When he returned home his house seemed to be pitiably small, cramped, and lacking in rich ornament; it seemed to be no sort of a house for a man with twenty thousand a year. But he was determined to love his house at all costs, and never to leave it. The philosopher within himself told him that happiness does not spring from large houses built with hands. And his own house was bright that afternoon; he felt as soon as he entered it that it was more bright than usual. The reason was immediately disclosed. Sissie was inside it. She had come for some belongings and to pay a visit to her mother.
"My word!" she greeted her father in the drawing-room, where she was strumming while Eve leaned lovingly on the piano. "My word! We are fine with our new private secretary!"
Not a sign on that girl's face, nor in her demeanour, that she had an amorous secret, that something absolutely unprecedented had happened to her only a few hours earlier! The duplicity of women astonished even the philosopher in Mr. Prohack.
"Will she mention it or won't she?" Mr. Prohack asked himself; and then began to equal Sissie in duplicity by demanding of his women in a tone of raillery what they thought of the new private secretary. He reflected that he might as well know the worst at once.
"She'll do," said Sissie gaily, and Eve said: "She seems very willing to oblige."
"Ah!" Mr. Prohack grew alert. "She's been obliging you already, has she?"
"Well," said Eve. "It was about the new house—"
"What new house?"
"But you know, darling. Charlie mentioned it to you last night, and I told you that I was going to look at it this morning."
"Oh!That!" Mr. Prohack ejaculated disdainfully.
"I've seen it. I've been all over it, and it's simply lovely. I never saw anything equal to it."
"Of course!"
"And so cheap!"
"Of course!"
"But it's ripping, dad, seriously."
"Seriously ripping, it is? Well, so far as I am concerned I shall let it rip."
"I rushed back here as soon as I'd seen it," Eve proceeded, quietly ignoring the last remark. "But you'd gone out without saying where. Nobody knew where you'd gone. It was very awkward, because if we want this house we've got to decide at once—at latest in three days, Charlie says. Miss Warburton—that's her name, isn't it?—Miss Warburton had a very bright idea. She seems to know quite a lot about property. She thought of the drains. She said the first thing would be to have the drains inspected, and that if there was any hurry the surveyors ought to be instructed instantly. She knew some surveyor people, and so she's gone out to see the agents and get permission from them for the surveyors to inspect, and she'll see the surveyors at the same time. She says we ought to have the report by to-morrow afternoon. She's very enterprising."
The enterprisingness of Miss Warburton frightened Mr. Prohack. She had acted exactly as he would have wished—only better; evidently she was working out his plot against the house in the most efficient manner. Yet he was frightened. So much so that he could find nothing to say except: "Indeed!"
"You never told me she used to be with Mr. Carrel Quire and is related to the Paulle family," observed Eve, mingling a mild reproach with joyous vivacity, as if saying: "Why did you keep this titbit from me?"
"I must now have a little repose," said Mr. Prohack.
"We'll leave you," Eve said, eager to be agreeable. "You must be tired, you poor dear. I'm just going out to shop with Sissie. I'm not sure if I shall be in for tea, but I will be if you think you'll be lonely."
"Did you do much entertaining at lunch, young woman?" Mr. Prohack asked.
"Charlie had several people—men—but I really don't know who they were. And Ozzie Morfey came. And permit me to inform you that Charlie was simply knocked flat by my qualities as a hostess. Do you know what he said to me afterwards? He said: 'That lunch was a bit of all right, kid.' Enormous from Charlie, wasn't it?"
Mother and daughter went out arm in arm like two young girls. Beyond question they were highly pleased with themselves and the world. Eve returned after a moment.
"Are you comfortable, dear? I've told Machin you mustn't on any account be disturbed. Charlie's borrowed the car. We shall get a taxi in the Bayswater Road." She bent down and seemed to bury her soft lips in his cheek. She was beginning to have other interests than himself. And since she had nothing now to worry about, in a maternal sense, she had become a child. She was fat—at any rate nobody could describe her as less than plump—and over forty, but a child, an exquisite child. He magnificently let her kiss him. However, he knew that she knew that she was his sole passion. She whispered most intimately and persuasively into his ear:
"Shall we have a look at that house to-morrow morning, just you and I? You'll love the furniture."
"Perhaps," he replied. What else could he reply? He very much desired to have a talk with her about Sissie and the fellow Morfey; but he could not broach the subject because he could not tell her in cold blood that he had seen Sissie in Morfey's arms. To do so would have an effect like setting fire to the home. Unless, of course, Sissie had already confided in her mother? Was it conceivable that Eve had a secret from him? It was certainly conceivable that he had a secret from Eve. Not only was he hiding from her his knowledge of the startling development in the relations between Sissie and Morfey,—he had not even told her that he had seen the house in Manchester Square. He was leading a double life,—consequence of riches! Was she?
