Strange, inconceivable as it may appear to people of the great world and readers of newspapers, Mr. Prohack, C.B., had never in his life before been inside the Grand Babylon Hotel. Such may be the narrow and mean existence forced by circumstances upon secretly powerful servants of the Crown. He arrived late, owing to the intricate preparations of his wife and daughter for Charlie's luncheon. These two were unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous, and their nervousness reacted upon Mr. Prohack, who perceived with disgust that his gay and mischievous mood of the morning was slipping away from him despite his efforts to retain it. He knew now definitely that his health had taken the right turn, and yet he could not prod the youthful Sissie as he had prodded the youthful Mimi Winstock. Moreover Mimi was a secret which would have to be divulged, and this secret not only weighed heavy within him, but seemed disturbingly to counterbalance the secrets that Charlie was withholding.
On the present occasion he saw little of the Grand Babylon, for as soon as he mentioned his son's name to the nonchalant official behind the enquiry counter the official changed like lightning into an obsequious courtier, and Charles's family was put in charge of a hovering attendant boy, who escorted it in a lift and along a mile of corridors, and Charlie's family was kept waiting at a door until the voice of Charlie permitted the boy to open the door. A rather large parlour set with a table for five; a magnificent view from the window of a huge white-bricked wall and scores of chimney pots and electric wires, and a moving grey sky above! Charlie, too, was unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous.
"Hullo, kid!" he greeted his sister.
"Hullo yourself," responded Sissie.
They shook hands. (They very rarely kissed. However, Charlie kissed his mother. Even he would not have dared not to kiss her.)
"Mater," said he, "let me introduce you to Lady Massulam."
Lady Massulam had been standing in the window. She came forward with a pleasant, restrained smile and made the acquaintance of Charlie's family; but she was not talkative. Her presence, coming as a terrific surprise to the ladies of the Prohack family, and as a fairly powerful surprise to Mr. Prohack, completed the general constraint. Mrs. Prohack indeed was somewhat intimidated by it. Mrs. Prohack's knowledge of Lady Massulam was derived exclusively fromThe Daily Picture, where her portrait was constantly appearing, on all sorts of pretexts, and where she was described as a leader of London society. Mr. Prohack knew of her as a woman credited with great feats of war-work, and also with a certain real talent for organisation; further, he had heard that she had a gift for high finance, and exercised it not without profit. As she happened to be French by birth, no steady English person was seriously upset by the fact that her matrimonial career was obscure, and as she happened to be very rich everybody raised sceptical eyebrows at the assertion that her husband (a knight) was dead; forThe Daily Pictureimplanted daily in the minds of millions of readers the grand truth that to the very rich nothing can happen simply. The wholeDaily Pictureworld was aware that of late she had lived at the Grand Babylon Hotel in permanence. That world would not have recognised her from her published portraits, which were more historical than actual. Although conspicuously anti-Victorian she had a Victorian beauty of the impressive kind; she had it still. Her hair was of a dark lustrous brown and showed no grey. In figure she was tall, and rather more than plump and rather less than fat. Her perfect and perfectly worn clothes proved that she knew just how to deal with herself. She would look forty in a theatre, fifty in a garden, and sixty to her maid at dawn.
This important person spoke, when she did speak, with a scarcely perceptible French accent in a fine clear voice. But she spoke little and said practically nothing: which was a shock to Marian Prohack, who had imagined that in the circles graced by Lady Massulam conversation varied from badinage to profundity and never halted. It was not that Lady Massulam was tongue-tied, nor that she was impolite; it was merely that with excellent calmness she did not talk. If anybody handed her a subject, she just dropped it; the floor around her was strewn with subjects.
The lunch was dreadful, socially. It might have been better if Charlie's family had not been tormented by the tremendous question: what had Charlie to do with Lady Massulam? Already Charlie's situation was sufficient of a mystery, without this arch-mystery being spread all over it. And inexperienced Charlie was a poor host; as a host he was positively pathetic, rivalling Lady Massulam in taciturnity.
Sissie took to chaffing her brother, and after a time Charlie said suddenly, with curtness:
"Have you dropped that silly dance-scheme of yours, kid?"
Sissie was obliged to admit that she had.
"Then I tell you what you might do. You might come and live here with me for a bit. I want a hostess, you know."
"I will," said Sissie, straight. No consultation of parents!
This brief episode overset Mrs. Prohack. The lunch worsened, to such a point that Mr. Prohack began to grow light-hearted, and chaffed Charlie in his turn. He found material for chaff in the large number of newly bought books that were lying about the room. There was even theEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethicsin eleven volumes. Queer possessions for a youth who at home had never read aught but the periodical literature of automobilism! Could this be the influence of Lady Massulam? Then the telephone bell rang, and it was like a signal of salvation. Charlie sprang at the instrument.
