In regard to the effect of the sermon of Dr. Veiga on Mr. Prohack, it was as if Mr. Prohack had been a desk with many drawers and one drawer open, and the sermon had been dropped into the drawer and the drawer slammed to and nonchalantly locked. The drawer being locked, Mr. Prohack turned to the weeping figure in front of him, which suddenly ceased to weep and became quite collected and normal.
"Now, my child," said Mr. Prohack, "I have just been informed that everything has a consequence. I've seen the consequence. What is the thing?"
He was rather annoyed by Mimi's tears, but in his dangerous characteristic desire to please, he could not keep kindness out of his tone, and Mimi, reassured and comforted, began feebly to smile, and also Mr. Prohack remarked that her mouth was acquiring firmness again.
"I ought to tell you in explanation of anything of a personal nature that I may have said to him in your presence, that the gentleman just gone is my medical adviser, and I have no secrets from him; in that respect he stands equal with you and above everybody else in the world without exception. So you must excuse my freedom in directing his attention to you."
"It's I who ought to apologise," said Miss Warburton, positively. "But the fact is I hadn't the slightest idea that you weren't alone. I was just a little bit upset because I understand that you want to get rid of me."
"Ah!" murmured Mr. Prohaek, "who put that notion into your absurd head?"
He knew he was exercising his charm, but he could not help it.
"Mr. Charles. He's just been down to my room and told me."
"I hope you remembered what I said to you about your duty so far as he is concerned."
"Of course, Mr. Prohack." She smiled anew; and her smile, so clever, so self-reliant, so enigmatic, a little disturbed Mr. Prohack.
"What did my son say to you?"
"He said that he was urgently in need of a thoroughly competent secretary at once—confidential—and that he was sure I was the very woman to suit him, and that he would give me double the salary I was getting."
"Did you tell him how much you're getting?"
"No."
"Well, neither did I! And then?"
"Then he told me all about his business, how big it was, and growing quickly, too, and how he was after a young woman who had tact and resource and could talk to any one from a bank director to a mechanic or a clergyman, and that tens of thousands of pounds might often depend on my tact, and that you wouldn't mind my being transferred from you to him."
"And I suppose he asked you to go off with him immediately?"
"No, at the beginning of next week."
"And what did you say?" demanded Mr. Prohack, amazed and frightened at the manoeuvres of his unscrupulous son.
"Naturally I said that I couldn't possibly leave you—unless you told me to go, and that I owed everything to you. Then he asked me what I did for you, and I said I was particularly busy at present making a schedule of all your new purchases and checking the outfitters' accounts, and so on. That reminds me, I haven't been able to get the neckties right yet."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack. "Not been able to get the neckties right! But this is very serious. The neckties are most important. Most important!"
"Oh!" said Mimi. "If necessary I shall run round to Bond Street in my lunch-hour."
At this point the drawer in the desk started to unlock itself and open of its own accord, and Mr. Prohack's eye caught a glimpse of a page of the sermon.
Mimi continued:
"We mustn't forget there'll be hundreds of things to see to about the new house."
"Will there?"
"Well, Mrs. Prohack told Machin, and Machin has just told me, that it's all settled about taking the house. And I know what taking a house is. Mr. Carrel Quire was always taking new houses."
"But perhaps you could keep an eye on the house even if you went over to Mr. Charles?"
"Then it's true," said Mimi. "You do want me to go." But she showed no sign of weeping afresh.
"You must understand," Mr. Prohack said with much benevolence, "that my son is my son. Of course my clothes are also my clothes. But Charles is in a difficult position. He's at the beginning of his career, whereas I'm at the end of mine. He needs all the help he can get, and he can afford to pay more than I can. And even at the cost of having to check my own neckties I shouldn't like to stand in his way. That's how I look at it. Mind you, I have certainly not told Charlie that I'll set you free."
"I quite see," said Mimi. "And naturally if you put it like that—"
"You'll still be in the family."
"I shall be very sorry to leave you, Mr. Prohack."
"Doubtless. But you'll be even gladder to go over to Charles, though with him you'll be more like a kettle tied to the tail of a mad dog than a confidential secretary."
Mimi raised the tip of her nose.
"Excuse me, Mr. Prohack, I shallnotbe gladder to go over to Mr. Charles. Any girl will tell you that she prefers to work for a man of your age than for a boy. Boys are not interesting."
