"Had any dinner?" Mr. Prohack asked his daughter.
"No."
"Aren't you hungry?"
"No, thanks."
Sissie seized the last remaining apple from the dessert-dish, and bit into it with her beautiful and efficient teeth. She was slim, and rather taller than necessary or than she desired to be. A pretty girl, dressed in a short-skirted, short-sleeved, dark blue, pink-heightened frock that seemed to combine usefulness with a decent perverse frivolity, and to carry forward the expression of her face. She had bright brown hair. She was perfectly mistress of the apple.
"Where's mother?"
"In bed with a headache."
"Didn't she have dinner with you?"
"She did not. And she doesn't want to be disturbed."
"Oh! I shan't disturb her, poor thing. I told her this afternoon she would have one of her headaches."
"Well," said Mr. Prohack, "that's one of the most remarkable instances of sound prophecy that I ever came across."
"Father, what's amusing you?"
"Nothing."
"Yes, something is. You've got your funny smile, and you were smiling all to yourself when I came in."
"I was thinking. My right to think is almost the only right I possess that hasn't yet been challenged in this house."
"Where's Charles?"
"Gone to Glasgow."
"Gone toGlasgow?"
"Yes."
"What, just now?"
"Ten minutes ago."
"Whatever has he gone toGlasgowfor?"
"I don't know,—any more than I know why you went out before dinner and came back after dinner."
"Would you like to know why I went out?" Sissie spoke with sudden ingratiatingness.
"No, not at all. But I should like to know why you went out without telling anybody. When people are expected to dinner and fail to appear they usually give notice of the failure."
"But, father, I told Machin."
"I said 'anybody.' Don't you know that the whole theory of the society which you adorn is based on the assumption that Machin is nobody?"
"I was called away in a frightful hurry, and you and mother were gossiping upstairs, and it's as much as one's life is worth to disturb you two when you are together."
"Oh! That's news."
"Besides, I should have had to argue with mother, and you know what she is."
"You flatter me. I don't even know whatyouare, and you're elementary compared to your mother."
"Anyhow, I'm glad mother's in bed with a headache. I came in here trembling just now. Mother would have made such a tremendous fuss although she's perfectly aware that it's not the slightest use making a fuss.... Only makes me stupid and obstinate. Showers and showers of questions there'd have been, whereas you haven't asked a single one."
"Yes, you're rather upset by my lack of curiosity. But let me just point out that it is not consistent with my paternal duty to sit here and listen to you slanging your mother. As a daughter you have vast privileges, but you mustn't presume on them. There are some things I couldn't stand from any woman without protest."
"But you must admit that motherisa bit awful when she breaks loose."
"No. I've never known your mother awful, or even a bit awful."
"You aren't being intellectually honest, dad."
"I am."
"Ah! Well, of course she only shows her best side toyou."
"She has no other side. In that sense she is certainly one-sided. Here! Have another." Mr. Prohack took the apple from his pocket, and threw it across the table to Sissie, who caught it.
Mr. Prohack was extremely happy; and Sissie too, in so far as concerned the chat with her father, was extremely happy. They adored each other, and they adored the awful woman laid low with a headache. Sissie's hat and cloak, which she had dropped carelessly on a chair, slipped to the floor, the hat carried away by the cloak. Mr. Prohack rose and picked them up, took them out of the room, and returned.
"So now you've straightened up, and you're pleased with yourself," observed Sissie.
"So now," said he. "Perhaps I may turn on my curiosity tap."
"Don't," said Sissie. "I'm very gloomy. I'm very disappointed. I might burst into tears at any moment.... Yes, I'm not joking."
"Out with it."
"Oh, it's nothing! It's only that I saw a chance of making some money and it hasn't come off."
"But what do you want to make money for?"
"I like that. Hasn't mother been telling me off and on all day that something will have to be done?"
"Done about what?"
"About economy, naturally." Sissie spoke rather sharply.
"But you don't mean your mother has spent the day in urging you to go forth and earn money!"
"Of course she hasn't, father. How absurd you are! You know very well mother would hate the idea of me earning money. Hate it! But I mean to earn some. Surely it's much better to bring more money in than to pinch and scrape. I loathe pinching and scraping."
"It's a sound loathing."
"And I thought I'd got hold of a scheme. But it's too big. I have fifty pounds odd of my own, but what use is fifty pounds when a hundred's needed? It's all off and I'm in the last stage of depression."
She threw away the core of the second apple.
"Is that port? I'll have some."
"So that you're short of fifty pounds?" said Mr. Prohack, obediently pouring out the port—but only half a glass. "Well, I might be able to let you have fifty pounds myself, if you would deign to accept it."
Sissie cried compassionately: "But you haven't got a cent, dad!"
"Oh! Haven't I? Did your mother tell you that?"
"Well, she didn't exactly say so."