"For you," he said, indicating Lady Massulam, who rose.
"Oh!" said she. "It's Ozzie."
"Who's Ozzie?" Charlie demanded, without thought.
"No doubt Oswald Morfey," said Mr. Prohack, scoring over his son.
"He wants to see me. May I ask him to come up for coffee?"
"Oh! Do!" said Sissie, also without thought. She then blushed.
Mr. Prohack thought suspiciously and apprehensively:
"I bet anything he's found out that my daughter is here."
Ozzie transformed the final act of the luncheon. An adept conversationalist, he created conversationalists on every side. Mrs. Prohack liked him at once. Sissie could not keep her eyes off him. Charlie was impressed by him. Lady Massulam treated him with the familiarity of an intimate. Mr. Prohack alone was sinister in attitude. Ozzie brought the great world into the room with him. In his simpering voice he was ready to discuss all the phenomena of the universe; but after ten minutes Mr. Prohack noticed that the fellow had one sole subject on his mind. Namely, a theatrical first-night, fixed for that very evening; a first-night of the highest eminence; one of Mr. Asprey Chown's first-nights, boomed by the marvellous showmanship of Mr. Asprey Chown into a mighty event. The competition for seats was prodigious, but of course Lady Massulam had obtained her usual stall.
"What a pity we can't go!" said Sissie simply.
"Will you all come in my box?" astonishingly replied Mr. Oswald Morfey, embracing in his weak glance the entire Prohack family.
"The fellow came here on purpose to fix this," said Mr. Prohack to himself as the matter was being effusively clinched.
"I must go," said he aloud, looking at his watch. "I have a very important appointment."
"But I wanted to have a word with you, dad," said Charlie, in quite a new tone across the table.
"Possibly," answered the superior ironic father in Mr. Prohack, who besides being sick of the luncheon party was determined that nothing should interfere with his Median and Persian programme. "Possibly. But that will be for another time."
"Well, to-night then," said Charlie, dashed somewhat.
"Perhaps," said Mr. Prohack. Yet he was burning to hear his son's word.
However, Mr. Prohack did not succeed in loosing himself from the embraces of the Grand Babylon Hotel for another thirty minutes. He offered to abandon the car, to abandon everything to his wife and daughter, and to reach his next important appointment by the common methods of conveyance employed by common people; but the ladies would permit no such thing; they announced their firm intention of personally escorting him to his destination. The party seemed to be unable to break up. There was a considerable confabulation between Eve and Lady Massulam at the entrance to the lift.
Mr. Prohack noticed anew that Eve's attitude to Lady Massulam was still a flattering one. Indeed Eve showed that in her opinion the meeting with so great a personage as Lady Massulam was not quite an ordinary episode in her simple existence. And Lady Massulam was now talking with a free flow to Eve. As soon as the colloquy had closed and Eve had at length joined her simmering husband in the lift, Charlie must have a private chat with Lady Massulam, apart, mysterious, concerning their affairs, whatever their affairs might be! In spite of himself, Mr. Prohack was impressed by the demeanour of the young man and the mature blossom of womanhood to each other. They exhibited a mutual trust; they understood each other; they liked each other. She was more than old enough to be his mamma, and yet as she talked to him she somehow became a dignified girl. Mr. Prohack was disturbed in a manner which he would never have admitted,—how absurd to fancy that Lady Massulam had in her impressive head a notion of marrying the boy! Still, such unions had occurred!—but he was pleasantly touched, too.
Then Oswald Morfey and Sissie made another couple, very different, more animated, and equally touching. Ozzie seemed to grow more likeable, and less despicable, under the honest and frankly ardent gaze of Miss Prohack; and Mr. Prohack was again visited by a doubt whether the fellow was after all the perfectly silly ass which he was reputed to be.
In the lift, Lady Massulam having offered her final adieux, Ozzie opened up to Mrs. Prohack the subject of an organisation called the United League of all the Arts. Mr. Prohack would not listen to this. He hated leagues, and especially leagues of arts. He knew in the marrow of his spine that they were preposterous; but Mrs. Prohack and Sissie listened with unfeigned eagerness to the wonderful tale of the future of the United League of all the Arts. And when, emerging from the lift, Mr. Prohack strolled impatiently on ahead, the three stood calmly moveless to converse, until Mr. Prohack had to stroll impatiently back again. As for Charlie, he stood by himself; there was leisure for the desired word with his father, but Mr. Prohack had bluntly postponed that, and thus the leisure was wasted.