As soon as she had softly closed the door he composed himself, for he was in fact considerably exhausted. Remembering a conversation at the club with a celebrated psycho-analyst about the possibilities of auto-suggestion, he strove to empty his mind and then to repeat to himself very rapidly in a low murmur: "You will sleep, you will sleep, you will sleep, you will sleep," innumerable times. But the incantation would not work, probably because he could not keep his mind empty. The mysterious receptacle filled faster than he could empty it. It filled till it flowed over with the flooding realisation of the awful complexity of existence. He longed to maintain its simplicity, well aware that his happiness would result from simplicity alone. But existence flatly refused to be simple. He desired love in a cottage with Eve. He could have bought a hundred cottages, all in ideal surroundings. The mere fact, however, that he was in a position to buy a hundred cottages somehow made it impossible for him to devote himself exclusively to loving Eve in one cottage....
His imagination leaped over intervening events and he pictured the wedding of Sissie as a nightmare of complications—no matter whom she married. He loathed weddings. Of course a girl of Sissie's sense and modernity ought to insist on being married in a registry office. But would she? She would not. For a month previous to marriage all girls cast off modernity and became Victorian. Yes, she would demand real orange-blossom and everything that went with it.... He got as far as wishing that Sissie might grow into an old maid, solely that he might be spared the wearing complications incident to the ceremony of marriage as practised by intelligent persons in the twentieth century. His character was deteriorating, and he could not stop it from deteriorating....
Then Sissie herself came very silently into the room.
"Sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you," he said in his most ingratiating and sympathetic tones. And in quite another tone he addressed her silently: "It's time I taught you a thing or two, my wench."
"Yes, father," she responded charmingly to his wily ingratiatingness, and sat down.
"If you were the ordinary girl," he began, "I shouldn't say a word. It would be no use. But you aren't. And I flatter myself I'm not the ordinary father. You are in love. Or you think you are. Which is the same thing—for the present. It's a fine thing to be in love. I'm quite serious. I like you tremendously just for being in love. Yes, I do. Now I know something about being in love. You've got enough imagination to realise that, and I want you to realise it. I want you to realise that I know a bit more about love than you do. Stands to reason, doesn't it?"
"Yes, father," said Sissie, placidly respectful.
"Love has got one drawback. It very gravely impairs the critical faculty. You think you can judge our friend Oswald with perfect impartiality. You think you see him as he is. But if you will exercise your imagination you will admit that you can't. You perceive that, don't you?"
"Quite, dad," the adorable child concurred.
"Well, do you know anything about him, really?"
"Not much, father."
"Neither do I. I've nothing whatever against him. But I shouldn't be playing straight with you if I didn't tell you that at the club he's not greatly admired. And a club is a very good judge of a man, the best judge of a man. And then as regards his business. Supposing you were not in love with him, should you like his business? You wouldn't. Naturally. There are other things, but I won't discuss them now. All I suggest to you is that you should go a bit slow. Exercise caution. Control yourself. Test him a little. If you and I weren't the greatest pals I shouldn't be such an ass as to talk in this strain to you. But I know you won't misunderstand me. I know you know there's absolutely no conventional nonsense about me, just as I know there's absolutely no conventional nonsense about you. I'm perfectly aware that the old can't teach the young, and that oftener than not the young are right and the old wrong. But it's not a question of old and young between you and me. It's a question of two friends—that's all."
"Dad," said she, "you're the most wonderful dad that ever was. Oh! If everybody would talk like that!"
"Not at all! Not at all!" he deprecated, delighted with himself and her. "I'm simply telling you what you know already. I needn't say any more. You'll do exactly as you think best, and whatever you do will please me. I don't want you to be happy in my way—I want you to be happy in your own way. Possibly you'll decide to tell Mr. Morfey to wait for three months."
"I most decidedly shall, dad," Sissie interrupted him, "and I'm most frightfully obliged to you."
He had always held that she was a marvellous girl, and here was the proof. He had spoken with the perfection of tact and sympathy and wisdom, but his success astonished him. At this point he perceived that Sissie was not really sitting in the chair at all and that the chair was empty. So that the exhibition of sagacity had been entirely wasted.
"Anyhow I've had a sleep," said the philosopher in him.
The door opened. Machin appeared, defying her mistress's orders.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but a Mr. Morfey is on the telephone and asks whether it would be convenient for you to see him to-night. He says it's urgent." Mr. Prohack braced himself, but where his stomach had been there was a void.