"I should hope not! And allow me to inform you, my girl, that in accusing me of not having a cent you're being guilty of the worst possible taste. Children should always assume that their fathers have mysterious stores of money, and that nothing is beyond their resources, and if they don't rise to every demand it's only because in their inscrutable wisdom they deem it better not to. Or it may be from mere cussedness."
"Yes," said Sissie. "That's what I used to think when I was young. But I've looked up your salary inWhitaker's Almanac."
"It was very improper of you. However, nothing is secret in these days, and so I don't mind telling you that I've backed a winner to-day—not to-day, but some little time since—and I can if necessary and agreeable let you have fifty pounds."
Mr. Prohack as it were shook his crest in plenary contentment. He had the same sensation of creativeness as he had had a while earlier with his son,—a godlike sensation. And he was delighted with his girl. She was so young and so old. And her efforts to play the woman of the world with him were so comic and so touching. Only two or three years since she had been driving a motor-van in order to defeat the Germans. She had received twenty-eight shillings a week for six days of from twelve to fourteen hours. She would leave the house at eight and come back at eight, nine, or ten. And on her return, pale enough, she would laugh and say she had had her dinner and would go to bed. But she had not had her dinner. She was simply too tired and nervously exasperated to eat. And she would lie in bed and tremble and cry quietly from fatigue. She did not know that her parents knew these details. The cook, her confidante, had told them, much later. And Mr. Prohack had decreed that Sissie must never know that they knew. She had stuck to the task during a whole winter, skidding on glassy asphalt, slimy wood, and slithery stone-setts in the East End, and had met with but one accident, a minor affair. The experience seemed to have had no permanent effect on her, but it had had a permanent effect on her father's attitude towards her,—her mother had always strongly objected to what she called the "episode," had shown only relief when it concluded, and had awarded no merit for it.
"Can you definitely promise me fifty pounds, dad?" Sissie asked quietly.
Mr. Prohack made no articulate answer. His reply was to take out his cheque-book and his fountain-pen and fill in a cheque toMiss Sissie Prohack or order. He saw no just reason for differentiating between the sexes in his offspring. He had given a cheque to Charlie; he gave one to Sissie.
"Then you aren't absolutely stone-broke," said Sissie, smiling.
"I should not so describe myself."
"It's just like mother," she murmured, the smile fading.
Mr. Prohack raised a sternly deprecating hand. "Enough."
"But don't you want to know what I want the money for?" Sissie demanded.
"No!... Ha-ha!"
"Then I shall tell you. The fact is I must tell you."
"I've decided to teach dancing," said Sissie, beginning again nervously, as her father kept a notable silence.
"I thought you weren't so very keen on dancing."
"I'm not; but perhaps that's because I don't care much for the new fashion of dancing a whole evening with the same man. Still the point is that I'm a very fine dancer. Even Charlie will tell you that."
"But I thought that all the principal streets in London were full of dancing academies at the present time, chiefly for the instruction of aged gentlemen."
"I don't know anything about that," Sissie replied seriously. "What I do know is that now I can find a hundred pounds, I have a ripping chance of taking over a studio—at least part of one; and it's got quite a big connection already,—in fact pupils are being turned away."
"And this is all you can think of!" protested Mr. Prohack with melancholy. "We are living on the edge of a volcano—the country is, I mean—and your share in the country's work is to teach the citizens to dance!"
"Well," said Sissie. "They'll dance anyhow, and so they may as well learn to dance properly. And what else can I do? Have you had me taught to do anything else? You and mother have brought me up to be perfectly useless except as the wife of a rich man. That's what you've done, and you can't deny it."
"Once," said Mr. Prohack. "You very nobly drove a van."
"Yes, I did. But no thanks to you and mother. Why, I had even to learn to drive in secret, lest you should stop me! And I can tell you one thing—if I was to start driving a van now I should probably get mobbed in the streets. All the men have a horrid grudge against us girls who did their work in the war. If we want to get a job in these days we jolly well have to conceal the fact that we were in the W.A.A.C. or in anything at all during the war. They won't look at us if they find out that. Our reward! However, I don't want to drive a van. I want to teach dancing. It's not so dirty and it pays better. And if people feel like dancing, why shouldn't they dance? Come now, dad, be reasonable."
"That's asking a lot from any human being, and especially from a parent."
"Well, have you got any argument against what I say?"
"I prefer not to argue."
"That's because you can't."
"It is. It is. But what is this wonderful chance you've got?"
"It's that studio where Charlie and I went last night, at Putney."
"AtPutney?"
"Well, why not Putney? They have a gala night every other week, you know. It belongs to Viola Ridle. Viola's going to get married and live in Edinburgh, and she's selling it. And Eliza asked me if I'd join her in taking it over. Eliza telephoned me about it to-night, and so I rushed across the Park to see her. But Viola's asking a hundred pounds premium and a hundred for the fittings, and very cheap it is too. In fact Viola's a fool,Ithink, but then she's fond of Eliza."
