When Mr. Prohack touched the handle of the door of the box, he felt as though he were returning to civilisation; he felt less desolated by the immediate past and by the prospect of the immediate future; he was yearning for the society of mere women after his commerce with a star at three hundred and fifty pounds a week. True, he badly wanted to examine his soul and enquire into his philosophy of life, but he was prepared to postpone that inquest until the society of mere women had had a beneficial effect on him.
Charlie, who had been paying a state visit to his mother and sister was just leaving the box and the curtain was just going up.
"Hullo, dad!" said the youth, "you're the very man I was looking for," and he drew his father out into the corridor. "You've got two of the finest ballroom dancers I ever saw," he added to Ozzie.
"Haven't we!" Ozzie concurred, with faint enthusiasm.
"But the rest of the show ..." Charlie went on, ruthless. "Well, if Chown's shows were only equal to his showmanship...! Only they aren't!"
Ozzie raised his eyebrows—a skilful gesture that at once defended his employer and agreed with Charles.
"By the way, dad, I've got a house for you. I've told the mater about it and she's going to see it to-morrow morning."
"A house!" Mr. Prohack exclaimed weakly, foreseeing new vistas of worry. "I've got one. I can't live in two."
"But this one's ahouse. You know about it, don't you, Morfey?"
Ozzie gave a nod and a vague smile.
"See here, dad! Come out here a minute."
Ozzie discreetly entered the box and closed the door.
"What is it?" asked Mr. Prohack.
"It's this," Charlie replied, handing his parent a cheque. "I've deducted what I paid for you to-night from what you lent me not long since. I've calculated interest on the loan at ten per cent. You can get ten practically anywhere in these days, worse luck."
"But I don't want this, my boy," Mr. Prohack protested, holding the cheque as he might have held a lady's handkerchief retrieved from the ground.
"Well, I'm quite sure I don't," said Charlie, a little stiffly.
There was a pause.
"As you please," said Mr. Prohack, putting the cheque—interest and all—into his pocket.
"Thanks," said Charlie. "Much obliged. You're a noble father, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you've laid the foundation of my fortunes. But of course you never know—in my business."
"Whatisyour business?" Mr. Prohack asked timidly, almost apologetically. He had made up his mind on the previous evening that he would talk to Charlie as a father ought to talk to a son, that is to say, like a cross-examining barrister and a moralist combined. He had decided that it was more than his right—it was his duty to do so. But now the right, if not the duty, seemed less plain, and he remembered what he had said to Eve concerning the right attitude of parents to children. And chiefly he remembered that Charlie was not in his debt.
"I'm a buyer and seller. I buy for less than I sell for. That's how I live."
"It appears to be profitable."
"Yes. I made over ten thousand in Glasgow, buying an option on an engineering business—with your money—from people who wanted to get rid of it, and then selling what I hadn't paid for to people in London who wanted to get hold of an engineering business up there. Seems simple enough, and the only reason everybody isn't doing it is that it isn't as simple as it seems. At least, it's simple, but there's a knack in it. I found out I'd got the knack through my little deals in motor-bikes and things. As a matter of fact I didn't find out,—some one told me, and I began to think.... But don't be alarmed if I go bust. I'm on to a much bigger option now, in the City. Oh! Very much bigger. If it comes off ... you'll see. Lady Massulam is keen on it, and she's something of a judge.... Any remarks?"
Mr. Prohack looked cautiously at the young man, his own creation, to whom, only the other day as it seemed, he had been in the habit of giving one pound per school-term for pocket-money. And he was affrighted—not by what he had created, but by the astounding possibilities of fatherhood, which suddenly presented itself to him as a most dangerous pursuit.
"No remarks," said he, briefly. What remarks indeed could he offer? Wildly guessing at the truth about his son, in that conversation with Eve on the previous evening, he had happened to guess right. And his sermon to Eve prevented now the issue of remarks.
"Oh! Of course!" Charlie burst out. "You can't tell me anything I don't know already. I'm a pirate. I'm not producing. All the money I make has to be earned by somebody else before I get hold of it. I'm not doing any good to my beautiful country. But I did try to find a useful job, didn't I? My beautiful country wouldn't have me. It only wanted me in the trenches. Well, it's got to have me. I'll jolly well make it pay now. I'll squeeze every penny out of it. I'll teach it a lesson. And why not? I shall only be shoving its own ideas down its throat. Supposing I hadn't got this knack and I hadn't hadyou. I might have been wearing all my ribbons and playing a barrel organ in Oxford Street to-day instead of living at the Grand Babylon."
"You're becoming quite eloquent in your old age," said Mr. Prohack, tremulously jocular while looking with alarm into his paternal heart. Was not he himself a pirate? Had not the hundred and fifty thousand that was coming to him had to be earned by somebody else? Money did not make itself.
"Well," retorted Charlie, with a grim smile. "There's one thing to be said for me. When Idotalk, I talk."
"And so at last you've begun to read?"
"I'm not going to be the ordinary millionaire. No fear! Make your mind easy on that point. Besides, reading isn't so bad after all."
"And what about that house you were speaking of? You aren't going to plant any of your options on me."