"Had an accident to your eye-glass?" asked Mr. Prohack, shaking hands with Oswald Morfey, when the latter entered, by appointment, Mr. Prohack's breakfast-room after dinner. Miss Warburton having gone home, Mr. Prohack had determined to employ her official room for formal interviews. With her woman's touch she had given it an air of business which pleasantly reminded him of the Treasury.
Ozzie was not wearing an eye-glass, and the absence of the broad black ribbon that usually ran like a cable-connection between his eye and his supra-umbilical region produced the disturbing illusion that he had forgotten an essential article of attire.
"Yes," Ozzie replied, opening his eyes with that mien of surprise that was his response to all questions, even the simplest. "Miss Sissie has cracked it."
"I'm very sorry my daughter should be so clumsy."
"It was not exactly clumsiness. I offered her the eye-glass to do what she pleased with, and she pleased to break it."
"Surely an impertinence?"
"No. A favour. Miss Sissie did not care for my eye-glass."
"You must be considerably incommoded."
"No. The purpose of my eye-glass was decorative, not optical." Ozzie smiled agreeably, though nervously.
Mr. Prohack was conscious of a certain surprising sympathy for this chubby simpering young man with the peculiar vocation, whom but lately he had scorned and whom on one occasion he had described as a perfect ass.
"Well, shall we sit down?" suggested the elder, whom the younger's nervousness had put into an excellent state of easy confidence.
"The fact is," said Ozzie, obeying, "the fact is that I've come to see you about Sissie. I'm very anxious to marry her, Mr. Prohack."
"Indeed! Then you must excuse this old velvet coat. If I'd had notice of the solemnity of your visit, my dear Morfey, I'd have met you in a dinner jacket. May I just put one question? Have you kissed Sissie already?"
"I—er—have."
"By force or by mutual agreement?"
"Neither."
"She made no protest?"
"No."
"The reverse rather?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you come here to me?"
"To get your consent."
"I suppose you arranged with Sissie that you should come here?"
"Yes, I did. We thought it would be best if I came alone."
"Well, all I can say is that you're a very old-fashioned pair. I'm afraid that you must have forgotten to alter your date calendar when the twentieth century started. Let me assure you that this is not by any means the nineteenth. I admit that I only altered my own date calendar this afternoon, and even then only as the result of an unusual dream."
"Yes?" said Ozzie politely, and he said nothing else, but it seemed to Mr. Prohack that Ozzie was thinking: "This queer old stick is taking advantage of his position to make a fool of himself in his queer old way."
"Let us examine the circumstances," Mr. Prohack proceeded. "You want to marry Sissie. Therefore you respect her. Therefore you would not have invited her to marry unless you had been reasonably sure that you possessed the brains and the material means to provide for her physical and moral comfort not merely during the next year but till the end of her life. It would be useless, not to say impolite, for me to question you as to your situation and your abilities, because you are convinced about both, and if you failed to convince me about both you would leave here perfectly sure that the fault was mine and not yours, and you would pursue your plans just the same. Moreover, you are a man of the world—far more a man of the world than I am myself—and you are unquestionably the best judge of your powers to do your duty towards a wife. Of course some might argue that I, being appreciably older than you, am appreciably wiser than you and that my opinion on vital matters is worth more than yours. But you know, and perhaps I know too, that in growing old a man does not really become wiser; he simply acquires a different sort of wisdom—whether it is a better or a worse sort nobody can decide. All we know is that the extremely young and the extremely old are in practice generally foolish. Which leads you nowhere at all. But looking at history we perceive that the ideas of the moderately young have always triumphed against the ideas of the moderately old. And happily so, for otherwise there could be no progress. Hence the balance of probability is that, assuming you and I were to differ, you would be more right than I should be."
"But I hope that we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was increased by the young man's increasing consternation.
"Again," resumed Mr. Prohack, ignoring Ozzie's hope. "Take the case of Sissie herself. Sissie's education was designed and superintended by myself. The supreme aim of education should be to give sound judgment in the great affairs of life, and moral stamina to meet the crises which arrive when sound judgment is falsified by events. If I were to tell you that in my opinion Sissie's judgment of you as a future husband was unsound, it would be equivalent to admitting that my education of Sissie had been unsound. And I could not possibly admit such a thing. Moreover, just as you are a man of the world, so Sissie is a woman of the world. By heredity and by natural character she is sagacious, and she has acquainted herself with all manner of things as to which I am entirely ignorant. Nor can I remember any instance of her yielding, from genuine conviction, to my judgment when it was opposed to hers. From all which it follows, my dear Morfey, that your mission to me here this evening is a somewhat illogical, futile, and unnecessary mission, and that the missioner must be either singularly old-fashioned and conventional—or laughing in his sleeve at me. No!" Mr. Prohack with a nineteenth century wave of the hand deprecated Ozzie's interrupting protest. "No! There is a third alternative, and I accept it. You desired to show me a courtesy. I thank you."