"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack. "A comfortable enough theory. And I've already heard it more than once from girls. But I've never seen any confirmation of it in practice. And I don't believe it. I'll tell you something about yourself you don't know. You're delighted to go over to my son. And if I'd refused to let you go I should have had a martyr instead of a secretary. You want adventure. You want a field for your remarkable talent for conspiracy and chicane. You know by experience there's little scope for it here. But under my son your days will be breathless.... No, no! I don't wish to hear anything. Run away and get on with your work. And you can telephone my decision to Charles. I'm now going to get up and wear all my new neckties at once."
Miss Warburton departed in a state of emotion.
As, with all leisureliness, Mr. Prohack made himself beautiful to behold, he reflected: "I'm very impulsive. I've simply thrown that girl into the arms of that boy. Eve will have something to say about it. Still, there's one complication off my chest."
Eve returned home as he was descending the stairs, and she blew him upstairs again and shut the door of the bedroom and pushed him into the privacy of the boudoir.
"It's all settled," said she. "I've signed the tenancy agreement for a year. Charlie said I could, and it would save you trouble. It doesn't matter the cheque for the first half-year's rent being signed by you, only of course the house will be in my name. How handsome you are, darling!" And she kissed him and re-tied one of the new cravats. "But that's not what I wanted to tell you, darling." Her face grew grave. "Do you know I'm rather troubled about Charlie—and your friend Lady Massulam. They're off again this morning."
"My friend?"
"Well, you know she adores you. It would be perfectly awful if—if—well, you understand what I mean. I hear she really is a widow, so that—well, you understand what I mean! I'm convinced she's at least thirty years older than Charlie. But you see she's French, and French women are so clever.... You can never be sure with them."
"Fluttering heart," said Mr. Prohack, suddenly inspired. "Don't get excited. I've thought of all that already, and I've taken measures to guard against it. I'm going to give Charlie my secretary. She'll see that Lady Massulam doesn't make any more headway, trust her!"
"Arthur, how clever you are! Nobody but you would have thought of that. But isn't it a bit dangerous, too? You see—don't you?"
Mr. Prohack shook his head.
"I gather you've been reading the love-story inThe Daily Picture," said he. "InThe Daily Picturethe typist always marries the millionaire. But outsideThe Daily PictureI doubt whether these romantic things really happen. There are sixty-five thousand girls typists in the City alone, besides about a million in Whitehall. The opportunities for espousing millionaires and ministers of state are countless. But no girl-typist has been married at St. George's, Hanover Square, since typewriters were invented."
The very next day Mr. Prohack had a plutocratic mood of overbearingness, which led to a sudden change in his location—the same being transferred to Frinton-on-Sea. The mood was brought about by a visit to the City, at the summons of Paul Spinner; and the visit included conversations not only with Paul, but with Smathe and Smathe, the solicitors, and with a firm of stockbrokers. Paul handed over to his crony saleable securities, chiefly in the shape of scrip of the greatest oil-combine and its subsidiaries, for a vast amount, and advised Mr. Prohack to hold on to them, as, owing to the present depression due to the imminence of a great strike, they were likely to be "marked higher" before Mr. Prohack was much older. Mr. Prohack declined the advice, and he also declined the advice of solicitors and stockbrokers, who were both full of wisdom and of devices for increasing capital values. What these firms knew about the future, and about the consequences of causes and about "the psychology of the markets" astounded the simple Terror of the departments; and it was probably unanswerable. But, being full of riches, Mr. Prohack did not trouble to answer it; he merely swept it away with a tyrannical and impatient gesture, which gesture somehow mysteriously established him at once as a great authority on the art of investment.
"Now listen to me," said he imperiously, and the manipulators of shares listened, recalling to themselves that Mr. Prohack had been a Treasury official for over twenty years and must therefore be worth hearing—although the manipulators commonly spent many hours a week in asserting, in the press and elsewhere, that Treasury officials comprehended naught of finance. "Now listen to me. I don't care a hang about my capital. It may decrease or increase, and I shan't care. All I care for is my interest. I want to be absolutely sure that my interest will tumble automatically into my bank on fixed dates. No other consideration touches me. I'm not a gambler. I'm not a usurer. Industrial development leaves me cold, and if I should ever feel any desire to knit the Empire closer together I'll try to do it without making a profit out of it. At the moment all I'm after is certain, sure, fixed interest. Hence—Government securities, British Government or Colonial! Britain is of course rotten to the core, always was, always will be. Still, I'll take my chances. I'm infernally insular where investment is concerned. There's one thing to be said about the British Empire—you do know where you are in it. And I don't mind some municipal stocks. I even want some. I can conceive the smash-up of the British Empire, but I cannot conceive Manchester defaulting in its interest payments. Can you?" And he looked round and paused for a reply, and no reply came. Nobody dared to boast himself capable of conceiving Manchester's default.
