The next morning at ten o'clock a strange thing happened. The hotel clocks showed the hour and Mr. Prohack's watch showed the hour, and Carthew was not there with the car. Mr. Prohack could not understand this unnatural failure to appear on the part of Carthew, for Carthew had never been known to be late (save when interfered with by Mimi), and therefore never could be late. Mr. Prohack fretted for a quarter of an hour, and then caused the hotel-garage to be telephoned to. The car had left the garage at nine-fifty. Mr. Prohack went out for a walk, not ostensibly, but really, to look for the car in the streets of London! (Such was his diseased mentality.) He returned at half past eleven, and at eleven thirty-two the car arrived. Immediately Mr. Prohack became calm; his exterior was apt to be very deceptive; and he said gently to Carthew, just as if nothing in the least unusual had occurred:
"A little late, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," Carthew replied, with a calmness to match his employer's. "As I was coming here from the garage I met the mistress. She was looking for a taxi and she took me."
"But did you tell her that I asked you to be here at 10 o'clock?"
"No, sir."
"Did you tell her that I was in London?"
"No, sir."
Mr. Prohack hesitated a moment and then said:
"Drive into Hyde Park, please, and keep to the north side."
When the car had reached a quiet spot in the park, Mr. Prohack stopped it, and, tapping on the front window, summoned Carthew.
"Carthew," said he, through the side-window, which he let down without opening the door, "we're by ourselves. Will you kindly explain to me why you concealed from Mrs. Prohack that I was in London?"
"Well, sir," Carthew answered, very erect and slightly frowning, "I didn't know you were in London, if you understand what I mean."
"Didn't you bring me to London? Of course you knew I was in London."
"No, sir. Not if you understand what I mean."
"I emphatically do not understand what you mean," said Mr. Prohack, who, however, was not speaking the truth.
"May I put a question, sir?" Carthew suggested. "Having regard to all the circumstances—I say having regard as it were to all the circumstances, in a manner of speaking, what should you have done in my place, sir?"
"How do I know?" cried Mr. Prohack. "I'm not a chauffeur. Whatdidyou say to Mrs. Prohack?"
"I said that you had instructed me to return to London, as you didn't need the car, and that I was just going to the house for orders. And by the way, sir," Carthew added, glancing at the car-clock, "Madam told me to be back at twelve fifteen—I told her I ought to go to the garage to get something done to the carbureter—so that there is not much time."
Mr. Prohack jumped out of the car and said: "Go."
Wandering alone in the chilly Park he reflected upon the potentialities of human nature as exhibited in chauffeurs. The fellow Carthew had evidently come to the conclusion that there was something wrong in the more intimate relationships of the Prohack family, and, faced with a sudden contretemps, he had acted according to the best of his wisdom and according to his loyalty to his employer, but he had acted wrongly. But of course the original sinner was Mr. Prohack himself. Respectable State officials, even when on sick leave, do not call at empty houses and stay at hotels within a stone's throw of their own residences unknown to their families. No! Mr. Prohack saw that he had been steering a crooked course. Error existed and must be corrected. He decided to walk direct to Manchester Square. If Eve wanted the car at twelve fifteen she would be out of the house at twelve thirty, and probably out for lunch. So much the better. She should find him duly established on her return.
Reconnoitring later at Manchester Square he saw no car, and rang the bell of the noble mansion. On account of the interview of the previous evening he felt considerably nervous and foolish, and the butler suffered through no fault of the butler's.
"I'm Mr. Prohack," said he, with self-conscious fierceness. "What's your name? Brool, eh? Take my overcoat and send Machin to me at once." He lit a cigarette to cover himself. The situation, though transient, had been sufficiently difficult.
Machin came leaping and bounding down the stairs as if by magic. She had heard his voice, and her joy at his entry into his abode caused her to forget her parlour-maidenhood and to exhibit a humanity which pained Mr. Brool, who had been brought up in the strictest traditions of flunkeyism. Her joy pleased Mr. Prohack and he felt better.
"Good morning, Machin," said he, quite blithely. "I just want to see how things have been fixed up in my rooms." He had not the least notion where or what his rooms were in the vast pile.
"Yes, sir," Machin responded eagerly, delighted that Mr. Prohack was making to herself, as an old friend, an appeal which he ought to have made to the butler. Mr. Prohack, guided by the prancing Machin, discovered that, in addition to a study, he had a bedroom and a dressing-room and a share in Eve's bath-room. The dressing-room had a most agreeable aspect. Machin opened a huge and magnificent wardrobe, and in drawer after drawer displayed his new hosiery marvellously arranged, and in other portions of the wardrobe his new suits and hats and boots. The whole made a wondrous spectacle.
"And who did all this?" he demanded.
"Madam, sir. But Miss Warburton came to help her at nine this morning, and I helped too. Miss Warburton has put the lists in your study, sir."
"Thank you, Machin. It's all very nice." He was touched. The thought of all these women toiling in secret to please him was exceedingly sweet. It was not as though he had issued any requests. No! They did what they did from enthusiasm, unknown to him.