"Now, Eliza? Is that Eliza Brating, or am I getting mixed up?"
"Yes, it's Eliza Brating."
"Ah!"
"You needn't be so stuffy, dad, because her father's only a second-division clerk at the Treasury."
"Oh, I'm not. It was only this morning that I was saying to Mr. Hunter that we must always remember that second-division clerks are also God's creatures."
"Father, you're disgusting."
"Don't say that, my child. At my age one needs encouragement, not abuse. And I'm glad to be able to tell you that there is no longer any necessity either for you to earn money or to pinch and scrape. Satisfactory arrangements have been made...."
"Really? Well, that's splendid. But of course it won't make any difference to me. There may be no necessity so far as you're concerned. But there's my inward necessity. I've got to be independent. It wouldn't make any difference if you had an income of ten thousand a year."
Mr. Prohack blenched guiltily.
"Er—er—what was I going to say? Oh, yes,—where's this Eliza of yours got her hundred pounds from?"
"I don't know. It's no business of mine."
"But do you insist—shall you—insist on introductions from your pupils?"
"Father, how you do chop about! No, naturally we shan't insist on introductions."
"Then any man can come for lessons?"
"Certainly. Provided he wears evening-dress on gala nights, and pays the fees and behaves properly. Viola says some of them prefer afternoon lessons because they haven't got any evening-dress."
"If I were you I shouldn't rush at it," said Mr. Prohack.
"But we must rush at it—or lose it. And I've no intention of losing it. Viola has to make her arrangements at once."
"I wonder what your mother will say when you ask her."
"I shan't ask her. I shall tell her. Nobody can decide this thing for me. I have to decide it for myself, and I've decided it. As for what mother says—" Sissie frowned and then smiled, "that's your affair."
"My affair!" Mr. Prohack exclaimed in real alarm. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Well, you and she are so thick together. You're got to live with her. I haven't got to live with her."
"I ask you, what on earthdoyou mean?"
"But surely you've understood, father, that I shall have to live at the studio. Somebody has to be on the spot, and there are two bedrooms. But of course you'll be able to put all that right with mother, dad. You'll do it for your own sake; but a bit for mine, too." She giggled nervously, ran round the table and kissed her parent. "I'm frightfully obliged for the fifty pounds," she said. "You and the mater will be fearfully happy together soon if Charlie doesn't come back. Ta-ta! I must be off now."
"Where?"
"To Eliza's of course. We shall probably go straight down to Putney together and see Viola and fix everything up. I know Viola's had at least one other good offer. I may sleep at the studio. If not, at Eliza's. Anyhow it will be too late for me to come back here."
"I absolutely forbid you to go off like this."
"Yes, do, father. You forbid for all you're worth if it gives you any pleasure. But it won't be much use unless you can carry me upstairs and lock me in my room. Oh! Father, you are a great pretender. You know perfectly well you're delighted with me."
"Indeed I'm not! I suppose you'll have the decency to see your mother before you go?"
"What! And wake her! You said she wasn't to be disturbed 'on any account.'"
"I deny that I said 'on any account.'"
"I shouldn't dream of disturbing her. And you'll tell her so much better than I could. You can do what you like with her."
"Where's my dessert?" demanded Mrs. Prohack, anxiously and resentfully, when her husband at length reached the bedroom. "I'm dying of hunger, and I've got a real headache now. Oh! Arthur how absurd all this is! At least it would be if I wasn't so hungry."
"Sissie ate all the dessert," Mr. Prohack answered timidly. He no longer felt triumphant, careless and free. Indeed for some minutes he had practically forgotten that he had inherited ten thousand a year. "The child ate it every bit, so I couldn't bring any. Shall I ring for something else?"
"And why," Mrs. Prohack continued, "why have you been so long? And what's all this business of taxis rushing up to the door all the evening?"
"Marian," said Mr. Prohack, ignoring her gross exaggeration of the truth as to the taxis. "I'd better tell you at once. Charlie's gone to Glasgow on his own business and Sissie's just run down to Viola Ridle's studio about a new scheme of some kind that she's thinking of. For the moment we're alone in the world."
"It's always the same," she remarked with indignation, when with forced facetiousness he had given her an extremely imperfect and bowdlerized account of his evening. "It's always the same. As soon as I'm laid up in bed, everything goes wrong. My poor boy, I cannot imagine what you've been doing. I suppose I'm very silly, but Ican'tunderstand it."
Nor could Mr. Prohack himself, now that he was in the sane conjugal atmosphere of the bedroom.
