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,”