"Wait a second," he stopped Machin, who was leaving him. "Which floor did you say my study is on?"
She led him to his study. An enormous desk, and in the middle of it a little pile of papers crushed by a block of crystal! The papers were all bills. The amounts of them alarmed him momentarily, but that was only because he could not continuously and effectively remember that he had over three hundred pounds a week coming in. Still, the bills did somewhat dash him, and he left them without getting to the bottom of the pile. He thought he would voyage through the house, but he got no further than his wife's boudoir. The boudoir also had an enormous desk, and on it also was a pile of papers. He offended the marital code by picking up the first one, which read as follows:—"Madam. We beg to enclose as requested estimate for buffet refreshments for one hundred and fifty persons, and hire of one hundred gilt cane chairs and bringing and taking away same. Trusting to be honoured with your commands—" This document did more than alarm him; it shook him. Clearly Eve was planning a great reception. Even to attend a reception was torture to him, always had been; but to be the host at a reception...! No, his mind refused to contemplate a prospect so appalling. Surely Eve ought to have consulted him before beginning to plan a reception. Why a reception? He glimpsed matters that might be even worse than a reception. And this was the same woman who had so touchingly arranged his clothes.
He was idly regarding himself in an immense mirror that topped the fireplace, and thinking that despite the stylishness of his accoutrement he presented the appearance of a rather tousled and hairy person of unromantic middle-age, when, in the glass, he saw the gilded door open and a woman enter the room. He did not move,—only stared at the image. He knew the woman intimately, profoundly, exhaustively, almost totally. He knew her as one knows the countryside in which one has grown up, where every feature of the scene has become a habit of the perceptions. And yet he had also a strange sensation of seeing her newly, of seeing her for the first time in his life and estimating her afresh. In a flash he had compared her, in this boudoir, with Lady Massulam in Lady Massulam's bungalow. In a flash all the queer, frightening romance of 2 a.m. in Frinton had swept through his mind. Well, she had not the imposingness nor the mystery of Lady Massulam, nor perhaps the challenge of Lady Massulam; she was very much more prosaic to him. But still he admitted that she had an effect on him, that he reacted to her presence, that she was at any rate at least as incalculable as Lady Massulam, and that there might be bits of poetry gleaming in her prose, and that after a quarter of a century he had not arrived at a final judgment about her. Withal Lady Massulam had a quality which she lacked,—he did not know what the quality was, but he knew that it excited him in an unprecedented manner and that he wanted it and would renounce it with regret. "Is it conceivable," he thought, shocked at himself, "that all three of us are on the road to fifty years?"
Then he turned, and blushed, feeling exactly like an undergraduate.
"I knew you'd be bored up there in that hole." Eve greeted him.
"I wasn't bored for a single moment," said he.
"Don't tell me," said she.
She was very smart in her plumpness. The brim of her spreading hat bumped against his forehead as he bent to kiss her. The edge of the brown veil came half-way down her face, leaving her mouth unprotected from him, but obscuring her disturbing eyes. As he kissed her all his despondency and worry fell away from him, and he saw with extraordinary clearness that since the previous evening he had been an irrational ass. The creature had done nothing unusual, nothing that he had not explicitly left her free to do; and everything was all right.
"Did you see your friend Lady Massulam?" was her first question.
Marvellous the intuition—or the happy flukes—of women! Yet their duplicity was still more marvellous. The creature's expressed anxiety about the danger of Lady Massulam's society to Charlie must have been pure, wanton, gratuitous pretence.
He told her of his meeting with Lady Massulam.
"I left her at 2 a.m.," said he, with well-feigned levity.
"I knew she wouldn't leave you alone for long. But I've no doubt you enjoyed it. I hope you did. You need adventure, my poor boy. You were getting into a regular rut."
"Oh, was I!" he opposed. "And what are you doing here? Machin told me you were out for lunch."
"Oh! You've been having a chat with your friend Machin, have you? It seems she's shown you your beautiful dressing-room. Well, I was going out for lunch. But when I heard you'd returned I gave it up and came back. I knew so well you'd want looking after."
"And who told you I'd returned?"
"Carthew, of course! You're a very peculiar pair, you two. When I first saw him Carthew gave me to understand he'd left you at Frinton. But when I see him again I learn that you're in town and that you spent last night at Claridge's. You did quite right, my poor boy. Quite right. I want you to feel free. It must have been great fun stopping at Claridge's, with your own home close by. I'll tell you something. We were dancing at Claridge's last night, but I suppose you'd gone to bed."
"The dickens you were!" said he. "By the way, you might instruct one of your butlers to telephone to the hotel for my things and have the bill paid."
"So you'll sleep here to-night?" said she, archly.
"If there's room," said he. "Anyway you've arranged all my clothes with the most entrancing harmony and precision."
"Oh!" Eve exclaimed, in a tone suddenly changed. "That was Miss Warburton more than me. She took an hour off from Charlie this morning in order to do it."
Then Mr. Prohack observed his wife's face crumble to pieces, and she moved aside from him, sat down and began to cry.