The next morning Mr. Prohack had a unique shock, for he was awakened by his wife coming into the bedroom. She held a big piece of cake in her hand. Never before had Mrs. Prohack been known to rise earlier than her husband. Also, the hour was eight-twenty, whereas never before had Mr. Prohack been known, on a working-day, to rise later than eight o'clock. He realised with horror that it would be necessary for him to hurry. Still, he did not jump up. He was not a brilliant sleeper, and he had had a bad night, which had only begun to be good at the time when as a rule he woke finally for the day. He did not feel very well, despite the fine sensation of riches which rushed reassuringly into his arms the moment consciousness returned.
"Arthur," said Mrs. Prohack, who was in her Chinese robe, "do you know that girl hasn't been home all night. Her bed hasn't been slept in!"
"Neither has mine," answered Mr. Prohack. "What girl?"
"Sissie, of course."
"Ah! Sissie!" murmured Mr. Prohack as if he had temporarily forgotten that such a girl existed. "Didn't I tell you last night she mightn't be back?"
"No, you didn't! And you know very well you didn't!"
"Honestly," said Mr. Prohack (meaning "dishonestly" as most people do in similar circumstances), "I thought I did."
"Do you suppose I should have slept one wink if I'd thought Sissie wasn't cominghome?"
"Yes, I do. The death of Nelson wouldn't keep you awake. And now either I shall be late at the office, or else I shall go without my breakfast. I think you might have wakened me."
Mrs. Prohack, munching the cake despite all her anxieties, replied in a peculiar tone:
"What does it matter if you are late for the office?"
Mr. Prohack reflected that all women were alike in a lack of conscience where the public welfare was concerned. He was rich: therefore he was entitled to neglect his duty to the nation! A pleasing argument! Mr. Prohack sat up, and Mrs. Prohack had a full view of his face for the first time that morning.
"Arthur," she exclaimed, absolutely and in an instant forgetting both cake and daughter. "You're ill!"
He thought how agreeable it was to have a wife who was so marvellously absorbed in his being. There was something uncanny, something terrible, in it.
"Oh, no I'm not," he said. "I swear I'm not. I'm very tired, but I'm not ill. Get out of my way."
"But your face is as yellow as a cheese," protested Eve, frightened.
"It may be," said Mr. Prohack.
"You won't get up."
"I shall get up."
Eve snatched her hand-mirror from the dressing-table, and gave it to him with a menacing gesture. He admitted to himself that the appearance of his face was perhaps rather alarming at first sight; but really he did not feel ill; he only felt tired.
"It's nothing. Liver." He made a move to emerge from the bed. "Exercise is all I want."
He saw Eve's lips tremble; he saw tears hanging in her eyes; these phenomena induced in him the sensation of having somehow committed a solecism or a murder. He withdrew the move to emerge. She was hurt and desperate. He at once knew himself defeated. He thought how annoying it was to have a woman in the house who was so marvellously absorbed in his being. She was wrong; but her unreasoning desperation triumphed over his calm sagacity.
"Telephone for Dr. Veiga," said Mrs. Prohack to Machin, for whom she had rung. "V-e-i-g-a. Bruton Street. He's in the book. And ask him to come along as soon as he can to see Mr. Prohack."
Now Mr. Prohack had heard of, but never seen, Dr. Veiga. He had more than once listened to the Portuguese name on Eve's lips, and the man had been mentioned more than once at the club. Mr. Prohack knew that he was, if not a foreigner, of foreign descent, and hence he did not like him. Mr. Prohack took kindly to foreign singers and cooks, but not to foreign doctors. Moreover he had doubts about the fellow's professional qualifications. Therefore he strongly resented his wife's most singular and startling order to Machin, and as soon as Machin had gone he expressed himself:
"Anyway," he said curtly, after several exchanges, "I shall see my own doctor, if I see any doctor at all—which is doubtful."
Eve's response was to kiss her husband—a sisterly rather than a wifely kiss. And she said, in a sweet, noble voice:
"It's I that want Dr. Veiga's opinion about you, and I must insist on having it. And what's more, you know I've never cared for your friend Dr. Plott. He never seems to be interested. He scarcely listens to what you have to say. He scarcely examines you. He just makes you think your health is of no importance at all, and it doesn't really matter whether you're ill or well, and that you may get better or you mayn't, and that he'll humour you by sending you a bottle of something."
"Stuff!" said Mr. Prohack. "He's a first-rate fellow. No infernal nonsense abouthim!And what doyouknow about Veiga? I should like to be informed."
"I met him at Mrs. Cunliff's. He cured her of cancer."
"You told me Mrs. Cunliff hadn't got cancer at all."
"Well, it was Dr. Veiga who found out she hadn't, and stopped the operation just in time. She says he saved her life, and she's quite right. He's wonderful."
Mrs. Prohack was now sitting on the bed. She gazed at her husband's features with acute apprehension and yet with persuasive grace.