"But have you no questions to ask me?" demanded Ozzie.
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "How did you first make the acquaintance of my daughter?"
"Do you mean to say you don't know? Hasn't Sissie ever told you?"
"Never. What is more, she has never mentioned your name in any conversation until somebody else had mentioned it. Such is the result of my educational system, and the influence of the time-spirit."
"Well, I'm dashed!" exclaimed Ozzie sincerely.
"I hope not, Morfey. I hope not, if by dashed you mean 'damned.'"
"But it was the most wonderful meeting, Mr. Prohack," Ozzie burst out, and he was in such an enthusiasm that he almost forgot to lisp. "You knew I was in M.I. in the war, after my trench fever."
"M.I., that is to say, Secret Service."
"Yes. Secret Service if you like. Well, sir, I was doing some work in the East End, in a certain foreign community, and I had to get away quickly, and so I jumped into a motor-van that happened to be passing. That van was driven by Sissie!"
"An example of fact imitating fiction!" remarked Mr. Prohack, seeking, not with complete success, to keep out of his voice the emotion engendered in him by Ozzie's too brief recital. "Now that's one question, and you have answered it brilliantly. My second and last question is this: Are you in love with Sissie—"
"Please, Mr. Prohack!" Ozzie half rose out of his chair.
"Or do you love her? The two things are very different."
"I beg your pardon, sir. I hadn't quite grasped," said Ozzie apologetically, subsiding. "I quite see what you mean. I'm both."
"You are a wonder!" Mr. Prohack murmured.
"Anyway, sir, I'm glad you don't object to our engagement."
"My dear Oswald," said Mr. Prohack in a new tone. "Do you imagine that after my daughter had expressed her view of you by kissing you I could fail to share that view. You have a great opinion of Sissie, but I doubt whether your opinion of her is greater than mine. We will now have a little whiskey together."
Ozzie's chubby face shone as in his agreeable agitation he searched for the eye-glass ribbon that was not there.
"Well, sir," said he, beaming. "This interview has not been at all like what I expected."
"Nor like what I expected either," said Mr. Prohack. "But who can foresee the future?" And he added to himself: "Could I foresee when I called this youth a perfect ass that in a very short time I should be receiving him, not unpleasantly, as a prospective son-in-law? Life is marvellous."
At the same moment Mrs. Prohack entered the room.
"Oh!" cried she, affecting to be surprised at the presence of Ozzie.
"Wife!" said Mr. Prohack, "Mr. Oswald Morfey has done you the honour to solicit the hand of your daughter in marriage. You are staggered!
"How ridiculous you are, Arthur!" said Mrs. Prohack, and impulsively kissed Ozzie.
The wedding festivities really began the next evening with a family dinner to celebrate Sissie's betrothal. The girl arrived magnificent from the Grand Babylon, escorted by her lover, and found Mrs. Prohack equally magnificent—indeed more magnificent by reason of the pearl necklace. It seemed to Mr. Prohack that Eve had soon become quite used to that marvellous necklace; he had already had to chide her for leaving it about. Ozzie also was magnificent; even lacking his eye-glass and ribbon he was magnificent. Mr. Prohack, esteeming that a quiet domestic meal at home demanded no ceremony, had put on his old velvet, but Eve had sharply corrected his sense of values—so shrewishly indeed that nobody would have taken her for the recent recipient of a marvellous necklace at his hands—and he had yielded to the extent of a dinner-jacket. Charlie had not yet come. Since the previous afternoon he had been out of town on mighty enterprises, but Sissie had seen him return to the hotel before she left it, and he was momently expected. Mr. Prohack perceived that Eve was treating Ozzie in advance as her son, and Ozzie was responding heartily: a phenomenon which Mr. Prohack in spite of himself found agreeable. Sissie showed more reserve than her mother towards Ozzie; but then Sissie was a proud thing, which Eve never was. Mr. Prohack admitted privately that he was happy—yes, he was happy in the betrothal, and he had most solemnly announced and declared that he would have naught to do with the wedding beyond giving a marriage gift to his daughter and giving his daughter to Ozzie. And when Sissie said that as neither she nor Ozzie had much use for the state of being merely engaged the wedding would occur very soon, Mr. Prohack rejoiced at the prospect of the upset being so quickly over. After the emotions and complications of the wedding he would settle down to simplicity,—luxurious possibly, but still simplicity: the plain but perfect. And let his fortune persist in accumulating, well it must accumulate and be hanged to it!