"Now what next? What next?" he demanded with impatient amiability, for he was completely at a loss to keep pace with the twistings of her mind.
"Arthur, why did you deceive me about that girl? How could you do it? I hadn't the slightest idea it was M—miss W—instock. I can't make you out sometimes, Arthur—really I can't!"
The fellow had honestly forgotten that he had in fact grossly deceived his wife to the point of planting Mimi Winstock upon her as somebody else. He had been nourishing imaginary and absurd grievances against Eve for many hours, but her grievance against himself was genuine enough and large enough. No wonder she could not make him out. He could not make himself out. His conscience awoke within him and became exceedingly unpleasant. But being a bad man he laughed somewhat coarsely.
"Oh!" he said. "That was only a bit of a joke. But how did you find out, you silly child?"
"Ozzie saw her yesterday. He knew her. You can't imagine how awkward it was. Naturally I had to laugh it off. But I cried half the night."
"But why? What did it matter? Ozzie's one of the family. The girl's not at all a bad sort, and I did it for her sake."
Eve dried her eyes and looked up at him reproachfully with wet cheeks.
"When I think," said she, "that that girl might so easily have killed me in that accident! And it would have been all her fault. And then where would you have been without me? Wherewouldyou have been? You'd never have got over it. Never, never! You simply don't know what you'd be if you hadn't got me to look after you! And you bring her into the house under a false name, and you call it a joke! No, Arthur. Frankly I couldn't have believed it of you."
Mr. Prohack was affected. He was not merely dazzled by the new light which she was shedding on things,—he was emotionally moved.... Would Lady Massulam be capable of such an attitude as Eve's in such a situation? The woman was astounding. She was more romantic than any creature in any bungalow of romantic Frinton. She beat him. She rent his heart. So he said:
"Well, my beloved infant, if it's any use to you I'm prepared to admit once for all that I was an ass. We'll never have the wretched Mimi in the house again. I'll give the word to Charlie."
"Oh, not at all!" she murmured, smiling sadly. "I've got over it. And you must think of my dignity. How ridiculous it would be of me to make a fuss about her being here! Now, wouldn't it? But I'm glad I've told you. I didn't mean to, really. I meant never to say a word. But the fact is I can't keep anything from you."
She began to cry again, but differently. He soothed her, as none but he could, thinking exultantly: "What a power I have over this chit!" They were perfectly happy. They lunched alone together, talking exclusively for the benefit of Eve's majestic butler. And Mr. Prohack, with that many-sidedness that marked his strange regrettable mind, said to himself at intervals: "Nevertheless she's still hiding from me her disgusting scheme for a big reception. And she knows jolly well I shall hate it."
The reception pleased Mr. Prohack as a spectacle, and it cost him almost no trouble. He announced his decision that it must cost him no trouble, and everybody in the house, and a few people outside it, took him at his word—which did not wholly gratify him. Indeed the family and its connections seemed to be conspiring to give him a life of ease. Responsibilities were lifted from him. He did not even miss his secretary. Sissie, who returned home—by a curious coincidence—on the very day that Mimi Winstock was transferred to Charlie's service in the Grand Babylon, performed what she called 'secretarial stunts' for her father as and when required. On the afternoon of the reception, which was timed to begin at 9 p.m., he had an attack of fright, but, by a process well known to public executants, it passed off long before it could develop into stage-fright; and he was quite at ease at 9 p.m.
The first arrivals came at nine thirty. He stood by Eve and greeted them; and he had greeted about twenty individuals when he yawned (for a good reason) and Eve said to him:
"You needn't stay here, you know. Go and amuse yourself." (This suggestion followed the advent of Lady Massulam.)
He didn't stay. Ozzie Morfey and Sissie supplanted him. At a quarter to eleven he was in the glazed conservatory built over the monumental portico, with Sir Paul Spinner. He could see down into the Square, which was filled with the splendid and numerous automobiles incident to his wife's reception. Guests—and not the least important among them—were still arriving. Cars rolled up to the portico, gorgeous women and plain men jumped out on to the red cloth, of which he could just see the extremity near the kerb, and vanished under him, and the cars hid themselves away in the depths of the Square. Looking within his home he admired the vista of brilliantly illuminated rooms, full of gilt chairs, priceless furniture, and extremely courageous toilettes. For, as the reception was 'to meet the Committee of the League of all the Arts.' (Ozzie had placed many copies of the explanatory pamphlet on various tables), artists of all kinds and degrees abounded, and the bourgeois world (which chiefly owned the automobiles) thought proper to be sartorially as improper as fashion would allow; and fashion allowed quite a lot. The affair might have been described as a study in shoulder-blades. It was a very great show, and Mr. Prohack appreciated all of it, the women, the men, the lionesses, the lions, the kaleidoscope of them, the lights, the reflections in the mirrors and in the waxed floors, the discreetly hidden music, the grandiose buffet, the efficient valetry. He soon got used to not recognising, and not being recognised by, the visitors to his own house. True, he could not conceive that the affair would serve any purpose but one,—namely the purpose of affording innocent and expensive pleasure to his wife.