"Oh! Arthur!" she murmured, "you are a worry to me!"
Mr. Prohack, not being an ordinary Englishman, knew himself beaten—for the second time that morning. He dared not trifle with his wife in her earnest, lofty mood.
"I bet you Veiga won't come," said Mr. Prohack.
"He will come," said Mrs. Prohack blandly.
"How do you know?"
"Because he told me he'd come at once if ever I asked him. He's a perfect dear."
"Oh! I know the sort!" Mr. Prohack said sarcastically. "And you'll see the fee he'll charge!"
"When it's a question of health money doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter when you've got the money. You'd never have dreamed of having Veiga this time yesterday. You wouldn't even have sent for old Plott."
Mrs. Prohack merely kissed her husband again, with a kind of ineffable resignation. Then Machin came in with her breakfast, and said that Dr. Veiga would be round shortly, and was told to telephone to the Treasury that her master was ill in bed.
"And what about my breakfast?" the victim enquired with irony. "Give me some of your egg."
"No, dearest, egg is the very last thing you should have with that colour."
"Well, if you'd like to know, I don't want any breakfast. Couldn't eat any."
"There you are!" Mrs. Prohack exclaimed triumphantly. "And yet you swear you aren't ill! That just shows.... It will be quite the best thing for you not to take anything until Dr. Veiga's been."
Mr. Prohack, helpless, examined the ceiling, and decided to go to the office in the afternoon. He tried to be unhappy but couldn't. Eve was too funny, too delicious, too exquisitely and ingenuously "firm," too blissful in having him at her mercy, for him to be unhappy.... To say nothing of the hundred thousand pounds! And he knew that Eve also was secretly revelling in the hundred thousand pounds. Dr. Veiga was her first bite at it.
Considering that he was well on the way to being a fashionable physician, Dr. Veiga arrived with surprising promptitude. Mr. Prohack wondered what hold Eve had upon him and how she had acquired it. He was prejudiced against the fellow before he came into the bedroom, simply because Eve, on hearing the noise of a car and a doorbell, had hurried downstairs, and a considerable interval had elapsed between the doctor's entrance into the house and his appearance at the bedside. Mr. Prohack guessed easily that those two had been plotting against him. Strange how Eve could be passionately loyal and basely deceitful simultaneously! The two-faced creature led the doctor forward with a candid smile that partook equally of the smile of a guardian angel and the smile of a cherub. She was an unparalleled comedian.
Dr. Veiga was fattish and rather shabby; about sixty years of age. He spoke perfectly correct English with a marked foreign accent. His demeanour was bland, slightly familiar, philosophical and sympathetic. Dr. Plott's eyes would have said: "This is my thirteenth visit this morning, and I've eighteen more to do, and it's all very tedious. Whydoyou people let yourselves get ill—if it's a fact that you really are ill? I don't think you are, but I'll see." Dr. Veiga's eyes said: "How interesting your case is! You've had no luck this time. We must make the best of things; but also we must face the truth. God knows I don't want to boast, but I expect I can put you right, with the help of your own strong commonsense."
Mr. Prohack, a connoisseur in human nature, noted the significances of the Veiga glance, but he suspected that there might also be something histrionic in it. Dr. Veiga examined heart, pulse, tongue. He tapped the torso. He asked many questions. Then he took an instrument out of a leather case which he carried, and fastened a strap round Mr. Prohack's forearm and attached it to the instrument, and presently Mr. Prohack could feel the strong pulsations of the blood current in his arm.
"Dear, dear!" said Dr. Veiga. "175. Blood pressure too high. Much too high! Must get that down."
Eve looked as though the end of the world had been announced, and even Mr. Prohack had qualms. Ten minutes earlier Mr. Prohack had been a strong, healthy man a trifle unwell in a bedroom. He was suddenly transformed into a patient in a nursing-home.
"A little catarrh," said Dr. Veiga.
"I've got no catarrh," said Mr. Prohack, with conviction.
"Yes, yes. Catarrh of the stomach. Probably had it for years. The duodenum is obstructed. A little accident that easily happens."
He addressed himself as it were privately to Mrs. Prohack. "The duodenum is no thicker than that." He indicated the pencil with which he was already writing in a pocket-book. "We'll get it right."
"What is the duodenum?" Mr. Prohack wanted to cry out. But he was too ashamed to ask. It was hardly conceivable that he, so wise, so prudent, had allowed over forty years to pass in total ignorance of this important item of his own body. He felt himself to be a bag full of disconcerting and dangerous mysteries. Or he might have expressed it that he had been smoking in criminal nonchalance for nearly half a century on the top of a powder magazine. He was deeply impressed by the rapidity and assurance of the doctor's diagnosis. It was wonderful that the queer fellow could in a few minutes single out an obscure organ no bigger than a pencil and say: "There is the ill." The fellow might be a quack, but sometimes quacks were men of genius. His shame and his alarm quickly vanished under the doctor's reassuring and bland manner. So much so that when Dr. Veiga had written out a prescription, Mr. Prohack said lightly:
"I suppose I can get up, though."