"We'll discuss that to-morrow. I must get back to my seat," said Charlie firmly, moving away. "So long."
"I say," Mr. Prohack summoned him to return. "I'm rather curious about the methods of you millionaires. Just when did you sign that cheque for me? You only lent me the money as we were leaving the hotel."
"I made it out while I was talking to the mater and Sis in your box, of course."
"How simple are the acts of genius—after they're accomplished!" observed Mr. Prohack. "Naturally you signed it in the box."
As he rejoined his family he yawned, surprising himself. He began to feel a mysterious fatigue. The effect of the Turkish bath, without doubt! The remainder of the evening stretched out in front of him, interminably tedious. The title of the play was misleading. He could not smack his face. He wished to heaven he could.... And then, after the play, the ball! Eliza might tell him to dance with her. She would be quite capable of such a deed. And by universal convention her suggestions were the equivalent of demands. Nobody ever could or would refuse to dance with Eliza.... There she was, all her four limbs superbly displayed, sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth, just as if the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and Virginia. The excited audience, in the professional phrase, was "eating" her.
Mr. Prohack was really a most absurd person.Smack Your Face, when it came to an end, towards midnight, had established itself as an authentic enormous success; and because Mr. Prohack did not care for it, because it bored him, because he found it vulgar and tedious and expensive, because it tasted in his mouth like a dust-and-ashes sandwich, the fellow actually felt sad; he felt even bitter. He hated to see the fashionable and splendid audience unwilling to leave the theatre, cheering one super-favourite, five arch-favourites and fifteen favourites, and cheering them again and again, and sending the curtain up and down and up and down time after time. He could not bear that what he detested should be deliriously admired. He went so far as to form views about the decadence of the theatre as an institution. Most of all he was disgusted because his beloved Eve was not disgusted. Eve said placidly that she did not think much of the affair, but that she had thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn't mind coming on the next night to see it afresh. He said gloomily:
"And I've been bringing you up for nearly twenty-five years."
As for Sissie, she was quietly and sternly enthusiastic about a lot of the dancing. She announced her judgment as an expert, and Charlie agreed with her, and there was no appeal, and Mr. Prohack had the air of an ignorant outsider whose opinions were negligible. Further, he was absurd in that, though he assuredly had no desire whatever to go to the dance, he fretted at the delay in getting there. Even when they had all got out to the porch of the theatre he exhibited a controlled but intense impatience because Charlie did not produce the car instantly from amidst the confused hordes of cars that waited in the surrounding streets. Moreover, as regards the ball, he had foolishly put himself in a false position; for he was compelled to pretend that he had purchased the tickets because he personally wanted to go to the ball. Had he not been learning to dance? Now the fact was that he looked forward to the ball with terror. He had never performed publicly. He proceeded from one pretence to another. When Charlie stated curtly that he, Charlie, was going to no ball, he feigned disappointment, saying that Charlie ought to go for his sister's sake. Yet he was greatly relieved at Charlie's departure (even in Lady Massulam's car); he could not stomach the notion of Charlie cynically watching his infant steps on the polished, treacherous floor. In the matter of Charlie, Oswald Morfey also feigned disappointment, but for a different reason. Ozzie wanted to have Sissie as much as possible to himself.
Mr. Prohack yawned in the car.
"You're over-tired, Arthur. It's the Turkish bath," said Eve with commiseration. This was a bad enough mistake on her part, but she worsened it by adding: "Perhaps the wisest thing would be for us all to go home."
Mr. Prohack was extremely exhausted, and would have given his head to go home; but so odd, so contrary, so deceitful and so silly was his nature that he replied:
"Darling! Where on earth do you get these ideas from? There's nothing like a Turkish bath for stimulating you, and I'm not at all tired. I never felt better in my life. But the atmosphere of that theatre would make anybody yawn."
The ball was held in a picture-gallery where an exhibition of the International Portrait Society was in progress. The crush of cars at the portals was as keen as that at the portals of the Metropolitan. And all the persons who got out of the cars seemed as fresh as if they had just got out of bed. Mr. Prohack was astonished at the vast number of people who didn't care what time they went to bed because they didn't care what time they arose; he was in danger of being morbidly obsessed by the extraordinary prevalence of idleness. The rooms were full of brilliant idlers in all colours. Everybody except chorus girls had thought fit to appear at this ball in aid of the admirably charitable Chorus Girls' Aid Association. And as everybody was also on the walls, the dancers had to compete with their portraits—a competition in which many of them were well beaten.
After they had visited the supper-room, where both Sissie and her mother did wonderful feats of degustation and Mr. Prohack drank all that was good for him, Sissie ordered her father to dance with her. He refused. She went off with Ozzie, while her parents sat side by side on gold chairs like ancestors. Sissie repeated her command, and Mr. Prohack was about to disobey when Eliza Fiddle dawned upon the assemblage.
The supernatural creature had been rehearsing until 3 a.m., she had been trying on clothes from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. She had borne the chief weight ofSmack Your Face, on her unique shoulders for nearly three hours and a half. She had changed into an unforgettable black ball-dress, cut to demonstrate in the clearest fashion that her shoulders had suffered no harm; and here she was as fresh as Aphrodite from the foam. She immediately set herself to bear the chief weight of the ball on those same defenceless shoulders; for she was, in theory at any rate, the leading organiser of the affair, and according to the entire press it was "her" ball. As soon as he saw her Mr. Prohack had a most ridiculous fear lest she should pick him out for a dance, and to protect himself he said "All right" to his daughter.