"You've hit on a pretty good sort of a place here," grunted Sir Paul Spinner, whose waistcoat buttons were surpassed in splendour only by his carbuncles.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack, "to me, living here is rather like being on the stage all the time. It's not real."
"What the deuce do you mean, it's not real? There aren't twenty houses in London with a finer collection of genuine bibelots than you have here."
"Yes, but they aren't mine, and I didn't choose them or arrange them."
"What does that matter? You can look at them and enjoy the sight of them. Nobody can do more."
"Paul, you're talking neo-conventional nonsense again. Have you ever in your career as a city man stood outside a money-changer's and looked at the fine collection of genuine banknotes in the window? Supposing I told you that you could look at them and enjoy the sight of them, and nobody could do more?... No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got to own it. And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of all the Arts." He gave another enormous yawn. "Excuse my yawning, Paul, but this house is a perfect Inferno for me. The church of St. Nicodemus is hard by, and the church of St. Nicodemus has a striking clock, and the clock strikes all the hours and all the quarters on a half cracked bell or two bells. If I am asleep every hour wakes me up, and most of the quarters. The clock strikes not only the hours and the quarters but me. I regulate my life by that clock. If I'm beginning to repose at ten minutes to the hour, I say to myself that I must wait till the hour before really beginning, and I do wait. It is killing me, and nobody can see that it is killing me. The clock annoys some individuals a little occasionally; they curse, and then go to sleep and stay asleep. For them the clock is a nuisance; but for me it's an assassination. However, I can't make too much fuss. Several thousands of people must live within sound of the St. Nicodemus clock; yet the rector has not been murdered nor the church razed to the ground. Hence the clock doesn't really upset many people. And there are hundreds of such infernal clocks in London, and they all survive. It follows therefore that I am peculiar. Nobody has a right to be peculiar. Hence I do not complain. I suffer. I've tried stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, and stuffing the windows of my bedroom with eiderdowns. No use. I've tried veronal. No use either. The only remedy would be for me to give the house up. Which would he absurd. My wife soothes me and says that of course I shall get used to the clock. I shall never get used to it. Lately she has ceased even to mention the clock. My daughter thinks I am becoming a grumbler in my latter years. My son smiles indifferently. I admit that my son's secretary is more sympathetic. Like most people who are both idle and short of sleep, I usually look very well, spry and wideawake. My friends remark on my healthy appearance. You did. The popular mind cannot conceive that I am merely helplessly waiting for death to put me out of my misery; but so it is. There must be quite a few others in the same fix as me in London, dying because rectors and other clergymen and officials insist on telling them the time all through the night. But they suffer in silence as I do. As I do, they see the uselessness of a fuss."
"Youwillget used to it, Arthur," said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack's disquisition. "You're in a nervous state and your judgment's warped. Now, I never even heard your famous clock strike ten."
"No, you wouldn't, Paul! And my judgment's warped, is it?" There was irritation in Mr. Prohack's voice. He took out his watch. "In sixty or seventy seconds you shall hear that clock strike eleven, and you shall give me your honest views about it. And you shall apologise to me."
Sir Paul obediently and sympathetically listened, while the murmur of the glowing reception and the low beat of music continued within.
"You tell me when it starts to strike," said he.
"You won't want any telling," said Mr. Prohack, who knew too well the riving, rending, smashing sound of the terrible bells.
"It's a pretty long seventy seconds," observed Sir Paul.
"My watch must be fast," said Mr. Prohack, perturbed.
But at eighteen minutes past eleven the clock had audibly struck neither the hour nor the quarter. Sir Paul was a man of tact. He said simply:
"I should like a drink, dear old boy."
"The clock's not striking," said Mr. Prohack, with solemn joy, as the wonderful truth presented itself to him. "Either it's stopped, or they've cut off the striking attachment." And to one of the maids on the landing he said as they passed towards the buffet: "Run out and see what time it is by the church clock, and come back and tell me, will you?" A few minutes later he was informed that the church clock showed half-past eleven. The clock therefore was still going but had ceased to strike. Mr. Prohack at once drank two glasses of champagne at the buffet, while Sir Paul had the customary whiskey.
"I say, old thing, I say!" Sir Paul protested.
"I shall sleep!" said Mr. Prohack in a loud, gay, triumphant voice. He was a new man.
The reception now seemed to him far more superb than ever. It was almost at its apogee. All the gilt chairs were occupied; all the couches and fauteuils of the room were occupied, and certain delicious toilettes were even spread on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors. On every hand could be heard artistic discussions, serious and informed and yet lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional quality of the best sculpture, and if not that then the influence on British life of the fox-trot, and if not that then the prospects of bringing modern poets home to the largest public by means of the board schools, and if not that then the evil effects of the twin great London institutions for teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian Ballet. And always there ran like a flame through the conversations the hot breath of a passionate intention to make Britain artistic in the eyes of the civilised world.
