Mrs. Merillia was just beginning to recover from the prostration of the preceding day when the Prophet came into the room where she was seated with Mrs. Fancy Quinglet. She looked up at him almost brightly, but started when she saw how agitated he seemed.
“Grannie,” said the Prophet, abruptly, “you would tell me anything, wouldn’t you?”
“Why, of course, my dear boy. But what about?”
“About—about yourself?”
Mrs. Merillia looked very much astonished.
“There is nothing to hide, Hennessey,” she said with gentle dignity. “You know that.”
“I do, I do,” cried the Prophet, passionately. “Yours has been the best, the sweetest life the world has ever known!”
“Well, I don’t wish to imply—”
“But I do, grannie, I do. Can Fancy leave us for a moment?”
“Certainly. Fancy, you can go to your tatting.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mr Hennessey has something to explain to me.”
“Oh, ma’am, the houses that have been broke up by explainings!”
And with this, as the Prophet thought, appallingly appropriate exclamation, Mrs. Fancy hurried feverishly from the room.
“Now what is the question you wish to ask me, Hennessey?” said Mrs. Merillia, with a soft dignity.
“There are—one moment—there are eight questions, grannie,” responded the Prophet, shrinking visibly before the dread necessity by which he found himself confronted.
“Eight! So many?”
“Yes, oh, indeed, yes.”
“Well, my dear, and what are they?”
“The first is—is—grannie, when were you removed from—from the bottle?”
A very delicate flush crept into Mrs. Merillia’s charming cheeks.
“The bottle, Hennessey! Never, never!” she said, with a sort of pathetic indignation. “How could you suppose—I—the bottle—”
Her pretty old voice died away.
“Answered, darling grannie, answered!” ejaculated the Prophet. “Please—please don’t! And now—your first tooth?”
“My first what!” cried Mrs. Merillia in almost terrified amazement.
“Tooth—when did you cut it?”
“I have no idea. Surely, Hennessey—”
“Answered, dearest grannie!” cried the Prophet, with gathering agitation. “Did you ever wear a short coat?”
“I—I’m not a man!”
“You didn’t! Always a skirt?”
“Of course! Why—”
“And you’re sixty-eight on the twentieth. So for sixty-eight years you’ve always worn a skirt. That’s four.”
“Four what? Are you—?”
“When did you put your hair up, grannie, darling?”
“My hair—never. You know I’ve always had a maid to do these things for me. Fancy—”
“Of course. You’ve never put your hair up. I might have known. You were married very young, weren’t you?”
“Ah, yes. On my seventeenth birthday, and was left a widow in exactly two years’ time. Your poor dear granf—”
“Thank you, grannie, thank you! Seven!”
“Seven what, Hennessey? One would th—”
“And now, dear grannie, tell me one thing, only one little thing more. About—that is, talking of rashes—”
“Rashers!”
“No, grannie, rashes—illnesses, you know, that take an epidemic form.”
“Well, what about them? Surely there isn’t an epidemic in the square?”
“How many have you had, grannie?”
“Where? Had what?”
“Here, anywhere in the square, grannie.”
“Had what in the square?”
“Rashes.”
“I! Have a rash in the square!”
“Exactly. Have you ever—an epidemic, you know?”
“I have an epidemic in Berkeley Square? You must be crazy, Hennessey!”
“Probably, very likely, grannie. But have you? Tell me quickly! Have you?”
“Certainly not! As if any gentlewoman—”
“Answered, grannie, answered! Eight!”
“Eight what?”
“Questions. Thank you, dearest grannie. I knew you’d tell me, I knew you would!”
And the Prophet rushed from the room, leaving Mrs. Merillia in a condition that cannot be described and that not all the subsequent ministrations of Mrs. Fancy Quinglet were able to alleviate.
Having reached the hall, the Prophet hastily put on his coat and hat and called Mr. Ferdinand to him.
“Mr. Ferdinand,” he said, assuming a fixed and stony dignity to conceal his agitation and dismay, “I am leaving the house at once with the—the lady and gentleman who are in the library.”
At this description of the kids Mr. Ferdinand was very nearly seized with convulsions. However, as he said nothing and merely wrung his large hands, the Prophet, after a slight pause, continued,—
“I may be away some time, so if Mrs. Merillia should make any inquiry, you will say that I have left to pay a visit to some friends.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I tell Gustavus to pack your things?”
“Certainly not.”
