The Prophet of Berkeley Square

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THE PROPHET OF BERKELEY SQUARE

By Robert Hichens




CHAPTER I

MRS. MERILLIA IS CARRIED TO BED

The great telescope of the Prophet was carefully adjusted upon its
lofty, brass-bound stand in the bow window of Number One Thousand
Berkeley Square. It pointed towards the remarkably bright stars which
twinkled in the December sky over frosty London, those guardian stars
which always seemed to the Prophet to watch with peculiar solicitude
over the most respectable neighbourhood in which he resided. The
polestar had its eye even now upon the mansion of an adjacent
ex-premier, the belt of Orion was not oblivious of a belted earl's cosy
red-brick home just opposite, and the house of a certain famous actor
and actress close by had been taken by the Great Bear under its special
protection.

The Prophet's butler, Mr. Ferdinand--that bulky and veracious
gentleman--threw open the latticed windows of the drawing-room and
let the cold air rush blithely in. Then he made up the fire carefully,
placed a copy of Mr. Malkiel's _Almanac_, bound in dull pink and silver
brocade by Miss Clorinda Dolbrett of the Cromwell Road, upon a
small tulip-wood table near the telescope, patted a sofa cushion
affectionately on the head, glanced around with the meditative eye of
the butler born not made, and quitted the comfortable apartment with a
salaried, but soft, footstep.

It was a pleasant chamber, this drawing-room of Number One Thousand. It
spoke respectfully of the generations that were past and seemed serenely
certain of a comfortable future. There was no too modern uneasiness
about it, no trifling, gim-crack furniture constructed to catch the eye
and the angles of any one venturing to seek repose upon it, no unmeaning
rubbish of ornaments or hectic flummery of second-rate pictures. Above
the high oaken mantel-piece was a little pure bust in marble of the
Prophet when a small boy. To right and left were pretty miniatures in
golden frames of the Prophet's delightfully numerous grandmothers. Here
might be seen Mrs. Prothero, the great ship-builder's faithful wife, in
blue brocade, and Lady Camptown, who reigned at Bath, in grey tabinet
and diamond buckles, when Miss Jane Austen was writing her first
romance; Mrs. Susan Burlington, who knew Lord Byron--a remarkable
fact--and Lady Sophia Green, who knew her own mind, a fact still more
remarkable. The last-named lady wore black with a Roman nose, and the
combination was admirably convincing. Here might also be observed Mrs.
Stuefitt, Mistress of the Mazurka, and the Lady Jane Follington, of
whom George the Second had spoken openly in terms of approbation. She
affected plum colour and had eyes like sloes--the fashionable hue in
the neat-foot-and-pretty-ankle period. The flames of the fire twinkled
brightly over this battalion of deuced fine women, who were all, without
one exception, the grandmothers--in various degrees--of the Prophet.
When speaking of them, in the highest terms, he never differentiated
them by the adjectives great, or great-great. They were all kind and
condescending enough to be his grandmothers. For a man of his sensitive,
delicate and grateful disposition this was enough. He thought them all
quite perfect, and took them all under the protection of his soft and
beaming eyes.

Of Mrs. Merillia, the live grandmother with whom he had the great
felicity to dwell in Berkeley Square, he seldom said anything in
public praise. The incense he offered at her shrine rose, most sweetly
perfumed, from his daily life. The hearth of this agreeable and
grandmotherly chamber was attractive with dogs, the silver cage beside
it with green love-birds. Upon the floor was a heavy, dull-blue carpet
over which--as has been intimated--even a butler so heavy as Mr.
Ferdinand could go softly. The walls were dressed with a dull blue paper
that looked like velvet.

Here and there upon them hung a picture: a landscape of George Morland,
lustily English, a Cotman, a Cuyp--cows in twilight--a Reynolds, faded
but exquisitely genteel. A lovely little harpsichord--meditating on
Scarlatti--stood in one angle, a harp, tied with most delicate ribands
of ivory satin powdered with pimpernels, in another. Many waxen
candles shed a tender and unostentatious radiance above their careful
grease-catchers. Upon pretty tables lay neat books by Fanny Burney,
Beatrice Harraden, Mary Wilkins, and Max Beerbohm, also the poems of
Lord Byron and of Lord de Tabley. Near the hearth was a sofa on which an
emperor might have laid an easy head that wore a crown, and before every
low and seductive chair was set a low and seductive footstool.

A grandmother's clock pronounced the hour of ten in a frail and
elegant voice as the finely-carved oak door was opened, and the
Prophet seriously entered this peaceful room, carrying a copy of the
_Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_ in his hand.