A fox-trot announced itself. In his own drawing-room, with the door locked, Mr. Prohack could and did treat a fox-trot as child's play. But now he realised that he had utterly forgotten every movement of the infernal thing. Agony as he stood up and took his daughter's hand! An awful conviction that everybody (who was anybody) was staring to witness the Terror of the departments trying to jazz in public for the first time. A sick, sinking fear lest some of his old colleagues from the Treasury might be lurking in corners to guy him! Agony as he collected himself and swayed his body slightly to catch the rhythm of the tune! Where in heaven's name was the first beat in the bar?
"Walk first," said Sissie professionally.... He was in motion.
"Now!" said Sissie. "One, two.One, two." Miraculously he was dancing! It was as though the whole room was shouting: "They're off!" Sissie steered him.
"Don't look at your feet!" said she sharply, and like a schoolboy he chucked his chin obediently up.... Then he was steering her. Although her feet were the reverse of enormous he somehow could not keep off them; but that girl was made of hardy stuff and never winced. He was doing better. Pride was puffing him. Yet he desired the music to stop. The music did stop.
"Thanks," he breathed.
"Oh, no!" said she. "That's not all." The dancers clapped and the orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve could dance these new dances.
"Let's stop," said he.
"Certainly not," Sissie forbade. "We must finish it." He finished it, rather breathless and dizzy. He had lived through it.
"You're perfectly wonderful, Arthur," said Eve when they met.
"Oh no! I'm no good."
"I was frightfully nervous about you at first," said Sissie.
He said briefly:
"You needn't have been. I wasn't."
A little later Eve said to him:
"Aren't you going to askmeto dance, Arthur?"
Dancing with Eve was not quite like dancing with Sissie, but they safely survived deadly perils. And Mr. Prohack perspired in a very healthy fashion.
"You dance really beautifully, dear," said Eve, benevolently smiling.
After that he cut himself free and roamed about. He wanted to ask Eliza Fiddle to dance, and also he didn't want to ask her to dance. However, he had apparently ceased to exist for her. Ozzie had introduced him to several radiant young creatures. He wanted to ask them to dance; but he dared not. And he was furious with himself. To dance with one's daughter and wife was well enough in its way, but it was not the real thing. It was without salt. One or two of the radiances glanced at him with inviting eyes, but no, he dared not face it. He grew gloomy, gloomier. He thought angrily: "All this is not for me. I'm a middle-aged fool, and I've known it all along." Life lost its savour and became repugnant. Fatigue punished him, and simultaneously reduced two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to the value of about fourpence. It was Eve who got him away.
"Home," he called to Carthew, after Eve and Sissie had said good-bye to Ozzie and stowed themselves into the car.
"Excuse me," said Sissie. "You have to deliver me at the Grand Babylon first."
He had forgotten! This détour was the acutest torture of the night. He could no longer bear not to be in bed. And when, after endless nocturnal miles, he did finally get home and into bed, he sighed as one taken off the rack. Ah! The delicious contact with the pillow!
But there are certain persons who, although their minds are logical enough, have illogical bodies. Mr. Prohack was one of these. His ridiculous physical organism (as he had once informed Dr. Veiga) was least capable of going to sleep when it was most fatigued. If Mr. Prohack's body had retired to bed four hours earlier than in fact it did, Mr. Prohack would have slept instantly and with ease. Now, despite delicious contact with the pillow, he could not 'get off.' And his mind, influenced by his body, grew restless, then excited, then distressingly realistic. His mind began to ask fundamental questions, questions not a bit original but none the less very awkward.
"You've had your first idle day, Mr. Prohack," said his mind challengingly instead of composing itself to slumber. "It was organised on scientific lines. It was carried out with conscientiousness. And look at you! And look at me! You've had a few good moments, as for example at the Turkish bath, but do you want a succession of such days? Could you survive a succession of such days? Would you even care to acquire a hundred and fifty thousand pounds every day? You have eaten too much and drunk too much, and run too hard after pleasure, and been too much bored, and met too many antipathetic people, and squandered too much money, and set a thoroughly bad example to your family. You have been happy only in spasms. Your health is good; you are cured of your malady. Does that render you any more contented? It does not. You have complicated your existence in the hope of improving it. But have you improved it? No. You ought to simplify your existence. But will you? You will not. All your strength of purpose will be needed to prevent still further complications being woven into your existence. To inherit a hundred thousand pounds was your misfortune. But deliberately to increase the sum to a quarter of a million was your fault. You were happier at the Treasury. You left the Treasury on account of illness. You are not ill any more. Will you go back to the Treasury? No. You will never go back, because your powerful commonsense tells you that to return to the Treasury with an income of twenty thousand a year would be grotesque. And rather than be grotesque you would suffer. Again, rightly. Nothing is worse than to be grotesque."
