He perceived the footman lying in a dead faint near the umbrella stand.
"Oh!" he said, speaking to himself aloud."Oh! Then I must go myself."Acting upon his conception of his duty, he accordingly walked to the front door, opened it, and found the policeman outside supporting the senseless form of Sir Tiglath Butt in one hand and holding a broken truncheon in the other.
"Well?" said the Prophet, calmly."Well?""I knocked him down as he was making a bolt," said the policeman.
The Prophet found himself wondering why so industrious and even useful an occupation should be interfered with in such a manner.However, he only replied,--"Indeed!"
"Ah," said the policeman, stepping into the hall and laying the astronomer out across a chair, "what's up?""They are both up," answered the Prophet, pointing with a lethargic finger towards the staircase, from which, at this moment, arose a perfect hubbub of voices.
"Come on!" cried the policeman.
"Why?" asked the Prophet.
"Why! you're a nice un, you are! Why! And nab 'em, of course!""You think it would be wise to--what was the word--nab them?" inquired the Prophet."You really think so?""Well, what am I here for then?" said the policeman, with angry irony.
"Oh, if you prefer," rejoined the Prophet, civilly."Nab them by all means.I shall not prevent you."The policeman, who was an active and industrious fellow deserving of praise, waited for no further permission, but immediately darted up the stairs, and in less than a minute returned with Mrs.Merillia--attired in a black silk gown, a bonnet, and an Indian shawl presented to her on her marriage by a very great personage--in close custody.
"Here's one of 'em!" he shouted."Here, you lay hold of her while Ifetch the rest!"
And with these words he thrust the Prophet's grandmother into one of his hands, the broken truncheon into the other, and turning smartly round, again bounded up the stairs.
In a famous poem of the late Lord Tennyson there is related a dramatic incident of a lady whose disinclination to cry, when such emotion would have been only natural, was overcome by the presentation to her of her child.A somewhat similar effect was produced upon our Prophet by the constable's presentation to him of his honoured grandmother.The sight of her reverent head, surmounted by the bonnet which she had assumed in readiness to flee from the house which she could no longer regard as a home--the touch of her delicate hand--the flutter of her so hallowed Indian shawl--these things broke down the strange calm of her devoted grandson.Like summer tempest came his emotion, and, when the policeman presently returned with Malkiel the Second and Madame nabbed by his right and left hands, and followed by Lady Enid and the weeping Mrs.
Fancy, he was confronted by a most pathetic tableau.The Prophet and Mrs.Merillia were weeping in each other's arm's while Sir Tiglath and Gustavus--just returned to consciousness--were engaged in examining the proceeding with puppy dog's eyes.
Over the explanations that ensued a veil may be partially drawn.One lifted corner, however, allows us to note that Sir Tiglath Butt, having come upon Madame hidden behind a bin of old port in the Prophet's cellar, had been seized by a desire not to alarm a lady so profound that it prompted him to hurry to the butler's pantry, and to seek concealment in the very cupboard which already contained Malkiel the Second.On perceiving that gentleman perched upon the loving-cup, and protected by candlesticks, sugar basins, teapots and other weapons, the astronomer's anxiety to become a murderer apparently forsook him.At any rate, he passed through the plate-glass of the window rather hastily into the area, where, as we know, he received the solicitous attentions of the policeman who had served as an intermediary between the Lord Chancellor's second cook--whose supper of dressed crab had caused so much confusion--and the supposed Mr.Ferdinand.Malkiel the Second, finding himself discovered, took to the open just as Madame fled forth from the cellar, to be overtaken by the very natural misconception that she was about to become the victim of a husband whose jealousy had at length caused him to assume his /toga virilibus/.
Perhaps it was Sir Tiglath's throwing off of the said garment which caused Lady Enid to throw him over.At any rate, she eventually married Mr.Robert Green and made him a very sensible wife.
The Malkiels returned to the Mouse, where they still live, and still carry on a certain amount of intercourse with architects and their wives.From time to time, however, they attend the receptions at Zoological House, and a rumour recently ran through the circles of the silly to the effect that they had been looking at a house not far from the Earls Court Station, with a view--it is surmised--of removing to more central districts.
They are no longer on terms with the Prophet.
He has retired from business and put down his telescope once and for all, recognising that prophecy is a dangerous employment, and one likely to bring about the very evils it foreshadows.Calmly he dwells with his beloved grandmother in the Berkeley Square, which has received them once more into its former favour.Sometimes, at night, when the sky is clear, and the bright stars, the guardian stars, keep watch over his aristocratic neighbourhood, he draws aside the curtain from the drawing-room window and glances forth at Mercury and Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.And when his eyes meet their twinkling eyes, he exchanges with them--not a question and answer, not a demand for unholy information and a reluctant reply, but a serene, gentlemanly and perfectly decorous good-night.
End
