She was ever p.r.o.ne 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 cla.s.ses. 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 n.o.bodies 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 amba.s.sadors 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.