The Prophet was turning towards the library when Mr. Ferdinand added,—
“When shall we expect you back, sir? Am I to forward your letters?”
“No, no. I shall return in a few hours.”
“Oh, I beg pardon, sir. And if any telegrams—”
“There will not be any. I am now going to answer the telegrams in person.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come along, my children,” cried the Prophet, putting his head into the library.
“Not your children, if you please, Mr. Vivian,” replied the little boy. “Corona, come on.”
“How do we go, my dears?” asked the Prophet, with an attempt at gaiety, and endeavouring to ignore the prostrated demeanour of Mr. Ferdinand, who was in waiting to open the hall door.
“By the purple ‘bus as far as the Pork Butcher’s Rest,” piped the little boy—(at this point Mr. Ferdinand could not refrain from a slight exclamation)—“then we take the train to the Mouse, Mouse, Mouse.”
“Mus, Mus, Mus,” chanted the little girl.
As Mr. Ferdinand was unable to open the door, paralysis having apparently supervened, the Prophet did so, and the cheerful little party emerged upon the step to find Lady Enid Thistle in the very act of pressing the electric bell. When she beheld the vivacious trio, all agog for their morning’s expedition, come thus suddenly upon her, she cried out musically,—
“Why, where are you off to?”
The Prophet was much embarrassed by the encounter.
“I am taking these lit”—he caught the staring eye of Capricornus—“these friends of mine for a little walk,” he said.
“I’ll come with you,” said Lady Enid, with an almost Highland decision. “I’ve got something to say to you, and we can talk as we go.”
She glanced very inquisitively indeed at the two children, who had begun to frisk at sight of the square all bathed in winter sunshine. The Prophet was very much upset.
“Don’t you think—” he began.
“It will be delightful to have some exercise,” she interrupted firmly. “Which way are you going?”
“Which way! Oh, to—towards—”
The Prophet stopped. He did not know from what point the purple ‘bus started to gain the Pork Butcher’s Rest. Capricornus hastened to inform him.
“We take the purple ‘bus at the corner of Air Street,” he piped.
“The purple ‘bus!” cried Lady Enid. “The purple bus!”
She glanced searchingly at the Prophet.
“Ah!” she murmured, “so you are taking a purple ‘bus to your double life!”
He could not deny it. They were now all walking forward in the sun and as the little Corona and Capricornus became speedily intent upon the wonders of this central district, Lady Enid and the Prophet were able to have a quiet word or two together.
“I came to tell you,” she said, “that Mrs. Vane Bridgeman will expect you to-night at—”
“I am engaged at eleven,” cried the Prophet, in despair at the imposition of this fresh burden upon his weary shoulders.
“I know. To the Lord Chancellor, but—”
“No. I have an engagement which I dare not break, at home.”
“Really!”
She gazed at him with her large, handsome grey eyes, and added,—
“I do believe you’re silly enough to live your double life at home sometimes. How splendid!”
“No, no! I assure you—”
“Of course you do! You dear foolish thing! You’re ever so much sillier than I am. You’re my master.”
“No, indeed, no, no!”
“But you can go to Mrs. Bridgeman’s for an hour easily. She expects you and I’ve promised that you will go.”
“It’s very kind of you, but really—”
“So that’s settled. You’ll meet me there, but don’t forget I’m Miss Minerva Partridge. The address is Zoological House, Regent’s Park, that big house in a garden just outside the Zoo.”
“The big house in the Zoological Gardens,” said the Prophet, feebly. “Thank you very much.”
“No, no, outside the Zoo. And then we can arrange to-night about your introducing her to Mr. Sagittarius.”
“Hush! Hush!” whispered the Prophet.
But he was too late. The long ears of the little pitchers had caught the well-known word.
“Why, that’s pater familias,” piped the little Capricornus.
“And mater familiaris,” added the little Corona.
“You don’t mean to say,” cried Lady Enid to the Prophet, “that these are the children of Mr. Sagittarius?”
The Prophet bent his head.
“How very interesting!” said Lady Enid. “Everything is working out most beautifully. I must get them some chocolates.”
And she immediately stepped into a confectioner’s and came out with a beautiful box of bon-bons, tied with amethyst ribbon, which she gave to the delighted children.
“I know your dear father,” she said. “At least I know who he is.”
And she looked firmly at the Prophet, who dropped his eyes. They were now at the corner of Air Street, and the purple ‘bus could be seen looming brilliantly in the distance.
“Good-bye, Lady Enid,” said the Prophet.