Towards the end of the arduous day Mr. Prohack departed from the City, leaving behind him an immense reputation for financial sagacity, and a scheme of investment under which he could utterly count upon a modest regular income of £17,000 per annum. He was sacrificing over £5,000 per annum in order to be free from an investor's anxieties, and he reckoned that his peace of mind was cheap at a hundred pounds a week. This detail alone shows to what an extent the man's taste for costly luxuries had grown.
Naturally he arrived home swollen. Now it happened that Eve also, by reason of her triumph in regard to the house in Manchester Square, had swelled head. A conflict of individualities occurred. A trifle, even a quite pleasant trifle! Nothing that the servants might not hear with advantage. But before you could say 'knife' Mr. Prohack had said that he would go away for a holiday and abandon Eve to manage the removal to Manchester Square how she chose, and Eve had leapt on to the challenge and it was settled that Mr. Prohack should go to Frinton-on-Sea.
Eve selected Frinton-on-Sea for him because Dr. Veiga had recommended it for herself. She had a broad notion of marriage as a commonwealth. She loved to take Mr. Prohack's medicines, and she was now insisting on his taking her watering-places. Mr. Prohack said that the threatened great strike might prevent his journey. Pooh! She laughed at such fears. She drove him herself to Liverpool Street.
"You may see your friend Lady Massulam," said she, as the car entered the precincts of the station. (Once again he was struck by the words 'your friend' prefixed to Lady Massulam; but he offered no comment on them.)
"Why Lady Massulam?" he asked.
"Didn't you know she's got a house at Frinton?" replied Mrs. Prohack. "Everybody has in these days. It's the thing."
She didn't see him into the train, because she was in a hurry about butlers. Mr. Prohack was cast loose in the booking-hall and had a fine novel sensation of freedom.
Never since marriage had he taken a holiday alone—never desired to do so. He felt himself to be on the edge of romance. Frinton, for example, presented itself as a city of romance. He knew it not, knew scarcely any English seaside, having always managed to spend his holidays abroad; but Frinton must, he was convinced, be strangely romantic. The train thither had an aspect which strengthened this conviction. It consisted largely of first-class coaches, and in the window of nearly every first-class compartment and saloon was exhibited a notice: "This compartment (or saloon) is reserved for members of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association." Mr. Prohack, being still somewhat swollen, decided that he was a member of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association and acted accordingly. Otherwise he might never have reached Frinton.
He found himself in a sort of club, about sixty feet by six, where everybody knew everybody except Mr. Prohack, and where cards and other games, tea and other drinks, tobacco and other weeds, were being played and consumed in an atmosphere of the utmost conviviality. Mr. Prohack was ignored, but he was not objected to. His fellow-travellers regarded him cautiously, as a new chum. The head attendant and dispenser was very affable, as to a promising neophyte. Only the ticket-inspector singled him out from all the rest by stopping in front of him.
"My last hour has come," thought Mr. Prohack as he produced his miserable white return-ticket.
All stared; the inspector stared; but nothing happened. Mr. Prohack had a sense of reprieve, and also of having been baptised or inducted into a secret society. He listened heartily to forty conversations about physical diversions and luxuries and about the malignant and fatuous wrong-headedness of men who went on strike, and about the approaching catastrophic end of all things.
Meanwhile, at any rate in the coach, the fabric of society seemed to be holding together fairly well. Before the train was half-way to Frinton Mr. Prohack judged—and rightly—that he was already there. The fact was that he had been there ever since entering the saloon. After two hours the train, greatly diminished in length, came to rest in the midst of a dark flatness, and the entire population of the coach vanished out of it in the twinkling of an eye, and Mr. Prohack saw the name 'Frinton' on a flickering oil-lamp, and realised that he was at the gates of the most fashionable resort in England, a spot where even the ozone was exclusive. The station staff marvelled at him because he didn't know where the Majestic Hotel was and because he asked without notice for a taxi, fly, omnibus or anything on wheels. All the other passengers had disappeared. The exclusive ozone was heavy with exciting romance for Mr. Prohack as the station staff considered his unique and incomprehensible case. Then a tiny omnibus materialised out of the night.
"Is this the Majestic bus?" Mr. Prohack enquired of the driver.
"Well, it is if you like, sir," the driver answered.
Mr. Prohack did like....