"But what about getting a house?" he asked his daughter.
"Oh, we shall live in Ozzie's flat," said Sissie.
"Won't it be rather small?"
"The smaller the better," said Sissie. "It will match our income."
"Oh, my dear girl," Eve protested, with a glance at Mr. Prohack to indicate that for the asking Sissie could have all the income she wanted. "And I'll give you an idea," Eve brightly added. "You can havethishouse rent free."
Sissie shook her head.
"Don't make so sure that they can have this house," said Mr. Prohack.
"But, Arthur! You've agreed to go and look at Manchester Square! And it's all ready excepting the servants. I'm told that if you don't want less than seven servants, including one or two menservants, there's no difficulty about servants at all. I shall be very disappointed if we don't have the wedding from Manchester Square."
Mr. Prohack writhed, though he knew himself safe. Seven servants; two menservants? No! And again no! No complications!
"I shall only agree to Manchester Square," said he with firmness and solemnity, "subject to the drains being all right. Somebody in the place must show a little elementary sagacity and restraint."
"But the drains are bound to be all right!"
"I hope so," said the deceitful father. "And I believe they will be. But until we're sure—nothing can be done." And he laughed satanically to himself.
"Haven't you had the report yet?" Sissie complained. "Miss Warburton was to try to get hold of it to-night."
A moment later Machin, in a condition of high excitement due to the betrothal, brought in a large envelope, saying that Miss Warburton had just left it. The envelope contained the report of Messrs. Doy and Doy on the drains of the noble mansion. Mr. Prohack read it, frowned, and pursed his judicial lips.
"Read it, my dear," he said to Eve.
Eve read that Messrs. Doy and Doy found themselves unable, after a preliminary inspection, which owing to their instructions to be speedy had not been absolutely exhaustive, to certify the drains of the noble mansion. They feared the worst, but there was of course always a slight hope of the best, or rather the second best. (They phrased it differently but they meant that.) In the meantime they would await further instructions. Mr. Prohack reflected calmly: "My new secretary is an adept of the first conspiratorial order." Eve was shocked into silence. (Doy and Doy used very thick and convincing note-paper.) The entrance of Charlie loosed her tongue.
"Charlie!" she cried. "The drains are all wrong. Look at this. And didn't you say the option expired to-morrow?"
Charlie read the report.
"Infernal rascals!" he muttered. "Whose doing is this? Who's been worrying about drains?" He looked round accusingly.
"I have," said Mr. Prohack bravely, but he could not squarely meet the boy's stern glance.
"Well, dad, what did you take me for? Did you suppose I should buy an option on a house without being sure of the drains? My first act was to have the drains surveyed by Flockers, the first firm in London, and I've got their certificate. As for Doy and Doy, they're notorious. They want to stop everybody else but themselves getting a commission on that house, and this—" he slapped the report—"this is how they're setting about it."
Eve adored her son.
"You see," she said victoriously to Mr. Prohack, who secretly trembled.
"I shall bring an action against Doy and Doy," Charlie continued. "I'll show the whole rascally thing up."
"I hope you'll do no such thing, my boy," said Mr. Prohack, foolishly attempting the grandiose.
"I most positively shall, dad."
Mr. Prohack realised desperately that all was lost except honour, and he was by no means sure about even honour.
Mr. Prohack passed a very bad night—the worst for months, one of the outstanding bad nights of his whole existence.
"Why didn't I have it out with Charlie before he left?" he asked himself some scores of times while listening to the tranquil regular breathing of Eve, who of course was now sure of her house and probably had quite forgotten the meaning of care. "I'm bound to have it out with him sooner or later, and if I'd done it at once I should at any rate have slept. They're all sleeping but me."
He simply could not comprehend life; the confounded thing called life baffled him by its mysterious illogicalness. He was adored by his spouse, beloved by his children, respected by the world. He had heaps of money, together with the full control of it. His word, if he chose, was law. He had only to say: "I will not take the house in Manchester Square," and nobody could thwart him. He powerfully desired not to take it. There was no sensible reason why he should take it. And yet he would take it, under the inexplicable compulsion of circumstances. In those sombre hours he had a fellow-feeling for Oriental tyrants, who were absolute autocrats but also slaves of exactly the same sinister force that had gripped himself. He perceived that in practice there is no such thing as an autocrat....
Not that his defeat in regard to the house really disturbed him. He could reconcile himself to the house, despite the hateful complications which it would engender. What disturbed him horribly was the drains business, the Doy and Doy business, the Mimi business; he could see no way out of that except through the valley of humiliation. He remembered, with terrible forebodings, the remark of his daughter after she heard of the heritage: "You'll never be as happy again."