“Oh, I’ll see you off,” she replied, evidently resolved to satisfy some further, unexpressed curiosity.
“There it is!” cried Capricornus. “It’s coming! There it is!”
“Isn’t it pretty?” shrieked the little Corona, who was evidently growing much excited by the chocolates and the centralness of the whole thing. “Let’s go on the top! Let’s go on the top!”
She began to jump on the pavement, and her brother was just about to follow her example when some sudden idea struck him into gravity. He turned to the Prophet and exclaimed solemnly,—
“Oh, if you please, Mr. Vivian, have you got the crab with you?”
“The crab!” cried Lady Enid, with much vivacity.
“Yes, yes, my boy, it’s all right!” said the Prophet, hastily.
“Not your boy, if you please, Mr. Vivian,” returned the little inquisitor. “And have you got the fist tooth?”
“Yes, yes!”
“And the rashes, and the honoured grandmother, and—”
“I’ve got everything,” cried the Prophet, “every single thing!”
“Because mater familias said I was to make you bring them if I stayed for them all day.”
“Yes, yes, they’re all here—every one.”
Lady Enid was gazing at the Prophet’s slim form with almost passionate curiosity. It was evidently a problem to her how he had managed to conceal so many various commodities about his person without altering his shape. However, she had no time to study the matter, for at this moment the purple ‘bus jerked along the kerb, and the voice of the conductor was heard crying,—
“Pork Butcher’s Rest! All the way one penny! Pork—penny—all the way—Butcher’s—Rest—one—Pork—all—Pork—penny—Pork—Butcher’s— Pork—Rest—Pork—penny!”
With a hasty farewell the Prophet, accompanied, and indeed closely clutched, by the little Corona and Capricornus, scrambled fanatically, and not without two or three heavy falls, to the summit of the ‘bus, while Lady Enid read the legend printed on it with a smile, ere she turned to walk home, putting two and two together, and thinking, with keen feminine satisfaction, how useless in the long run are all the negatives of man.
In later years, though many memories intervene, the Prophet will never forget his journey to the banks of the Mouse. Always it seemed very strange to him and dream-like, that everlasting journey upon the purple ‘bus, complicated by the chatter of the younger scions of the Malkiel dynasty, and by the shrill cries of the conductor summoning the passers-by to hasten to that place of repose consecrated to the worthy and hard-working individuals who drew their modest incomes from the pig. The character of the streets changed as the central districts were left behind, and a curious scent, the scent of Suburbia, seemed to float between the tall chimneys in the morose atmosphere. The purple chariot, which rolled on and on like the chariot of Fate, drew gradually away from the large thoroughfares into mean streets, whose air of dull gentility was for ever autumnal, and the Prophet, on passing some gigantic gasworks, mechanically wondered whether it might not, perhaps, be that monument to whose shadow Malkiel the First had lived and died. Once, looking up at the black sky, he remarked to the little Capricornus that it was evidently going to rain.
“No, Mr. Vivian,” replied the boy. “It won’t rain hard this week. January’s a fine month, but there’ll be heavy floods in March, especially along the banks of the Thames.”
“And in February there’ll be such a lot of scarlet fever in the southern portions of England,” added the little Corona. “Oh, Corney, just look at that kitty on the airey railings!”
“Area, Corona,” corrected her brother. “Oh, my! ain’t it funny?”
The Prophet remembered that he was travelling with the scions of a prophetic house.
It seemed many years before the ‘bus stopped before a brick building full of quart pots, situated upon a gentle eminence sloping to a coal-yard, and the voice of the conductor proclaimed that the place of repose was reached. The Prophet and his diminutive guides descended from the roof and were shortly in a train puffing between the hunched backs of abominable little houses, sooty as street cats and alive with crying babies. Then bits of waste land appeared, bald wildernesses in which fragments of broken crockery hibernated with old tin cans and kettles yellow as dying leaves. A furtive brown rivulet wandered here and there like a thing endeavouring to conceal itself and unable to find a hiding-place.
“That’s the Mouse, Mr. Vivian,” remarked Capricornus, proudly. “We shall soon be there.”
“Ridiculum mus,” rejoined his sister, who evidently took after her learned mother.
“Culus, Corona; and you’re not to say that. Pater familias says that the Mouse is a noble stream. We get out here, Mr. Vivian.”
Here proved to be a wayside station on the very bank of the noble stream, and on the edge of a piece of waste ground so large that it might almost have been called country.
