第22章

"Do you ask about your reverent granddam's hallowed ankles, sir? Do you afflict the stars with inquiries about the state of the ridiculous weather? Is that it?"The Prophet understood that Mrs.Merillia had been frank with the astronomer.He cast upon her a glance of respectful reproach.

"Yes, Hennessey," she answered, "I have.My dear child, I thought it for the best.This prophetic business would soon have been turning the house upside down, and at my age I'm really not equal to living at close quarters with a determined young prophet.To do so would upset the habits of a lifetime.So Sir Tiglath knows all about it."There was a moment of silence, which was broken by the agreeable voice of Lady Enid saying,--"All about what? Remember, please, that I'm a young woman and that all young women share one quality.All about what, please?"Mrs.Merillia looked at the Prophet.The Prophet looked at Sir Tiglath, who wagged his great head and cried, with rolling pathos and rebuke,--"Oh-h-h-h!"

"Please--Mr.Vivian!" repeated Lady Enid, with considerable determination.

"Grannie means that I--that--well, that I have been enabled by the stars to foretell certain future events," said the Prophet, glancing rather furtively at Sir Tiglath while he spoke, to note the effect of the desperate declaration.""Oh-h-h-h!" bellowed the distressed astronomer, shaking like a jelly in his wrath.

"What?" cried Lady Enid, in an almost piercing voice, and with a manner that had suddenly become most animated."What--like Malkiel's /Almanac/does?"

This remark had a very striking effect upon Sir Tiglath, an effect indeed so striking that it held Mrs.Merillia, Lady Enid and the Prophet in a condition of paralytic expectation for at least three minutes by the grandmother's clock in the corner of the drawing-room.

The venerable astronomer was already very stout in person and very inflamed in appearance.But at this point in the discourse he suddenly became so very much stouter and so very much more inflamed, that his audience of three gazed upon him rather as little children gaze upon dough which has been set by the cook to "rise" and which is fulfilling its mission with an unexpected, and indeed intemperate, vivacity.Their eyes grew round, their features rigid, their hands tense, their attitudes expectant.Leaning forward, they stared upon Sir Tiglath with an unwinking fixity and preternatural determination that was almost entirely infantine.And while they did so he continued slowly to expand in size and to deepen in colour until mortality seemed to drop from him.He ceased to be a man and became a phenomenon, a purple thing that journeyed towards some unutterable end, portentous as marching judgment, tragic as fate, searching as epidemic, and yet heavily painted and generally touched up by the brush of some humorous demon, such as lays about him in preparation for Christmas pantomime, sworn to provide the giants' faces and the ogres' heads for Drury Lane.

"Don't!" at last cried a young voice."Don't, Sir Tiglath!"A peal of laughter followed the remark, of that laughter which is loud and yet entirely without the saving grace of merriment, a mere sudden demonstration of hysteria.

"Oh, Sir Tiglath--don't!"

A second laugh joined the first and rang up with it, older, but also hysterical--Mrs.Merillia's.

"No, no--please don't, Sir Tig--Tig--"

A third laugh burst into the ring, seeming to complete it fatally--the Prophet's.

"Sir Tiglath--for Heaven's sake--don't!"

The adjuration came from a trio of choked voices, and might have given pause even to a descending lift or other inflexible and blind machine.

But still the astronomer grew steadily more gigantic in person and more like the god of wine in hue.The three voices failed, and the terrible, united laughter was just upon the point of breaking forth again when a diversion occurred.The door of the drawing-room was softly opened, and Mrs.Fancy Quinglet appeared upon the threshold, holding in her hands an ice-wool shawl for the comfort of her mistress.It chanced that as the phenomenon of the astronomer was based upon a large elbow chair exactly facing the door she was instantly and fully confronted by it.

She did not drop the shawl, as any ordinary maid would most probably have done.Mrs.Fancy was not of that kidney.She did not even turn tail, or give a month's warning or a scream.She was of those women who, when they meet the inevitable, instinctively seem to recognise that it demands courage as a manner and truth as a greeting.She, therefore, stared straight at Sir Tiglath--much as she stared at Mrs.