When the household day began and the familiar comfortable distant noises of domestic activity announced that the solar system was behaving much as usual in infinite and inconceivable space, he decided that he was too tired to be scientifically idle that day—even though he had a trying-on appointment with Mr. Melchizidek. He decided, too, that he would not get up, would in fact take everything lying down, would refuse to descend a single step of the stairs to meet trouble. And he had a great wish to be irritated and angry. But, the place seemed to be full of angels who turned the other cheek—and the other cheek was marvellously soft and bewitching.
Eve, Sissie (who had called), and Machin—they were all in a state of felicity, for the double reason that Sissie was engaged to be married, and that the household was to move into a noble mansion. Machin saw herself at the head of a troup of sub-parlourmaids and housemaids and tweenies, and foretold that she would stand no nonsense from butlers. They all treated Mr. Prohack as a formidable and worshipped tyrant, whose smile was the sun and whose frown death, and who was the fount of wisdom and authority. They knew that he wanted to be irritated, and they gave him no chance to be irritated. Their insight into his psychology was uncanny. They knew that he was beaten on the main point, and with their detestable feminine realism they exquisitely yielded on all the minor points. Eve, fresh as a rose, bent over him and bedewed him, and said that she was going out and that Sissie had gone again.
When he was alone he rang the bell for Machin as though the bell had done him an injury.
"What time is it?"
"Eleven o'clock, sir."
"Eleven o'clock! Good God! Why hasn't Miss Warburton come?"
As if Machin was responsible for Miss Warburton!... No! Mr. Prohack was not behaving nicely, and it cannot be hidden that he lacked the grandeur of mind which distinguishes most of us.
"Miss Warburton was here before ten o'clock, sir."
"Then why hasn't she come up?"
"She was waiting for orders, sir."
"Send her up immediately."
"Certainly, sir."
Miss Warburton was the fourth angel—an angel with another spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the sound of it in her purling voice.
"Good morning," the gruff brute started. "Did I hear the telephone-bell just now?"
"Yes, sir. Doy and Doy have telephoned to say that Mr. Charles Prohack has just been in to see them, and they've referred him to you, and—and—"
"And what? And what? And what?" (A machine-gun.)
"They said he was extremely unpleasant."
Instinctively Mr. Prohack threw away shame. Mimi was his minion. He treated her as an Oriental tyrant might treat the mute guardian of the seraglio, and told her everything,—that Charlie had forestalled them in the matter of the drains of the noble mansion, that Charlie had determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a trap, that there was the devil to pay, and that the finest lies that ingenuity could invent would have to be uttered. He abandoned all pretence of honesty and uprightness. Mimi showed no surprise whatever, nor was she apparently in the least shocked. She seemed to regard the affair as a quite ordinary part of the day's routine. Her insensitive calm frightened Mr. Prohack.
"Now we must think of something," said the iniquitous monster.
"I don't see that there need be any real difficulty," Mimi replied. "Youdidn't know anything about my plot with Doy and Doy. I got the notion—quite wrongly—that you preferred not to have the house, and I acted as I did through an excess of zeal. I must confess the plot. I alone am to blame, and I admit that what I did was quite inexcusable."
"What a girl! What a girl!" thought Mr. Prohack. But there were limits to his iniquity, and he said aloud, benevolently, grandiosely: "But I did know about it. You as good as told me exactly what you meant to do, and I let you do it. I approved, and I am responsible. Nothing will induce me to let you take the responsibility. Let that be clearly understood, please."
He looked squarely at the girl, and watched with apprehension her aspiring nose rise still further, her delicate ruthless mouth become still more ruthless.
"Excuse me," she said. "My plan is the best. It's the obvious plan. Mr. Carrel Quire often adopted it. I'm afraid you're hesitating to trust me as I expect to be trusted. Please don't forget that you sacrificed an empire for me—I shall always remember that. And what's more, you said you expected from me absolute loyalty to your interests. I can stand anything but not being trusted—fully!"
Mr. Prohack sank deeper into the bed, and laughed loudly, immoderately, titanically. His ill-humour vanished as a fog will vanish. Nevertheless he was appalled by the revelation of the possibilities of the girl's character.
The strange scene was interrupted by the arrival of Charlie, who, thanks to his hypnotic influence over Machin, came masterfully straight upstairs, entered the bedroom without asking permission to do so, and, in perfect indifference to the alleged frailty of his father's health, proceeded to business.
"Dad," said he, after Mimi had gone through her self-ordained martyrdom and left the room. "I wonder whether you quite realise what a top-hole creature that Warburton girl is. She's perfectly astounding."