Without consulting Mr. Prohack's wishes, Ozzie drew the ladies towards the great lounge, and Mr. Prohack at a distance unwillingly after them. In the lounge so abundantly enlarged and enriched since the days of the celebrated Felix Babylon, the founder of the hotel, post-lunch coffee was merging into afternoon tea. The number of idle persons in the world, and the number of busy persons who ministered to them, and the number of artistic persons who played voluptuous music to their idleness, struck Mr. Prohack as merely prodigious. He had not dreamed that idleness on so grandiose a scale flourished in the city which to him had always been a city of hard work and limited meal-hours. He saw that he had a great deal to learn before he could hope to be as skilled in idleness as the lowest of these experts in the lounge. He tapped his foot warningly. No effect on his women. He tapped more loudly, as the hatred of being in a hurry took possession of him. Eve looked round with a delightful placatory smile which conjured an answering smile into the face of her husband.
He tried to be irritated after smiling, and advancing said in a would-be fierce tone:
"If this lunch lasts much longer I shall barely have time to dress for dinner."
But the effort was a failure—so complete that Sissie laughed at him.
He had expected that in the car his women would relate to him the sayings and doings of Ozzie Morfey in relation to the United League of all the Arts. But they said not a syllable on the matter. He knew they were hiding something formidable from him. He might have put a question, but he was too proud to do so. Further, he despised them because they essayed to discuss Lady Massulam impartially, as though she was just a plain body, or nobody at all. A nauseating pretence on their part.
Crossing a street, the car was held up by a procession of unemployed, with guardian policemen, a band consisting chiefly of drums, and a number of collarless powerful young men who shook white boxes of coppers menacingly in the faces of passers-by.
"Instead of encouraging them, the police ought to forbid these processions of unemployed," said Eve gravely. "They're becoming a perfect nuisance."
"Why!" said Mr. Prohack, "this car of yours is a procession of unemployed."
This sardonic pleasantry pleased Mr. Prohack as much as it displeased Mrs. Prohack. It seemed to alleviate his various worries, and the process of alleviation went further when he remembered that, though he would be late for his important appointment, he had really lost no time because Dr. Veiga had forbidden him to keep this particular appointment earlier than two full hours after a meal.
"Don't take cold, darling," Eve urged with loving solicitude as he left the car to enter the place of rendezvous. Sissie grinned at him mockingly. They both knew that he had never kept such an appointment before.
Solemnity, and hush, and antique menials stiff with tradition, surrounded him. As soon as he had paid the entrance fee and deposited all his valuables in a drawer of which the key was formally delivered to him, he was motioned through a turnstile and requested to permit his boots to be removed. He consented. White linens were then handed to him.
"See here," he said with singular courage to the attendant. "I've never been into one of these resorts before. Where do I go?"
The attendant, who was a bare-footed mild child dressed in the Moorish mode, reassuringly charged himself with Mr. Prohack's well-being, and led the aspirant into a vast mosque with a roof of domes and little glowing windows of coloured glass. In the midst of the mosque was a pale green pool. White figures reclined in alcoves, round the walls. A fountain played—the only orchestra. There was an eastern sound of hands clapped, and another attendant glided across the carpeted warm floor. Mr. Prohack understood that, in this immense seclusion, when you desired no matter what you clapped your hands and were served. A beautiful peace descended upon him and enveloped him; and he thought: "This is the most wonderful place in the world. I have been waiting for this place for twenty years."
He yielded without reserve to its unique invitation. But some time elapsed before he could recover from the unquestionable fact that he was still within a quarter of a mile of Piccadilly Circus.
From the explanations of the attendant and from the precise orders which he had received from Dr. Veiga regarding the right method of conduct in a Turkish bath, Mr. Prohack, being a man of quick mind, soon devised the order of the ceremonial suited to his case, and began to put it into execution. At first he found the ceremonial exacting. To part from all his clothes and to parade through the mosque in attire of which the principal items were a towel and the key of his valuables (adorning his wrist) was ever so slightly an ordeal to one of his temperament and upbringing. To sit unsheltered in blinding steam was not amusing, though it was exciting. But the steam-chapel (as it might be called) of the mosque was a delight compared to the second next chapel further on, where the woodwork of the chairs was too hot to touch and where a gigantic thermometer informed Mr. Prohack that with only another fifty degrees of heat he would have achieved boiling point.
He remembered that it was in this chamber he must drink iced tonic water in quantity. He clapped his streaming hands clammily, and a tall, thin, old man whose whole life must have been lived near boiling point, immediately brought the draught. Short of the melting of the key of his valuables everything possible happened in this extraordinary chamber. But Mr. Prohack was determined to shrink from naught in the pursuit of idleness.
