"I want to learn his views on this strange faculty of prophecy.Has it ever occurred to you that among all our immense acquaintance we don't number a single prophet?""One can't know everybody, Hennessey.And I believe that prophets always spring from the lower classes.The line must be drawn somewhere even in these days.""Why not draw it at millionaires then?"
"I should like to.Somethin' will have to be done.If the nobodies continue to go everywhere the very few somebodies that are left will soon go nowhere.
"Perhaps they do go nowhere.Perhaps that is why we have never met a prophet."Mrs.Merillia looked up sharply, with her wide, cheerful mouth set awry in a shrewd smile that seemed to say "So ho!" She recognised a strange, new note of profound, though not arrogant, self-respect in her grandson.
"Prophets," Hennessey added more gently, "have always been inclined to dwell in the wilderness.""But where can you find a wilderness in these days?" asked Mrs.
Merillia, still smiling."Even Hammersmith is becomin' quite a fashionable neighbourhood.And you say that the /Almanac/ man lives in Shaftesbury Avenue, only half a minute from Piccadilly Circus.""My dear grannie," he corrected her, "I said he received letters there.
I don't know where he lives."
"How are you goin' to find him then?"
"I shall call this afternoon at eleven hundred Z.""To see if he has run in for a postcard! And what sort of person do you expect him to be?""Something quite out of the common."
Mrs.Merillia screwed up her eyes doubtfully.
"I hope you won't be disappointed.How many editions have there been of the /Almanac/?""Seventy yearly editions."
"Then Malkiel must be a very old man."
"But this Mr.Malkiel is Malkiel the Second.""One of a dynasty! That alters the case.Perhaps he's a young man about town.There are young men about town, I believe, who have addresses at clubs and libraries, and sleep on doorsteps, or in the Park.Well, Hennessey, I see you are getting fidgety.You had better be off.Buy me some roses for my room on your way home.I'm expectin' someone to have tea with the poor victim of prophecy this afternoon."The Prophet kissed his grandmother, put on his overcoat and stepped into the square.
It was a bright, frosty, genial day, and he resolved to walk to Jellybrand's Library.
London was looking quite light-hearted in the dry, cold air, which set a bloom even upon the cheeks of the ambassadors who were about, and caused the butcher boys to appear like peonies.The crossing-sweepers swept nothing vigorously, and were rewarded with showers of pence from pedestrians delighting in the absence of mud.Crystal as some garden of an eternal city seemed the green Park, wrapped in its frosty mantle embroidered with sunbeams.Even the drivers of the "growlers" were moderately cheerful--a very rare occurrence--and the blind man of Piccadilly smiled as he roared along the highway, striking the feet of the charitable with the wand which was the emblem of his profession.
Only the Prophet was solemn on this delicious afternoon.People looked at him and thought that he must surely be the richest man of the town.
His face was so sad.
He wound across the whirlpool, where the green image postures to the human streams that riot below it.He saw beneath their rooves of ostrich feathers the girls shake their long earrings above sweet violets and roses fainting with desire to be bought by country cousins.
"Where is eleven hundred Z, if you please?" he asked the Shaftesbury Avenue policeman.
"Jellybrand's sir? On the right between the cream shop and the engine warehouse, just opposite the place where they sell parrots, after that there patent medicine depot."The Prophet bowed, thinking of the blessings of knowledge.In a moment he stood before the library and glanced at its dirty window.He saw several letters lying against the glass.One was addressed to "Miss Minerva Partridge." He stepped in, wondering what she was like.
Jellybrand's Library was a small, square room containing a letter rack, a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter.It was fitted up with letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head.The last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with one hand, and throwing a box of J nibs into the air and catching it with the other.Upon the Prophet's entrance this youth obligingly dropped the nibs accidentally upon the floor, and arranged his sharp and anemic face in an expression of consumptive inquiry.The Prophet approached the counter softly, and allowed the sable with which his coat was trimmed to rest against it.
"Did a boy messenger call here a few days ago with a note for Mr.
Malkiel?" he asked.
The young librarian assumed an attitude of vital suspicion and the expression of a lynx.
"For Malkiel the Second, sir?" he replied in a piercing soprano voice.
"Yes," said the Prophet."A boy messenger with four medals.There was a crest on the envelope--an elephant rampant surrounded by a swarm of bees."A dogged look of combined terror and resolution overspread the young librarian's countenance.
"There's been no elephant and no swarm of bees in here," he said with trembling curtness.
"You are sure you would have remembered the circumstance if there had been?""Rather! What do you think? We don't allow things of them sort in here, I can tell you."The Prophet drew out half a sovereign, upon which a ray of sunshine immediately fell as if in benediction.
"Does Mr.Malkiel--?
"Malkiel the Second," interrupted the young librarian, whose pinkish eyes winked at the illumination of the gold.
"Malkiel the Second ever call here--in person?""In person?" said the young librarian, very suspiciously.
"Exactly."
"I don't know about in person.He calls here.""Ah," said the Prophet, recognising in the youth a literary sense that instinctively rejected superfluity."He does call.May I ask when?""When he chooses," said the young librarian, and he winked again.
"Does he choose often?"