He was a neatly-made little man of fashionable, even of modish, cut,
spare, smart and whimsical, with a clean-shaved, small-featured face,
large, shining brown eyes, abundant and slightly-waving brown hair, that
could only be parted, with the sweetest sorrow, in the centre of
his well-shaped, almost philosophical head, and movements light and
temperate as those of a meditative squirrel. Having just dined he was
naturally in evening dress, with a butterfly tie, gleaming pumps, and
a buttonhole of violets. He shut the door gently, glanced at his
nice-looking grandmothers, and, walking forward very quietly and
demurely, applied his eye to the telescope, lowering himself slightly
by a Sandow exercise, which he had practised before he became a prophet.
Having remained in this position of astronomical observation for some
minutes, he deviated into the upright, closed the window, and tinkled
a small silver bell that stood on the tulip-wood table beside Malkiel's
_Almanac_.

Mr. Ferdinand appeared, looking respectfully buoyant.

"Has Mr. Malkiel sent any reply to my inquiry, Mr. Ferdinand?" asked the
Prophet.

"He has not, sir," replied Mr. Ferdinand, sympathetically.

"Did the boy messenger say he delivered my note?"

"He said so, sir, on his Bible oath, sir."

"And do you believe him?"

"Oh, sir!" responded Mr. Ferdinand, in a shocked voice, "surely a London
lad would not be found to tell a lie!"

"I hope not, Mr. Ferdinand. Still--did he look a nervous sort of lad?"

"He was a trifle pale, sir, about the gills--but a heart of gold, sir, I
feel sure. He wore four medals, sir."

"Four medals! Nevertheless, he may have been frightened to go to Mr.
Malkiel's door. That will do, Mr. Ferdinand."

Mr. Ferdinand was about to bow and retire when the Prophet, after a
moment of hesitation, added,--

"Stay, Mr. Ferdinand. Mrs. Merillia has gone to the Gaiety Theatre
to-night. I expect her back at half-past eleven. She may need assistance
on her return."

"Assistance, sir! Mrs. Merillia, sir!"

Mr. Ferdinand's luminous eyes shone with amazement.

"She may--I say she _may_--have to be carried to bed."

Mr. Ferdinand's jaw dropped. He gave at the knees and was obliged to
cling to a Chippendale cabinet for support.

"Have an armchair ready in the hall in case of necessity and tell
Gustavus to sit up. Mrs. Merillia must not be dropped. You understand.
That will do, Mr. Ferdinand."

Mr. Ferdinand endeavoured to bow, and ultimately succeeded in retiring.
When his tremulous shoulders were no longer visible, the Prophet opened
Marcus Aurelius, and, seating himself in a corner of the big couch by
the fire, crossed his legs one over the other and began to read that
timid Ancient's consolatory, but unconvincing, remarks. Occasionally he
paused, however, murmured doubtfully, "Will she have to be carried to
bed?" shook his head mournfully and then resumed his reading.

While he thus employs his time, we must say a word or two about him.

Mr. Hennessey Vivian was now a man of thirty-eight, of excellent
fortune, of fine connections, and of admirable disposition. He had
become an orphan as soon as it was in his power to do so, having lost
his father--Captain Vivian of Her Majesty's Tenth Lancers--some months
before, and his mother--who had been a Merillia of Chipping Sudbury--a
few minutes after his birth. In these unfortunate circumstances, over
which he, poor infant, had absolutely no control--whatever unkind people
might say!--he devolved upon his mother's mother, the handsome and
popular Mrs. Merillia, who assumed his charge with the rosy alacrity
characteristic of her in all her undertakings. With her the little
Hennessey had passed his infantine years, blowing happy bubbles,
presiding over the voyages of his own private Noah--from the Army
and Navy Stores, with two hundred animals of both sexes!--eating pap
prepared by Mrs. Merillia's own _chef_, and sleeping in a cot hung with
sunny silk that might have curtained Venus or have shaken about Aurora
as she rose in the first morning of the world. From her he had acquired
the alphabet and many a ginger-nut and decorative bonbon. And from her,
too, he had set forth, with tears, in his new Eton jacket and broad
white collar, to go to Mr. Chapman's preparatory school for little boys
at Slough. Here he remained for several years, acquiring a respect for
the poet Gray and a love of Slough peppermint that could only cease
with life. Here too he made friends with Robert Green, son of Lord
Churchmore, who was afterwards to be a certain influence in his life.
His existence at Slough was happy. Indeed, so great was his affection
for the place that his removal to Eton cost him suffering scarcely less
acute than that which presently attended his departure from Eton to
Christchurch. Over his sensations on leaving Oxford we prefer to draw a
veil, only saying that his last outlook--as an undergraduate--over her
immemorial towers was as hazy as the average Cabinet Minister's outlook
over the events of the day and the desires of the community.