The Prophet and the two kids set off across this earth, which was named by the inhabitants “the Common.” In the distance rose a fringe of detached brick and stone villas towards which Capricornus now pointed a forefinger that trembled with pride.
“That’s where we live,” he said, in a voice that was grown squeaky from conceit.
“Dulce domus,” piped his sister, clutching the skirt of the Prophet’s coat, and, thus supported, performing several very elaborate dancing steps upon the clayey soil over which he was feebly staggering. “Dulce dulce, dulce domus. Look at that rat, Corney!”
A large, raking rodent, indeed, at that instant emerged from the wreckage of what had once been a copper cauldron near by, and walked slowly away towards a slope of dust garnished with broken bottles and abandoned cabbage stalks. The Prophet shuddered and longed to flee, but the two kids, as if divining his thought, now clasped his hands and led him firmly forward to a yellow villa, fringed with white Bath stone and garnished plentifully with griffins. From its flat front shot ostentatiously forth a porch adorned with Roman columns which commanded a near view of the Mouse, and before the porch was a small garden in which several healthy-looking nettles had made their home.
As the Prophet and the two kids approached this delightful abode, a white face appeared, gluing itself to the pane of an upper window.
“There’s pater familias!” piped Capricornus. “Don’t he look ill?”
As they mounted the flight of imitation marble steps the face disappeared abruptly.
“He’s coming to let us in,” said Capricornus. “You’re sure you’ve brought the crab and all the rashes?”
“Quite sure.”
“Because, if you haven’t, I don’t know whatever mater familias’ll—”
At this moment the portal of the lodge was furtively opened about half an inch, and a very small segment of ashen-coloured human face, containing a large and apprehensive eye, was shown in the aperture.
“Are you alone?” said the hollow voice of Mr. Sagittarius.
“Quite, quite alone,” said the Prophet, reassuringly.
“It’s all right, pater familias!” cried Capricornus. “He’s brought all the rashes and the first tooth and everything. I made him.”
“I don’t think he wanted to,” added the little Corona, suddenly developing malice.
“I’ve taken this long journey, Mr. Sagittarius,” said the Prophet, with a remnant of self-respect, “at your special request. Am I to be permitted to come in?”
“If you’re sure you’re quite alone,” returned the sage, showing a slightly enlarged segment of face.
“I am quite sure—positive!”
At this the door was opened just sufficiently to admit the passage of one thin person at a time, and, in single file, the Prophet, Corona and Capricornus passed into the lodge.
On stepping into a small vestibule, paved with black and white lozenges, and fitted up with an iron umbrella stand, a Moorish lamp and a large yellow china pug dog, the Prophet found himself at once faced by Mr. Sagittarius, whose pallid countenance, nervous eye and suspicious demeanour plainly proclaimed him to be, as he had stated, very rightly and properly going about in fear of his life.
“Go to the schoolroom, my darlings,” he whispered to his children. “Why, what have you there?”
“Choclets,” said Capricornus.
“From the pretty lady, mulius pulchrum,” added the little Corona.
“Who is a mulibus pulchrum, my love?” asked Mr. Sagittarius, before Capricornus had time to correct his sister’s Latin.
“It was Miss Minerva,” said the Prophet. “We happened to meet her.”
“Indeed, sir. Run away, my pretties, and don’t eat more than one each, or mater familias will not approve.”
Then, as the little ones disappeared into the shadows of the region above, he added to the Prophet,—
“You’ve nearly been the death of Madame, sir.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry,” said the Prophet.
“Sorrow is no salve, sir, no salve at all. Were it not for her books I fear we might have lost her.”
“Good gracious!”
“Mercifully her books have comforted her. She is resting among them now. Madame is possessed of a magnificent library, sir, encyclopaedic in its scope and cosmopolitan in its point of view. In it are represented every age and every race since the dawn of letters; thousands upon thousands of authors, sir, Rabelais and Dean Farrar, Lamb and the Hindoos, Mettlelink and the pith of the great philosophers such as John Oliver Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Earl Spencer; the biting sarcasm of Hiny, the pathos of Peps, the oratorical master-strokes of such men as Gladstone, Demosthenes and Keir Hardie; the romance of Kipling, sir, of Bret Harte and Danty Rossini; the poetry of Kempis a Browning and of Elizabeth Thomas Barrett—all, all are there bound in Persian calf. Among these she seeks for solace. To these she flies in hours of anguish.”
“Does she indeed?” said the Prophet, feeling thoroughly overwhelmed.