And at length, after he had sat in a less ardent chapel, and in still another chapel been laid out on a marble slab as for an autopsy and, defenceless, attacked for a quarter of an hour by a prize-fighter, and had jumped desperately into the ice-cold lake and been dragged out and smothered in thick folds of linen, and finally reposed horizontal in his original alcove,—then he was conscious of an inward and profound conviction that true, perfect, complete and supreme idleness had been attained. He had no care in the world; he was cut off from the world; he had no family; he existed beatifically and individually in a sublime and satisfied egotism.
But, such is the insecurity of human organisms and institutions, in less than two minutes he grew aware of a strange sensation within him, which sensation he ultimately diagnosed as hunger. To clap his hands was the work of an instant. The oncoming attendant recited a catalogue of the foods at his disposal; and the phrase "welsh rarebit" caught his attention. He must have a welsh rarebit; he had not had a welsh rarebit since he was at school. It magically arrived, on an oriental tray, set on a low Moorish table.
Eating the most wonderful food of his life and drinking tea, he looked about and saw that two of the unoccupied sofas in his alcove were strewn with garments; the owners of the garments had doubtlessly arrived during his absence in the chapels and were now in the chapels themselves. He lay back; earthly phenomena lost their hard reality....
When he woke up the mosque was a pit of darkness glimmering with sharp points of electric light. He heard voices, the voices of two men who occupied the neighbouring sofas. They were discoursing to each other upon the difficulties of getting good whiskey in Afghanistan and in Rio de Janeiro respectively. From whiskey they passed to even more interesting matters, and Mr. Prohack, for the first time, began to learn how the other half lives, to such an extent that he thought he had better turn on the lamp over his head. Whereupon the conversation on the neighbouring sofas curved off to the English weather in late autumn.
Then Mr. Prohack noticed a deep snore. He perceived that the snore originated in a considerable figure that, wrapped in white and showing to the mosque only a venerable head, was seated in one of the huge armchairs which were placed near the entrance to every alcove. It seemed to him that he recognised the snore, and he was not mistaken, for he had twice before heard it on Sunday afternoons at his chief club. The head was the head of Sir Paul Spinner. Mr. Prohack recalled that old Paul was a devotee of the Turkish bath.
Now Mr. Prohack was exceedingly anxious to have speech with old Paul, for he had heard very interesting rumours of Paul's activities. He arose softly and approached the easy-chair and surveyed Sir Paul, who in his then state looked less like a high financier and more like something chipped off the roof of a cathedral than anything that Mr. Prohack had ever seen.
But Paul did not waken. A bather plunged into the pool with a tremendous splash, but Paul did not waken. And Mr. Prohack felt that it would be contrary to the spirit of the ritual of the mosque to waken him. But he decided that if he waited all night he would wait until old Paul regained consciousness.
At that moment an attendant asked Mr. Prohack if he desired the attentions of the barber, the chiropodist, or the manicurist. New vistas opened out before Mr. Prohack. He said yes. After the barber, he padded down the stairs from the barber's chapel (which was in the upper story of the mosque), to observe if there was any change in old Paul's condition. Paul still slept. Mr. Prohack did similarly after the chiropodist. Paul still slept. Then again after the manicurist. Paul still slept. Then a boyish attendant hurried forward and in a very daring manner shook the monumental Paul by the shoulder.
"You told me to wake you at six, Sir Paul." And Paul woke.
"How simple," reflected Mr. Prohack, "are the problems of existence when they are tackled with decision! Here have I been ineffectively trying to waken the fellow for the past hour. But I forgot that he who wishes the end must wish the means, and my regard for the ritual of the mosque was absurd."
He retired into the alcove to dress, keeping a watchful eye upon old Paul. He felt himself to be in the highest state of physical efficiency. From head to foot he was beyond criticism. When Mr. Prohack had got as far as his waistcoat Sir Paul uprose ponderously from the easy-chair.
"Hi, Paul!"
The encounter between the two friends was one of those affectionate and ecstatic affairs that can only happen in a Turkish Bath.
"I've been trying to get you on the 'phone half the day," grunted Paul Spinner, subsiding on to Mr. Prohack's sofa.
"I've been out all day. Horribly busy," said Mr. Prohack. "What's wrong? Anything wrong?"
"Oh, no! Only I thought you'd like to know I've finished that deal."
"I did hear some tall stories, but not a word from you, old thing." Mr. Prohack tried to assume a tranquillity which he certainly did not feel.
"Well, I never sing until I'm out of the wood. But this time I'm out sooner than I expected."
"Any luck?"
"Yes. But I dictated a letter to you before I came here."
"I suppose you can't remember what there was in it."
"I shall get the securities next week."
"What securities?"
"Well, you'll receive"—here Paul dropped his voice—"three thousand short of a quarter of a million in return for what you put in, my boy."
"Then I'm worth over two hundred and fifty thousand pounds!" murmured Mr. Prohack feebly. And he added, still more feebly: "Something will have to be done about this soon." His heart was beating against his waistcoat like an engine.