What especially pleased Mr. Prohack about the whole affair, as he moved to and fro seeking society now instead of avoiding it, was the perfect futility of the affair, save as it affected Eve's reputation. He perceived the beauty of costly futility, and he was struck again, when from afar he observed his wife's conquering mien, by the fact that the reception did not exist for the League, but the League for the reception. The reception was a real and a resplendent thing; nobody could deny it. The League was a fog of gush. The League would be dear at twopence half-penny. The reception was cheap if it stood him in five hundred pounds. Eve was an infant; Eve was pleased with gewgaws; but Eve had found herself and he was well content to pay five hundred pounds for the look on her ingenuous face.
"And nothing of this would have happened," he thought, impressed by the wonders of life, "if in a foolish impulse of generosity I hadn't once lent a hundred quid to that chap Angmering."
He descried Lady Massulam in converse with a tall, stout and magnificently dressed gentleman, who bowed deeply and departed as Mr. Prohack approached.
"Who is your fat friend?" said Mr. Prohack.
"He's fromThe Daily Picture.... But isn't this rather a strange way of greeting a guest after so long a separation? Do you know that I'm in your house and you haven't shaken hands with me?"
There was a note of intimacy and of challenge in Lady Massulam's demeanour that pleased Mr. Prohack immensely, and caused him to see that the romance of Frinton was neither factitious nor at an end. He felt pleasantly, and even thrillingly, that they had something between them.
"Ah!" he returned, consciously exerting his charm. "I thought you detested our English formality and horrible restraint. Further, this isn't my house; it's my wife's."
"Your wife is wonderful!" said Lady Massulam, as though teaching him to appreciate his wife and indicating that she alone had the right thus to teach him,—the subtlest thing. "I've never seen an evening better done—reussie."
"She is rather wonderful," Mr. Prohack admitted, his tone implying that while putting Lady Massulam in a class apart, he had wit enough to put his wife too in a class apart,—the subtlest thing.
"I quite expected to meet you again in Frinton," said Lady Massulam simply. "How abrupt you are in your methods!"
"Only when it's a case of self-preservation," Mr. Prohack responded, gazing at her with daring significance.
"I'm going to talk to Mrs. Prohack," said Lady Massulam, rising. But before she left him she murmured confidentially in his ear: "Where's your son?"
"Don't know. Why?'
"I don't think he's come yet. I'm afraid the poor boy's affairs are not very bright."
"I shall look after him," said Mr. Prohack, grandly. A qualm did pierce him at the sound of her words, but he would not be depressed. He smiled serenely, self-confidently, and said to himself: "I could look after forty Charleses."
He watched his wife and his friend chatting together as equals inThe Daily Picture. Yes, Eve was wonderful, and but for sheer hazard he would never have known how wonderful she was capable of being.
"You've got a great show here to-night, old man," said a low, mysterious voice at his side. Mr. Softly Bishop was smiling down his nose and holding out his hand while looking at nothing but his nose.
"Hello, Bishop!" said Mr. Prohack, controlling a desire to add: "I'd no ideayou'dbeen invited!"
"Samples of every world—except the next," said Mr. Softly Bishop. "And now the theatrical contingent is arriving after its night's work."
"Do you know who that fellow is?" Mr. Prohack demanded, indicating a little man with the aspect of a prize-fighter who was imperially conveying to Mrs. Prohack that Mrs. Prohack was lucky to get him to her reception.
"Why!" replied Mr. Bishop. "That's the Napoleon of the stage."
"Not Asprey Chown!"
"Asprey Chown."
"Great Scott!" And Mr. Prohack laughed.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Mere glee. This is the crown of my career as a man of the world." He saw Mr. Asprey Chown give a careless brusque nod to Ozzie Morfey, and he laughed again.
"It's rather comic, isn't it?" Mr. Softly Bishop acquiesced. "I wonder why Oswald Morfey has abandoned his famous stock for an ordinary necktie."
"Probably because he's going to be my son-in-law," said Mr. Prohack.
"Ah!" ejaculated Mr. Softly Bishop. "I congratulate him."
Mr. Prohack looked grim in order to conceal his joy in the assurance that he would sleep that night, and in the sensations produced by the clear fact that Lady Massulam was still interested in him. Somehow he wanted to dance, not with any woman, but by himself, a reel.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Mr. Softly Bishop. "Youareshining to-night. Here's Eliza Fiddle, and that's her half-sister Miss Fancy behind her."
And it was Eliza Fiddle, and the ageing artiste with her ravaged complexion and her defiant extra-vivacious mien created instantly an impression such as none but herself could have created. The entire assemblage stared, murmuring its excitement, at the renowned creature. Eliza loved the stare and the murmur. She was like a fish dropped into water after a gasping spell in mere air.
"I admit I was in too much of a hurry when I spoke of having reached the zenith," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm only just getting there now. And who's the half-sister?"
"She's not precisely unknown on the American stage," answered Mr. Softly Bishop. "But before we go any further I'd perhaps better tell you a secret." His voice and his gaze dropped still lower. "She's a particularly fine girl, and it won't be my fault if I don't marry her. Not a word of course! Mum!" He turned away, while Mr. Prohack was devising a suitable response.
