Bernhardt, and
Watkins, whose philosophy sells more than Tupper’s, and Caroline Jingo,
who writes war poems and patriotic odes. If you were to invite these
supposed seven persons to dinner, and all of them came, you would have
to lay covers for at least fifty scoundrels. Oh-h-h-h!”

“Well, but how are you sure that--ahem--the _Almanac_ person is also
plural, Sir Tiglath?” inquired Mrs. Merillia.

“Because I sought him with the firm intention of assault and battery
for five-and-forty years,” returned the astronomer. “And only gave up my
Christian quest when I was assured, on excellent authority, that he was
a company, and had originally been formed in the United States for the
making of money and the defiance of the heavenly bodies. May bulls and
bears destroy him!”

“Well, it’s very odd,” said Lady Enid. “Very odd indeed.”

As she spoke she glanced at the Prophet and met his eyes. There are
moments when the mere expression in another person’s eyes seems to shout
a request at one. The expression in the Prophet’s eyes performed this
feat at this moment, with such abrupt vehemence, that Lady Enid felt
almost deafened. She leaned back in her chair, as if avoiding a missile,
and exclaimed,--

“Of course! And I never guessed it!”

“Guessed what, my dear?” inquired Mrs. Merillia.

“Why, that--he--it--was a company,” replied Lady Enid.

The Prophet blessed and thanked her with a piercing and saved look.

“Nor I,” he assented, descending into the very mine of subterfuge for
his recent oath’s sake, “nor I, or I should never have taken the useless
trouble that I have taken.”

He managed to say this with such conviction that his grandmother,
who, in the past, had always found him to be transparently honest and
sincere, was carried away by the deception. She wrinkled her long nose,
as was her habit when sincerely pleased, and cried gaily,--

“Then, Hennessey, now you’ve heard Sir Tiglath’s opinion of the practice
of trying to turn the stars into money-makers, and the planets into old
gipsy women who tell fortunes to silly servant girls, I’m sure you’ll
never study them again. Come, promise me!”

The Prophet made no answer.

“Hennessey,” cried his grandmother, with tender pertinacity, “promise
me! Sir Tiglath, join your voice to mine!”

Sir Tiglath had become really grave, not theatrically serious.

“Young man,” he said, “your revered granddam asks of you a righteous
thing. Who are you to trifle with those shining worlds that make a
beauty of the night and that stir eternity in the soul of man? Who are
you to glue your pinpoint of a human eye to yonder machine and play with
the stupendous Jupiter and Saturn as a child plays with marbles or with
peg-tops? Who are you that thinks those glittering monsters have nothing
to do but to inform your pigmy brain of snowfalls, street accidents,
and love-affairs prematurely, so that you may flaunt about your
pocket-handkerchief of a square pluming your dwarfship that you are a
prophet? Fie, young man, and again fie! Bow the knee, as I do, to the
mysteries of the great universal scheme, instead of bothering them
to turn informers and ‘give away’ the knowledge which is deliberately
hidden from us. Show me a man that can understand the present and you’ll
have shown me a god. And yet you knock at the gates of the heavens
through that telescope and clamour to be told the future! Fie upon you,
young man, fie! Oh-h-h-h!”

Now the Prophet, as has been before observed, possessed a very sensitive
nature. He was also very devoted to his grandmother, and had an
extraordinary reverence for the world-famed attainments of Sir Tiglath
Butt. Therefore, when he heard Mrs. Merillia’s pleading, and the
astronomer’s weighty denunciation, he was deeply moved. Nevertheless, so
strongly had recent events appealed to his curiosity, so ardently did he
desire to search into the reality of his own peculiar powers, that it
is very doubtful whether he might not have withstood both the behests of
affection and of admiration had it not been that they took to themselves
an ally, whose force is one of the moving spirits of the world. This
ally was fear. Just as the Prophet was beginning to feel obstinate and
to steel himself to resistance, he remembered the fierce and horrible
threats of Malkiel the Second. If he should cease to concern himself
with the stars, if he should cease to prophesy, not alone should he
restore peace to his beloved grandmother, and pay the tribute of respect
to Sir Tiglath, but he should do more. He should preserve his quick from
being searched and his core from being probed. His marrow, too, would be
rescued from the piercing it had been so devoutly promised. The dread,
by which he was now companioned--of Malkiel, of that portentous and
unseen lady who dwelt beside the secret waters of the Mouse, of those
imagined offshoots of the prophetic tree, Corona and Capricornus--this
would drop away. He would be free once more, light-hearted, a happy and
mildly intellectual man of the town, emerged from the thrall of bogies,
and from beneath the yoke which he already felt laid upon his shoulders
by those august creatures who were the centre of the architectural
circle.

All these things suddenly presented themselves to the Prophet’s mind
with extraordinary vividness and force. His resolve was taken in a
moment, and, turning to his eager grandmother and to the still slightly
inflated astronomer, he exclaimed without further hesitation,--

“Very well. I’ll give it up. I promise you.”

Mrs. Merillia clapped her mittens together almost like a girl.

“Thank you, Sir Tiglath,” she cried. “I knew you would persuade the dear
boy.”

The astronomer beamed like the rising sun.

“Let the morning stars--freed from insult--sing together!” he roared.

The Prophet glanced towards Lady Enid. She was looking almost narrow
and not at all pleased. She, and all her family, had a habit of suddenly
appearing thinner than usual when they were put out. This habit had
descended to them from a remote Highland ancestor, who had perished of
starvation and been very vexed about it. The Prophet felt sure that she
did not applaud his resolution, but he could not discuss the matter with
her in public, and she now got up--looking almost like a skeleton--and
said that she must go. Sir Tiglath immediately rolled up out of his
chair and roared that he would accompany her.

“The old astronomer will protect the injudicious young female,” he
exclaimed, “lest she wander forth into accursed places.”

“I’m only going to Hill Street,” said Lady Enid, rather snappishly.
“Come to see me to-morrow at three,” she whispered to the Prophet as she
took his hand. “We must have a talk. Don’t tell anybody!”

The Prophet nodded surreptitiously. He felt that she was curious to her
finger-tips as he gently pressed them.

When he and his grandmother were alone together he rang the drawing-room
bell. Mr. Ferdinand appeared.

“Mr. Ferdinand,” said the Prophet, “kindly call Gustavus to your aid and
take away the telescope.”

“Sir!” said Mr. Ferdinand in great astonishment.

“Take away the telescope.”

“Certainly, sir. Where shall we place it, sir?”

“Anywhere,” said the Prophet. “In the pantry--the square--in Piccadilly
if you like--it’s all the same to me.”

And, unable to trust himself to say more, he hurried almost tumultuously
from the room.

“Here’s a go, Gustavus,” remarked Mr. Ferdinand a moment later as he
entered the servants’ hall.

“Where, Mr. Ferdinand?” replied Gustavus, glancing up from a dish of
tea and a couple of Worthing shrimps with which he was solacing an idle
moment.

“Here, in this mansion, Gustavus. Me and you’ve got to take the
telescope out of the drawing-room, and Master Hennessey says if we wish
we can chuck it in Piccadilly.”

The round eyes of Gustavus brightened.

“That is my wish, Mr. Ferdinand,” he exclaimed. “Here’s a lark!”

He sprang up. But Mr. Ferdinand checked his very agreeable vivacity.

“I am your head, Gustavus,” he remarked, with severe ambiguity, “and
master having also said that, if we wish, we can set the instrument in
the butler’s pantry, I have decided that so it shall moreover be. It
will be very useful to us there.”

“Useful, Mr. Ferdinand! However--?”

“Never mind, Gustavus, never mind,” replied Mr. Ferdinand with some
acrimony.

Being of a dignified nature he did not care to explain to a subordinate
that there was a very pleasant-looking second-cook just arrived at the
house of the Lord Chancellor on the opposite side of the square.



CHAPTER VII

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF MISS MINERVA

On the following day, just as the Prophet was drawing on a new pair of
suede gloves preparatory to setting out to Hill Street, Gustavus entered
with a silver salver.

“A telegram for you, sir,” he said.

The Prophet took the blushing envelope, ripped it gently open, and read
as follows:--

“Madame and self must confer with you this afternoon without fail. Shall
be with you five sharp; most important.

“JUPITER SAGITTARIUS.”


Gustavus nearly dropped at sight of the wrinkles that seamed the
Prophet’s usually smooth face as he grasped the full meaning of this
portentous missive.

“Any answer, sir?”

The wrinkles increased and multiplied.

“Any reply, sir?”

“What--no.”

Gustavus glided in a well-trained manner towards the door. When he got
there the Prophet cried, rather sharply,--

“Stop a moment!”

Gustavus stopped.

“Sir?”

“The--I--er--I am expecting a--a--couple this afternoon,” began the
Prophet, speaking with considerable hesitation, and still gazing, in a
hypnotised manner, at the telegram.

“A couple, sir?”

“Exactly. A pair.”

