“Did I scare you? Was I too much in earnest? I beg your pardon! True enough,—‘this eternal blazon must not be, to ears of flesh and blood!’ But, the ‘something after death’ was a peculiarly aggravating reality to that poor ghost, and Hamlet knew that it was so when he spoke of it as a mere ‘dread.’ Thus, as I say, he was inconsistent, or, rather, Shakespeare did not argue the case logically.”
“You would make a capital actor,”—said Vaughan, still gazing at him in astonishment. “Why, you went on just now as if,—well, as if you meant it, you know.”
“So I did mean it,” replied El-Râmi lightly—“for the moment! I always find Hamlet a rather absorbing study; so will you, perhaps, when you are my age.”
“Your age?” and Vaughan shrugged his shoulders. “I wish I knew it! Why, nobody knows it. You may be thirty or a hundred—who can tell?”
“Or two hundred—or even three hundred?” queried El-Râmi, with a touch of satire in his tone;—“Why stint the measure of limitless time? But here comes our recalcitrant knave”—this, as the keeper of the cloak-room made his appearance from a side-door with a perfectly easy and unembarrassed air, as though he had done rather a fine thing than otherwise in keeping two gentlemen waiting his pleasure. “Let us get our coats, and be well away before the decree of Fate can be accomplished in making you the winner of the desirable Chester prize. It is delightful to conquer Fate—if one can!”
His black eyes flashed curiously, and Vaughan paused in the act of throwing on his overcoat to look at him again in something of doubt and dread.
At that moment a gay voice exclaimed:
“Why, here’s Vaughan!—Freddie Vaughan—how lucky!” and a big handsome man of about two or three and thirty sauntered into the lobby from the theatre, followed by two ladies. “Look here, Vaughan, you’re just the fellow I wanted to see. We’ve left Hamlet in the thick of his fight, because we’re going on to the Somers’s ball,—will you come with us? And I say, Vaughan, allow me to introduce to you my friends—Mrs. Jabez Chester, Miss Idina Chester—Sir Frederick Vaughan.”
For one instant Vaughan stood inert and stupefied; the next he remembered himself, and bowed mechanically. His presentation to the Chesters was thus suddenly effected by his cousin, Lord Melthorpe, to whom he was indebted for many favours, and whom he could not afford to offend by any show of brusquerie. As soon as the necessary salutations were exchanged, however, he looked round vaguely, and in a sort of superstitious terror, for the man who had so surely prophesied this introduction. But El-Râmi was gone. Silently and without adieu he had departed, having seen his word fulfilled.