But if the moisture of the Prophet did him credit at that painful period
of his life, it must be allowed that his behaviour on being formally
introduced into London Society showed no puling regret, no backward
longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no
more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched
contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the
young gentlemen accustomed to "the High."

Mrs. Merillia, who had been a widow ever since she could remember,
possessed the lease of the house in Berkeley Square in which the
Prophet was now sitting. It was an excellent mansion, with everything
comfortable about it, a duke on one side, a Chancellor of the Exchequer
on the other, electric light, several bathrooms and the gramophone.
There was never any question of the Prophet setting up house by himself.
On leaving Oxford he joined his ample fortune to Mrs. Merillia's as
a matter of course, and they settled down together with the greatest
alacrity and hopefulness. Nor were their pleasant relations once
disturbed during the fifteen years that elapsed before the Prophet
applied his eye to the telescope in the bow window and gave Mr.
Ferdinand the instructions which have just been recorded.

These fifteen years had not gone by without leaving their mark upon our
hero. He had done several things during their passage. For instance,
he had written a play, very nearly proposed to the third daughter of
a London clergyman and twice been to the Derby. Such events had, not
unnaturally, had their effect upon the formation of his character and
even upon the expression of his intelligent face. The writing of
the play--and, perhaps, its refusal by all the actor-managers of the
town--had traced a tiny line at each corner of his mobile mouth. The
third daughter of the London clergyman--his sentiment for her--had
taught his hand the slightly episcopal gesture which was so admired at
the Lambeth Palace Garden Party in the summer of 1892. And the great
race meeting was responsible for the rather tight trousers and the
gentleman-jockey smile which he was wont to assume when he set out for a
canter in the Row. From all this it will be guessed that our Prophet was
exceedingly amenable to the influences that throng at the heels of the
human destiny. Indeed, he was. And some few months before this story
opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact,
the primary cause of this story being true. Who was this gentleman? you
will say. Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of
the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science,
Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet,
"Star-Gazers," and the brochure, "An investigation into the psychical
condition of those who see stars," C.B.F.R.S. and popular member of the
Colley Cibber Club in Long Acre.

The Prophet was introduced to Sir Tiglath at the Colley Cibber Club, and
though Sir Tiglath, who was of a freakish disposition and much addicted
to his joke declined to speak to him, on the ground that he (Sir
Tiglath) had lost his voice and was unlikely to find it in conversation,
the Prophet was greatly impressed by the astronomer's enormous brick-red
face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for
drinking port-wine--so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he
hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for
several days to a minute investigation of the Milky Way.

As there is a fascination of the earth, so is there a fascination of the
heavens. Along the dim, empurpled highways that lead from star to star,
from meteorite to comet, the imagination travels wakefully by night, and
the heart leaps as it draws near to the silver bosses of the moon.
Mrs. Merillia was soon obliged to permit the intrusion of a gigantic
telescope into her pretty drawing-room, and found herself expected to
converse at the dinner-table on the eight moons of Saturn, the belts of
Jupiter, the asteroids of Mars and the phases of Venus. These last
she at first declined to discuss with a man, even though he were her
grandson. But she was won over by the Prophet's innocent persuasiveness,
and drawn on until she spoke almost as readily of the movements of the
stars as formerly she had spoken of the movements of the Court from
Windsor to London, and from London to Balmoral. In truth, she expected
that Hennessey's passion for the comets would cease as had ceased his
passion for the clergyman's daughter; that his ardour for astronomy
would die as had died his ardour for play-writing; that he would give up
going to _Corona Borealis_ and to the Southern Fish as he had given up
going to the Derby. Time proved her wrong. As the days flew Hennessey
became increasingly impassioned. He was more often at the telescope than
at the Bachelors', and seemed on the way to become almost as gibbous as
the planet Mars. Even he slightly neglected his social duties; and on
one terrible occasion forgot that he was engaged to dine at Cambridge
House because he was assisting at a transit of Mercury.

Now all this began to weigh upon the mind of Mrs. Merillia, despite the
amazing cheerfulness of disposition which she had inherited from two
long lines of confirmed optimists--her ancestors on the paternal and
maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she
might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been
reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the
evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the
Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented
those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful
melodramas, or those ironic pieces called farces, in which the ultimate
misery of which human nature is capable is drawn to its farthest point.