“A pair, sir? Of horses, sir?”

“Horses! No--of people, that is, persons.”

“A pair of persons, sir. Yes, sir.”

“They should arrive towards five o’clock.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I should not be home by that time you will show them very quietly
into my library--not the drawing-room. Mrs. Merillia is not at present
equal to receiving ordinary guests.”

The Prophet meant extraordinary, but he preferred to put it the other
way.

“Yes, sir. What name, sir?”

“Mr. and Mrs.--that is, Madame Sagittarius. That will do.”

Gustavus hastened to the servants’ hall to discuss the situation,
while the Prophet stood re-reading the telegram with an expression of
shattered dismay. Not for at least five minutes did he recover himself
sufficiently to remember his appointment with Lady Enid, and, when at
length he set forth to Hill Street, he was so painfully preoccupied that
he walked three times completely round the square before he discovered
the outlet into that fashionable thoroughfare.

When he reached the dark green mansion of Lady Enid’s worthy father,
the Marquis of Glome, and had applied the bronze demon that served as a
knocker four separate times to the door, he was still so lost in thought
that he started violently on the appearance of the Scotch retainer at
the portal, and behaved for a moment as if he were considering which
of two courses he should pursue: _i.e._, whether he should clamber
frantically into the seclusion of the area, or take boldly to the
open street. Before he could do either M’Allister, the retainer, had
magnetised him into the hall, relieved him of his hat--almost with the
seductive adroitness of a Drury Lane thief--and drawn him down a tartan
passage into a very sensible-looking boudoir, in which Lady Enid was
sitting by a wood fire with a very tall and lusty young man.

“Mr. Hennessey Vivian!”

“What, Bob--you here!” said the Prophet to the lusty young man, after
shaking hands a little distractedly with Lady Enid.

“Yes, old chap. But I’m just off. I know you two want to have a confab,”
 returned Mr. Robert Green, wringing his old school friend’s hand.
“Niddy’s given me the chuck. And anyhow I’m bound to look in at the Bath
Club at four to fence with Chicky Bostock.”

Mr. Green spoke in a powerful baritone voice, rolling his r’s, and
showing his large and square white teeth in a perpetual cheery and even
boisterous smile. He was what is called a thorough good fellow, springy
in body and essentially gay in soul. That he was of a slightly belated
temperament will be readily understood when we say that he was at
this time just beginning to whistle, with fair correctness,
“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” to discuss the character of Becky Sharp, to dwell
upon the remarkable promise as a vocalist shown by Madame Adelina Patti,
and to wonder at the marvellous results said to be accomplished by the
telephone. He had also never heard of Christian Science, and was totally
unaware that there exists in the metropolis a modest and retiring
building called “The Imperial Institute.” Nevertheless, he was
repeatedly spoken of by substantial people as a young man of many parts,
was a leading spirit in Yeomanry circles, and was greatly regarded by
the Prophet as a trusty friend and stalwart upholder of the British
Empire. He had rather the appearance of a bulwark, and something of the
demeanour of a flourishing young oak tree.

“Yes, Bob, you’ve got to go,” assented Lady Enid, examining the
Prophet’s slightly distorted countenance with frank, and even eager,
curiosity. “Mr. Vivian and I are going to talk of modern things.”

“I know, Thackeray and Patti, and three-volume novels, and skirt
dancing, and all the rest of it,” said Mr. Green, with unaffected
reverence. “Well, I’m off. I say, Hen, pop in at the Bath on your way
home and have a whiskey and soda. I shall just be out of the hot room
and--”

“I’m sorry, Bob,” said the Prophet with almost terrible solemnity, “that
I can’t, that--in fact--I am unable.”

“What? Going to the dentist?”

“Exactly--that is, not at all.”

“Well, what’s up? Some intellectual business, lecture on Walter Scott,
or Dickens, or one of the other Johnnies that are so popular just now?”

“No. I have a--a small gathering at home this afternoon.

“All right. Then I’ll pop round on you--say five o’clock.”

“No, Bob, no, I can’t say that. I’m very sorry, but I can’t possibly say
that.”

“Right you are. Too clever for me, I s’pose. Look me up at the Tintack
to-night then--any time after ten.”

“If I can, Bob, I will,” replied the Prophet, with impressive
uncertainty, “I say if I can I will do so.”

“Done! If you can’t, then I’m not to expect you. That it?”

“That is it--precisely.”

“Good-bye, Niddy, old girl. Keep your pecker up. By the way, if you
want a real good tune for a Charity sing-song, a real rouser, try ‘Nancy
Lee.’”

He was gone, humming vigorously that new-fangled favourite.

“Sit down, Mr. Vivian,” said Lady Enid, looking her right size. “We’ve
got a lot to say to one another.”

“I have to be home at five,” replied the Prophet, abstractedly.

Lady Enid begin to appear a trifle thin.

“Why? How tiresome! I didn’t think you really meant it.”

“It is very, very tiresome.”

He spoke with marked uneasiness, and remained standing with the air of
one in readiness for the punctual call of the hangman.

“What is it?” continued Lady Enid, with her usual inquisitiveness.

“I have, as I said, a--a small gathering at home at that hour,” said the
Prophet, repeating his formula morosely.

“A gathering--what of?”

“People--persons, that is.”

“What--a party?”

“Two parties,” replied the Prophet, instinctively giving Mr. Sagittarius
and Madame their undoubted due. “Two.”

“Two parties at the same time--and in the afternoon! How very odd!”

“They will look very odd, very--in Berkeley Square,” responded the
Prophet, in a tone of considerable dejection. “I don’t know, I’m sure,
what Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus will think. Still I’ve given strict
orders that they are to be let in. What else could I do?”

He gazed at Lady Enid in a demanding manner.

“What else could I possibly do under the circumstances?” he repeated.

“Sit down, dear Mr. Vivian,” she answered, with her peculiar Scotch
lassie seductiveness, “and tell me, your sincere friend, what the
circumstances are.”

Unluckily her curiosity had led her to overdo persuasion. That cooing
interpolation of “your sincere friend”--too strongly honeyed--suddenly
recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never
be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him. He therefore sat
down, but with an abrupt air of indefinite social liveliness, and
exclaimed, not unlike Mr. Robert Green,--

“Well, and how are things going with you, dear Lady Enid?”

She jumped under the transition as under a whip.

“Me! But--these parties you were telling me about?”

But the Prophet remembered his oath. He was a strictly honourable little
man, and never swore carelessly.

“Parties!” he said. “You and I are too old friends to waste our life in
chattering about such London nonsense.”

“Then we’ll talk of yesterday,” said Lady Enid, very firmly.

The Prophet looked rather blank.

“Yes,” she repeated. “Yesterday. I’ve guessed your secret.”

“Which one?” he cried, much startled.

“Which?” she said reproachfully. “Oh, Mr. Vivian--and I thought you
trusted in me.”

The Prophet was silent. The third daughter of the clergyman had often
made that remark to him when they were nearly engaged. It recalled
bygone memories.

“That’s what I thought,” she added with pressure.

“I’m sorry,” the Prophet murmured, rather obstinately.

“I always think,” she continued, with deliberate expansiveness, “that
nearly all the miseries of the world come about from people not trusting
in--in people.”

“Or from people trusting in the wrong people. Which is it?” said the
Prophet, not without slyness.

She began to look thin, but checked herself.

“Tell me,” she said, “why did you stop me yesterday when I was beginning
to say to Sir Tiglath that I was sure Malkiel was a man and not a
syndicate?”

“Did I stop you?” said the Prophet, artlessly.

“Yes, with your eyes.”

“Because--because I was sure--that is, certain you couldn’t be sure.”

“How could you be certain?”

“How?”

“Yes.”

“Well, how is one certain of anything?” said the Prophet, rather feebly.

“How are you certain that I’m Miss Minerva Partridge?”

“Because you told me so yourself, because I’ve seen you come into
Jellybrand’s for your letters, because--”

“Haven’t I seen Malkiel come into Jellybrand’s for his?”

This unexpected retort threw the Prophet upon his beam ends. But he
remembered his oath even in that very awkward position.

“Does he go to Jellybrand’s?” he exclaimed, with a wild attempt after
astonishment. “But he’s a company--Sir Tiglath said so.”

“And what did your eyes say yesterday?”

“I had a cold in my eyes yesterday,” said the Prophet. “They were very
weak. They were--they were aching.”

Lady Enid was silent for a moment. During that moment she was conferring
with her feminine instinct. What it said to her must be guessed by
the manner in which she once more entered into conversation with the
Prophet.

“Mr. Vivian,” she said, with a complete change of demeanour to girlish
geniality and impulsiveness, “I’m going to confide in you. I’m going to
thrown myself upon your mercy.”

The Prophet blinked with amazement, like a martyr who suddenly finds
himself snatched from the rack and laid upon a plush divan with a satin
cushion under his head.

“I’m going to trust you,” Lady Enid went on, emphasising the two
pronouns.