The Majestic was large and prim, resembling a Swiss hotel in its furniture, the language and composition of the menu, the dialect of the waiters; but it was about fifteen degrees colder than the highest hotel in Switzerland. The dining-room was shaded with rose-shaded lamps and it susurrated with the polite whisperings of elegant couples and trios, and the entremet was cabinet pudding: a fine display considering the depth of winter and of the off-season.
Mr. Prohack went off after dinner for a sharp walk in the east wind. Solitude! Blackness! Night! East wind in the bushes of gardens that shielded the façades of large houses! Not a soul! Not a policeman! He descended precariously to the vast, smooth beach. The sound of the sea! Romance! Mr. Prohack seemed to walk for miles, like Ozymandias, on the lone and level sands. Then he fancied he descried a moving object. He was not mistaken. It approached him. It became a man and a woman. It became a man and a young woman arm-in-arm and soul-in-soul. And there was nothing but the locked couple, and the sound of the invisible, immeasurable sea, and the east wind, and Mr. Prohack. Romance thrilled through Mr. Prohack's spine.
"So I said to him," the man was saying to the young woman as the pair passed Mr. Prohack, "I said to him 'I could do with a pint o' that,' I said."
The next morning Mr. Prohack rose with alacrity from a hard bed, and was greeted in the hall by the manager of the hotel, an enormous, middle-aged, sun-burnt, jolly person in flannels and an incandescent blazer, who asked him about his interests in golf and hard-court tennis. Mr. Prohack, steeped as he felt himself to be in strange romance, was prepared to be interested in these games, but the self-protective instinct warned him that since these games could not be played alone they would, if he indulged in them, bring him into contact with people who might prove tedious. He therefore changed the conversation and asked whether he could have strawberry jam to his breakfast. The manager's face instantly changed, hardening to severity. Was Mr. Prohack eccentric? Did he desire to disturb the serene habits of the hotel? The manager promised to see. He did see, and announced that he was 'afraid' that Mr. Prohack could not have strawberry jam to his breakfast. And Mr. Prohack said to himself: "What would my son Charles have done?" During a solitary breakfast (with blackberry jam) in the huge dining-room, Mr. Prohack decided that Charles would have approached the manager differently.
After breakfast he saw the manager again, and he did not enquire from the manager whether there was any chance of hiring a motor-car. He said briefly:
"I want to hire a car, please. It must be round here in half an hour, sharp."
"I will attend to the matter myself," said the manager humbly.
The car kept the rendezvous, and Mr. Prohack inspected Frinton from the car. He admired the magnificent reserve of Frinton, which was the most English place he had ever seen. The houses gave nothing away; the shivering shopping ladies in the streets gave nothing away; and certainly the shops gave nothing away. The newspaper placards announced what seemed to be equivalent to the end of the existing social order; but Frinton apparently did not blench nor tremble; it went calmly and powerfully forward into the day (which was Saturday), relying upon the great British axiom: "To ignore is to destroy." It ignored the end of the existing social order, and lo! there was no end. Up and down various long and infinitely correct avenues of sheltered homes drove Mr. Prohack, and was everywhere baffled in his human desire to meet Frinton half-way. He stopped the car at the Post Office and telegraphed to his wife: "No strawberry jam in this city. Love. Arthur." The girl behind the counter said: "One and a penny, please," and looked hard at him. Five minutes later he returned to the Post Office and telegraphed to his wife: "Omitted to say in previous telegram that Frinton is the greatest expression of Anglo-Saxon character I have ever encountered. Love. Arthur." The girl behind the counter said: "Two and three, please," stared harder at him, and blushed. Perceiving the blush, Mr. Prohack at once despatched a third telegram to his wife: "But it has charming weaknesses. Love. Arthur." Extraordinarily happy and gay, he drove out of Frinton to see the remainder of North East Essex in the enheartening east wind.
In the evening he fell asleep in the lounge while waiting for dinner, having dressed a great deal too soon and being a great deal too full of east wind. When he woke up he noticed a different atmosphere in the hotel. Youth and brightness had entered it. The lounge had vivacity and expectation; and Mr. Prohack learned that Saturday night was gala, with a dance and special bridge. Not even the news that the star-guest of the hotel, Lord Partick, was suddenly indisposed and confined to his room could dash the new optimism of the place.
At dinner the manager walked around the little tables and gorgeously babbled with diners about the sportive feats of the day. And Mr. Prohack, seeing that his own turn was coming, began to feel as if he was on board a ship. He feared the worst and the worst came.