"Further," said his mind, "you have started your son on a sinister career of adventure that may end in calamity. You have ministered to your daughter's latent frivolity. You have put temptations in the way of your wife which she cannot withstand. You have developed yourself into a waster. What is the remedy? Obviously to dispose of your money. But your ladies would not permit you to do so and they are entitled to be heard on the point. Moreover, how could you dispose of it? Not in charity, because you are convinced of the grave social mischievousness of charity. And not in helping any great social movement, because you are not silly enough not to know that the lavishing of wealth never really aids, but most viciously hinders, the proper evolution of a society. And you cannot save your income and let it accumulate, because if you did you would once again be tumbling into the grotesque; and you would, further, be leaving to your successors a legacy of evil which no man is justified in leaving to his successors. No! Your case is in practice irremediable. Like the murderer on the scaffold, you are the victim of circumstances. And not one human being in a million will pity you. You are a living tragedy which only death can end."
During this disconcerting session Eve had been mysteriously engaged in the boudoir. She now came into the dark bedroom.
"What?" she softly murmured, hearing Mr. Prohack's restlessness. "Not asleep, darling?" She bent over him and kissed him and her kiss was even softer, more soporific, than her voice. "Now do go to sleep."
And Mr. Prohack went to sleep, and his last waking thought was, with the feel of the kiss on his nose (the poor woman had aimed badly in the dark): "Anyway this tragedy has one compensation, of which a hundred quarter of a millions can't deprive me."
Within a few moments of his final waking up the next morning, Mr. Prohack beheld Eve bending over him, the image of solicitude. She was dressed for outdoor business.
"How do you feel?" she asked, in a tender tone that demanded to know the worst at once.
"Why?" asked Mr. Prohack, thus with one word, and a smile to match, criticising her tone.
"You looked so dreadfully tired last night. I did feel sorry for you, darling. Don't you think you'd better stay in bed to-day?"
"Can you seriously suggest such a thing?" he cried. "What about my daily programme if I stay in bed? I have undertaken to be idle, and nobody can be scientifically idle in bed. I'm late already. Where's my breakfast? Where are my newspapers? I must begin the day without the loss of another moment. Please give me my dressing-gown."
"I very much wonder how your blood-pressure is," Eve complained.
"And you, I suppose, are perfectly well?"
"Oh, yes, I am. I'm absolutely cured. Dr. Veiga is really very marvellous. But I always told you he was."
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "What's sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander. If you're perfectly well, so am I. You can't have the monopoly of good health in this marriage. What's that pamphlet you've got in your hand, my dove?"
"Oh! It's nothing. It's only about the League of all the Arts. Mr. Morfey gave it to me."
"I suppose it was that pamphlet you were reading last night in the boudoir instead of coming to bed. Eve, you're hiding something from me. Where are you going to in such a hurry?"
"I'm not hiding anything, you silly boy.... I thought I'd just run along and have a look at that house. You see, if it isn't at all the kind of thing to suit us, me going first will save you the trouble of going."
"What house?" exclaimed Mr. Prohack with terrible emphasis.
"But Charlie told me he'd told you all about it," Eve protested innocently.
"Charlie told you no such thing," Mr. Prohack contradicted her. "If he told you anything at all, he merely told you that he'd mentioned a house to me in the most casual manner."
Eve proceeded blandly:
"It's in Manchester Square, very handy for the Wallace Gallery, and you know how fond you are of pictures. It's on sale, furniture and all; but it can be rented for a year to see how it suits us. Of course it may not suit us a bit. I understand it has some lovely rooms. Charlie says it would be exactly the thing for big receptions."
"Big receptions! I shall have nothing to do with it. Now we've lost our children even this house is too big for us. And I know what the houses in Manchester Square are. You've said all your life you hate receptions."
"So I do. They're so much trouble. But one never knows what may happen...! And with plenty of servants...!"
"You understand me. I shall have nothing to do with it. Nothing!"
"Darling, please, please don't excite yourself. The decision will rest entirely with you. You know I shouldn't dream of influencing you. As if I could! However, I've promised to meet Charlie there this morning. So I suppose I'd better go. Carthew is late with the car." She tapped her foot. "And yet I specially told him to be here prompt."
"Well, considering the hour he brought us home, he's scarcely had time to get into bed yet. He ought to have had the morning off."
"Why? A chauffeur's a chauffeur after all. They know what they have to do. Besides, Carthew would do anything for me."
"Yes, that's you all over. You deliberately bewitch him, and then you shamelessly exploit him. I shall compare notes with Carthew. I can give him a useful tip or two about you."
"Oh! Here he is!" said Eve, who had been watching out of the window. "Au revoir, my pet. Here's Machin with your breakfast and newspapers. I daresay I shall be back before you're up. But don't count on me."
As he raised himself against pillows for the meal, after both she and Machin had gone, Mr. Prohack remembered what his mind had said to him a few hours earlier about fighting against further complications of his existence, and he set his teeth and determined to fight hard.
Scarcely had he begun his breakfast when Eve returned, in a state of excitement.