It is remarkable that even in the most fashionable shopping thoroughfares certain shops remain brilliantly open, exposing plush-cushioned wares under a glare of electricity in the otherwise darkened street, for an hour or so after all neighbouring establishments have drawn down their blinds and put up their shutters. An interesting point of psychology is involved in this phenomenon.
On his way home from the paradise of the mosque, Mr. Prohack, afoot and high-spirited, and energised by a long-forgotten sensation of physical well-being, called in at such a shop, and, with the minimum of parley, bought an article enclosed in a rich case. A swift and happy impulse on his part! The object was destined for his wife, and his intention in giving it was to help him to introduce more easily to her notice the fact that he was now, or would shortly be, worth over quarter of a million of money. For he was a strange, silly fellow, and just as he had been conscious of a certain false shame at inheriting a hundred thousand pounds, so now he was conscious of a certain false shame at having increased his possessions to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
The Eagle was waiting in front of Mr. Prohack's door; he wondered what might be the latest evening project of his women, for he had not ordered the car so early; perhaps the first night had been postponed; however, he was too discreet, or too dignified, to make any enquiry from the chauffeur; too indifferent to the projects of his beloved women. He would be quite content to sit at home by himself, reflecting upon the marvels of existence and searching among them for his soul.
Within the house, servants were rushing about in an atmosphere of excitement and bell-ringing. He divined that his wife and daughter were dressing simultaneously for an important occasion—either the first night or something else. In that feverish environment he forgot the form of words which he had carefully prepared for the breaking to his wife of the great financial news. Fortunately she gave him no chance to blunder.
"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" she cried, sweetly reproachful, as with an assumed jauntiness he entered the bedroom. "How late you are! I expected you back an hour ago at least. Your things are laid out in the boudoir. You haven't got a moment to spare. We're late as it is." She was by no means dressed, and the bedroom looked as if it had been put to the sack; nearly every drawer was ajar, and the two beds resembled a second-hand shop.
Mr. Prohack's self-protective instinct at once converted him into a porcupine. An attempt was being made to force him into a hurry, and he loathed hurry.
"I'm not late," said he, "because I didn't say when I should return. It won't take me more than a quarter of an hour to eat, and we've got heaps of time for the theatre."
"I'm giving a little dinner in the Grand Babylon restaurant," said Eve, "and of course we must be there first. Sissie's arranged it for me on the 'phone. It'll be much more amusing than dining here, and it saves the servants." Yet the woman had recently begun to assert that the servants hadn't enough to do!
"Ah!" said Mr. Prohack, startled. "And who are the guests?"
"Oh! Nobody! Only us and Charlie, of course, and Oswald Morfey, and perhaps Lady Massulam. I've told Charlie to do the ordering."
"I should have thought one meal per diem at the Grand Babylon would have been sufficient."
"But this is in therestaurant, don't I tell you? Oh, dear! That's three times I've tried to do my hair. It's always the same when I want it nice. Now do get along, Arthur!"
"Strange!" said he with a sardonic blitheness. "Strange how it's always my fault when your hair goes wrong!" And to himself he said: "All right! All right! I just shan't inform you about that quarter of a million. You've no leisure for details to-night, my girl."
And he went into the boudoir.
His blissful serenity was too well established to be overthrown by anything short of a catastrophe. Nevertheless it did quiver slightly under the shock of Eve's new tactics in life. This was the woman who, on only the previous night, had been inveighing against the ostentation of her son's career at the Grand Babylon. Now she seemed determined to rival him in showiness, to be the partner of his alleged vulgarity. That the immature Sissie should suddenly drop the ideals of the new poor for the ideals of the new rich was excusable. But Eve! But that modest embodiment of shy and quiet commonsense! She, who once had scorned the world ofThe Daily Picture, was more and more disclosing a desire for that world. And where now were her doubts about the righteousness of Charlie's glittering deeds? And where was the ancient sagacity which surely should have prevented her from being deceived by the superficialities of an Oswald Morfey? Was she blindly helping to prepare a disaster for her blind daughter? Was the explanation that she had tasted of the fruit? The horrid thought crossed Mr. Prohack's mind:All women are alike.He flung it out of his loyal mind, trying to substitute: All women except Eve are alike. But it came back in its original form.... Not that he cared, really. If Eve had transformed herself into a Cleopatra his ridiculous passion for her would have suffered no modification.