"Welcome to your old home. And do come with me to the buffet. You must be tired after your work," Mr. Prohack burst out in a bold, loud voice to Eliza, taking her away from his wife, whose nearly exhausted tact almost failed to hide her relief.
"I do hope you like the taste of my old home," Eliza answered. "My new house up the river is furnished throughout in real oriental red lacquer. You must come and see it."
"I should love to," said Mr. Prohack bravely.
"This is my little sister, Miss Fancy. Fan, Mr. Prohack."
Mr. Prohack expressed his enchantment.
At the buffet Eliza did not refuse champagne, but Miss Fancy refused. "Now don't put on airs, Fan," Eliza reproved her sister heartily and drank off her glass while Mr. Prohack sipped his somewhat cautiously. He liked Eliza's reproof. He was beginning even to like Eliza. To say that her style was coarse was to speak in moderation; but she was natural, and her individuality seemed to be sending out waves in all directions, by which all persons in the vicinity were affected whether they desired it or not. Mr. Prohack met Eliza's glance with satisfaction. She at any rate had nothing to learn about life that she was capable of learning. She knew everything—and was probably the only creature in the room who did. She had succeeded. She was adored—strangely enough. And she did not put on airs. Her original coarseness was apparently quite unobscured, whereas that of Miss Fancy had been not very skilfully painted over. Miss Fancy was a blonde, much younger than Eliza; also slimmer and more finickingly and luxuriously dressed and jewelled. But Mr. Prohack cared not for her. She was always keeping her restless inarticulate lips in order, buttoning them or sewing them up or caressing one with the other. Further, she looked down her nose; probably this trait was the secret lien between her and Mr. Softly Bishop. Mr. Prohack, despite a cloistral lifetime at the Treasury, recognised her type immediately. She was of the type that wheedles, but never permits itself to be wheedled. And she was so pretty, and so simpering, and her blue eyes were so steely. And Mr. Prohack, in his original sinfulness, was pleased that she was thus. He felt that "it would serve Softly Bishop out." Not that Mr. Softly Bishop had done him any harm! Indeed the contrary. But he had an antipathy to Mr. Softly Bishop, and the spectacle of Mr. Softly Bishop biting off more than he could chew, of Mr. Softly Bishop being drawn to his doom, afforded Mr. Prohack the most genuine pleasure. Unfortunately Mr. Prohack was one of the rare monsters who can contemplate with satisfaction the misfortunes of a fellow being.
Mr. Softly Bishop unostentatiously joined the sisters and Mr. Prohack.
"Better have just a sip," he said to Miss Fancy, when told by Eliza that the girl would not be sociable. His eyes glimmered at her through his artful spectacles. She listened obediently to his low-voiced wisdom and sipped. She was shooting a million fascinations at him. Mr. Prohack decided that the ultimate duel between the two might be a pretty even thing after all; but he would put his money on the lady. And he had thought Mr. Softly Bishop so wily!
A fearful thought suddenly entered his mind: supposing the failure of the church-clock's striking powers should be only temporary; supposing it should recover under some verger's treatment, and strike twelve!
"Let's go into the conservatory and look at the Square," said he. "I always look at the Square at midnight, and it's nearly twelve now."
"You're the most peculiar man I ever met," said Eliza Fiddle, eyeing him uneasily.
"Very true," Mr. Prohack agreed.
"I'm half afraid of you."
"Very wise," said Mr. Prohack absently.
They crossed the rooms together, arousing keen interest in all beholders. And as they crossed Charlie entered the assemblage. He certainly had an extremely perturbed—or was it merely self-conscious—face. And just in front of him was Mimi Winstock, who looked as if she was escaping from the scene of a crime. Was Lady Massulam's warning about Charlie about to be justified? Mr. Prohack's qualm was renewed. The very ground trembled for a second under his feet and then was solid and moveless again. No sooner had the quartette reached the conservatory than Eliza left it to go and discuss important affairs with Mr. Asprey Chown, who had summoned Ozzie to his elbow. They might not have seen one another for many years, and they might have been settling the fate of continents.
Mr. Prohack took out his watch, which showed a minute to twelve. He experienced a minute's agony. The clock did not strike.
"Well," said Mr. Softly Bishop, who during the minute had been whispering information about the historic Square to Miss Fancy, who hung with all her weight on his words, "Well, it's very interesting and even amusing, we three being alone here together isn't it?... The three heirs of the late Silas Angmering! How funny life is!" And he examined his nose with new curiosity.
All Mr. Prohack's skin tingled, and his face flushed, as he realised that Miss Fancy was the mysterious third beneficiary under Angmering's will. Yes, she was in fact jewelled like a woman who had recently been handling a hundred thousand pounds or so. And Mr. Softly Bishop might be less fascinated by the steely blue eyes than Mr. Prohack had imagined. Mr. Softly Bishop might in fact win the duel. The question, however, had no interest for Mr. Prohack, who was absorbed in a sense of gloomy humiliation. He rushed away from his co-heirs. He simply had to rush away right to bad.
