第20章

THE OLD ASTRONOMER DISCOURSETH OF THE STARSNever before had the Prophet felt so alive with curiosity as he did when he followed Lady Enid into Mrs.Merillia's presence, for he knew that he was about to see the venerable victim of the young librarian's indignant chivalry, the "old gent" who had come to intimate terms with Jellybrand's bookcase, and who had kicked and knocked at least a pint of paint off Jellybrand's door.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.

"I beg your pardon," said the Prophet, earnestly."Sir Tiglath--this is indeed a sur--a pleasure."Lady Enid was being embraced by Mrs.Merillia.The Prophet extended his hand to the astronomer, who, however, turned his back to the company and, diving one of his enormous hands into the pot-pourri jar, began to rummage violently for his vanished meal.

"What is it?" said the Prophet, who had not seen the muffin go."Can Ihelp you?"

Still presenting his huge back and the purple nape of his fat neck to the assemblage, the astronomer, after trying in vain to extract the lost dainty in a legitimate manner, turned the jar upside down, and poured the rose-leaves and the muffin in a heterogeneous libation upon the Chippendale table.After a close examination of it he turned around, holding up the food to whose buttered surface several leaves adhered in a disordered, but determined, manner.

"Only a Persian could devour this muffin now," he said, in his rumbling, sing-song and strangely theatrical voice, which always suggested that he was about to deliver a couple of hundred or so lengths of blank verse."Omar beneath his tree perchance, or Gurustu who to Baghdad came with steed a-foam and eyes a-flame.Wherefore do you trample upon hapless animals that are not dumb, young man, and cause the poor astronomer to cast his muffin upon the roses, where, mayhap, the housemaid might find it after many days? Oh-h-h-h!"He uttered a tremulous bass cry of mingled reproach and despair, that sounded rather like the wail of some deplorable watchman upon a city wall, shaking his enormous head at the Prophet the while, and flapping his red hands slowly in the air.

"How d'you do, Sir Tiglath?" said Lady Enid, coming up to him with light carelessness.

Sir Tiglath bowed.

"Very ill, very ill," he rumbled, looking at her furtively with his glassy eyes."One has had an afternoon of tragedy, an afternoon of brawling and of disturbance, in an avenue that shall henceforth be called accursed."He sat down upon his armchair, with his short legs stuck straight out and resting upon his heels alone, his hands folded across his stomach, and his purple triple chin sunk in his elaborate, but very dusty, cravat.Wagging his head to and fro, he added, with the heavy, concluding tremolo that decorated most of his vocal efforts, "Thrice accursed.Oh-h-h-h!"Lady Enid, who seemed to have quite recovered her self-possession, sat down by Mrs.Merillia, while the Prophet, in some confusion, offered to his grandmother the bunch of roses he had bought at Hollings's.""They're a little late, grannie, I'm afraid," he said."But I was unavoidably detained."Mrs.Merillia glanced at him sharply.

"Detained, Hennessey! Then you found what you were seeking?"The Prophet remembered his oath and turned scarlet.

"No, no, grannie," he murmured hastily, and looking like a criminal."Imet Lady Enid," he added.

"Where did you meet the lady, young man?" said Sir Tiglath."Was it in the accursed avenue?"Lady Enid shot a hasty glance of warning at the Prophet.Mrs.Merillia intercepted it, and began to form fresh ideas of that young person, whom she had formerly called sensible, but whom she now began to think of as crafty.

"Which avenue is that, Sir Tiglath?" asked the Prophet, with a rather inadequate assumption of innocence.

"The Avenue in which one beholds the perfidy darting into hidden places, young man, in which the defenders of foolish virgins are buffeted and browbeaten by counter-jumpers with craniums as big as the great nebula of Orion.The avenue named after a crumbled philanthropist, who could walk, sheeted, through the atrocious night could his sacred dust awake to the abominations that are perpetrated under the protection of his shadow.Let dragons lay it waste like the highways of Babylon."He gathered up a crumpet, and blinked at Lady Enid, who was airily sipping her tea with a slightly detached air of calm and maidenly dignity.

"I think Sir Tiglath must be describing Shaftesbury Avenue," remarked Mrs.Merillia, rather mischievously.

"Oh, really," stammered the Prophet, "I had no idea that it was such an evil neighbourhood.""Where is Shaftesbury Avenue?" asked Lady Enid, gently folding a fragment of thin bread and butter and nibbling it with her pretty mouth.

Sir Tiglath elevated his hands and rolled his eyes.

"Where partridges are to be found in January, oh-h-h-h!" was his very unexpected reply.

The Prophet started violently, and even Lady Enid looked disconcerted for a moment.

"What do you mean, Sir Tiglath?" she said, recovering herself.

She turned to Mrs.Merillia.

"I wonder what he means," she said."He never talks sensibly unless he is in his observatory, or lecturing to the Royal Society on the 'Regularity of Heavenly Bodies,' or--""The irregularities of earthly ones," interposed Sir Tiglath."In the accursed avenue--oh-h-h!""I fear, Sir Tiglath, you must be a member of the Vigilance Society,"said Mrs.Merillia.