Lying around the boudoir were various rectangular parcels, addressed in flowing calligraphy to himself: the first harvest-loads of his busy morning. The sight of them struck his conscience. Was not he, too, following his wife on the path of the new rich? No! As ever he was blameless. He was merely executing the prescription of his doctor, who had expounded the necessity of scientific idleness and the curative effect of fine clothes on health. True, he knew himself to be cured, but if nature had chosen to cure him too quickly, that was not his fault.... He heard his wife talking to Machin in the bedroom, and Machin talking to his wife; and the servant's voice was as joyous and as worried as if she herself, and not Eve, were about to give a little dinner at the Grand Babylon. Queer! Queer! The phrase 'a quarter of a million' glinted and flashed in the circumambient air. But it was almost a meaningless phrase. He was like a sort of super-savage and could not count beyond a hundred thousand. And, quite unphilosophical, he forgot that the ecstasy produced by a hundred thousand had passed in a few days, and took for granted that the ecstasy produced by two hundred and fifty thousand would endure for ever.
"Take that thing off, please," he commanded his wife when he returned to the bedroom in full array. She was by no means complete, but she had achieved some progress, and was trying the effect of her garnet necklace.
"But it's the best I've got," said she.
"No, it isn't," he flatly contradicted her, and opened the case so newly purchased.
"Arthur!" she gasped, spellbound, entranced, enchanted.
"That's my name."
"Pearls! But—but—this must have cost thousands!"
"And what if it did?" he enquired placidly, clasping the thing with much delicacy round her neck. His own pleasure was intense, and yet he severely blamed himself. Indeed he called himself a criminal. Scarcely could he meet her gaze when she put her hands on his shoulders, after a long gazing into the mirror. And when she kissed him and said with frenzy that he was a dear and a madman, he privately agreed with her. She ran to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I must show Sissie."
"Wait a moment, child. Do you know why I've bought that necklace? Because the affair with Spinner has come off." He then gave her the figures.
She observed, not unduly moved:
"But I knewthatwould be all right."
"How did you know?"
"Because you're so clever. You always get the best of everybody."
He realised afresh that she was a highly disturbing woman. She uttered highly disturbing verdicts without thought and without warning. You never knew what she would say.
"I think," he remarked, calmly pretending that she had said something quite obvious, "that it would be as well for us not to breathe one word to anybody at all about this new windfall."
She eagerly agreed.
"But we must really begin to spend—I mean spend regularly."
"Yes, of course," he admitted.
"Otherwise it would be absurd, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, of course."
"Arthur."
"Yes."
"How much will it be—in income?"
"Well, I'm not going in for any more flutters. No! I've done absolutely with all speculating idiocies. Providence has watched over us. I take the hint. Therefore my investments will all have to be entirely safe and sound. No fancy rates of interest. I should say that by the time old Paul's fixed up my investments we shall have a bit over four hundred pounds a week coming in—if that's any guide to you."
"Arthur, isn't itwicked!"
She examined afresh the necklace.
By the time they were all three in the car, Mr. Prohack had become aware of the fact that in Sissie's view he ought to have bought two necklaces while he was about it.
Sissie's trunks were on the roof of the car. She had decided to take up residence at the Grand Babylon that very night. The rapidity and the uncontrollability of events made Mr. Prohack feel dizzy.
"I hope you've brought some money, darling," said his wife.
"Lend me some money, will you?" murmured Mr. Prohack lightly to his splendid son, after he had glanced at the bill for Eve's theatre dinner at the Grand Babylon. Mr. Prohack had indeed brought some money with him, but not enough. "Haven't got any," said Charlie, with equal lightness. "Better give me the bill. I'll see to it." Whereupon Charlie signed the bill, and handed the bowing waiter five ten shilling notes.
"That's not enough," said Mr. Prohack.
"Not enough for the tip. Well, it'll have to be. I never give more than ten per cent."
Mr. Prohack strove to conceal his own painful lack of worldliness. He had imagined that he had in his pockets heaps of money to pay for a meal for a handful of people. He was mistaken; that was all, and the incident had no importance, for a few pounds more or less could not matter in the least to a gentleman of his income. Yet he felt guilty of being a waster. He could not accustom himself to the scale of expenditure. Barely in the old days could he have earned in a week the price of the repast consumed now in an hour. The vast apartment was packed with people living at just that rate of expenditure and seeming to think naught of it. "But do two wrongs make a right?" he privately demanded of his soul. Then his soul came to the rescue with its robust commonsense and replied:
"Perhaps two wrongs don't make a right, but five hundred wrongs positively must make a right." And he felt better.
And suddenly he understood the true function of the magnificent orchestra that dominated the scene. It was the function of a brass band at a quack-dentist's booth in a fair,—to drown the cries of the victims of the art of extraction.
"Yes," he reflected, full of health and carelessness. "This is a truly great life."
The party went off in two automobiles, his own and Lady Massulam's. Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing façade of the Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the entertainment,Smack Your Face, together with the names of Asprey Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked straight into the building at the head of his guests. Highly expensive persons were humbling themselves at the little window of the box office, but Ozzie held his course, and officials performed obeisances which stopped short only at falling flat on their faces at the sight of him. Tickets were not for him.