The fount of riches and the Terror of the departments, clothed in the latest pattern of sumptuous pyjamas, lay in the midst of his magnificent and spacious bed, and, with the shaded electric globe over his brow, gazed at the splendours of the vast bedroom which Eve had allotted to him. It was full, but not too full, of the finest Directoire furniture, and the walls were covered with all manner of engravings and watercolours. Evidently this apartment had been the lair of the real owner and creator of the great home. Mr. Prohack could appreciate the catholicity and sureness of taste which it displayed. He liked the cornice as well as the form of the dressing-table, and the Cumberland landscape by C.J. Holmes as well as the large Piranesi etching of an imaginary prison, which latter particularly interested him because it happened to be an impression between two "states"—a detail which none but a true amateur could savour. The prison depicted was a terrible place of torment, but it was beautiful, and the view of it made Mr. Prohack fancy, very absurdly, that he too was in prison, just as securely as if he had been bolted and locked therein. His eye ranged about the room and saw nothing that was not lovely and that he did not admire. Yet he derived little or no authentic pleasure from what he beheld, partly because it was the furnishing of a prison and partly because he did not own it. He had often preached against the mania for owning things, but now—and even more clearly than when he had sermonised Paul Spinner—he perceived, and hated to perceive, that ownership was probably an essential ingredient of most enjoyments. The man, foolishly priding himself on being a philosopher, was indeed a fleshly mass of strange inconsistencies.
More important, he was losing the assurance that he would sleep soundly that night. He could not drag his mind off his co-heiress and his co-heir. The sense of humiliation at being intimately connected and classed with them would not leave him. He felt himself—absurdly once again—to be mysteriously associated with them in a piece of sharp practice or even of knavery. They constituted another complication of his existence. He wanted to disown them and never to speak to them again, but he knew that he could not disown them. He was living in gorgeousness for the sole reason that he and they were in the same boat.
Eve came in, opening the door cautiously at first and then rushing forward as soon as she saw that the room was not in darkness. He feared for an instant that she might upbraid him for deserting her. But no! Triumphant happiness sat on her forehead, and affectionate concern for him was in her eyes. She plumped down, in her expensive radiance, on the bed by his side.
"Well?" said he.
"I'm so glad you decided to go to bed," said she. "You must be tired, and late nights don't suit you. I just slipped away for a minute to see if you were all right. Are you?" She puckered her shining brow exactly as of old, and bent and kissed him as of old. One of her best kisses.
But the queer fellow, though touched by her attention, did not like her being so glad that he had gone to bed. The alleged philosopher would have preferred her to express some dependence upon his manly support in what was for her a tremendous event.
"I feel I shall sleep," he lied.
"I'm sure you will, darling," she agreed. "Don't you think it's all been a terrific success?" she asked naïvely.
He answered, smiling:
"I'm dying to seeThe Daily Pictureto-morrow. I think I shall tell the newsagent in future only to deliver it on the days when you're in it."
"Don't be silly," she said, too pleased with herself, however, to resent his irony. She was clothed in mail that night against all his shafts.
He admitted, what he had always secretly known, that she was an elementary creature; she would have been just as at home in the Stone Age as in the twentieth century—and perhaps more at home. (Was Lady Massulam equally elementary? No? Yes?) Still, Eve was necessary to him.
Only, up to a short while ago, she had been his complement; whereas now he appeared to be her complement. He, the philosopher and the source of domestic wisdom, was fully aware, in a superior and lofty manner, that she was the eternal child deceived by toys, gewgaws, and illusions; nevertheless he was only her complement, the indispensable husband and payer-out. She was succeeding without any brain-work from him. He noticed that she was not wearing the pearls he had given her. No doubt she had merely forgotten at the last moment to put them on. She was continually forgetting them and leaving them about. But this negligent woman was the organiser in chief of the great soiree! Well, if it had succeeded, she was lucky.
"I must run off," said she, starting up, busy, proud, falsely calm, the general of a victorious army as the battle draws to a close. She embraced him again, and he actually felt comforted.... She was gone.
"As I grow older," he reflected, "I'm hanged if I don't understand life less and less."
He was listening to the distant rhythm of the music when he mistily comprehended that there was no music and that the sounds in his ear were not musical. He could not believe that he had been asleep and had awakened, but the facts were soon too much for his delusion and he said with the air of a discoverer: "I've been asleep," and turned on the light.
There were voices and footsteps in the corridors or on the landing,—whispers, loud and yet indistinct talking, tones indicating that the speakers were excited, if not frightened, and that their thoughts had been violently wrenched away from the pursuit of pleasure. His watch showed two o'clock. The party was over, the last automobile had departed, and probably even the tireless Eliza Fiddle was asleep in her new home. Next Mr. Prohack noticed that the door of his room was ajar.