To which Dr. Veiga amiably replied:
"I shall leave that to you. Perhaps if I tell you you'll be lucky if you don't have jaundice...! But I think youwillbe lucky. I'll try to look in again this afternoon."
These last words staggered both Mr. and Mrs. Prohack.
"I've been expecting this for years. I knew it would come." Mrs. Prohack breathed tragically.
And even Mr. Prohack reflected aghast:
"My God! Doctor calling twice a day!"
True, "duodenum" was a terrible word.
Mrs. Prohack gazed at Dr. Veiga as at a high priest, and waited to be vouchsafed a further message.
"Anyhow, if I find it impossible to call, I'll telephone in any case," said Dr. Veiga.
Some slight solace in this!
Mrs. Prohack, like an acolyte, personally attended the high priest as far as the street, listening with acute attention to his recommendations. When she returned she had put on a carefully bright face. Evidently she had decided, or had been told, that cheerfulness was essential to ward off jaundice.
"Now that's what Icalla doctor," said she. "To think of your friend Plott...! I've telephoned for a messenger boy to go to the chemist's."
"You're at liberty to call the man a doctor," answered Mr. Prohack. "And I'm at liberty to call him a fine character actor."
"I knew the moment you sat up it was jaundice," said Mrs. Prohack.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "I lay you five to one I don't have jaundice. Not that you'd ever pay me if you lost."
Mrs. Prohack said:
"When I saw you were asleep at after eight o'clock this morning I knew there must be something serious. I felt it. However, as the doctor says, if wetakeit seriously it will soon cease to be serious."
"He's not a bad phrase-maker," said Mr. Prohack.
In the late afternoon Dr. Veiga returned like an old and familiar acquaintance, with his confident air of saying: "We can manage this affair between us—I am almost sure." Mr. Prohack felt worse; and the room, lighted by one shaded lamp, had begun to look rather like a real sick-room. Mr. Prohack, though he mistrusted the foreign accent, the unprofessional appearance, and the adventurous manner, was positively glad to see his new doctor, and indeed felt that he had need of succour.
"Yes," said Dr. Veiga, after investigation. "My opinion is that you'll escape jaundice. In four or five days you ought to be as well as you were before the attack. I don't sayhowwell you were before."
Mr. Prohack instantly felt better.
"It will be very awkward if I can't get back to the office early next week," said he.
"I'm sure it will," Dr. Veiga agreed. "And it might be still more awkward if you went back to the office early next week, and then never went any more."
"What do you mean?"
Dr. Veiga smiled understandingly at Mrs. Prohack, as though he and she were the only grown-up persons in the room.
"Look here," he addressed the patient. "I see I shall have to charge you a fee for telling you what you know as well as I do. The fact is I get my living by doing that. How old are you?"
"Forty-six."
"Every year of the war counts double. So you're over fifty. A difficult age. You can run an engine ten hours a day for fifty years. But it's worn; it's second-hand. And if you keep on running it ten hours a day you'll soon discover how worn it is. But you can run it five hours a day for another twenty years with reasonable safety and efficiency. That's what I wanted to tell you. You aren't the man you were, Mr. Prohack. You've lost the trick of getting rid of your waste products. You say you feel tired. Why do you feel tired? Being tired simply means being clogged. The moment you feel tired your waste products are beginning to pile up. Look at those finger joints! Waste products! Friction! Why don't you sleep well? You say the more tired you are the worse you sleep: and you seem surprised. But you're only surprised because you haven't thought it out. Morpheus himself wouldn't sleep if his body was a mass of friction-producing waste products from top to toe. You aren't a body and soul, Mr. Prohack. You're an engine—I wish you'd remember that and treat yourself like one. The moment you feel tired, stop the engine. If you don't, it'll stop itself. It pretty nearly stopped to-day. You need lubrication too. The best lubricant is a tumbler of hot water four times a day. And don't take coffee, or any salt except what your cook puts into the dishes. Don't try to be cleverer than nature. Don't think the clock is standing still. It isn't. If you treat yourself as well as you treat your watch, you'll bury me. If you don't, I shall bury you. All that I've told you I know by heart, because I'm saying it to men of your age every day of my life."
Mr. Prohack felt like a reprimanded schoolboy. He feared the wrath to come.
"Don't you think my husband ought to take a long holiday?" Eve put in.
"Well,of coursehe ought," said Dr. Veiga, opening both mouth and eyes in protest against such a silly question.
"Six months?"
"At least."
"Where ought he to go?"