“She desires me to take you to her at once, sir, there to confer and”—he lowered his voice and trembled visibly—“to arrange measures for the protection of my life.”
The Prophet found himself wishing that he had been less precipitate in covertly alluding to Sir Tiglath’s long desire of assault and battery, but before he had time to wish anything for more than half a minute, Mr. Sagittarius had guided him ceremoniously across the hall and was turning the handle of a door that was decorated with black and scarlet paint.
“Here, sir,” he whispered, “you will find Madame surrounded by the authors whom she loves, by their portraits, their biographies and their writings. Here she communes with the great philosophers, sir, the poets, the historians and the humourists of the entire world, from the earliest days down to this very moment—in Persian calf, sir.”
He gazed awfully at the Prophet, and gently opened the door of this temple of the intellect.
The Prophet expected to find himself ushered into a gigantic chamber, lined from floor to ceiling with shelves that groaned beneath their burden of the literature of genius. Indeed he had, in fancy, beheld even the chairs and couches covered with stacks of volumes, the very floor littered with the choicest productions of the brains of the dead and living. His surprise was, therefore, very great when, on passing through the door, he beheld Madame Sagittarius reposing at full length upon a maroon sofa in a small apartment, whose bare walls, were entirely innocent of book-shelves. Indeed the only thing of the sort which was visible was a dwarf revolving bookcase which stood beside the sofa, and contained some twenty volumes bound, as Mr. Sagittarius had stated, in Persian calf, each of these volumes being numbered and adorned with a label on which was printed in letters of gold, “The Library of Famous Literature: Edited by Dr. Carter. Tasty Tit-bits from all Times.”
“Madame, sir, in her library,” whispered Mr. Sagittarius by the door. “She is absorbed, sir, and does not notice us.”
In truth Madame Sagittarius did appear to be absorbed in thought, or something else, for her eyes were closed, her mouth was open, and a sound of regular breathing filled the little room.
“She is thinking out some problem, sir,” continued Mr. Sagittarius. “She is communing with the mighty dead. Sophronia, my love, Sophronia, Capricornus has brought the gentleman according to your orders. Sophy! Sophy!”
His final utterances, which were somewhat strident caused Madame Sagittarius to come away from her communion with the mighty dead with a loud ejaculation of the nature of a snort combined with a hissing whistle, to kick up her indoor kid boots into the air, turn upon her right elbow, and present a countenance marked with patches of red and white, and a pair of goggling, and yet hazy, eyes to the intruders upon her intellectual exertions.
“Mr. Vivian has come, Sophronia, according to your directions.”
Madame uttered a second snort, brought her feet to the floor, arranged her face in a dignified expression with one fair hand, breathed heavily, and finally bowed to the Prophet with majestic reserve and remarked, with the professional click,—
“I was immersed in thought and did not perceive your entrance.Mens invictus manetur. Be seated, I beg.”
Here certain very elaborate contortions and swellings of her interesting countenance suggested that she was repressing a good-sized yawn, and she was obliged to rearrange her features with both hands before she could continue.
“Thought conquers matter, as Plauto—I should say as Platus very rightly obesrved.”
“Quite so,” assented the Prophet, trying to live up to the library, but scarcely succeeding.
“Even in the days of the great Juvenile,” proceeded Madame, “to whose satires I owe much”—here she laid a loving hand upon Vol. 2 of the “Library of Famous Literature.”—“Long ere the days when Lord Lytton and his Caxtons introduced us to the blessings of the printing press there were doubtless ladies who, like myself, could forget the treachery and the lies of men in silent communion with the brains of the departed. Far better to be Milton’s ‘Il Penserosero’ than Lord Byron’s ‘L’Allegra!’”
To this pronounciamento, which was interrupted several times by more alarming contortions of the brain-worker’s face, the Prophet replied with a vague affirmative, while Mr. Sagittarius whispered,—
“Her whole knowledge, sir, comes straight from there”—pointing towards the dwarf bookcase. “She brought it on the instalment system. Dr. Carter has made her what she is! That man, sir, deserves to be canonised. Eight guineas and a half, sir, and such a result!”
“Such a result!” the Prophet whispered back.
By this time Madame Sagittarius had apparently ceased to commune with the dead, for her striking face assumed a more normal expression of feminine bitterness as she realised who was before her, and she exclaimed sharply,—
“Oh, so you’ve come at last, Mr. Vivian! And pray what have you to say? What about the rashes? And what is this danger that threatens Mr. Sagittarius?”