In the beginning of this new dejection of hers, Mrs. Merillia was now
seated in a stage box at the "Gaiety," with an elderly General of Life
Guards, a Mistress of the Robes, and the grandfather of the Central
American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, and all four of them
were smiling at a neat little low comedian, who was singing, without any
voice and with the utmost precision, a pathetic romance entitled, "De
Coon Wot Got de Chuck."

Meanwhile the Prophet was engaged for the twentieth time in considering
whether Mrs. Merillia, on her return from this festival, would have to
be carried to bed by hired menials.

Why?

This brings us to the great turning point in our hero's life, to the
point when first he began to respect the strange powers stirring within
him.

Until he encountered Sir Tiglath Butt in the dining-room of the Colley
Cibber Club Hennessey had been but a dilettante fellow. He had written a
play, but airily, and without the twenty years of arduous and persistent
study declared by the dramatic critics to be absolutely necessary before
any intelligent man can learn how to get a bishop on, or a chambermaid
off, the stage. He had nearly proposed to a clergyman's daughter, but
thoughtlessly, and without any previous examination into the clericalism
of rectory females, any first-hand knowledge of mothers' meetings,
devoid of which he must be a stout-hearted gentleman who would rush in
where even curates often fear to tread. He had been to the Derby, but
without wearing a bottle-green veil or carrying a betting-book. In fact,
he had not taken life very seriously, or fully appreciated the solemn
duties it brings to all who bear its yoke. Only when the plump red hand
of Sir Tiglath--holding a bumper of thirty-four port--pointed the way
to the heavens, did Hennessey begin--through his telescope--to see the
great possibilities that foot it about the existence of even the meanest
man who eats, drinks and suffers. For through his telescope he saw that
he might be a prophet. Malkiel read the future in the stars. Why not he?

He endeavoured to do so. He sought an intimacy with the benefic
_Jupiter_, and found it--perhaps by a secret kowtowing to
_Sagittarius_. He made up openly to _Canis Major_ and was shortly on
what might almost be considered terms of affection with _Venus_. And
he was, moreover, presently quite fearless in the presence of _Saturn_,
quite unabashed beneath the glittering eye of _Mercury_. Then, as the
neophyte growing bold by familiarity with the circle of the great ones,
he ventured on his first prophecy, a discreet and even humble forecast
of the weather. He predicted a heavy fall of snow for a certain evening,
and so distrusted his own prediction that when the evening came, mild
and benign, he sallied forth to the Empire Palace of Varieties, and
stayed till near midnight, laughing at the sallies of French clowns, and
applauding the frail antics of cockatoos on motor bicycles. When, on the
stroke of twelve, he came airily forth wrapped in the lightest of dust
coats, he was obliged to endure the greatest of man's amazements--the
knowledge that there was a well of truth within him. Leicester Square
was swathed in an ivory fleece, and he was obliged to gain Berkeley
Square on foot, treading gingerly in pumps, escorted by linkmen with
flaring golden torches, and preceded by tipsy but assiduous ruffians
armed with shovels, who, with many a lusty oath and horrid imprecation,
cleared a thin thread of path between the towering walls of snow that
sparkled faintly in the gaslight.

This experience fired him. He rose up early, lay down late, and, quite
with her assent, cast the horoscope of Mrs. Merillia in the sweat of his
brow. He cast, we say, her horoscope and, from a certain conjunction of
the planets, he gathered, to his horror, that upon the fifteenth day of
the month of January she would suffer an accident while on an evening
jaunt. We find him now, on this fifteenth day of the first month, aware
of his revered grandmother's intrepid expedition to the Gaiety Theatre,
waiting her return to Berkeley Square with mingled feelings which we
might analyse for pages, but which we prefer baldly to state.

He longed to be proved indeed a prophet, and he longed also to see his
beloved relative return from her sheaf of pleasures in the free and
unconstrained use of all her graceful limbs. He was, therefore, torn
by foes in a mental conflict, and was in no case to sip the philosophic
honey of Marcus Aurelius as he sat between the telescope and the fire in
the comfortable drawing-room awaiting his grandmother's return.

"Gustavus," said Mr. Ferdinand in the servants' hall to the flushed
footman who lay upon a what-not, sipping a glass of ale and reading a
new and unabridged farthing edition of Carlyle's _French Revolution_,
"Gustavus, Mrs. Merillia has been and gone to the Gaiety Theatre
to-night. We expect her back at eleven-thirty sharp. She may need
assistance on her return, Gustavus."