"Doesn't matter. Portugal, the Riviera, Switzerland. But it's not the season yet for any of these places. If he wants to keep on pleasant terms with nature he'll get out his car and motor about his own country for a month or two. After that he might go to the Continent. But of course he won't. I know these official gentlemen. If you ask them to disturb their routine they'll die first. They really would sooner die. Very natural of course. Routine is their drug."
"My husband will take six months holiday," said Eve quietly. "I suppose you could give the proper certificate? You see in these Government departments...."
"I'll give you the certificate to-morrow."
Mr. Prohack was pretending to be asleep, or at least to be too fatigued and indifferent to take notice of this remarkable conversation. But as soon as Dr. Veiga had blandly departed under the escort of Eve, he slipped out of bed and cautiously padded to the landing where there was a bookcase.
"Duodenum. Duodenum. Must be something to do with twelve." Then he found a dictionary and brought it back into the bedroom and consulted it. "So it's twelve inches long, is it?" he murmured. He had just time to plunge into bed and pitch the dictionary under the bed before his wife returned.
She was bending over him.
"Darling!"
He opened his deceiving eyes. Her face was within a foot of his.
"How do you feel now?"
"I feel," said he, "that this is the darnedest swindle that ever was. If I hadn't come into a fortune I should have been back at the office the day after to-morrow. In about eight hours, with the help of that Portuguese mountebank, you've changed me from a sane normal man into a blooming valetudinarian who must run all over the earth in search of health. I've got to 'winter' somewhere, have I? You'll see. It's absolutely incredible. It's more like Maskelyne and Cook's than anything I ever came across." He yawned. He knew that it was the disturbed duodenum that caused him to yawn, and that also gave him a dry mouth and a peculiar taste therein.
"Yes, darling," Eve smiled above him the smile of her impenetrable angelicism. "Yes, darling. You're better."
The worst was that she had beaten him on the primary point. He had asserted that he was not ill. She had asserted that he was. She had been right; he wrong. He could not deny, even to himself, that he was ill. Not gravely, only somewhat. But supposing that he was gravely ill! Supposing that old Plott would agree with all that Veiga had said! It was conceivable. Misgivings shot through him.
And Eve had him at her sweet mercy. He was helpless. She was easily the stronger. He perceived then, what many a husband dies without having perceived, that his wife had a genuine individual existence and volition of her own, that she was more than his complement, his companion, the mother of his children.
She lowered her head further and gave him a long, fresh, damp kiss. They were very intimate, with an intimacy that her enigmatic quality could not impair. He was annoyed, aggrieved, rebellious, but extremely happy in a weak sort of way. He hated and loved her, he despised and adored her, he reprehended and admired her—all at once. What specially satisfied him was that he had her to himself. The always-impinging children were not there. He liked this novel solitude of two.
"Darling, where is Charlie staying in Glasgow?"
"Why?"
"I want to write to him."
"Post's gone, my poor child."
"Then I shall telegraph."
"What about?"
"Never mind."
"I shan't tell you the address unless you promise to show me the telegram. I intend to be master in my own house even if I am dying."
Thus he saw the telegram, which ran: "Father ill in bed what is the best motor car to buy. Love. Mother." The telegram astounded Mr. Prohack.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?" he cried. Then he laughed. What else was there to do? What else but the philosopher's laugh was adequate to the occasion?
While Eve with her own unrivalled hand was preparing the bedroom for the night, Machin came in with a telegram. Without being asked to do so Eve showed it to the sufferer: "Tell him to buck up. Eagle six cylinder. Everything fine here. Charles."
"I think he might have sent his love," said Eve.
Mr. Prohack no longer attempted to fight against the situation, which was like a net winding itself round him.
One evening, ten days later, Mr. Prohack slipped out of his own house as stealthily as a thief might have slipped into it. He was cured provisionally. The unseen, unfelt, sinister duodenum no longer mysteriously deranged his whole engine. Only a continual sensation of slight fatigue indicated all the time that he was not cleverer than nature and that he was not victoriously disposing of his waste products. But he could walk mildly about; his zest for smoking had in part returned; and to any uninstructed observer he bore a close resemblance to a healthy man.
Four matters worried him, of which three may be mentioned immediately. He could not go to the Treasury. His colleague Hunter had amiably called the day after his seizure, and Mrs. Prohack had got hold of Hunter. Her influence over sane and well-balanced males was really extraordinary. Mr. Prohack had remained in perfect ignorance of the machinations of these two for eight days, at the end of which period he received by post an official document informing him that My Lords of the Treasury had granted him six months' leave of absence for reasons of ill-health. Dr. Veiga had furnished the certificate unknown to the patient. The quick despatch of the affair showed with what celerity a government department can function when it is actuated from the inside. The leave of absence for reasons of ill-health of course prevented Mr. Prohack from appearing at his office. How could he with decency appear at his office seemingly vigorous when it had been officially decided that he was too ill to work? And Mr. Prohack desired greatly to visit the Treasury. The habit of a life-time had been broken in a moment, and since Mr. Prohack was the creature of that habit he suffered accordingly. He had been suffering for two days. This was the first matter that worried Mr. Prohack.