"Perhaps you'd like to make a fourth at bridge. If so—" said the manager jollily. "Or perhaps you dance. If so—"
Mr. Prohack shut his eyes and gave forth vague affirmatives.
And as soon as the manager had left him he gazed around the room at the too-blonde women young and old and wondered fearfully which would be his portion for bridge or dance. In the lounge after dinner he ignited a cigar and watched the lighting up of the ball-room (ordinarily the drawing-room) and the entry of the musicians therein. Then he observed the manager chatting with two haughty beldames and an aged gentleman, and they all three cast assaying glances upon Mr. Prohack, and Mr. Prohack knew that he had been destined for bridge, not dancing, and the manager moved towards him, and Mr. Prohack breathed his last sigh but one....
But the revolving doors at the entrance revolved, and out of the Frintonian night appeared Lady Massulam, magnificently enveloped. Seldom had Mr. Prohack's breast received a deeper draught of mingled astonishment and solace. Hitherto he had not greatly cared for Lady Massulam, and could not see what Charlie saw in her. Now he saw what Charlie saw and perhaps more also. She had more than dignity,—she had style. And she femininely challenged. She was like a breeze on the French shore to a British barque cruising dully in the Channel. She welcomed the sight of Mr. Prohack, and her greeting of him made a considerable change in the managerial attitude towards the unassuming Terror of the departments. The manager respectfully informed Lady Massulam that Lord Partick was indisposed, and respectfully took himself off. Lady Massulam and Mr. Prohack then proceeded to treat each other like new toys. Mr. Prohack had to explain why he was at Frinton, and Lady Massulam explained that whenever she was in Frinton at the week-end she always came to the Majestic to play bridge with old Lord Partick. It flattered him; she liked him, though he had bought his peerage; he was a fine player—so was she; and lastly they had had business relations, and financially Lord Partick watched over her as over a young girl.
Mr. Prohack was relieved thus to learn that Lady Massulam had not strolled into the Majestic Hotel, Frinton, to play bridge with nobody in particular. Still, she was evidently well known to the habitués, several of whom approached to greet her. She temporised with them in her calm Latin manner, neither encouraging nor discouraging their advances, and turning back to Mr. Prohack by her side at every surcease.
"We shall be compelled to play bridge if we do not take care," she murmured in his ear, as a dowager larger than herself loomed up.
"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack, "I've been feeling the danger ever since dinner. Will you dance with me,—not of course as a pleasure—I won't flatter myself—but as a means of salvation?"
The dowager bore down with a most definite suggestion for bridge in the card-room. Lady Massulam definitely stated that she was engaged to dance....
Well, of course Lady Massulam was something of a galleon herself; but she was a beautiful dancer; that is to say, she responded perfectly to the male volition; she needed no pushing and no pulling; she moved under his will as lightly as a young girl. Her elaborately dressed hair had an agreeable scent; her complexion was a highly successful achievement; everything about her had a quiet and yet a dazzling elegance which had been obtained regard-less of expense. As for her figure, it was on a considerable scale, but its important contours had a soft and delicate charm. And all that was nothing in the estimation of Mr. Prohack compared with her glance. At intervals in the fox-trot he caught the glance. It was arch, flirtatious, eternally youthful, challenging; and it expressed pleasure in the fox-trot. Mr. Prohack was dancing better than ever before in his career as a dancer. She made him dance better. She was not the same woman whom he had first met at lunch at the Grand Babylon Hotel. She was a new revelation, packed with possibilities. Mr. Prohack recalled his wife's phrase: "You know she adores you." He hadn't known. Honestly such an idea had not occurred to him. But did she adore him? Not "adore"—naturally—but had she a bit of a fancy for him?
Mr. Prohack became the youngest man in the room,—an extraordinary case of rejuvenescence. He surveyed the room with triumph. He sniffed up the brassy and clicking music into his vibrating nostrils. He felt no envy of any man in the room. When the band paused he clapped like a child for another dose of fox-trot. At the end of the third dose they were both a little breathless and they had ices. After a waltz they both realised that excess would be imprudent, and returned to the lounge.
"I wish you'd tell me something about my son," said Mr. Prohack. "I think you must be the greatest living authority on him."
"Here?" exclaimed Lady Massulam.
"Anywhere. Any time."
"It would be safer at my house," said Lady Massulam. "But before I go I must just write a little note to Lord Partick. He will expect it."
That was how she invited him to The Lone Cedar, the same being her famous bungalow on the Front.