"She is," Mr. Prohack admitted.
"She's got ideas."
"She has."
"And she isn't afraid of carrying them out."
"She is not."
"She's much too good for you, dad."
"She is."
"I mean, you can't really make full use of her, can you? She's got no scope here."
"She makes her own scope," said Mr. Prohack.
"Now I honestly do need a good secretary," Charlie at last unmasked his attack. "I've got a temporary idiot, and I want a first-rater, preferably a woman. I wish you'd be decent and turn Miss Warburton over to me. She'd be invaluable to me, and with me she reallywouldhave scope for her talents." Charlie laughed.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I was only thinking of her having the notion of queering the drains like that because she wanted to please you. It was simply great. It's the best thing I ever heard." He laughed again. "Now, dad, will you turn her over to me?"
"You appear to think she's a slave to be bought and sold and this room the slave-market," said Mr. Prohack. "It hasn't occurred to you thatshemight object to the transfer."
"Oh! I can soon persuadeher." said Charlie, lightly.
"But you couldn't easily persuade me. And I may as well inform you at once, my poor ingenuous boy, that I won't agree. I will never agree. Miss Warburton is necessary to my existence."
"All in two or three days, is she?" Charlie observed sarcastically.
"Yes."
"Well, father, as we're talking straight, let's talk straight. I'm going to take her from you. It's a very little help I'm asking you for, and that you should refuse is a bit thick. I shall speak to the mater."
"And what shall you say?"
"I shall tell her all about the plot against the new house. It was really a plot against her, because she wants the house—the house is nothing to me. I may believe that you knew nothing about the plot yourself, but I'll lay you any odds the mater won't."
"Speaking as man to man, my boy, I lay you any odds you can't put your mother against me."
"Oh!" cried Charlie, "she won'tsayshe believes you're guilty, but she'll believe it all the same. And it's what people think that matters, not what they say they think."
"That's wisdom," Mr. Prohack agreed. "I see that I brought you up not so badly after all. But doesn't it strike you that you're trying to blackmail your father? I hope I taught you sagacity, but I never encouraged you in blackmail—unless my memory fails me."
"You can call it by any name you please," said Charlie.
"Very well, then, I will. I'll call it blackmail. Give me a cigarette." He lit the offered cigarette. "Anything else this morning?"
Father and son smiled warily at one another. Both were amused and even affectionate, but serious in the battle.
"Come along, dad. Be a sport. Anyhow, let's ask the girl."
"Do you know what my answer to blackmail is?" Mr. Prohack blandly enquired.
"No."
"My answer is the door. Drop the subject entirely. Or sling your adventurous book."
Mr. Prohack was somewhat startled to see Charlie walk straight out of the bedroom. A disturbing suspicion that there might be something incalculable in his son was rudely confirmed.
He said to himself: "But this is absurd."
That morning the Prohack bedroom seemed to be transformed into a sort of public square. No sooner had Charlie so startlingly left than Machin entered again.
"Dr. Veiga, sir."
And Dr. Veiga came in. The friendship between Mr. Prohack and his picturesque quack had progressed—so much so that Eve herself had begun to twit her husband with having lost his head about the doctor. Nevertheless Eve was privately very pleased with the situation, because it proved that she had been right and Mr. Prohack wrong concerning the qualities of the fat, untidy, ironic Portuguese. Mr. Prohack was delighted to see him, for an interview with Dr. Veiga always meant an unusual indulgence in the sweets of candour and realism.
"This is my wife's doing, no doubt," said Mr. Prohack, limply shaking hands.
"She called to see me, ostensibly about herself, but of course in fact about you. However, I thought she needed a tonic, and I'll write out the prescription while I'm here. Now what's the matter with you?"
"No!" Mr. Prohack burst out, "I'm hanged if I'll tell you. I'm not going to do your work for you. Find out."
Dr. Veiga examined, physically and orally, and then said: "There's nothing at all the matter with you, my friend."
"That's just where you're mistaken," Mr. Prohack retorted. "There's something rather serious the matter with me. I'm suffering from grave complications. Only you can't help me. My trouble is spiritual. Neither pills nor tonics can touch it. But that doesn't make it any better."
"Try me," said Dr. Veiga. "I'm admirable on the common physical ailments, and by this time I should have been universally recognised as a great man if common ailments were uncommon; because you know in my profession you never get any honour unless you make a study of diseases so rare that nobody has them. Discover a new disease, and save the life of some solitary nigger who brought it to Liverpool, and you'll be a baronet in a fortnight and a member of all the European academies in a month. But study colds, indigestion and insomnia, and change a thousand lives a year from despair to felicity, and no authority will take the slightest notice of you ... As with physical, so with mental diseases—or spiritual, if you like to call them so. You don't suspect that in the common mental diseases I'm a regular benefactor of mankind; but I am. I don't blame you for not knowing it, because you're about the last person I should have thought susceptible to any mental disease, and so you've had no chance of finding out. Now, what is it?"