“We’d better take the danger first, my dear,” said Mr. Sagittarius, with grave anxiety.
“Very well. Not that it should be the most important to one who wears thetoga virilibus!”
“True, my love. Still, to take it first will clear the ground, I think, and set me more at ease. Well, sir?”
Thus adjured, the Prophet resolved to make a clean breast of Sir Tiglath’s declarations, and he therefore replied,—
“I thought it only right to wire to you as I did, having learnt that there is in London a gentleman, an eminent man, who has for five-and-forty years been seeking for Malkiel with the avowed intention of—of—”
“Oh what, sir, of what?” said Mr. Sagittarius with trembling lips.
“Of doing him violence,” replied the Prophet, impressively.
“What is the gent’s name?” said Mr. Sagittarius, in great agitation.
“His name!Nomen volens!” added Madame.
“That,” said the Prophet, “I prefer not to say at present.”
“But why should he desire to—?”
“Because you are a prophet.”
“There, Jupiter!” cried Madame, with flushed spitefulness. “What have I always said! All prophets are what they call outsiders—hors d’oeuvres, neither more nor less.”
“I know, my love, I know. But how should this gent recognise me for a prophet? I’m sure my dress, my manner, are those of an outside broker, as I have often told you, Sophy. How—”
“The gentleman has not yet recognised you,” said the Prophet. “At the moment he believes you to be an American syndicate.”
“Thank mercy!” ejaculated Mr. Sagittarius.
“But one can never tell,” added the Prophet. “He might find out.”
“Nonsense!” cried Madame at this juncture. “We might quite well have gone to the square yesterday as I always suspected. But you are so timid, Jupiter.Timeo Dan—Dan—well,Dansomething or other, as Virgil so truly says.”
“Cautious, Sophronia, only cautious, for your and the children’s sakes!”
“I call a man who’s afraid even when he’s passing everywhere as an American syndicate a cowardly custard,” rejoined Madame, who appeared to be suffering under that peculiar form of flushed irritability which is apt to follow on heavy thought, indulged in to excess in a recumbent position during the daytime. “There, that’s settled. So now let us get to business. Kindly hand me your prophecy of last night, Mr. Vivian.”
The Prophet drew from a breast pocket a sheet or two of notepaper, on which he had dotted down, in prophetic form, the events of the night before. Madame received it and continued,—
“Before perusing this report, Mr. Vivian, I should wish to be made acquainted with those particulars.”
“Which ones?” said the Prophet.
“Of your grandmother’s career.”
“Oh, I—”
“Let us take them in order, please, and proceedparri passo. When was the old lady removed from the bottle?”
“Never,” replied the Prophet, firmly. “Never.”
An expression of incredulous amazement decorated the obstreperous features of Madame.
“Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Vivian, that she sucks it still?” she inquired.
“I mean what I say, that she has never been removed from it,” returned the Prophet, with energy.
“Well, sir, she must be very partial to milk and Indian rubber, very partial indeed!” said Mr. Sagittarius. “Go on, my darling.”
“Her first tooth, Mr. Vivian—when did she cut it?”
“She has no idea.”
Madame began to look decidedly grim.
“Date of short-coating?” she rapped out.
“There was no date. She never wore a short-coat.”
“Do you desire me to believe, Mr. Vivian, that the old lady has been going about in long clothes ever since she was born?” inquired Madame, with incredulous sarcasm.
“Most certainly I do,” replied the Prophet.
“Then how does she get along, pray? Come! Come!”
“She has always worn long clothes,” cried the Prophet, boldly standing up for his beloved relative, “and always will. You can take that from me, Madame Sagittarius. I know my grandmother, and I am ready to pledge my honour to it.”
“Oh, very well. She must be a very remarkable lady. That’s all I can say. When did she put her hair up?”
“Never. She has never put it up.”
“She has never put her hair up!”
“No, never.”
“You mean to say that your grandmother goes about in long clothes with her hair down in the central districts?” cried Madame in blank amazement.
“She has never put her hair up,” answered the Prophet, with almost obstinate determination.
“Oh, well—if she prefers! But I wonder what the police are about!” retorted Madame. “And now the rashes?”
“There are none.”
But at this Madame’s temper—already somewhat upset by her prolonged communion with the mighty dead—showed symptoms of giving way altogether.
“Rubbish, Mr. Vivian!” she said, clicking loudly and passing with an almost upheaving jerk to her upper register! “I’m a mother and was once a child. Rubbish! I must insist upon knowing the number of the rashes.”