The second matter had to do with his clubs. He was cut off from his clubs. Partly for the same reason as that which cut him off from the Treasury—for both his clubs were full of Civil Servants—and partly because he was still somehow sensitive concerning the fact of his inheritance. He would have had a similar objection to entering his clubs in Highland kilt. The explanation was obvious. He hated to be conspicuous. His inheritance was already (through Mr. Softly Bishop) the talk of certain official and club circles, and Mr. Prohack apprehended that every eye would be curiously upon him if he should set foot in a club. He could not bear that, and he could not bear the questions and the pleasantries. One day he would have to bear them—but not yet.
The third matter that worried him was that he could not, even in secret, consult his own doctor. How could he go to old Plott and say: "Plott, old man, I've been ill and my wife insisted upon having another doctor, but I've come to ask you to tell me whether or not the other doctor's right?" The thing was impossible. Yet he badly wanted to verify Veiga by Plott. He still mistrusted Veiga, though his mistrust lessened daily, despite his wish to see it increase.
Mrs. Prohack had benevolently suggested that he should run down to his club, but on no account for a meal—merely "for a change." He had declined, without giving the reason, and she had admitted that perhaps he was right.
He attributed all the worries to his wife.
"I pay a fine price for that woman," he thought as he left the house, "a rare fine price!" But as for her price, he never haggled over it. She, just as she existed in her awful imperfection, was his first necessary of life. She had gone out after dinner to see an acquaintance about a house-maid (for already she was reorganising the household on a more specious scale); she was a mile off at least; but she would have disapproved of him breaking loose into his clubs at night, and so the Terror of the departments stole forth, instead of walking forth, intimidated by that moral influence which she left behind her. Undoubtedly since the revolt of the duodenum her grip of him had sensibly tightened.
Not that Mr. Prohack was really going to a club. He had deceitfully told himself that hemightstroll down to his principal club, for the sake of exercise (his close friends among the members were lunchers not diners), but the central self within himself was aware that no club would see him that evening.
A taxi approached in the darkness; he knew by its pace that it was empty. He told the driver to drive to Putney. In the old days of eleven days ago he would not have dared to tell a taxi-driver to drive to Putney, for the fare would have unbalanced his dizzy private weekly budget; and even now he felt he was going the deuce of a pace. Even now he would prudently not have taken a taxi had not part of the American hundred thousand pounds already materialised. Mr. Softly Bishop had been to see him on the previous day, and in addition to being mysteriously sympathetic about his co-heir's ill-health had produced seven thousand pounds of the hundred thousand. A New York representative had cabled fourteen thousand, not because Mr. Prohack was in a hurry for seven, but because Mr. Softly Bishop was in a hurry for seven. And Mr. Softly Bishop had pointed out something which Mr. Prohack, Treasury official, had not thought of. He had pointed out that Mr. Prohack might begin immediately to spend just as freely as if the hundred thousand were actually in hand.
"You see," said he, "the interest has been accumulating over there ever since Angmering's death, and it will continue to accumulate until we get all the capital; and the interest runs up to about a couple of hundred a week for each of us."
Now Mr. Prohack had directed the taxi to his daughter's dance studio, and perhaps it was the intention to do so that had made him steal ignobly out of the house. For Eve would assuredly have rebelled. A state of war existed between Eve and her daughter, and Mr. Prohack's intelligence, as well as his heart, had ranged him on Eve's side. Since Sissie's departure, the girl had given no sign whatever to her parents. Mrs. Prohack had expected to see her on the next day after her defection. But there was no Sissie, and there was no message from Sissie. Mrs. Prohack bulged with astounding news for Sissie, of her father's illness and inheritance. But Mrs. Prohack's resentful pride would not make the first move, and would not allow Mr. Prohack to make it. They knew, at second-hand through a friend of Viola Ridle's, that Sissie was regularly active at the studio; also Sissie had had the effrontery to send a messenger for some of her clothes—without even a note! The situation was incredible, and waxed daily in incredibility. Sissie's behaviour could not possibly be excused.
This was the fourth and the chief matter that worried Mr. Prohack. He regarded it sardonically as rather a lark; but he was worried to think of the girl making a fool of herself with her mother. Her mother was demonstrably in the right. To yield to the chit's appalling heartlessness would be bad tactics and it would be humiliating. Nevertheless Mr. Prohack had directed the taxi-driver to the dance-studio at Putney. On the way it suddenly occurred to him, almost with a shock, that he was a rich man, secure from material anxieties, and that therefore he ought to feel light-hearted. He had been losing sight of this very important fact for quite some time.