“Many thanks,” said the Prophet, unoriginally.

She was sitting on a square piece of furniture which the Marquis of
Glome called an “Aberdeen lean-to.” She now spread herself out upon it
in the easy attitude of one who is about to converse intimately for some
centuries, and proceeded.

“I daresay you know, Mr. Vivian, that people always call me a very
sensible sort of girl.”

The Prophet remembered his grandmother’s remark about Lady Enid.

“I know they do,” he assented, trying not to think of five o’clock.

“What do they mean by that, Mr. Vivian?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say what do they mean by a sensible sort of girl?”

“Why, I suppose--”

“I’m going to tell you,” she interrupted him. “They mean a sort of girl
who likes fresh air, washes her face with yellow soap, sports dogskin
gloves, drives in an open cart in preference to a shut brougham, enjoys
a cold tub and Whyte Melville’s novels, laughs at ghosts and cries over
‘Misunderstood,’ considers the Bishop of London a deity and the Albert
Memorial a gem of art, would wear a neat Royal fringe in her grave, and
a straw hat and shirt on the Judgment Day if she were in the country for
it--walks with the guns, sings ‘Home, Sweet Home’ in the evening
after dinner to her bald-headed father, thinks the _Daily Mail_ an
intellectual paper, the Royal Academy an uplifting institution, the
British officer a demi-god with a heart of gold in a body of steel, and
the road from Calais to Paris the way to heaven. That’s what they mean
by a sensible sort of girl, isn’t it?”

“I daresay it is,” said the Prophet, endeavouring not to feel as if he
were sitting with a dozen or two of very practised stump orators.

“Yes, and that’s what they think I am.”

“And aren’t you?” inquired the Prophet.

Lady Enid drew herself upon the Aberdeen lean-to.

“No,” she said decisively, “I’m not. I’m a Miss Minerva Partridge.”

“Well, but what is that?” asked the Prophet, with all the air of a man
inquiring about some savage race.

“That’s the secret--”

“Oh, I beg your pardon!”

“That I’m going to tell you now, because I trust you--”

Again the pronouns were emphasised, and the Prophet thought how
difficult it would be to keep his oath.

“And because I know now that you’re silly too.”

The Prophet jumped, though not for joy.

“I’ve been Miss Minerva Partridge for--wait a moment, I must look.”

She got up, went to a writing table, opened a drawer in it, and took out
a large red book and turned its leaves.

“My diary,” she explained. “It’s foolish to keep one, isn’t it?”

Her intonation so obviously called for an affirmative that the Prophet
felt constrained to reply,--

“Very foolish indeed.”

She smiled with pleasure.

“I’m so glad you think so. Ah--exactly a year and a half.”

“You’ve been Miss Minerva Partridge?”

“Yes.”

“So long as that?”

“Yes, indeed. Mr. Vivian, during that time I have been leading a double
life.”

The Prophet remembered the other double life beside the borders of the
River Mouse, and began to wonder if he were acquainted with any human
being who led a single one.

“Many people do that,” he remarked rather aimlessly.

Lady Enid looked vexed.

“I did not say I had a monopoly of the commodity,” she rejoined,
evidently wishing that she had.

“Oh, no,” said the Prophet, making things worse; “one meets people who
live double lives every day, I might almost say every hour.”

The clock had just struck four, and he had begun to think of five. Lady
Enid’s pleasant plumpness began rapidly to disappear.

“I can’t say I do,” she said sharply, feeling that most of the gilt was
being stripped off her sin.

She stopped in such obvious dissatisfaction that the Prophet, vaguely
aware that he had made some mistake, said,--

“Please go on. I am so interested. Why have you led a double life for
the last week and a half?”

“Year and a half, I said.”

“I mean year and a half.”

He forced his mobile features to assume a fixed expression of greedy,
though rather too constant, curiosity. Lady Enid brightened up.

“Mr. Vivian,” she said, “many girls are born sensible-looking without
wishing it.”

“Are they really? It never occurred to me.”

“Such things very seldom do occur to men. Now that places these girls in
a very painful position. I was placed in this position as soon as I was
born, or at least as soon as I began to look like anything at all. For
babies really don’t.”

“That’s very true,” assented the Prophet, with more fervour.

“People continually said to me, ‘What a nice sensible girl you are’;
or--‘One always feels your Common sense’; or--‘There’s nothing foolish
about you, Enid, thank Heaven!’ The Chieftain relied upon me thoroughly.
So did the tenants. So did everybody. You can understand that it became
very trying?”

“Of course, of course.”

“It’s something to do with the shape of my eyebrows, the colour of my
hair, the way I smile and that sort of thing.”

“No doubt it is.”

“Mr. Vivian, I’ll tell you now, that I’ve never felt sensible in all my
life.”

“Really!” ejaculated the Prophet, still firmly holding all his features
together in an unyielding expression of fixed curiosity.

“Never once, however great the provocation. And in my family, with the
Chieftain, the provocation you can understand is exceptionally great.”

The Marquis of Glome, who was the head of a clan called “The
MacArdells,” was always named the Chieftain by his relations and
friends.

“I felt sure it must be,” said the Prophet, decisively.

“Nevertheless it is so extremely difficult, if not impossible, not to
try to be what people take you for that I was in a perpetual condition
of acting sensibly, against my true nature.”

“How very trying!” murmured the Prophet, mechanically.

“It was, Mr. Vivian. It often made me fell quite ill. Nobody but you
knows how I have suffered.”

“And why do I know?” inquired the Prophet.

“Because I realised yesterday that you must be almost as silly by nature
as I am.”

“Yesterday--why? When?”

“When you said to Sir Tiglath that you could prophesy.”

The Prophet stiffened. She laughed almost affectionately.

“So absurd! But I was vexed when you said you’d give it up. You mustn’t
do that, or you’ll be flying in the face of your own folly.”

She drew the Aberdeen lean-to, which ran easily on Edinburgh castors, a
little nearer to him, and continued.

“At least I felt obliged to seek an outlet. I could not stifle my real
self for ever, and yet I could not be comfortably silly with those who
were absolutely convinced of my permanent good sense. I tried to be
several times.

“Didn’t you succeed?”

“Not once.”

“Tch! Tch!”

“So at last I was driven to the double life.”

“Then your coachman knows?”

“MacSpillan! No! I took a cab--a four-wheeler--at the corner of the
Square, and the name of Minerva Partridge. It’s a silly name, isn’t it?”

She asked the question with earnest anxiety.

“Quite idiotic,” said the Prophet, reassuringly.

“I felt quite sure it was,” she cried, obviously comforted. “Because it
came to me so inevitably. I was so perfectly natural--and alone--when I
invented it. No one helped me.”

“I assure you,” reiterated the Prophet, “there is no doubt the name is
absolutely and entirely idiotic.”

“Thank you, dear Mr. Vivian! What a pleasure it is to talk to you! Under
this name I have, for a year and a half, led an idiotic life, such a
life as really suits me, such a life as is in complete accord with my
true nature. Oh, the joy of it! The sense of freedom! If only all other
silly girls who look sensible like me had the courage to do what I have
done!”

“It is a pity!” said the Prophet, in assent, beginning to be genuinely
moved by the obvious sincerity of this human being’s bent towards
folly. “But what have you done during this year and a half of truth and
freedom?”

“More foolish things than many crowd into a lifetime,” she cried
ecstatically. “It would take me days to tell you of half of them!”

“Oh, then you mustn’t,” said the Prophet, glancing furtively at the
clock. “Had you come out to be silly yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes, I had--to be sillier even than usual. And if it hadn’t been
for Sir Tiglath catching sight of me in the avenue, and then--Mr.
Sagittarius and you being in the parlour--”

She stopped.

“By the way,” she said, in her usual tone of breezy common sense, “were
you living a double life in the parlour?”

“I!” said the Prophet. “Oh, no, not at all. I never do anything of that
kind.”

“Sure?”

“Quite certain.”

“You’re not going to?”

“Certainly not. Nothing would induce me.”

She looked at him, as if unconvinced, raising her dark, sensible
eyebrows.

“All Jellybrand’s clients do,” she said. “And I’m certain Mr.
Sagittarius--”

“I assure you,” said the Prophet, with the heavy earnestness of absolute
insincerity, “Mr. Sagittarius is the most single lived man I ever met,
the very most. But why did Sir Tiglath, that is, why did you--?”

“Try to avoid him? Well--”

For the first time she hesitated, and began to look slightly confused.

“Well,” she repeated, “Sir Tiglath is a very strange, peculiar old man.”

The Prophet thought that if the young librarian had been present he
would have eliminated the second adjective.

“Peculiar! Yes, he is. His appearance, his manner--”

“Oh, I don’t mean that.”

“No?”

“No. Lots of elderly men have purple faces, turned legs and roaring
voices. You must know that. Sir Tiglath is peculiar in this way--he is
quite elderly and yet he’s not in the least little bit silly.”