"There's a young woman downstairs waiting for you in the dining-room. She wouldn't give her name to Machin, it seems, but she says she's your new secretary. Apparently she recognised my car on the way from the garage and stopped it and got into it; and then she found out she'd forgotten something and the car had to go back with her to where she lives, wherever that is, and that's why Carthew was late forme." Eve delivered these sentences with a tremendous air of ordinariness, as though they related quite usual events and disturbances, and as though no wife could possibly see in them any matter for astonishment or reproach. Such was one of her methods of making an effect.
Mr. Prohack collected himself. On several occasions during the previous afternoon and evening he had meditated somewhat uneasily upon the domestic difficulties which might inhere in this impulsive engagement of Miss Winstock as a private secretary, but since waking up the affair had not presented itself to his mind. He had indeed completely forgotten it.
"Who told you all this?" he asked warily.
"Well, she told Machin and Machin told me."
"Let me see now," said Mr. Prohack. "Yes. It's quite true. After ordering a pair of braces yesterday morning, I did order a secretary. She was recommended to me."
"You didn't say anything about it yesterday."
"My dove, had I a chance to do so? Had we a single moment together? And you know how I was when we reached home, don't you?... You see, I always had a secretary at the Treasury, and I feel sort of lost without one. So I—"
"But, darling,of course! I always believe in letting you do exactly as you like. It's the only way.... Au revoir, my pet. Charlie will be frightfully angry with me." And then, at the door: "If she hasn't got anything to do she can always see to the flowers for me. Perhaps when I come back you'll introduce us."
As soon as he had heard the bang of the front-door Mr. Prohack rang his bell.
"Machin, I understand that my secretary is waiting in the dining-room."
"Yes, sir."
"Ask her to take her things off and then bring her up here."
"Up here, sir?"
"That's right."
In seven movements of unimaginable stealthy swiftness Machin tidied the worst disorders of the room and departed. Mr. Prohack continued his breakfast.
Miss Winstock appeared with a small portable typewriter in her arms and a notebook lodged on the typewriter. She was wearing a smart black skirt and a smart white blouse with a high collar. In her unsullied freshness of attire she somewhat resembled a stage secretary on a first night; she might have been mistaken for a brilliant imitation of a real secretary.
"Good morning. So you're come," Mr. Prohack greeted her firmly.
"Good morning. Yes, Mr. Prohack."
"Well, put that thing down on a chair somewhere."
Machin also had entered the room. She handed a paper to Mr. Prohack.
"Mistress asked me to give you that, sir."
It was a lengthy description, typewritten, of a house in Manchester Square.
"Pass me those matches, please," said Mr. Prohack to Mimi when they were alone. "By the way, why wouldn't you give your name when you arrived?"
"Because I didn't know what it was."
"Didn't know what it was?"
"When I told you my Christian name yesterday you said it wouldn't do at all, and I was never to mention it again. In the absence of definite instructions about my surname I thought I had better pursue a cautious policy of waiting. I've told the chauffeur that he will know my name in due course and that until I tell him what it is he mustn't know it. I was not sure whether you would wish the members of your household to know that I'm the person who had a collision with your car. Mrs. Prohack and I were both in a state of collapse after the accident, and I was removed before she could see me. Therefore she did not recognise me this morning. But on the other hand she has no doubt heard my name often enough since the accident and would recognisethat."
Mr. Prohack lit the first cigarette of the day.
"Why did you bring that typewriter?" he asked gravely.
"It's mine. I thought that if you didn't happen to have one here it might be useful. It was the typewriter that the car had to go back for. I'd forgotten it. I can take it away again. But if you like you can either buy it or hire it from me."
The girl could not have guessed it from his countenance, but Mr. Prohack was thunderstruck. She was bringing forward considerations which positively had not presented themselves to him. That she had much initiative was clear from her conduct of the previous day. She now disclosed a startling capacity for intrigue. Mr. Prohack, however, was not intimidated. The experience of an official life had taught him the value of taciturnity, and moreover a comfortable feeling of satisfaction stole over him as he realised that once again he had a secretary under his thumb. He seemed to be delightfully resuming the habits which ill-health had so ruthlessly broken.
"Mary Warburton," said he at length.
"Certainly," said she. "I'll tell your chauffeur."
"The initials will correspond—in case—"
"Yes," said she. "I'd noticed that."
"We will see what your typewriting machine is capable of, and then I'll decide about it."
"Certainly."
"Please take down some letters."
"Mr. Carrel Quire always told me what he wanted said, and I wrote the letters myself."
"That is very interesting," said Mr. Prohack. "Perhaps you can manage to sit at the dressing-table. Mind that necklace there. It's supposed to be rather valuable. Put it in the case, and put the case in the middle drawer."
"Don't you keep it in a safe?" said Miss Warburton, obeying.
"All questions about necklaces should be addressed direct to Mrs. Prohack."
"I prefer to take down on my knee," said Miss Warburton, opening her notebook, "if I am to take down."
