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