“Oh!”

“He’s a thoroughly sensible old man, the only one I ever met.”

“Your father?”

“The Chieftain can be very foolish at times. That’s why he’s always
relied so on me.”

She gave this proof triumphantly. The Prophet felt bound to accept it.

“Sir Tiglath is really, as an old man, what everybody thinks I am, as a
young woman. D’you see?”

“You mean?”

“The opposite of me. And in this way too. While I hide my silliness
under my eyebrows, and hair, and smile, and manner, he hides his
sensibleness under his. When people meet me they always think--what a
common-sense young woman! When they meet him they always think--what a
preposterous old man!”

“Well, but then,” cried the Prophet, struck by a sudden idea, “if that
is so, how can you live a double life as Miss Minerva Partridge? You
can’t change your eyebrows with your name!”

“Ah, you don’t know women!” she murmured. “No, but you see I begin at
once.”

“Begin?”

“Being silly. All the people who know me as Miss Partridge know I’m
an absurd person in spite of my looks. I’ve proved it to them by my
actions. I’ve begun at once before they could have time to judge by my
appearance. I’ve told them instantly that I’m a Christian Scientist,
and a believer in the value of tight-lacing and in ghosts, an
anti-vaccinator, a Fabian, a member of ‘The Masculine Club,’ a ‘spirit,’
a friend of Mahatmas, an intimate of the ‘Rational Dress’ set--you know,
who wear things like half inflated balloons in Piccadilly--a vegetarian,
a follower of Mrs. Besant, a drinker of hop bitters and Zozophine, a
Jacobite, a hater of false hair and of all collective action to stamp
out hydrophobia, a stamp-collector, an engager of lady-helps instead
of servants, an amateur reciter and skirt dancer, an owner of a lock of
Paderewski’s hair--torn fresh from the head personally at a concert--an
admirer of George Bernard Shaw as a thinker but a hater of him as
a humourist, a rationalist and reader of _Punch_, an atheist and
table-turner, a friend of all who think that women don’t desire to be
slaves, a homoeopathist and Sandowite, an enemy of babies--as if all
women didn’t worship them!--a lover of cats--as if all women didn’t hate
one another!--a--”

“One--one moment!” gasped the Prophet at this juncture. “Many of these
views are surely in opposition, in direct opposition to each other.”

“I daresay. That doesn’t matter in the least to a real silly woman such
as I am.”

“And then you said that you proved by your actions instantly that--”

“So I did. I caught up a happy dog in the street, cried over its agony,
unmuzzled it and allowed it to add its little contribution to the joy
of life by mangling a passing archdeacon. I sat on the floor and handled
snakes. I wore my hair parted on one side and smoked a cigarette in a
chiffon gown. I refused food in a public restaurant because it had been
cooked by a Frenchman. I--”

“Enough! Enough!” cried the Prophet. “I understand. You forced Miss
Partridge’s acquaintances to believe in Miss Partridge’s folly. But who
were these acquaintances?”

“It would take me hours to tell you. First there was--”

“I really have to go at five.”

“Then I’ll finish about Sir Tiglath. He’s an utterly sensible old man,
and so is different from all other old men, for you know human folly
increases enormously with age. Isn’t that lovely? Now, Mr. Vivian, Sir
Tiglath admires me.”

“Ah!”

“I know. You think that proves him the contrary of what I’ve said.”

“Not at all!” exclaimed the Prophet, with frenzied courtesy, “not at
all!”

“Yes, you do. But you’re wrong. He doesn’t exactly admire my character,
but he likes me because I’m tall, and have pleasant coloured eyes,
and thick hair, and walk well, and know that he’s really an unusually
sensible old man.”

“Oh, is that it?”

“Yes. But now, if he could be made to think that I really am what I look
like--a thoroughly sensible young woman, he would more than admire me,
he would adore me.”

“But if you wish him to?” asked the Prophet in blank amazement.

“I do.”

“Why?”

“The Miss Minerva part of me desires it.”

“Indeed.”

“Yes. He’s got to do one or two things for Miss Minerva without knowing
that I’m Miss Minerva. That is why I bolted into the parlour yesterday.
Just as I was stepping into Jellybrand’s I happened to see Sir Tiglath
and he happened to think he saw me.”

“Only to think?”

“Yes. He is not certain. I saw that by the expression of his face. He
was wondering whether I was me--or is it I?--or not. I didn’t give him
time to be certain. I rushed into the parlour.”

“You did.”

“So it’s all right. Frederick Smith would never betray a client.”

“Really?”

“Never; so I’m saved. For Sir Tiglath isn’t certain even now. I found
that out on the way home with him last night. And an old man who’s
uncertain of the truth can soon be made certain of the lie, by a young
woman he admires, however sensible he is. And now I’ll tell you part of
what I want Sir Tiglath to do for Miss Minerva--”

But at this moment the clock struck five, and the Prophet bounded up
with hysterical activity, and hastily took his leave, promising to call
again and hear more on the following day.

“And tell more,” thought Lady Enid to herself as the door of the
sensible-looking boudoir shut behind him.



CHAPTER VIII

THE PROPHET RECEIVES HIS DIRECTIONS FROM MADAME

When the Prophet reached his door he rang the bell with a rather
faltering hand. Mr. Ferdinand appeared.

“Any one called, Mr. Ferdinand?” asked the Prophet with an attempt at
airy gaiety.

“Yes, sir,” replied Mr. Ferdinand, looking rather like an elderly maiden
lady when she unexpectedly encounters her cook taking an airing with a
corporal in the Life Guards, “the pair of persons you expected, sir, has
come.”

The Prophet blushed.

“Oh! You--you haven’t disturbed Mrs. Merillia with them, I hope,” he
rejoined.

“No, sir, indeed. Gustavus said your orders was that they was to be
shown quietly to the library.”

“Exactly.”

“I begged them to walk a-tiptoe, sir.”

“What?” ejaculated the Prophet.

“I informed them there was illness in the house, sir.”

“And did they--er--?”

“The male person got on his toes at once, sir, but the female person
shrieks out, ‘Is it catching? Ho! Think of--of Capericornopus,’ sir, or
something to that effect.”

“Tch! Tch!”

“I took the liberty to say, sir, that ankles was not catching, and
that I would certainly think of Capericornopus if she would but walk
a-tiptoe.”

“Well, and--”

“By hook and cook I got them to the library, sir. But the male person’s
boots creaked awful. The getting on his toes, sir seemed to induce it,
as you might say.”

“Yes, yes. So they’re in the library?”

“They are, sir, and have been talking incessant, sir, ever since they
was put there. We can hear their voices in our hall, sir.”

Mr. Ferdinand again pursed his lips and looked like an elderly lady. The
Prophet could no longer meet his eye.

“Bring some tea, Mr. Ferdinand, quietly to the library. And--and if Mrs.
Merillia should ask for me say I’m--say I’m busy--er--writing.”

Mr. Ferdinand moved a step backward.

“Master Hennessey!” he cried in a choked voice. “I, a London butler, and
you ask me to--!”

“No, no. I beg your pardon, Mr. Ferdinand. Simply say I’m busy. That
will be quite true. I shall be--very busy.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Ferdinand with a stern and at length successful
effort to conquer his outraged feelings.

He wavered heavily away to fetch the tea, while the Prophet, like a
guilty thing, stole towards the library. When he drew near to the door
he heard a somewhat resounding hubbub of conversation proceeding
within the chamber. He distinguished two voices. One was the hollow
and sepulchral organ of Malkiel the Second, the other was a heavy and
authoritative contralto, of the buzzing variety, which occasionally
gave an almost professional click--suggesting mechanism--as the speaker
passed from the lower to the upper register of her voice. As the Prophet
reached the mat outside the door he heard the contralto voice say,--

“How are we to know it really is only ankles?”

The voice of Malkiel the Second replied plaintively,--

“But the gentleman who opened the door and--”

The contralto voice clicked, and passed to its upper register.

“You are over fifty years of age,” it said with devastating compassion,
“and you can still trust a gentleman who opens doors! _O sanctum
simplicitatus!_”

On hearing this sudden gush of classical erudition the Prophet must have
been seized by a paralysing awe, for he remained as if glued to the mat,
and made no effort to open the door and step into the room.

“If I am sanctified, Sophronia,” said the voice of Malkiel, “I cannot
help it, indeed I can’t. We are as we are.”

“Did Bottom say so in his epics?” cried the contralto, contemptuously.
“Did Shakespeare imply that when he invented his immortal Bacon, or
Carlyle, the great Cumberland sage, when he penned his world-famed
‘Sartus’?”

“P’r’aps not, my dear. You know best. Still, ordinary men--not that I,
of course, can claim to be one--must remain, to a certain extent, what
they are.”

“Then why was Samuel Smiles born?”

“What, my love?”