"You are. Now. 'Dear Madam. I am requested by my Lords of the Treasury to forward to you the enclosed cheque for one hundred pounds for your Privy Purse.' New line. 'I am also to state that no account of expenditure will be required.' New line. 'Be good enough to acknowledge receipt. Your obedient servant. To Miss Prohack, Grand Babylon Hotel.' Got it? 'Dear Sir. With reference to the action instituted by your company against Miss Mimi Winstock, and to my claim against your company under my accident policy. I have seen the defendant. She had evidently behaved in an extremely foolish not to say criminal way; but as the result of a personal appeal from her I have decided to settle the matter privately. Please therefore accept this letter as a release from all your liabilities to me, and also as my personal undertaking to pay all the costs of the action on both sides. Yours faithfully. Secretary, World's Car Insurance Corporation.' Wipe your eyes, wipe your eyes, Miss Warburton. You're wetting the notebook."
"I was only crying because you're so kind. I know Ididbehave in a criminal way."
"Just so, Miss Warburton. But it will be more convenient for me and for you too if you can arrange to cry in your own time and not in mine." And he continued to address her, in his own mind: "Don't think I haven't noticed your aspiring nose and your ruthless little lips and your gift for conspiracy and your wonderful weakness for tears! And don't confuse me with Mr. Carrel Quire, because we're two quite different people! You've got to be useful to me." And in a more remote part of his mind, he continued still further: "You're quite a decent sort of child, only you've been spoilt. I'll unspoil you. You've taken your first medicine rather well. I like you, or I shall like you before I've done with you."
Miss Warburton wiped her eyes.
"You understand," Mr. Prohack proceeded aloud, "that you're engaged as my confidential secretary. And when I say 'confidential' I mean 'confidential' in the fullest sense."
"Oh, quite," Miss Warburton concurred almost passionately.
"And you aren't anybody else's secretary but mine. You may pretend to be everybody else's secretary, you may pretend as much as you please—it may even be advisable to do so—but the fact must always remain that you are mine alone. You have to protect my interests, and let me warn you that my interests are sometimes very strange, not to say peculiar. Get well into your head that there are not ten commandments in my service. There is only one: to watch over my interests, to protect them against everybody else in the whole world. In return for a living wage, you give me the most absolute loyalty, a loyalty which sticks at nothing, nothing, nothing."
"Oh, Mr. Prohack!" replied Mary Warburton, smiling simply. "You needn't tell me all that. I entirely understand. It's the usual thing for confidential secretaries, isn't it?"
"And now," Mr. Prohack went on, ignoring her. "This being made perfectly clear, go into the boudoir—that's the room through there—and bring me here all the parcels lying about. Our next task is to check the accuracy of several of the leading tradesmen in the West End."
"I think there are one or two more parcels that have been delivered this morning, in the hall," said Miss Warburton. "Perhaps I had better fetch them."
"Perhaps you had."
In a few minutes, Miss Warburton, by dint of opening parcels, had transformed the bedroom into a composite of the principal men's shops in Piccadilly and Bond Street. Mr. Prohack recoiled before the chromatic show and also before the prospect of Eve's views on the show.
"Take everything into the boudoir," said he, "and arrange them under the sofa. It's important that we should not lose our heads in this crisis. When you go out to lunch you will buy some foolscap paper and this afternoon you will make a schedule of the goods, divided according to the portions of the human frame which they are intended to conceal or adorn. What are you laughing at, Miss Warburton?"
"You are so amusing, Mr. Prohack."
"I may be amusing, but I am not susceptible to the flattery of giggling. Endeavour not to treat serious subjects lightly."
"I don't see any boots."
"Neither do I. You will telephone to the bootmaker's, and to my tailor's; also to Sir Paul Spinner and Messrs. Smathe and Smathe. But before that I will just dictate a few more letters."
"Certainly."
When he had finished dictating, Mr. Prohack said:
"I shall now get up. Go downstairs and ask Machin—that's the parlourmaid—to show you the breakfast-room. The breakfast-room is behind the dining-room, and is so called because it is never employed for breakfast. It exists in all truly London houses, and is perfectly useless in all of them except those occupied by dentists, who use it for their beneficent labours in taking things from, or adding things to, the bodies of their patients. The breakfast-room in this house will be the secretary's room—your room if you continue to give me satisfaction. Remove that typewriting machine from here, and arrange your room according to your desire.... And I say, Miss Warburton."
"Yes, Mr. Prohack," eagerly responded the secretary, pausing at the door.
"Yesterday I gave you a brief outline of your duties. But I omitted one exceedingly important item—almost as important as not falling in love with my son. You will have to keep on good terms with Machin. Machin is indispensable and irreplaceable. I could get forty absolutely loyal secretaries while my wife was unsuccessfully searching for another Machin."
"I have an infallible way with parlourmaids," said Miss Warburton.
"What is that?"
"I listen to their grievances and to their love-affairs."
Mr. Prohack, though fatigued, felt himself to be inordinately well, and he divined that this felicity was due to the exercise of dancing on the previous night, following upon the Turkish bath. He had not felt so well for many years. He laughed to himself at intervals as he performed his toilette, and knew not quite why. His secretary was just like a new toy to him, offering many of the advantages of official life and routine without any of the drawbacks. At half past eleven he descended, wearing one or two of the more discreet of his new possessions, and with the sensation of having already transacted a good day's work, into the breakfast-room and found Miss Warburton and Machin in converse. Machin feverishly poked the freshly-lit fire and then, pretending to have urgent business elsewhere, left the room.
"Here are some particulars of a house in Manchester Square," said Mr. Prohack. "Please read them."