"Don't I tell you I'm suffering from horrible complications?" cried Mr. Prohack.
"What kind of complications?"
"Every kind. My aim has always been to keep my life simple, and I succeeded very well—perhaps too well—until I inherited money. I don't mind money, but I do mind complications. I don't want a large house—because it means complications. I desire Sissie's happiness, but I hate weddings. I desire to be looked after, but I hate strange servants. I can find pleasure in a motor-car, but I hate even the risk of accidents. I have no objection to an income, but I hate investments. And so on. All I ask is to live simply and sensibly, but instead of that my existence is transformed into a quadratic equation. And I can't stop it. My happiness is not increasing—it's decreasing. I spend more and more time in wondering whither I am going, what I am after, and where precisely is the point of being alive at all. That's a fact, and now you know it."
Dr. Veiga rose from his chair and deliberately sat down on the side of his patient's bed. The gesture in itself was sufficiently unprofessional, but he capped it with another of which probably no doctor had ever been guilty in a British sick-room before; he pulled out a pocket-knife and became his own manicure, surveying his somewhat neglected hands with a benevolently critical gaze, smiling at them as if to say: "What funny hands you are!"
And Mr. Prohack felt that the doctor was saying: "What a funny Prohack you are!"
"My friend," said Dr. Veiga at length (with his voice), "my friend, I will not conceal from you that your alarm was justified. You are suffering from one of the commonest and one of the gravest mental derangements. I'm surprised, but there it is. You haven't yet discovered that it's the earth you're living on. You fancy it may be Sirius, Uranus, Aldebaran or Jupiter—let us say Jupiter. Perhaps in one of these worlds matters are ordered differently, and their truth is not our truth; but let me assure you that the name of your planet is the Earth and that on the earth one great unalterable truth prevails. Namely:—You can't do this"—here Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit the consequences. You knew when you accepted a fortune that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit them too. You want to alter the rules after the game has started. You set in motion circumstances which were bound to influence the development of the members of your family, and when the inevitable new developments begin, you object, simply because you hadn't foreseen them. You knew that money doesn't effectively exist until it's spent and that you can't spend money without causing consequences, and when your family causes consequences by bringing the money to life you complain that you're a martyr to the consequences and that you hadn't bargained for complications. My poor friend, you have made one crucial mistake in your career,—the mistake of being born. Happily the mistake is curable. I can give you several prescriptions. The first is prussic acid. If you don't care for that you can donate the whole of your fortune to the Sinking Fund for extinguishing the National Debt and you can return to the Treasury. If you don't care for that you can leave your family mysteriously and go and live in Timbuctoo by yourself. If you don't care for that you can buy a whip and forbid your wife and daughter to grow older or change in any way on pain of a hundred lashes. And if you don't like that you can acquaint yourself with the axioms that neither you nor anybody else are the centre of the universe and that what you call complications are simply another name for life itself. Worry is life, and life is worry. And the absence of worry is death. I won't say to you that you're rich and beloved and therefore you've nothing to worry about. I'll say to you, you've got a lot to worry about because you're rich and beloved.... I'll leave the other hand for to-morrow." Dr. Veiga snapped down the blade of the pocket-knife.
"Platitudes!" ejaculated Mr. Prohack.
"Certainly," agreed the quack. "But I've told you before that it's by telling everybody what everybody knows that I earn my living."
"I'll get up," said Mr. Prohack.
"And not too soon," said the quack. "Get up by all means and deal with your worries. All worries can be dealt with."
"It doesn't make life any better," said Mr. Prohack.
"Nothing makes life any better, except death—and there's a disgusting rumour that there is no death. Where shall I find a pencil, my dear fellow? I've forgotten mine, and I want to prescribe Mrs. Prohack's tonic."
"In the boudoir there," said Mr. Prohack. "What the deuce are you smiling at?"
"I'm smiling because I'm so glad to find you aren't so wise as you look." And Dr. Veiga disappeared blithely into the boudoir.
Almost at the same moment Mimi knocked and entered. She entered, stared harshly at Mr. Prohack, and then the corners of her ruthless mouth twitched and loosened and she began to cry.
"Doctor," called Mr. Prohack, "come here at once." The doctor came. "You say all worries can be dealt with? How should you deal with this one?"
The doctor dropped a slip of paper on to the bed and walked silently out of the room, precisely as Charlie had done.