"This is a beautiful box," said Eve to him, amazed at the grandeur of the receptacle into which they had been ushered.
"It's Mr. Chown's own box."
"Then isn't Mr. Chown to be here to-night?"
"No! He went to Paris this morning for a rest. The acting manager will telephone to him after each act. That's how he always does, you know."
"When the cat's away the mice will play," thought Mr. Prohack uncomfortably, with the naughty sensations of a mouse. The huge auditorium was a marvellous scene of excited brilliance. As the stalls filled up a burst of clapping came at intervals from the unseen pit.
"What are they clapping for?" said the simple Eve, who, like Mr. Prohack, had never been to a first-night before, to say nothing of such a super-first-night as this.
"Oh!" replied Ozzie negligently. "Some one they know by sight just come into the stalls. Thechicthing in the pit is to recognise, and to show by applause that you have recognised. The one that applauds the oftenest wins the game in the pit."
At those words and their tone Mr. Prohack looked at Ozzie with a new eye, as who should be thinking: "Is Sissie right about this fellow after all?"
Sissie sat down modestly and calmly next to her mother. Nobody could guess from her apparently ingenuous countenance that she knew that she, and not the Terror of the departments and his wife, was the originating cause of Mr. Morfey's grandiose hospitality.
"I suppose the stalls are full of celebrities?" said Eve.
"They're full of people who've paid twice the ordinary price for their seats," answered Ozzie.
"Who's that extraordinary old red-haired woman in the box opposite?" Eve demanded.
"That's Enid."
"Enid?"
"Yes. You know the Enid stove, don't you? All ladies know the Enid stove. It's been a household word for forty years. That's the original Enid. Her father invented the stove, and named it after her when she was a girl. She never misses a first-night."
"How extraordinary! Is she what you call a celebrity?"
"Rather!"
"Now," said Mr. Prohack. "Now, at last I understand the real meaning of fame."
"But that's Charlie down there!" exclaimed Eve, suddenly, pointing to the stalls and then looking behind her to see if there was not another Charlie in the box.
"Yes," Ozzie agreed. "Lady Massulam had an extra stall, and as five's a bit of a crowd in this box.... I thought he'd told you."
"He had not," said Eve.
The curtain went up, and this simple gesture on the part of the curtain evoked enormous applause. The audience could not control the expression of its delight. A young lady under a sunshade appeared; the mere fact of her existence threw the audience into a new ecstasy. An old man with a red nose appeared: similar demonstrations from the audience. When these two had talked to each other and sung to each other, the applause was tripled, and when the scene changed from Piccadilly Circus at 4 a.m. to the interior of a Spanish palace inhabited by illustrious French actors and actresses who proceeded to play an act of a tragedy by Corneille, the applause was quintupled. At the end of the tragedy the applause was decupled. Then the Spanish palace dissolved into an Abyssinian harem, and Eliza Fiddle in Abyssinian costume was discovered lying upon two thousand cushions of two thousand colours, and the audience rose at Eliza and Eliza rose at the audience, and the resulting frenzy was the sublimest frenzy that ever shook a theatre. The piece was stopped dead for three minutes while the audience and Eliza protested a mutual and unique passion. From this point onwards Mr. Prohack lost his head. He ran to and fro in the bewildering glittering maze of the piece, seeking for an explanation, for a sign-post, for a clue, for the slightest hint, and found nothing. He had no alternative but to cling to Eliza Fiddle, and he clung to her desperately. She was willing to be clung to. She gave herself, not only to Mr. Prohack, but to every member of the audience separately; she gave herself in the completeness of all her manifestations. The audience was rich in the possession of the whole of her individuality, which was a great deal. She sang, danced, chattered, froze, melted, laughed, cried, flirted, kissed, kicked, cursed, and turned somersaults with the fury of a dervish, the languor of an odalisque, and the inexhaustibility of a hot-spring geyser.... And at length Mr. Prohack grew aware of a feeling within himself that was at war with the fresh, fine feeling of physical well-being. "I have never seen a revue before," he said in secret. "Is it possible that I am bored?"
"Would you care to go behind and be introduced to Miss Fiddle?" Ozzie suggested at the interval after the curtain had been raised seventeen times in response to frantic shoutings, cheerings, thumpings and clappings, and the mighty tumult of exhilaration had subsided into a happy buzz that arose from all the seats in the entire orange-tinted brilliant auditorium. The ladies would not go; the ladies feared, they said, to impose their company upon Miss Fiddle in the tremendous strain of her activities. They spoke primly and decisively. It was true that they feared; but their fear was based on consideration for themselves rather than on consideration for Miss Fiddle. Ozzie was plainly snubbed. He had offered a wonderful privilege, and it had been disdained.