“Why, I say? Where is the use of effort? Of what benefit was Plato’s
existence to the republic? Of what assistance has the great Tracy Tupper
been if men must still, despite all his proverbs, remain what they are?
_O curum hominibus! O imitatori! Servus pecum!_”

At this point the voice of Mr. Ferdinand remarked in the small of the
Prophet’s back,--

“Shall I set down the tea on the mat, sir, or--”

The Prophet bounded into the library, tingling in every vein. His
panther-like entrance evidently took the two conversationalists aback,
for Malkiel the Second, who had been plaintively promenading about the
room, still on his toes according to the behest of Mr. Ferdinand,
sat down violently on a small table as if he had been shot, while the
contralto voice, which had been sitting on a saddle-back chair by the
hearth, simultaneously bounced up; both these proceedings being
carried out with the frantic promptitude characteristic of complete and
unhesitating terror.

“I beg your pardon!” said the Prophet. “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

Malkiel the Second leaned back, the contralto voice leaned forward, and
both breathed convulsively.

“I really must apologise,” continued the Prophet. “I fear I have
startled you.”

His guests swallowed nothing simultaneously and mechanically drew out
their handkerchiefs. Then Malkiel feebly got up and the contralto voice
feebly sank down again.

“I--I thought I said sharp, sir,” remarked Malkiel, at length, with a
great effort recovering himself.

“Wasn’t I sharp?” returned the Prophet. “Will you present me?”

“Are you equal to it, my love?” inquired Malkiel, tenderly, to the
contralto voice.

The contralto voice nodded hysterically.

“Madame Sagittarius, sir,” said Malkiel, turning proudly to the Prophet,
“my wife, the mother of Corona and Capricornus.”

The Prophet bowed and the lady inclined herself, slightly protruding her
elbows as she did so, as if just to draw attention to the fact that she
was possessed of those appendages and could use them if necessary.

Madame Malkiel, or rather Madame Sagittarius, as she must for the
present be called, was a smallish woman of some forty winters. Her hair,
which was drawn away intellectually from an ample and decidedly convex
brow, was as black as a patent leather boot, and had a gloss upon it as
of carefully-adjusted varnish. Her eyes were very large, very dark and
very prominent. Her features were obstreperous and rippling, running
from right to left, and her teeth, which were shaded by a tiny black
moustache, gleamed in a manner that could scarcely be called natural.
She was attired in a black velvet gown trimmed with a very large
quantity of beadwork, a bonnet adorned with purple cherries, green
tulips and orange-coloured ostrich tips, a pelisse, to which bugles had
been applied with no uncertain hand, and an opal necklace. Her gloves
were of white, her boots of black kid, the latter being furnished with
elastic sides, and over her left wrist she carried a plush reticule,
whose mouth was kept shut by a tightly-drawn scarlet riband. On the left
side of her pelisse reposed a round bouquet of violets about the size of
a Rugby football.

“I thought you might like to have some tea,” began the Prophet, in his
most soothing manner, while Mr. Ferdinand, with pursed lips, softly
arranged that beverage upon the seat which Mr. Sagittarius--so we must
call him--had just vacated.

“Thank you,” said Madame Sagittarius, with dignity. “It would be
acceptable. The long journey from the banks of the Mouse to these
central districts is not without its fatigue. A beautiful equipage!”

“You said--”

“You have a very fine equipage.”

“You have seen the brougham?” said the Prophet, in some surprise.

“What broom?” buzzed Madame Sagittarius.

“I thought you were admiring--”

“The tea equipage.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure. Queen Anne silver, yes.”

“A great woman!” said Madame Sagittarius, spreading a silk handkerchief
that exactly matched the ostrich tips in her bonnet carefully over
her velvet lap. “All who have read Mrs. Markham’s work of genius with
understanding must hold her name in reverence. A noble creature! A pity
she died!”

“A great pity indeed!”

“Still we must remember that _Mors omnis communibus_. We must not forget
that.”

“No, no.”

“And after all it is the will of Providence. _Mors Deo_.”

“Quite so.”

During this classical and historical retrospect Mr. Ferdinand had
finished his task and quitted the apartment. As soon as he had gone
Madame Sagittarius continued,--

“As the mother of Corona and Capricornus I feel it my duty to ask you,
sir--that is, Mr.--”

“Vivian.”

“Mr. Vivian, whether the illness in your house is really only ankles as
the gentleman who opened the door assured me?”

“It is only that.”

“Not catching?”

“Oh, dear, no.”

“There, Sophronia!” said Mr. Sagittarius. “I told you it was merely the
prophecy.”

He suddenly assumed a formidable manner, and continued,--

“And now, sir, that we are alone--”

But Madame interrupted him.

“Kindly permit our host to succour my fatigue, Jupiter,” she said
severely. “I am greatly upset by the journey. When I am restored we can
proceed to business. At present I am fit only for consolation.”

Mr. Sagittarius subsided, and the Prophet hastily assisted the victim
of prolonged travel to some buttered toast. Having also attended to the
wants of her precipitate underling, he thought it a good opportunity to
proceed to a full explanation with the august couple, and he therefore
remarked, with an ingratiating and almost tender smile,--

“I think I ought to tell you at once that there will be no need for
any further anxiety on your part. I have put down my telescope and
have--well, in fact, I have decided once and for all to give up prophecy
for the future.”

The Prophet, in his innocence, had expected that this declaration
of policy would exercise a soothing influence upon his guests, more
especially when he added--it is to be feared with some insincerity,--

“I have come to the conclusion that I overrated my powers, as amateurs
will, you know, and that I have never really possessed any special
talent in that direction. I think I shall take up golf instead, or
perhaps the motor car.”

He spoke deliberately in a light-minded, even frivolous, manner, toying
airily with a sugar biscuit, as he leaned back in his chair, which stood
opposite to Madame Sagittarius’s. To his great surprise his well-meaning
remarks were received with every symptom of grave dissatisfaction by
his illustrious companions. Madame Sagittarius threw herself suddenly
forward with a most vivacious snort, and her husband’s face was
immediately overcast by a threatening gloom that seemed to portend some
very disagreeable expression of adverse humour.

“That won’t do, sir, at this time of day!” he exclaimed. “You should
have thought of that yesterday. That won’t do at all, will it, Madame?”

“_O miseris hominorum mentas_!” exclaimed that lady, tragically. “_O
pectorae caecae_!”

“You hear her, sir?” continued Mr. Sagittarius. “You grasp her meaning?”

“I do hear certainly,” said the Prophet, beginning to feel that he
really must rub up his classics.

“She helps Capricornus, sir, of an evening. She assists him in his
Latin. Madame is a lady of deep education, sir.”

“Quite so. But--”

“There can be no going back, sir,” continued Mr. Sagittarius. “Can
there, Madame?”

“No human creature can go back,” said Madame Sagittarius. “Such is the
natural law as exemplified by the great Charles Darwin in his _Vegetable
Mould and Silkworms_. No human creature can go back. Least of all this
gentleman. He must go forward and we with him.”

The Prophet began to feel uncomfortable.

“But--” he said.

“There is no such word as ‘but’ in my dictionary,” retorted the lady.

“Ah, an abridged edition, no doubt,” said the Prophet. “Still--”

“I am better now,” interposed Madame Sagittarius, brushing some crumbs
of toast from her pelisse with the orange handkerchief. “Jupiter, if you
are ready, we can explain the test to the gentleman.”

So saying she drew a vinaigrette, set with fine imitation carbuncles,
from the plush reticule, and applied it majestically to her nose.
The Prophet grew really perturbed. He remembered his promise to his
grandmother and Sir Tiglath, and felt that he must assert himself more
strongly.

“I assure you,” he began, with some show of firmness, “no tests will
be necessary. My telescope has already been removed from its position,
and--”

“Then it must be reinstated, sir,” said Mr. Sagittarius, “and this very
night. Madame has hit upon a plan, sir, of searching you to the quick.
Trust a woman, sir, to do that.”

“I should naturally trust Madame Sagittarius,” said the Prophet, very
politely. “But I really cannot--”

“So you say, sir. Our business is to find out whether, living in
the Berkeley Square as you do, you can bring off a prophecy of any
importance or not. The future of myself, Madame and family depends upon
the results of the experiments which we shall make upon you during the
next few days.”

The Prophet began to feel as if he were shut up alone with a couple of
determined practitioners of vivisection.

“Let’s see, my dear,” continued Mr. Sagittarius, addressing his wife,
“what was it to be?”

“The honored grandmother one,” replied the lady, tersely.

The Prophet started.

“I cannot possibly consent--” he began.

“Pray, Mr. Vivian, listen to me,” interposed Madame Sagittarius.

“Pray, sir, attend to Madame!” said Mr. Sagittarius, sternly.

“But I must really--”

“January,” said Madame, “is a month of grave importance to grandmothers
this year, is it not, Jupiter?”

“Yes, my dear. In consequence of Scorpio being in the sign of
Sagittarius. The crab will be very busy up till the third of February.”

