Robert Hichens

“ Merillia and Lady Julia looked at each other in elegant amazement.
“What do you mean, sir?” exclaimed Sir Tiglath. “And why do you insult the sacred heavens, you an astronomer!”
“I am not an astronomer,” cried Mr. Sagittarius, cringing in the voluminous waistcoat of Mr. Ferdinand. “I am an outside broker. I swear it. My dress, my manner proclaim the fact. Sophronia, tell the gentleman that I am an outside broker and that all Margate has recognised me as such.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her bells pealed. Mrs. Fancy began to sob.
“Me to leave the house!” she wailed. “Me to go to prison!”
“Bear up, Mrs. Fancy, she doesn’t know who it is!” said Gustavus. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Missis! Missis!”
“I am ringing,” said Mrs. Merillia, in a muffled manner through the door. “I am summoning assistance! You will be captured if you don’t go away.”
And again she pealed her bells. This time, as she did so, the tingling of a third bell became audible in the silent house.
“Lord!” cried Gustavus, “if there isn’t the hall door. It must be master. He left his key to-night. Here’s a nice 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. ”

“ My Minerva!” said Harriet in a thick and guttural voice.
“Lady Enid, Harriet love, to-night. Eureka says I’m astral. Oh, Mr. Towle, what an honour to meet you—what an honour for us all!”
The great Towle ducked and scraped in cabman fashion.
“Oh, will you materialise for us to-night?”
“Yes, yes,” cried Mrs. Bridgeman, trembling with excitement. “He’s promised to after supper. He says he feels less material then—more en rapport with the dear spirits.”
“How delightful! Mr. Towle, tell me, do you agree with Eureka? I await your fiat. Am I astral?” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ferdinand!”
“Sir?”
“The ice to Madame Sagittarius instantly!”
Mr. Ferdinand, who was trembling in every limb at having to assist at such a scene in his dining-room, which had hitherto been the very temple of soft conversation and the most exquisite decorum, advanced towards Madame, clattering the flat silver dish, and causing the frozen delicacy that the cook had elegantly posed upon it to run first this way and then that as if in imitative agitation.
“I cannot,” sobbed Madame, beginning once more to catch her breath. “At such a moment food becomes repulsive!” ”

“ 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 remembered the repeated injunctions of his great forebear who had lived and died in the Susan Road beside the gasworks. More, he remembered Sir Tiglath Butt. He was torn between ambition and terror.
“Declare yourself, Jupiter!” cried Madame. “Declare yourself this moment!”
“My love!” replied Mr. Sagittarius. “My angel, we must reflect.”
“I have reflected,” retorted Madame.
“There are difficulties, my dear, many difficulties in the way.”
“And what if there are? Per augustum ad augustibus. Every fool knows that.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bridgeman was forced—from lack of room—to forego her society start, though she was still able to indulge in her society smile, as she bowed, with almost swooning graciousness, to a short, perspiring, bald and side-whiskered man in greasy broadcloth, who looked as if he would have been quite at home upon the box of a four-wheeled cab, as indeed he would, seeing that he had driven a growler for five-and-twenty years before discovering that he was the great and only Towle, medium, seer, and worker-of-miracles-in-chief to the large and increasing crowd that lives the silly life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Merillia appeared in the aperture, clad in a most charming night bonnet, and robed in a dressing-gown of white watered silk.
“The ratcatcher!” she cried. “The ratcatcher!”
Malkiel turned and darted down the stairs, while Mrs. Merillia, in the extreme of terror, shut her door, locked it as many times as she could, and then hastened trembling to the bell which communicated with the faithful Mrs. Fancy, rang it, and dropped half fainting into a chair. Mrs. Fancy woke from her second dream just as Malkiel, closely followed by the now shattered Gustavus, reached the hall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII THE SILLY LIFE
“Call a cab for Sir Tiglath, Mr. Ferdinand,” whispered the Prophet—“a four-wheeler with a lame horse. I’ll take both Mr. and Madame Sagittarius in the brougham.”
“Must the horse be lame, sir?”
“Yes. I absolutely decline to encourage the practice of using good horses in four-wheeled cabs. It’s a disgrace to the poor animals. It must be a very lame horse.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The Prophet got off the instruments and, in answer to a firm, Scottish gesture from Lady Enid, nodded his head twice.
“What!” continued Sir Tiglath, puffing out his cheeks, “a woman be a pioneer among the Heavenly Bodies!”
The Prophet nodded again, as mechanically as a penny toy.
“The old astronomer is exercised,” bawled Sir Tiglath, with every symptom of acute perturbation. “He is greatly exercised by the narrative of the young female!” ”

“ The Prophet offered his arm. Mrs. Bridgeman took it. They walked forward, and almost instantly came upon Sir Tiglath Butt, who, with a face even redder than usual, was rolling away from the hall of the guitars, holding one enormous hand to his ear and snorting indignantly at the various clairvoyants, card-readers, spiritualists and palmists whom he encountered at every step he took. The Prophet turned pale, and Lady Enid, who was just behind him, put on her most sensible expression and moved quickly forward. ”