Miss Warburton complied.
"It seems really very nice," said she. "Very nice indeed."
"Does it? Now listen to me. That house is apparently the most practical and the most beautiful house in London. Judging from the description, it deserves to be put under a glass-case in a museum and labelled 'the ideal house.' There is no fault to be found with that house, and I should probably take it at once but for one point. I don't want it. I do not want it. Do I make myself clear? I have no use for it whatever."
"Then you've inspected it."
"I have not. But I don't want it. Now a determined effort will shortly be made to induce me to take that house. I will not go into details or personalities. I say merely that a determined effort will shortly be made to force me to act against my will and my wishes. This effort must be circumvented. In a word, the present is a moment when I may need the unscrupulous services of an utterly devoted confidential secretary."
"What am I to do?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is that my existence must not on any account be complicated, and that the possession of that house would seriously complicate it."
"Will you leave the matter to me, Mr. Prohack?"
"What shall you do?"
"Wouldn't it be better for you not to know what I should do?" Miss Warburton glanced at him oddly. Her glance was agreeable, and yet disconcerting. The attractiveness of the young woman seemed to be accentuated. The institution of the confidential secretary was magnified, in the eyes of Mr. Prohack, into one of the greatest achievements of human society.
"Not at all," said he, in reply. "You are under-rating my capabilities, for I can know and not know simultaneously."
"Well," said Miss Warburton. "You can't take an old house without having the drains examined, obviously. Supposing the report on the drains was unfavourable?"
"Do you propose to tamper with the drains?"
"Certainly not. I shouldn't dream of doing anything so disgraceful. But I might tamper with the surveyor who made the report on the drains."
"Say no more," Mr. Prohack adjured her. "I'm going out."
And he went out, though he had by no means finished instructing Miss Warburton in the art of being his secretary. She did not even know where to find the essential tools of her calling, nor yet the names of tradesmen to whom she had to telephone. He ought to have stayed in if only to present his secretary to his wife. But he went out—to reflect in private upon her initiative, her ready resourcefulness, her great gift for conspiracy. He had to get away from her. The thought of her induced in him qualms of trepidation. Could he after all manage her? What a loss would she be to Mr. Carrel Quire! Nevertheless she was capable of being foolish. It was her foolishness that had transferred her from Mr. Carrel Quire to himself.
Mr. Prohack went out because he was drawn out, by the force of an attraction which he would scarcely avow even to himself,—a mysterious and horrible attraction which, if he had been a logical human being like the rest of us, ought to have been a repulsion for him.
And as he was walking abroad in the pleasant foggy sunshine of the West End streets, a plutocratic idler with nothing to do but yield to strange impulses, he saw on a motor-bus the placard of a financial daily paper bearing the line: "The Latest Oil Coup." He immediately wanted to buy that paper. As a London citizen he held the opinion that whenever he wanted a thing he ought to be able to buy it at the next corner. Yet now he looked in every direction but could see no symptom of a newspaper shop anywhere. The time was morning—for the West End it was early morning—and there were newsboys on the pavements, but by a curious anomaly they were selling evening and not morning newspapers. Daringly he asked one of these infants for the financial daily; the infant sniggered and did no more. Another directed him to a shop up an alley off the Edgware Road. The shopman doubted the existence of any such financial daily as Mr. Prohack indicated, apparently attaching no importance to the fact that it was advertised on every motor-bus travelling along the Edgware Road, but he suggested that if it did exist, it might just conceivably be purchased at the main bookstall at Paddington Station. Determined to obtain the paper at all costs, Mr. Prohack stopped a taxi-cab and drove to Paddington, squandering eighteenpence on the journey, and reflecting as he rolled forward upon the primitiveness of a so-called civilisation in which you could not buy a morning paper in the morning without spending the whole morning over the transaction—and reflecting also upon the disturbing fact that after one full day of its practice, his scheme of scientific idleness had gone all to bits. He got the paper, and read therein a very exciting account of Sir Paul Spinner's deal in oil-lands. The amount of Paul's profit was not specified, but readers were given to understand that it was enormous and that Paul had successfully bled the greatest Oil Combine in the world. The article, though discreet and vague in phraseology, was well worth a line on any placard. It had cost Mr. Prohack the price of a complete Shakespere, but he did not call it dear. He threw the paper away with a free optimistic gesture of delight. Yes, he had wisely put his trust in old Paul and he was veritably a rich man—one who could look down on mediocre fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds or so. Civilisation was not so bad after all.
Then the original attraction which had drawn him out of the house resumed its pull.... Why did his subconscious feet take him in the direction of Manchester Square? True, the Wallace Collection of pictures is to be found at Hertford House, Manchester Square, and Mr. Prohack had always been interested in pictures! Well, if he did happen to find himself in Manchester Square he might perhaps glance at the exterior of the dwelling which his son desired to plant upon him and his wife desired him to be planted with.... It was there right enough. It had not been spirited away in the night hours. He recognised the number. An enormous house; the largest in the Square after Hertford House. Over its monumental portico was an enormous sign, truthfully describing it as "this noble mansion." As no automobile stood at the front-door Mr. Prohack concluded that his wife's visit of inspection was over. Doubtless she was seeking him at home at that moment to the end of persuading him by her soft, unscrupulous arts to take the noble mansion.