“Just so.”

“At which date the little dog, my love, assumes the roll of maleficence
towards the aged.”

“I know. _Cane cavem_. When was the old lady born, Mr. Vivian, if you
please?”

“What old lady?” stammered the Prophet, beginning to perspire.

“The old lady who’s got ankles, your honoured grandmother?”

“On the twentieth of this month. But--”

“At what time?”

“Six in the morning. But--”

“Under what star?”

“Saturn. But--”

“That’s lucky, isn’t it, Jupiter?” said Madame, in an increasingly
business-like manner. “That brings her into touch with the
Camelopard--doesn’t it?”

“Into very close touch indeed, my dear, and also with the bull. He goes
right to her, as you may say.”

“I cannot conceivably permit--” began the Prophet in much agitation.

But Madame, without taking the smallest notice of him, proceeded.

“Will the scorpion be round her on her birthday?”

“Close round her, my love--with the serpent. They work together.”

“Together, do they? You know what effect they’ll have on her, don’t you,
Jupiter?”

“I should rather think so, my darling,” replied Mr. Sagittarius, with an
air of profound and sinister information.

The Prophet’s blood ran cold in his veins. Yet he felt for the moment
unable to utter a syllable, or even to make a gesture of protest.
So entirely detached from him did the worthy couple appear to be,
so completely wrapped up in their own evidently well-considered and
carefully-laid plans, that he had a sense of being in another sphere,
not theirs, of hearing their remarks from some distance off. Madame
Sagittarius now turned towards him in a formal manner, and continued.

“And now, Mr. Vivian, I shall have to lay down the procedure that you
will follow. Have you a good memory--no, a pencil and notebook will be
best. _Litterae scriptus manetur_, as we all know full well. Have you a
pencil and--?”

The Prophet nodded mechanically.

“Will you kindly get them?”

The Prophet rose, walked to his writing table and felt for the
implements.

“If you will sit down now I will direct you,” continued Madame,
authoritatively.

The Prophet sat down at the table, holding a lead pencil upside down in
one hand and an account-book wrong side up in the other.

“Let’s see--what’s to-day?” inquired Madame, of her husband.

“The seventeenth, my dear,” replied Mr. Sagittarius, looking at his wife
with almost sickly adoration.

“To be sure. Capricornus’s day for Homer’s Idyl. Very well, Mr. Vivian,
to-day being the seventeenth, and the old lady’s birthday the twentieth,
you have three days, or rather nights, of steady work before you.”

“Steady work?” murmured the Prophet.

“What should be his hours, Jupiter?” continued Madame. “At what time of
night is he to commence? Shall I say nine?”

The Prophet remembered feebly that, during the next three nights, he had
two important dinner-engagements, a party at the Russian Ambassador’s,
and a reception at the Lord Chancellor’s just opposite. However, he made
no remark. Somehow he felt that words were useless when confronted with
such an iron will as that of the lady in the pelisse.

“Nine would be too early, my dear,” said Mr. Sagittarius. “Eleven p.m.
would be more to the purpose.”

“Eleven let it be then, punctually. Will you dot down, Mr. Vivian, that
you have to be at the telescope to take observations at eleven p.m.
every night from now till the twentieth.”

“But I have had the telesc--”

“Kindly dot it down.”

The Prophet dotted it down with the wrong end of the pencil on the wrong
side of the account-book.

“And what are his hours to be exactly, Jupiter?” continued Madame. “From
eleven till dawn, I suppose?”

The Prophet shuddered.

“Eleven till three will be sufficient, my love. The crab, you know, has
pretty well done his London work by that time. And the old lady will
have to depend very much on the crab for these few nights.”

At this point the Prophet’s brain began to swim. Sparks seemed to float
before his eyes, and amid these sparks, nebulous and fragmentary visions
appeared, visions of his beloved grandmother companioned by scorpions
and serpents, in close touch with camelopards and bovine monsters, and,
in the last stress of terror and dismay, left entirely dependent
upon crustaceans for that help and comfort which hitherto her devoted
grandson had ever been thankful to afford.

“Oh, very well,” replied Madame. “You will be able to get to bed at
three, Mr. Vivian. Dot that down.”

“Thank you,” murmured the Prophet, making a minute pencil scratch in the
midst of a bill for butcher’s meat.

“During these hours--but you can tell him the rest, Jupiter.”

So saying, and with an air of one retiring from business upon a
well-earned competence, Madame Sagittarius lay back in her chair,
settled her bonnet-strings, flicked a crumb from the football of violets
that decorated her left side, and, extending her kid boots towards
the cheerful blaze that came from the fire, fell with a sigh into a
comfortable meditation. Mr. Sagittarius, on the other hand, assumed
a look of rather hectoring authority, and was about to utter what the
Prophet had very little doubt was a command when there came a gentle tap
to the door.

“Come in,” said the Prophet.

He thought he had spoken in his ordinary voice. In reality he had merely
uttered a very small whisper. The tap was repeated.

“Louder, sir, louder!” said Mr. Sagittarius, encouragingly.

“Come in!” shrieked the Prophet.

Mr. Ferdinand appeared, looking more like the elderly spinster lady when
confronted with the corporal in the Life Guards than ever.

“If you please, sir, I was to tell you that Lady Enid Thistle is with
Mrs. Merillia taking tea. Mrs. Merillia thought you would wish to know.”

Madame Sagittarius took the kid boots from the blaze on hearing this
aristocratic name. Mr. Sagittarius assumed a look of reverence, and
the Prophet realised, more acutely than ever, that even well-born young
women can be inquisitive.

“Very well,” he said. “Say I’ll--I’ll”--he succeeded in making his voice
sound absolutely firm--“I’ll come in a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Ferdinand cast a glance of respectful, but unlimited, horror upon
the Prophet’s guests and retired, while the Prophet, calling upon all
his manhood, turned to Mr. Sagittarius.

“I regret more than I can say that I shall be obliged now to obey
my grandmother’s summons,” he said courteously. “Suppose we defer
this--this pleasant little discussion to some future oc--”

“Impossible, sir!” cried Mr. Sagittarius. “Quite impossible. You must
get to work to-night, and how can you do it without your directions?”

“Oh, I can manage all right,” said the Prophet, desperately. “I can give
a guess as to--”

“_Non sunt ad astrae mollibus a terrus viae_!” cried Madame. “The road
from Berkeley square to the stars is not so easy, is it, Jupiter?”

“No indeed, my love. Why--”

“Then,” exclaimed the Prophet, much agitated, and feeling it incumbent
upon him to get rid of Mr. Sagittarius at once lest the curiosity of
Lady Enid should increase beyond all measure, and lead to an encounter
between the two clients of Jellybrand’s, “then kindly give me my
directions as briefly as possible, and--”

There was another tap upon the door.

“What is it?” cried the Prophet, distractedly, “Come in!”

Mr. Ferdinand re-entered very delicately.

“Her ladyship can only stay a minute, sir. Mrs. Merillia hopes you can
leave your business--I said as you was very busy, sir--and come up to
the drawing-room.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll come. Say I’ll come, Mr. Ferdinand.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the door closed the Prophet exclaimed excitedly,--

“I fear I really must--”

“Take down your directions, sir,” broke in Mr. Sagittarius, firmly.

“Very well,” rejoined the Prophet, desperately, seizing his pencil and
the account-book. “What are they?”

“You swear to follow them, sir?”

“Yes, yes, anything--anything!”

“Have you a star map?”

“Yes--no!”

“You must get one.”

“Very well.”

“You had better do so at the Stores.”

Madame breathed an almost sensuous sigh which caused her husband to
glance tenderly towards her.

“I know, my love, I know,” he said. “It may come some day.”

“_O festum dies! Longa intervallam!_” she murmured, shaking her bonnet
with the manner of a martyr to duty.

Mr. Sagittarius was greatly moved.

“She’s a saint,” he whispered aside to the Prophet, as if imparting some
necessary information.

“Certainly. Please go on!”

Mr. Sagittarius started, as if suddenly recalled to mundane matters.

“Get it at the Stores,” he said. “In the astronomical department.”

“Very well.”

“Having done so, and keeping the old lady perpetually in your mind, you
will place her in the claws of the crab--”

“What!”

“Mentally, sir, mentally, of course.”

“Oh.”

“And, allowing for the natural effect of the scorpion and serpent upon
one of her venerable age--”

“Good Heavens!”

“When close round her, as they will be--but you will observe that for
yourself--”

The Prophet shut his eyes as one who refuses to behold sacrilege.

“You will trace the cycloidal curve of the planets--can you do that?”

The Prophet nodded.

“As it affects her birthday, the twentieth. Should the lynx be near
her--”

“No, no!” cried the Prophet. “It shall not be!”

“Well, you’ll have to find that out and keep an eye to it. But should
it be, you will commit to paper what result its presence is likely to
produce to her, and work the whole thing out clearly for myself and
Madame on paper--in prophetic form, of course--so that we receive it
by--what post shall I say, my dear?”