“I assure you there are none.”
“D’you wish me to believe that the old lady has gone about all her life in the Berkeley Square in long clothes and her hair down, with her lips to the bottle and never had a rash? Do you wish me to believe that, Mr. Vivian?”
“Yes, sir, do you wish Madame, a lady of deep education, sir, to believe that?” cried Mr. Sagittarius.
“I can only adhere to what I have said,” answered the Prophet. “My grandmother has never been removed from the bottle, has never worn a short coat, has never put her hair up and has never had an epidemic in Berkeley Square.”
“Then all I can say is that she’s an unnatural old lady,” cried Madame, with obvious temper, tossing her head and kicking out the kid boots, as if seized with the sudden desire to use them upon a human football. “And there’s not many like her.”
“There is no one like her, no one at all,” said the Prophet with fervour.
“So I should suppose,” cried Madame, forgetting the other questions as to the day of marriage, etc., in the vexation of the moment. “She must certainly be the bird of whom Phoenix wrote that rose from ashes in the days of the classics.Rarum avisindeed! Eh, Jupiter?”
“Very rarum, my dear, very indeed!” responded her husband, with imitative sarcasm. “An avis indeed, not a doubt of it.”
“De Queechy should have known her,” continued Madame. “He always loved everything out of the common. Well, and now for the prophecy. What is all this, Mr. Vivian?”
“The result of last night’s observation,” said the Prophet.
“Do you call that a cycloidal curve?” asked Madame, with a contralto laugh that shook the library. “Look, Jupiter!”
Mr. Sagittarius glanced over his wife’s heaving shoulder.
“Very poor, my dear, very irregular indeed.”
“It’s the best I could do,” said the Prophet, still politely.
“I daresay,” replied Mr. Sagittarius. “I daresay. Where’s your star-map?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” answered the Prophet. “I left it in the pomade.”
“The pomade!”
“Yes, the butler’s own special pomade, and it seems to have disappeared.”
“Very careless, very careless indeed. Let’s see—prophecy first, then how arrived at. ‘Grandmother apparently threatened with some danger at night in immediate future. Great turmoil in the house during dark hours.’ H’m! ‘Some stranger, or strangers, coming into her life and causing great trouble and confusion, almost resulting in despair, and perhaps actually inducing illness.’ H’m! H’m! We didn’t arrive at any of this by our observations, did we, Sophronia?”
“Decidedly not,” snapped Madame, haughtily.
“And now let’s see how arrived at. H’m! H’m! Grandmother—ingress of Crab—conjunction of Scorpio with Serpens—moon in eleventh house. Yes, that’s so. Jupiter in trine with Saturn—What’s this? ‘Crab dressed implies danger—undressed Crab much safer—attempted intervention failure—she’s in a nice state now—it tried to keep her from it, but she was drawn right to it.’ Right to what?”
“The Crab?”
“Of course she was drawn to it. She depends on the Crab these nights. But what does the rest mean?”
“The Crab was dressed.”
“Dressed—what in?”
“I don’t know,” said the Prophet. “It didn’t tell me.”
Mr. Sagittarius and Madame exchanged glances.
“Explain yourself, Mr. Vivian, I beg,” cried Madame in a somewhat excited manner. “How could the Crab be dressed?”
“I have wondered,” said the Prophet, gazing at the couple before him with shining eyes. “But it was dressed last night, and that made it exceptionally dangerous in some way. Something seemed to tell me so. Something did tell me so.”
“What told you?” inquired Madame, with more excitement and a certain respect which had been quite absent from her manner before.
“Something that came in the night. I don’t know what it was. Light flashed from it.”
“It sounds like a sort of comet, my darling,” said Mr. Sagittarius, considerably perturbed. “We didn’t observe that the Crab was specially dressed, did we?”
“It had nothing on at all when we saw it,” said Madame with growing agitation. “But whatever was this comet that flashed light? That’s what I want to get at.”
“It was a dark thing that told me the Crab was dressed, that my grandmother had been with it and that its influence was inimical to her.”
“A dark thing! That’s not a comet!” said Mr. Sagittarius.
“It vanished with a flash of light into the square.”
“At what time did you observe it, sir?” asked Mr. Sagittarius, while Madame leaned forward, gazing with goggling eyes at the Prophet.
“At exactly half-past one.”
“Did it stay long?”
“A few minutes only—but it made an impression upon me that I can never forget.”
