The Prophet of Berkeley Square. Robert Hichens
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he said, drawing from his tail pocket a white handkerchief covered with a pattern of pink storks in flight. “I trusted to Jellybrand’s and Jellybrand’s has betrayed me. Oh, Frederick Smith!”
He put a stork to each eye. The young librarian assumed an injured air.
“It was the agitation did it, Mr. Sagittarius,” he said. “If you hadn’t a-kep’ dodging I shouldn’t have lost my memory.”
And he looked avariciously at the Prophet, who smiled at him reassuringly and drew forth a card case.
“I feel sure, Mr. Sag—Malkiel—”
“Malkiel the Second, sir, is my name if it is betrayed by Jellybrand’s,” said that gentleman with sudden dignity. “There is no need of any mister.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the Prophet, handing his card. “That is my name and address. May I beg you to forgive my apparent anxiety to make your acquaintance, and implore you to grant me a few moments of private conversation on a matter of the utmost importance?”
Malkiel the Second read the card.
“Berkeley Square,” he said. “The Berkeley Square?”
“Exactly, the Berkeley Square,” said the Prophet, modestly.
“Not the one at Brixton Rise behind the Kimmins’s mews?” said Malkiel the Second, suspiciously.
“Certainly not. The one near Grosvenor Square.”
“That’s better,” said Malkiel, upon whom the Prophet’s address had evidently made a good impression. “Kimmins’s is no class at all. Had you come from there, I—but what may you want with me?”
The Prophet glanced significantly at the young librarian, who was leaning upon the counter in a tense, keyhole position, with his private ear turned somewhat ostentatiously towards the two speakers.
“I can tell you in an inner room,” he murmured, in his most ingratiating manner.
“You’re certain it’s not Berkeley Square behind Kimmins’s?” said Malkiel, with a last flicker of suspicion.
“Quite certain—quite.”
“Frederick Smith,” said Malkiel the Second, “since Jellybrand’s has betrayed me Jellybrand’s must abide the consequences. Show this gentleman and me to the parlour.”
“Right, Mr. Sagittarius,” replied the young librarian whose memory had again become excellent. “But Miss Minerva is coming at three-thirty.”
“Has she bespoke the parlour, Frederick Smith?”
“Yes, Mr. Sagittarius.”
“Then she can’t have it. That’s all. Jellybrand’s must abide the full consequences of my betrayal. Go forward, Frederick Smith.”
The young librarian went forward towards a door of deal and ground glass which he threw open with some ceremony.
“The parlour, gents,” he said.
“After you, sir, after you,” said Malkiel the Second, making a side step and bringing his feet together in the first position.
“No, no,” rejoined the Prophet, gently drawing the sage to the front, and inserting him into the parlour in such an ingenious manner that he did not perceive the journey of a second half sovereign from the person of the Prophet to that of the young librarian, who thereafter closed the deal and ground glass door, and returned to the counter, whistling in an absent-minded manner, “I’m a Happy Millionaire from Colorado.”
CHAPTER III
THE TWO PROPHETS PARTAKE OF “CREAMING FOAM.”
“And now, sir,” said Malkiel the Second, pointing to a couple of cane chairs which, with the table, endeavoured, rather unsuccessfully, to furnish forth the parlour at Jellybrand’s, “now sir, what do you want with me?”
As he spoke he threw his black overcoat wide open, seated himself on the edge of one of the chairs in a dignified attitude, and crossed his feet—which were not innocent of spats—one over the other.
The Prophet was resolved to dare all, and he, therefore, answered boldly—
“Malkiel the Second, I wish to speak to you as one prophet to another.”
At this remark Malkiel started violently, and darted a searching glance from beneath his blonde eyebrows at Hennessey.
“Do you live in the Berkeley Square, sir,” he said, “and claim to be a prophet?”
“I do,” said Hennessey, with modest determination.
Malkiel smiled, a long and wreathed smile that was full of luscious melancholy and tragic sweetness.
“The assumption seems rather ridiculous—forgive me,” he exclaimed. “The Berkeley Square! Whatever would Madame say?”
“Madame?” said the Prophet, inquiringly.
“Madame Malkiel, or Madame Sagittarius, as she always passes.”
“Your wife?”
“My honoured lady,” said Malkiel, with pride. “More to me almost than any lunar guide or starry monitor. What, oh, what would she say to a prophet from the Berkeley Square?”
He burst into hollow laughter, shaking upon the cane chair till its very foundations seemed threatened as by an earthquake, and was obliged to apply the flight of storks to his eyes before he could in any degree recover his equanimity. At length he glanced up with tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “But what can you know of prophecy in such a fashionable neighbourhood, close to Grosvenor Square and within sight, as one may say, of Piccadilly? Oh, dear, oh, dear!”
“But really,” said the Prophet, who had flushed red, but who still spoke with pleasant mildness, “what influence can neighbourhood have upon such a superterrestrial matter?”
“Did Isaiah reside in the Berkeley Square, sir?”
“I fancy not. Still—”
“I fancy not, too,” rejoined Malkiel. “Nor Bernard Wilkins either, or any prophet that ever I heard of. Why, even Jesse Jones lives off Perkin’s Road, Wandsworth Common, though he does keep a sitting-room in Berners Street just to see his clients in, and he is a very low-class person, even for a prophet. No, no, sir, Madame is quite right. She married me despite the damning—yes, I say, sir, the damning fact that I was a prophet—” here Malkiel the Second brought down one of the dogskin gloves with violence upon the rickety parlour table—“but before ever we went to the Registrar’s she made me take a solemn oath. What was it, do you say?”
“Yes, I do,” said Hennessey, leaning forward and gazing into Malkiel’s long and excited face round which the heavy mat of pomaded hair vibrated.
“It was this, sir—to mix with no prophets so long as we both should live. Prophets, she truly said, are low-class, even dirty, persons. Their parties, their ‘at homes’ are shoddy. They live in fourth-rate neighbourhoods. They burn gas and sit on horsehair. Only in rare cases do they have any bathroom in their houses. Their influence would be bad for the children when they begin to grow up. How could Corona make her debut”—Malkiel pronounced it debbew—“in prophetic circles? How could she come out in Drakeman’s Villas, Tooting, or dance