“First post, Jupiter.”

“First post on--what day is the twentieth?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Prophet, helplessly.

“A Thursday,” said Madame. “Capricornus’s day for chronic sections.”

“She always knows,” said Mr. Sagittarius to the Prophet.

“Always.”

“Very well then, first post Thursday morning. Now is that quite clear?”

“Oh, quite, quite.”

“You will of course send the old lady’s horoscope to us at the same time
with full particulars.”

“Full particulars?” said the Prophet. “What of?”

“Of her removal from the bottle, cutting of her first tooth, short
coating, going into skirts, putting of the hair up, day of marriage and
widowhood, illnesses--”

“Especially the rashes, Jupiter,” struck in Madame.

“What a mind!” said Mr. Sagittarius aside to the Prophet.

“What!”

“Especially as Madame says, any illnesses taking the form of a rash--the
epidemic form, as I may say--and so forth. We are to receive this
document by the first post Thursday morning.”

“Have you dotted all that down, Mr. Vivian?” inquired Madame.

The Prophet hastily made a large variety of scratches with the lead
pencil.

“And now,” continued Mr. Sagittarius.

There was a third tap at the door.

“Come in,” cried the Prophet, distractedly, and feeling as if homicidal
mania were rapidly creeping upon him.

Mr. Ferdinand appeared once more, with a mouth like a purse.

“Her ladyship says she really must go in a moment, sir, and--and Mrs.
Merillia begs that--”

“I am coming at once, Mr. Ferdinand. I swear it. Go upstairs and swear I
swear it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Ferdinand departed, rather with the demeanour of an archbishop who
has been inveigled into pledging himself, on his archiepiscopal oath, to
commit some horrid crime. The Prophet turned, almost violently, towards
his guests.

“I must go,” he cried. “I must indeed. Pray forgive me. You see how I am
circumstanced. Permit me to show you to the door.”

“You swear, sir, to carry out all our directions and to dot down--”

“I do. I swear solemnly to dot down--if you will only--this way. Take
care of the mat.”

“We trust you, Mr. Vivian,” said Madame, with majestic pathos. “A wife,
a mother trusts you. _Placens uxus! Mater familiaris_.”

“I pledge my honour. This is the--no, no, not that way, not that way!”

The worthy couple, by mistake, no doubt, were proceeding towards the
grand staircase, having missed the way to the hall door, and as the
Prophet, following them up with almost unimaginable activity, drew near
enough to drum the right direction into their backs, Lady Enid became
visible on the landing above. Mr. Sagittarius perceived her.

“Why, it’s Miss Minerv--” he began.

“This way, this way!” cried the Prophet, wheeling them round and driving
them, but always like a thorough gentleman, towards the square.

“Then she leads a double life, too!” said Mr. Sagittarius, solemnly,
fixing his strained eyes upon the Prophet.

“She? Who?” said Madame, sharply.

She had not seen Lady Enid.

“All of us, my love, all of us,” returned her husband, as the Prophet
succeeded in shepherding them on to the pavement.

“Good-bye,” he cried.

With almost inconceivable rapidity he shut the door. As he did so
two vague echoes seemed to faint on his ear. One was male,
a dreamlike--“First post, Thursday!” The other was female, a
fairylike--“_Jactum alea sunt_.”



CHAPTER IX

THE PROPHET BEGINS TO CARRY OUT HIS DIRECTIONS

“Mr. Ferdinand,” said the Prophet the same evening, after he had dressed
for dinner, “what has become of the telescope?”

He spoke in a low voice, not unlike that of a confirmed conspirator, and
glanced rather furtively around him, as if afraid of being overheard.

“I have removed it, sir, according to your orders,” replied Mr.
Ferdinand, also displaying some uneasiness.

“Yes, yes. Where have you placed it?”

“Well, sir, I understood you to say I might throw it in Piccadilly, if I
so wished.”

The Prophet suddenly displayed relief.

“I see. You have done so.”

“Well, no, sir.”

The Prophet’s face fell.

“Then where is it?”

“Well, sir, for the moment I have set it in the butler’s pantry.”

“Indeed!”

“I thought it might be of use there, sir,” continued Mr. Ferdinand,
in some confusion, which, however, was not noticed by the Prophet. “Of
great use to--to Gustavus and me in--in our duties, sir.”

“Quite so, quite so,” returned the Prophet, abstractedly.

“Did you wish it to be taken to the drawing-room again, sir?”

The Prophet started.

“Certainly not,” he said. “On no account. As you very rightly say--a
butler’s pantry is the place for a telescope. It can be of great service
there.”

His fervour surprised Mr. Ferdinand, who began to wonder whether, by
any chance, his master knew of the Lord Chancellor’s agreeable-looking
second-cook. After pausing a moment respectfully, Mr. Ferdinand was
about to decamp when the Prophet checked him with a gesture.

“One moment, Mr. Ferdinand!”

“Sir?”

“One moment!”

Mr. Ferdinand stood still. The Prophet cleared his throat, arranged his
tie, and then said, with an air of very elaborate nonchalance,--

“At what time do you generally go to bed, Mr. Ferdinand, when you don’t
sit up?”

“Sometimes at one time, sir, and sometimes at another.”

“That’s rather ambiguous.”

“I beg pardon, sir.”

“What is your usual hour for being quite--that is, entirely in bed.”

“Entirely in bed, sir?”

Mr. Ferdinand’s fine bass voice vibrated with surprise.

“Yes. Not partially in bed, but really and truly in bed?”

“Well, sir,” returned Mr. Ferdinand, with decided dignity, “when I am in
bed, sir, I am.”

“And when’s that?”

“By twelve, sir.”

“I thought as much,” cried the Prophet, with slightly theatrical
solicitude. “You sit up too late, Mr. Ferdinand.”

“I hope, sir, that I--”

“That’s what makes you so pale, Mr. Ferdinand, and delicate.”

“Delicate, sir!” cried Mr. Ferdinand, who had in fact been hopelessly
robust from the cradle, totally incapable of acquiring even the most
universal complaints, and, moreover, miraculously exempt from that
well-recognised affliction of the members of his profession so widely
known as “butler’s feet.”

“Yes,” said the Prophet, emphatically. “You should be in bed, thoroughly
in bed, by a quarter to eleven. And Gustavus too! He is young, and the
young can’t be too careful. Begin to-night, Mr. Ferdinand. I speak for
your health’s sake, believe me.”

So saying the Prophet hurried away, leaving Mr. Ferdinand almost as
firmly rooted to the Turkey carpet with surprise as if he had been woven
into the pattern at birth, and never unpicked in later years.

At ten that evening the Prophet, having escaped early from his dinner on
some extravagant plea of sudden illness or second gaiety, stood in the
small and sober passage of the celebrated Tintack Club and inquired
anxiously for Mr. Robert Green.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Green is upstairs in the smoke-room,” said the
functionary whom the club grew under glass for the benefit of the
members and their friends.

“Sam, show this gentleman to Mr. Green.”

Sam, who was a red-faced child in buttons, with a man’s walk and the
back of one who knew as much as most people, obeyed this command, and
ushered the Prophet into a room with a sealing-wax red paper, in which
Robert Green was sitting alone, smoking a large cigar and glancing at
the “stony-broke edition” of an evening paper. He greeted the Prophet
with his usual unaffected cordiality, offered him every drink that had
yet been invented, and, on his refusal of them all, handed him a cigar
and a matchbox, and whistled “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-av” at him in the most
friendly manner possible.

“Bob,” said the Prophet, taking a very long time to light the cigar,
“what, in your opinion, is the exact meaning of the term honour?”

Mr. Green’s cheerful, though slightly belated, face assumed an
expression of genial betwaddlement.

“Oh, well, Hen,” he said, “exact meaning you know’s not so easy.
But--hang it, we all understand the thing, eh, without sticking it down
in words. What?”

“I don’t, Bob,” rejoined the Prophet, in the tone of a man at odds with
several consciences. “In what direction does honour lie?”

“It don’t lie at all, old chap,” said Mr. Green, with the decided manner
which had made him so universally esteemed in yeomanry circles.

The Prophet began to look very much distressed.

“Look here, Bob, I’ll put it in this way,” he said. “Would an honourable
man feel bound to keep a promise?”

“Rather.”

“Yes, but would he feel bound to keep two promises?”

“Rather, if he’d made ‘em.”

“Suppose he had!”

“Go ahead, Hen, I’m supposing,” said Mr. Green, beginning to pucker
his brows and stare very hard indeed in the endeavour to keep the
supposition fixed firmly in his head.

“And, further, suppose that these two promises were diametrically
opposed to one another.”

Mr. Green stuck out one leg, looked obliquely at the carpet, pressed his
lips together and nodded.

“So that if he fulfilled them both he’d have to break them both--”

“Stop a sec! Gad, I’ve lost it! Start again, Hen!”