It had apparently also made a very great impression upon Mr. and Madame Sagittarius, who remained for some seconds staring fixedly at the Prophet without uttering a word. At last Mr. Sagittarius turned to Madame and said in a voice that shook with seriousness,—
“Can it be, Sophronia, that prophets ought to live in the central districts? Can it really be that the nearer they are to the Circus, and even to the Stores—”
“O beatus illa!” interjected Madame upon the pinions of a sigh.
“Yes, Sophronia, the Stores, the more clearly is the knowledge of the future vouchsafed to them? If it should prove to be so!”
Madame stared again upon the Prophet with a fixity and strained inquiry which made him shift in his seat.
“If it should!” she repeated, upon the lowest note of her lower register, which sounded, at that solemn moment, like the keynote of a dreamer. Then, with a sudden change of manner, she cried sharply,—
“Jupiter, you must accompany this gentleman back to the square to-day.”
The Prophet started. So did Mr. Sagittarius.
“But—” they cried simultaneously.
“And you must share his night watch.”
“But, my darling—”
“Or I will,” cried Madame. “Which is it to be?”
“Mr. Sagittarius!” exclaimed the Prophet.
“Very well,” said Madame. “Let mine be the weary task to wait and watch at home.Fata feminus. The mystery of the dressed Crab must be unveiled. Should this mysterious visitant again vouchsafe a prophetic message, a practical prophet must be at hand to receive it. Jupiter, this gentleman is not practical. This report”—she struck the paper on which the Prophet had dotted down his notes—“is badly written. The cycloidal curve might have been made by a Board School child. The deductions drawn—deductio ad absurdibus—reveal no talent, none of the propheticfeu de joieat all. But this mystery of the dressed Crab may mean much. Jupiter, you will accompany this gentleman back to London and you will assist him practically at the telescope to-night.”
“Very well, my love. I will risk the personal danger, for your and the children’s—”
“But—but really—” began the Prophet. “I am very sorry, but—”
“Madame has spoken, sir,” said Mr. Sagittarius, very solemnly.
“I know she has. But—yes, I know there are no buts in your dictionary, Madame, I know there aren’t—but I have an engagement to-night that I have sworn—”
“What engagement, sir?” said Mr. Sagittarius, sternly. “You have sworn to us. You must know that.”
“I have sworn to almost everyone,” cried the distracted Prophet. “But this swear—I mean this oath must be kept before yours.”
“Before ours, sir?”
“It comes on before eleven. I keep my oath to you after it. I manage the two, don’t you see?”
“He will see that you manage the two, Mr. Vivian, I can assure you,” said Madame, viciously. “Won’t you, Jupiter?”
“Certainly, my dear. What is the oath, sir, that you place before ours?”
“An oath to Miss Minerva,” returned the Prophet, beginning to feel reckless, firm in the conviction that it was henceforth his destiny to be the very sport of Fate.
“Ha!” cried Mr. Sagittarius. “The double life!”
“Who is Miss Minerva, pray?” said Madame, shooting a very penetrating glance upon her husband.
“Your husband can tell you that,” replied the Prophet, by no means without guile.
“Jupiter,” cried Madame, “what is the meaning of this? Who is this person?”
Mr. Sagittarius looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
“My dear,” he began, “she is a young fe—that is, a young wo—I should say—”
“A fe! A wo! Explain yourself, Jupiter!”
“She is a lady, my love.”
“A lady! Do I know her?”
“I believe not, my dear.”
“And do you?”
“No, my darling. That is—that is—”
“Yes, I suppose!” said Madame, with a very violent click.
“I can hardly say, Sophronia, that, I can’t indeed. I have met her, by accident, quite by accident I assure you, once or twice.”
“Where?”
“At Jellybrand’s. She goes there to fetch letters on the same day as I do.”
Madame’s very intellectual brow was over-clouded with storm. She turned upon the Prophet.
“And what of this person, Mr. Vivian?” she cried. “What of her and this oath?”
The Prophet, who was secretly very delighted with the diversion he had so cleverly created, hastened to reply,—
“I have promised most solemnly to meet her to-night at a house in the Zoological Gardens!”
“A house in the Zoological Gardens!”
“I mean at the Zoological House, the residence of Mrs. Vane Bridgeman, who is—”
But, at this point in his explanation, the Prophet was interrupted by both his hearers.
“The Jellybrand one!” cried Mr. Sagittarius.
“The prophets’ patron!” vociferated Madame.