Mr. Prohack could not bear the spectacle of Ozzie's discomfiture. His sad weakness for pleasing people overcame him, and, putting his hand benevolently on the young man's shoulder, he said:
"My dear fellow, personally I'm dying to go."
They went by strangely narrow corridors and through iron doors across the stage, whose shirt-sleeved, ragged population seemed to be behaving as though the last trump had sounded, and so upstairs and along a broad passage full of doors ajar from which issued whispers and exclamations and transient visions of young women. From the star's dressing-room, at the end, a crowd of all sorts and conditions of persons was being pushed. Mr. Prohack trembled with an awful apprehension, and asked himself vainly what in the name of commonsense he was doing there, and prayed that Ozzie might be refused admission. The next moment he was being introduced to a middle-aged woman in a middle-aged dressing-gown. Her face was thickly caked with paint and powder, her eyes surrounded with rings of deepest black, her finger-nails red. Mr. Prohack, not without difficulty, recognised Eliza. A dresser stood on either side of her. Blinding showers of electric light poured down upon her defenceless but hardy form. She shook hands, but Mr. Prohack deemed that she ought to bear a notice: "Danger. Visitors are requested not to touch."
"So good of you to come round," she said, in her rich and powerful voice, smiling with all her superb teeth. Mr. Prohack, entranced, gazed, not as at a woman, but as at a public monument. Nevertheless he thought that she was not a bad kind, and well suited for the rough work of the world.
"I hope you're all coming to my ball to-night," said she. Mr. Prohack had never heard of any ball. In an instant she told him that she had remarked two most charming ladies with him in the box—(inordinate faculty of observation, mused Mr. Prohack)—and in another instant she was selling him three two guinea tickets for a grand ball and rout in aid of the West End Chorus Girls' Aid Association. Could he refuse, perceiving so clearly as he did that within the public monument was hiding a wistful creature, human like himself, human like his wife and daughter? He could not.
"Now you'llcome?" said she.
Mr. Prohack swore that he would come, his heart sinking as he realised the consequence of his own foolish weakness. There was a knock at the door.
"Did you want me, Liza?" said a voice, and a fat gentleman, clothed with resplendent correctness, stepped into the room. It was the stage-manager, a god in his way.
Eliza Fiddle became a cyclone.
"I should think I did want you," she said passionately. "That's why I sent for you, and next time I'll ask you to come quicker. I'm not going to have that squint-eyed girl on the stage any more to-night. You know, the one at the end of the row. Twice she spoiled my exit by getting in the way. And you've got to throw her out, and take it from me. She does it on purpose."
"I can't throw her out without Mr. Chown's orders, and Mr. Chown's in Paris."
"Then you refuse?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Then I'm not going on again to-night, not if I know it. I'm not going to be insulted in my own theatre."
"It's not the girl's fault. You know they haven't got room to move."
"I don't know anything about that and I don't care. All I know is that I've finished with that squint-eyed woman, and you can choose right now between her and me. And so that's that."
Miss Fiddle's fragile complexion had approached to within six inches of the stage-manager's broad and shiny features, and it had little resemblance to any of the various faces which audiences associated with the figure of Eliza Fiddle; it was a face voluptuously distorted by the violence of emotion. As Miss Fiddle appeared to be under the impression that she was alone with the stage-manager, Mr. Prohack rendered justice to that impression by softly departing. Ozzie followed. The stage-manager also followed. "Where are you going?" they heard Eliza's voice behind them addressing the stage-manager.
"I'm going to tell your under-study to get ready quick."
An enormous altercation uprose, and faces peeped from every door in the corridor; but Mr. Prohack stayed not. Ozzie led him to Mr. Asprey Chown's private room. The Terror of the departments was shaken. Ozzie laughed gently as he shut the door.
"What will happen?" asked Mr. Prohack, affecting a gaiety he did not feel.
"What do you think will happen?" simpered Ozzie blandly, "having due regard to the fact that Miss Fiddle has to choose between three hundred and fifty pounds a week and a law-suit with Chown involving heavy damages? I must say there's nobody like Blaggs for keeping these three hundred and fifty pound a week individuals in order. Chown would sooner lose forty of them than lose Blaggs. And Eliza knows it. By the way, what do you think of the show?"
"Will it succeed?"
"You should see the advance booking. There's a thousand pounds in the house to-night. Chown will be clearing fifteen hundred a week when he's paid off his production."
"Well, it's marvellous."
"You don't mean the show?"
"No. The profit."
"I agree," simpered Ozzie.
"I'm beginning to like this sizzling idiot," thought Mr. Prohack, as it were regretfully. They left the imperial richness of Mr. Chown's private room like brothers.