He had no anxiety. Rather he felt quite gay and careless,—the more so as he had wakened up with the false sensation of complete refreshment produced by short, heavy slumber. He thought:
"Whatever has happened, I have had and shall have nothing to do with it, and they must deal with the consequences themselves as best they can." And as a measure of precaution against being compromised, he switched off the light. He heard Eve's voice, surprisingly near his door:
"I simply daren't tell him! No, I daren't!"
The voice was considerably agitated, but he smiled maliciously to himself, thinking:
"It can't be anything very awful, because she only talks in that strain when it's nothing at all. She loves to pretend she's afraid of me. And moreover I don't believe there's anything on earth she daren't tell me."
He heard another voice, reasoning in reply, that resembled Mimi's. Hadn't that girl gone home yet? And he heard Sissie's voice and Charlie's. But for him all these were inarticulate.
Then his room was filled with swift blinding light. Somebody had put a hand through the doorway and turned the light on. It must be Eve.... It was Eve, scared and distressed, but still in complete war-paint.
"I'm so relieved you're awake, Arthur," she said, approaching the bed as though she anticipated the bed would bite her.
"I'm not awake. I'm asleep, officially. My poor girl, you've ruined the finest night I was ever going to have in all my life."
She ignored his complaint, absolutely.
"Arthur," she said, her face twitching in every direction, and all her triumph fallen from her, "Arthur, I've lost my pearls. They're gone! Some one must have taken them!"
Mr. Prohack's reaction to this piece of more-than-midnight news was to break into hearty and healthy laughter; he appeared to be genuinely diverted; and when Eve protested against such an attitude he said:
"My child, anything that strikes you as funny after being wakened up at two o'clock in the morning is very funny, very funny indeed. How can I help laughing?" Eve thereupon began to cry, weakly.
"Come here, please," said he.
And she came and sat on the bed, but how differently from the previous visit! She was now beaten by circumstances, and she turned for aid to his alleged more powerful mind and deeper wisdom. In addition to being amused, the man was positively happy, because he was no longer a mere complement! So he comforted her, and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Don't worry," said he, gently. "And after all I'm not surprised the necklace has been pinched."
"Not surprised? Arthur!"
"No. You collect here half the notorious smart people in London. Fifty per cent of them go through one or other of the Courts; five per cent end by being detected criminals, and goodness knows what per cent end by being undetected criminals. Possibly two per cent treat marriage seriously, and possibly one per cent is not in debt. That's the atmosphere you created, and it's an atmosphere in which pearls are apt to melt away. Hence I am not surprised, and you mustn't be. Still, it would be interesting to knowhowthe things melted away. Were you wearing them?"
"Of course I was wearing them. There was nothing finer here to-night—thatIsaw."
"You hadn't got them on when you came in here before."
"Hadn't I?" said Eve, thoughtful.
"No, you hadn't."
"Then why didn't you tell me?" Eve demanded suddenly, almost fiercely, through her tears, withdrawing her shoulders from his hands.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "I thought you'd know what you'd got on, or what you hadn't got on."
"I think you might have told me. If you had perhaps the—"
Mr. Prohack put his hand over her mouth.
"Stop," said he. "My sweet child, I can save you a lot of trouble. It's all my fault. If I hadn't been a miracle of stupidity the necklace would never have disappeared. This point being agreed to, let us go on to the next. When did you find out your sad loss?"
"It was Miss Winstock who asked me what I'd done with my necklace. I put my hand to my throat, and it was gone. It must have come undone."
"Didn't you say to me a fortnight or so ago that the little safety-chain had gone wrong?"
"Did I?" said Eve, innocently.
"Did you have the safety-chain repaired?"
"I was going to have it done to-morrow. You see, if I'd sent it to be done to-day, then I couldn't have worn the necklace to-night, could I?"
"Very true," Mr. Prohack concurred.
"But who could have taken it?"
"Ah! Are you sure that it isn't lying on the floor somewhere?"
"Every place where I've been has been searched—thoroughly. It's quite certain that it must have been picked up and pocketed."
"Then by a man, seeing that women have no pockets—except their husbands'. I'm beginning to feel quite like a detective already. By the way, lady, the notion of giving a reception in a house like this without a detective disguised as a guest was rather grotesque."
"But of course I had detectives!" Eve burst out. "I had two private ones. I thought one ought to be enough, but as soon as the agents saw the inventory of knicknacks and things, they advised me to have two men. One of them's here still. In fact he's waiting to see you. The Scotland Yard people are very annoying. They've refused to do anything until morning."
That Eve should have engaged detectives was something of a blow to the masculine superiority of Mr. Prohack. However, he kept himself in countenance by convincing himself in secret that she had not thought of the idea; the idea must have been given to her by another person—probably Mimi, who nevertheless was also a woman.
"And do you seriously expect me to interview a detective in the middle of the night?" demanded Mr. Prohack.
"He said he should like to see you. But of course if you don't feel equal to it, my poor boy, I'll tell him so."
"What does he want to seemefor? I've nothing to do with it, and I know nothing."
"He says that as you bought the necklace he must see you—and the sooner the better."
This new aspect of the matter seemed to make Mr. Prohack rather thoughtful.