“No, I mean so that if he didn’t break one he would be forced to break
the other. Have you got that?”

“Stop a bit! Don’t believe I have. Let’s see!”

He moved his lips silently, repeating the Prophet’s words.

“Yes. I’ve got that all right now,” he said, after three minutes of
strenuous mental exertion.

“Well, what would you say of him?”

“That he was a damned fool.”

The Prophet looked very much upset.

“No, no, Bob, I meant to him. What would you say to him?”

“That he was a damned fool.”

The Prophet began to appear thoroughly broken down. However, he still
stuck to his interpellation.

“Very well, Bob,” he said, with unutterable resignation--as of a toad
beneath the harrow--“but, putting all that aside--”

“Give us a chance, Hen! I’ve got to shunt all that, have I?”

“Yes, at least all you would say of, and to, the man.”

“Oh, only that. Wait a bit! Yes, I’ve done that. Drive on now!”

“Putting all that aside, what should you advise the man to do?”

“Not to be such a damned fool again.”

“No, no! I mean about the two promises?”

“What about ‘em?”

“Which would his sense of honour compel him to keep?”

“I shouldn’t think such a damned fool’d got a sense of honour.”

The Prophet winced, but he stuck with feverish obstinacy to his point.

“Yes, Bob, he had.”

“I don’t believe it, Hen, ‘pon my word I don’t. You’ll always find that
damned f--”

“Bob, I must beg you to take it from me. He had. Now which promise
should he keep?”

“Who’d he made ‘em to?”

“Who?” said the Prophet, wavering.

“Yes.”

“One to--to a very near and dear relative, the other to--well, Bob to
two comparative strangers.”

“What sort of strangers.”

“The sort of strangers who--who live beside a river, and who--who mix
principally with--well, in fact, with architects and their wives.”

“Rum sort of strangers?”

“They are decidedly.”

“Oh, then, you know ‘em?”

“That’s not the point,” exclaimed the Prophet, hastily. “The point is
which promise is to be kept.”

“I should say the one made to the relative. Wait a bit, though! Yes, I
should say that.”

The Prophet breathed a sigh of relief. But some dreadful sense of
honesty within him compelled him to add,--

“I forgot to say that he’d pledged his honour to the architects--that
is, to the strangers who lived beside a river.”

“What--and not pledged it to the relative?”

“Well, no.”

“Then he ought to stick to the promise he’d pledged his honour over, of
course. Nice for the relative! The man’s a damned fool, Hen. Do have a
drink, old chap.”

Thus did Mr. Robert Green drive the Prophet to take the first decisive
step that was to lead to so many complications,--the step towards Mr.
Ferdinand’s pantry.

At precisely a quarter to eleven p.m. the Prophet stood upon his
doorstep and, very gently indeed, inserted his latchkey into the door.
A shaded lamp was burning in the deserted hall, where profound silence
reigned. Clear was the night and starry. As the Prophet turned to close
the door he perceived the busy crab, and the thought of his beloved
grandmother, sinking now to rest on the second floor all unconscious of
the propinquity of the scorpion, the contiguity of the serpent, filled
his expressive eyes with tears. He shut the door, stood in the hall and
listened. He heard a chair crack, the ticking of a clock. There was no
other sound, and he felt certain that Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus had
heeded his anxious medical directions and gone entirely to bed betimes,
leaving the butler’s pantry free for the nocturnal operations of the
victim of Madame. For he recognised that she was the guiding spirit of
the family that dwelt beside the Mouse. He might have escaped out of
the snare of Mr. Sagittarius, but Madame was a fowler who would hold
him fast till she had satisfied herself once and for all whether it were
indeed possible to dwell in the central districts, within reach of the
Army and Navy heaven in Victoria Street, and yet remain a prophet. Yes,
he must now work for the information of her ambitious soul. He sighed
deeply and went softly up the stairs. His chamber was on the same floor
as Mrs. Merillia’s, and, as he neared her door, he rose instinctively
upon his toes and, grasping the tails of his evening coat firmly with
his left hand, to prevent any chance rustling of their satin lining, and
bearing his George the Third silver candlestick steadily to control any
clattering of its extinguisher, he moved on rather like a thief who
was also a trained ballerina, holding his breath and pressing his lips
together in a supreme agony of dumbness.

Unluckily he tripped in the raised pattern of the carpet, the
candlestick uttered a silver note, his pent-in breath escaped with a
loud gulp, and Mrs. Merillia’s delicate voice cried out from behind her
shut door,--

“Hennessey! Hennessey!”

The Prophet bit his lip and went at once into her room.

Mrs. Merillia looked simply charming in bed, with her long and elegant
head shaded by a beautiful muslin helmet trimmed with lace, and a
delicious embroidered wrapper round her shoulders. The Prophet stood
beside her, shading the candle-flame with his hand.

“Well, grannie, dear,” he said, “what is it? You ought to be asleep.”

“I never sleep before twelve. Have you had a pleasant dinner?”

“Very. Stanyer Phelps, the American, was there and very witty. And we
had a marvellous _supreme de volaille_. Everybody asked after you.”

Mrs. Merillia nodded, like an accustomed queen who receives her due. She
knew very well that she was the most popular old woman in London, knew
it too well to think about it.

“Well, good-night, grannie.”

The Prophet bent to kiss her, his heart filled with compunction at the
thought of the promise he was about to break. It seemed to him almost
more than sacrilegious to make of this dear and honoured ornament of
old age a vehicle for the satisfaction of the vulgar ambitions and
disagreeable curiosity of the couple who dwelt beside the Mouse.

“Good-night, my dear boy.”

She kissed him, then added,--

“You like Lady Enid, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“So does Robert Green. He thinks her such a thoroughly sensible girl.”

“Bob! Does he?” said the Prophet, concealing a slight smile.

“Yes. If you want her to get on with you, Hennessey, you should come up
to tea when she is here.”

“I couldn’t to-day, grannie.”

“You were really busy?”

“Very busy indeed.”

“I suppose you only saw her for a moment on the stairs?”

“That was all.”

It was true, for Lady Enid had scarcely stayed to speak to the Prophet,
having hurried out in the hope of discovering who were the “two parties”
 he had been entertaining on the ground floor.

Mrs. Merillia dropped the subject.

“Good-night, Hennessey,” she said. “Go to bed at once. You look quite
tired. I am so thankful you have given up that horrible astronomy.”

The Prophet did not reply, but, as he went out of the room, he knew, for
the first time, what criminals with consciences feel like when they are
engaged in following their dread profession.

As he walked across the landing he heard a clock strike eleven. He
started, hastened into his room, tore off his coat, replaced it with
a quilted smoking-jacket, sprang lightly to his table, seized a
planisphere, or star-map, which he had succeeded in obtaining that
night from a small working astronomer’s shop in the Edgeware Road,
and, mindful of the terms of his oath and the decided opinion of Robert
Green, scurried hastily, but very gingerly, down the stairs. This time
Mrs. Merillia did not hear him. She had indeed become absorbed in a new
romance, written by a very rising young Montenegrin who was just then
making some stir in the literary circles of the elect.

Very surreptitiously the Prophet tripped across the hall and reached
the stout door which gave access to the servants’ quarters. But here he
paused. Although he had lived in Mrs. Merillia’s most comfortable home
for at least fifteen years, he had actually never once penetrated
beyond this door. It had never occurred to him to do so. Often he had
approached it. Quite recently, when Mrs. Fancy Quinglet had broken
into tears on the refusal of Sir Tiglath Butt to burst according to
her prediction, he had handed her to this very portal. But he had never
passed through it, nor did he know what lay beyond. No doubt there was
a kitchen, very probably the mysterious region of watery activities
commonly known as a scullery, quite certainly a butler’s pantry. But
where each separate sanctum lay, and what should be the physiognomy of
each one the Prophet had not the vaguest idea. As he turned the handle
of the door he felt like Sir Henry Stanley, when that intrepid explorer
first set foot among the leafy habitations of the dwarfs.

As the door opened the Prophet found himself in a large apartment whose
walls were decorated with the efforts of those great painters who feed
the sentimental imaginations of the masses in the beautiful Christmas
numbers of our artistic day. Enchanting little girls and exceedingly
human dogs observed his entrance from every hand, while such penetrating
and suggestive legends as “Don’t bite!” “Mustn’t!” “Naughty!” “Would
‘ums?” and the like, filled his mind with the lofty thoughts so suitable
to the Christmas season. Over the mantelpiece was a _Cook’s Almanac for
the Home_, decorated in bright colours, a _Butler’s own book_, bound
in claret-coloured linen, and a large framed photograph of Francatelli,
that immortal _chef_ whose memory is kept green in so many kitchens, and
whose recipes are still followed as are followed the footprints of the
great ones in the Everlasting Sands of Time. One corner of the room
Gustavus had made his own, and here might be seen his tasteful what-not
and his little library--neatly arranged unabridged farthing editions

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