So saying the Prophet hurried away, leaving Mr. Ferdinand almost as firmly rooted to the Turkey carpet with surprise as if he had been woven into the pattern at birth, and never unpicked in later years.

At ten that evening the Prophet, having escaped early from his dinner on some extravagant plea of sudden illness or second gaiety, stood in the small and sober pa.s.sage of the celebrated Tintack Club and inquired anxiously for Mr. Robert Green.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Green is upstairs in the smoke-room," said the functionary whom the club grew under gla.s.s for the benefit of the members and their friends.

"Sam, show this gentleman to Mr. Green."

Sam, who was a red-faced child in b.u.t.tons, with a man's walk and the back of one who knew as much as most people, obeyed this command, and ushered the Prophet into a room with a sealing-wax red paper, in which Robert Green was sitting alone, smoking a large cigar and glancing at the "stony-broke edition" of an evening paper. He greeted the Prophet with his usual unaffected cordiality, offered him every drink that had yet been invented, and, on his refusal of them all, handed him a cigar and a matchbox, and whistled "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-av" at him in the most friendly manner possible.

"Bob," said the Prophet, taking a very long time to light the cigar, "what, in your opinion, is the exact meaning of the term honour?"

Mr. Green's cheerful, though slightly belated, face a.s.sumed an expression of genial betwaddlement.

"Oh, well, Hen," he said, "exact meaning you know's not so easy.

But--hang it, we all understand the thing, eh, without sticking it down in words. What?"

"I don't, Bob," rejoined the Prophet, in the tone of a man at odds with several consciences. "In what direction does honour lie?"

"It don't lie at all, old chap," said Mr. Green, with the decided manner which had made him so universally esteemed in yeomanry circles.

The Prophet began to look very much distressed.

"Look here, Bob, I'll put it in this way," he said. "Would an honourable man feel bound to keep a promise?"

"Rather."

"Yes, but would he feel bound to keep two promises?"

"Rather, if he'd made 'em."

"Suppose he had!"

"Go ahead, Hen, I'm supposing," said Mr. Green, beginning to pucker his brows and stare very hard indeed in the endeavour to keep the supposition fixed firmly in his head.

"And, further, suppose that these two promises were diametrically opposed to one another."

Mr. Green stuck out one leg, looked obliquely at the carpet, pressed his lips together and nodded.

"So that if he fulfilled them both he'd have to break them both--"

"Stop a sec! Gad, I've lost it! Start again, Hen!"

"No, I mean so that if he didn't break one he would be forced to break the other. Have you got that?"

"Stop a bit! Don't believe I have. Let's see!"

He moved his lips silently, repeating the Prophet's words.

"Yes. I've got that all right now," he said, after three minutes of strenuous mental exertion.

"Well, what would you say of him?"

"That he was a d.a.m.ned fool."

The Prophet looked very much upset.

"No, no, Bob, I meant to him. What would you say to him?"

"That he was a d.a.m.ned fool."

The Prophet began to appear thoroughly broken down. However, he still stuck to his interpellation.

"Very well, Bob," he said, with unutterable resignation--as of a toad beneath the harrow--"but, putting all that aside--"

"Give us a chance, Hen! I've got to shunt all that, have I?"

"Yes, at least all you would say of, and to, the man."

"Oh, only that. Wait a bit! Yes, I've done that. Drive on now!"

"Putting all that aside, what should you advise the man to do?"

"Not to be such a d.a.m.ned fool again."

"No, no! I mean about the two promises?"

"What about 'em?"

"Which would his sense of honour compel him to keep?"

"I shouldn't think such a d.a.m.ned fool'd got a sense of honour."

The Prophet winced, but he stuck with feverish obstinacy to his point.

"Yes, Bob, he had."

"I don't believe it, Hen, 'pon my word I don't. You'll always find that d.a.m.ned f--"

"Bob, I must beg you to take it from me. He had. Now which promise should he keep?"

"Who'd he made 'em to?"

"Who?" said the Prophet, wavering.

"Yes."

"One to--to a very near and dear relative, the other to--well, Bob to two comparative strangers."