The front-door was ajar. Astounding carelessness on the part of the caretaker! Mr. Prohack's subconscious legs carried him into the house. The interior was amazing. Mr. Prohack had always been interested, not only in pictures, but in furniture. Pictures and furniture might have been called the weakness to which his circumstances had hitherto compelled him to be too strong to yield. He knew a good picture, and he knew a good piece of furniture, when he saw them. The noble mansion was full of good pictures and good furniture. Evidently it had been the home of somebody who had both fine tastes and the means to gratify them. And the place was complete. Nothing had been removed, and nothing had been protected against the grimy dust of London. The occupiers might have walked out of it a few hours earlier. The effect of dark richness in the half-shuttered rooms almost overwhelmed Mr. Prohack. Nobody preventing, he climbed the beautiful Georgian staircase, which was carpeted with a series of wondrous Persian carpets laid end to end. A woman in a black apron appeared in the hall from the basement, gazed at Mr. Prohack's mounting legs, and said naught. On the first-floor was the drawing-room, a magnificent apartment exquisitely furnished in Louis Quinze. Mr. Prohack blenched. He had expected nothing half so marvellous. Was it possible that he could afford to take this noble mansion and live in it? It was more than possible; it was sure.
Mr. Prohack had a foreboding of a wild, transient impulse to take it. The impulse died ere it was born. No further complications of his existence were to be permitted; he would fight against them to the last drop of his blood. And the complications incident to residence in such an abode would be enormous. Still, he thought that he might as well see the whole house, and he proceeded upstairs, wondering how many people there were in London who possessed the taste to make, and the money to maintain, such a home. Even the stairs from the first to the second floor, were beautiful, having a lovely carpet, lovely engravings on the walls, and a delightful balustrade. On the second-floor landing were two tables covered with objects of art, any of which Mr. Prohack might have pocketed and nobody the wiser; the carelessness that left the place unguarded was merely prodigious.
Mr. Prohack heard a sound; it might have been the creak of a floor-board or the displacement of a piece of furniture. Startled, he looked through a half-open door into a small room. He could see an old gilt mirror over a fire-place; and in the mirror the images of the upper portions of a young man and a young woman. The young woman was beyond question Sissie Prohack. The young man, he decided after a moment of hesitation—for he could distinguish only a male overcoated back in the glass—was Oswald Morfey. The images were very close together. They did not move. Then Mr. Prohack overheard a whisper, but did not catch its purport. Then the image of the girl's face began to blush; it went redder and redder, and the crimson seemed to flow downwards until the exposed neck blushed also. A marvellous and a disconcerting spectacle. Mr. Prohack felt that he himself was blushing. Then the two images blended, and the girl's head and hat seemed to be agitated as by a high wind. And then both images moved out of the field of the mirror.
The final expression on the girl's face as it vanished was one of the most exquisite things that Mr. Prohack had ever witnessed. It brought the tears to his eyes. Nevertheless he was shocked.
His mind ran:
"That fellow has kissed my daughter, and he has kissed her for the first time. It is monstrous that any girl, and especially my daughter, should be kissed for the first time. I have not been consulted, and I had not the slightest idea that matters had gone so far. Her mother has probably been here, with Charlie, and gone off leaving these doves together. Culpable carelessness on her part. Talk about mothers! No father would have been guilty of such negligence. The affair must be stopped. It amounts to an outrage."
A peculiar person, Mr. Prohack! No normal father could have had such thoughts. Mr. Prohack could of course have burst in upon the pair and smashed an idyll to fragments. But instead of doing so he turned away from the idyll and descended the stairs as stealthily as he could.
Nobody challenged his exit. In the street he breathed with relief as if he had escaped from a house of great peril; but he did not feel safe until he had lost himself in the populousness of Oxford Street.
"For social and family purposes," he reflected, "I have not seen that kiss. I cannot possibly tell them, or tell anybody, that I spied upon their embrace. To put myself right I ought to have called out a greeting the very instant I spotted them. But I did not call out a greeting. By failing to do so I put myself in a false position.... How shall I get official news of that kiss? Shall I ever get news of it?"
He had important business to transact with tradesmen. He could not do it. On leaving home he had not decided whether he would lunch domestically or at the Grand Babylon. He now perceived that he could do neither. He would lunch at one of his clubs. No! He could not bring himself to lunch at either club. He could face nobody. He resembled a man who was secretly carrying a considerable parcel of high explosive. He wandered until he could wander no more, and then he entered a tea-shop that was nearly full of young girls. It was a new world to him. He saw "Mutton pie 8d" on the menu and ordered it haphazard. He discovered to his astonishment that he was hungry. Having eaten the mutton pie, he ordered a second one, and ate it. The second mutton pie seemed to endow the eater with the faculty of vision—a result which perhaps no other mutton pie had ever before in the whole annals of eating achieved. He felt much better. He was illuminated by a large, refreshing wisdom, which thus expressed itself in his excited brain:
"After all, I suppose it's not the first or the only instance of a girl being kissed by a man. Similar incidents must occur quite often in the history of the human race."