The footman put down the tumbler which he was in the act of raising to
his pouted lips.

"Assistance, Mr. Ferdinand!" he ejaculated. "Mrs. Merillia, Mr.
Ferdinand!"

"She may--we say she _may_--have to be carried to bed, Gustavus."

Gustavus's jaw dropped, and the _French Revolution_ fluttered in his
startled hands.

"Good lawks, Mr. Ferdinand!" he exclaimed (not quoting from Carlyle).

"Have an armchair ready in the hall, Gustavus. Mrs. Merillia must not be
dropped. You understand? That will do, Gustavus."

And Mr. Ferdinand passed to the adjacent supper-table, to join the upper
housemaid in a discussion of two subjects that were very near to their
hearts, a round of beef and a tureen of pickled cabbage, while Gustavus
got up from the what-not in a bemused manner, and proceeded to search
dreamily for an armchair. He came upon one by chance in the dining-room,
and wheeled it out into the hall just as the clocks in the house rang
out the half-hour after eleven.

The Prophet above sprang up from the couch by the fire, Mr. Ferdinand
below closed his discussion with the upper housemaid, and the former
rapidly came down, the latter up, stairs as the roll of wheels broke
through the silence of the square.

Gustavus, in an attitude of bridled curiosity, was posed beneath a polar
bear that held an electric lamp. His hand was laid upon the back of the
armchair, and his round hazel eyes were turned expectantly towards the
hall as his two masters joined him.

"Is all ready, Mr. Ferdinand?" said the Prophet, anxiously.

"All is ready, sir," replied the butler.

"Wheel the chair forward, Gustavus, if you please," said the Prophet.
"Mrs. Merillia must not be dropped. Remember that."

"Not be dropped, sir--no."

The chair ran forward on its amicable castors as a carriage was heard
to stop outside. Mr. Ferdinand flung open the portal, and the Prophet
glided out excitedly upon the step.

"Well?" he cried, "well?"

A footman, in a long drab coat with red facings, was preparing to get
off the box of a smart brougham, but before he could reach the pavement,
a charming head, covered with a lace cap, was thrust out of the window,
and a musical and almost girlish voice cried,--

"All nonsense, Hennessey, all rubbish! Saturn don't know what he's
talkin' about. Look!"

The carriage door was vivaciously opened from the inside and a
delightful little old lady, dressed in brown silk, with a long, cheerful
pointed nose, rosy cheeks, and chestnut hair--that almost mightn't have
been a wig in certain lights--prepared to leap forth without waiting for
the reverent assistance that the Prophet, flanked by Mr. Ferdinand and
Gustavus, was in waiting to afford.

As she jumped, she began to cry, "Not much wrong with me, is there,
Hennessey?" but before the sentence was completed she had caught her
neat foot in her brown silk gown, had stumbled from the step of the
carriage to the pavement, had twisted her pretty ankle, had reeled and
almost fallen, had been caught by the Prophet and Mr. Ferdinand, borne
tenderly into the hall, and placed in the armchair which the terrified
Gustavus, with almost enraged ardour, drove forward to receive her. As
she sank down in it, helpless, Mrs. Merillia exclaimed, with unabated
vivacity,--

"It's happened, Hennessey, it's happened! But it was my own doin' and
yours. You shouldn't have prophesied at your age, and I shouldn't have
jumped at mine.

"Dearest grannie!" cried the Prophet, on his knees beside her, "how
grieved, how shocked I am! Is it--is it--"

"Sprained, Hennessey?"

He nodded. Mechanically Mr. Ferdinand nodded. Gustavus let his powdered
head drop, too, in imitation of his superiors.

"I'll tell you in the drawin'--room."

She placed her pretty, mittened hands upon the arms of the chair, and
gave a little wriggle, trying to get up. Then she cried out musically,--

"No, I must be carried up. Mr. Ferdinand!"

"Ma'am!"

"Is Gustavus to be trusted?"

"Trusted, ma'am!" cried Mr. Ferdinand, looking at Gustavus, who had
assumed an expression of pale and pathetic dignity. "Trusted--a London
footman! Oh, ma'am!"

His voice failed. He choked and began to rummage in the pocket of his
black tail coat for his perfumed handkerchief.

"T'st, t'st! I mean his arms," said Mrs. Merillia, patting her delicate
hands quickly on the chair. "Can he carry me?"