第24章

"Because I sought him with the firm intention of assault and battery for five-and-forty years," returned the astronomer."And only gave up my Christian quest when I was assured, on excellent authority, that he was a company, and had originally been formed in the United States for the making of money and the defiance of the heavenly bodies.May bulls and bears destroy him!""Well, it's very odd," said Lady Enid."Very odd indeed."As she spoke she glanced at the Prophet and met his eyes.There are moments when the mere expression in another person's eyes seems to shout a request at one.The expression in the Prophet's eyes performed this feat at this moment, with such abrupt vehemence, that Lady Enid felt almost deafened.She leaned back in her chair, as if avoiding a missile, and exclaimed,--"Of course! And I never guessed it!"

"Guessed what, my dear?" inquired Mrs.Merillia.

"Why, that--he--it--was a company," replied Lady Enid.

The Prophet blessed and thanked her with a piercing and saved look.

"Nor I," he assented, descending into the very mine of subterfuge for his recent oath's sake, "nor I, or I should never have taken the useless trouble that I have taken.

He managed to say this with such conviction that his grandmother, who, in the past, had always found him to be transparently honest and sincere, was carried away by the deception.She wrinkled her long nose, as was her habit when sincerely pleased, and cried gaily,--"Then, Hennessey, now you've heard Sir Tiglath's opinion of the practice of trying to turn the stars into money-makers, and the planets into old gipsy women who tell fortunes to silly servant girls, I'm sure you'll never study them again.Come, promise me!"The Prophet made no answer.

"Hennessey," cried his grandmother, with tender pertinacity, "promise me! Sir Tiglath, join your voice to mine!"Sir Tiglath had become really grave, not theatrically serious.

"Young man," he said, "your revered granddam asks of you a righteous thing.Who are you to trifle with those shining worlds that make a beauty of the night and that stir eternity in the soul of man? Who are you to glue your pinpoint of a human eye to yonder machine and play with the stupendous Jupiter and Saturn as a child plays with marbles or with peg-tops? Who are you that thinks those glittering monsters have nothing to do but to inform your pigmy brain of snowfalls, street accidents, and love-affairs prematurely, so that you may flaunt about your pocket-handkerchief of a square pluming your dwarfship that you are a prophet? Fie, young man, and again fie! Bow the knee, as I do, to the mysteries of the great universal scheme, instead of bothering them to turn informers and 'give away' the knowledge which is deliberately hidden from us.Show me a man that can understand the present and you'll have shown me a god.And yet you knock at the gates of the heavens through that telescope and clamour to be told the future! Fie upon you, young man, fie! Oh-h-h-h!"Now the Prophet, as has been before observed, possessed a very sensitive nature.He was also very devoted to his grandmother, and had an extraordinary reverence for the world-famed attainments of Sir Tiglath Butt.Therefore, when he heard Mrs.Merillia's pleading, and the astronomer's weighty denunciation, he was deeply moved.