"Your son," said Lady Massulam, in a familiar tone, but most reassuringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful capacity, "your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now playing a dangerous game—far more dangerous than he imagines, and he will not be warned. He is selling something he hasn't got before he knows what price he will have to pay for it."
"Ah!" breathed Mr. Prohack.
They were sitting together in the richly ornamented bungalow drawing-room, by the fire. Lady Massulam sat up straight in her sober and yet daring evening frock. Mr. Prohack lounged with formless grace in a vast easy-chair neighbouring a whiskey-and-soda. She had not asked him to smoke; he did not smoke, and he had no wish to smoke. She was a gorgeously mature specimen of a woman. He imagined her young, and he decided that he preferred the autumn to the spring. She went on talking of finance.
"She is moving in regions that Eve can never know," he thought. "But how did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?"
The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him. Her appreciation or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a vehicle for the expression of her personality. He had never met such a woman. He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself. He looked surreptitiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied sumptuosity aptly illustrated her mind and heart. His own heart was full of quite new sensations.
"Of course," she was saying, "if Charles is to become the really great figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and perhaps it is incurable."
"I know what that is," said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.
"What is it?" Her glance met his.
"His confounded reserve, lack of elasticity, lack of adaptability. The old British illusion that everything will come to him who won't budge. Why, it's a ten-horse-power effort for him even to smile!"
Lady Massulam seemed to leap from her chair, and she broke swiftly into French:
"Oh! You comprehend then, you? If you knew what I have suffered in your terrible England! But you do not suspect what I have suffered! I advance myself. They retire before me. I advance myself again. They retire again. I open. They close. Do they begin? Never! It is always I who must begin! Do I make a natural gesture—they say to themselves, 'What a strange woman! How indiscreet! But she is foreign.' They lift their shoulders. Am I frank—they pity me. They give themselves never! They are shut like their lips over their long teeth. Ah, but they have taught me. In twenty years have I not learnt the lesson? There is nobody among you who can be more shut-tight than me. I flatter myself that I can be more terrible than any English woman or man. You do not catch me now! But what a martyrdom!... I might return to France? No! I am become too English. In Paris I should resemble anémigrée. And people would say: 'What is that? It is like nothing at all. It has no name.' Besides, I like you English. You are terrible, but one can count on you....Vous y êtes?"
"J'y suis," replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.
Lady Massulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped.
"Pardon!" she cried, aghast. "It is yours," and planked the tumbler down again on the lacquered table.
Mr. Prohack had the wit to drink also. They went on talking.... A silver tongue vibrated from the hall with solemn British deliberation—One! Two! The air throbbed to the sound for many seconds.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, rising in alarm. "And this is Frinton!" She let him out herself, with all soft precautions against shocking the Frintonian world. His manner of regaining the Majestic Hotel can only be described by saying that he 'effected an entrance' into it. He went to bed but not to sleep.
"What the deuce has happened to me?" he asked himself amazed. "Is it anything serious? Or am I merely English after all?"
Late the next morning, when he was dreaming, a servant awoke him with the information that a chauffeur was demanding him. But he was sleepy and slept again. Between noon and one o'clock he encountered the chauffeur. It was Carthew, who stated that his mistress had sent him with the car. She felt that he would need the car to go about in. As for her, she would manage without it.
Mr. Prohack remained silent for a few moments and then said:
"Be ready to start in a quarter of an hour."
"Before lunch, sir?"
"Before lunch."
Mr. Prohack paid his bill and packed.
"Which way, sir?" Carthew asked, as the Eagle moved from under the portico of the hotel.
"There is only one road out of Frinton," said Mr. Prohack. "It's the road you came in by. Take it. I want to get off as quickly as possible. The climate of this place is the most dangerous and deceptive I was ever in."
"Really, sir!" responded Carthew, polite but indifferent. "The east wind I suppose, sir?"
"Not at all. The south wind."
How exhilarating (Mr. Prohack found it) to be on the road without a destination! It was Sunday morning, and the morning was marvellous for the time of year. Mr. Prohack had had a very fine night, and he now felt a curious desire to defy something or somebody, to defend himself, and to point out, if any one accused him of cowardice, that he had not retreated from danger until after he had fairly affronted it. More curious still was the double, self-contradictory sensation of feeling both righteous and sinful. He would have spurned a charge of wickedness, and yet the feeling of being wicked was really very jolly. He seemed to have begun a new page of life, and then to have ripped the page away—and possibly spoilt the whole book. Deference to Eve, of course! Respect for Eve! Or was it merely that he must always be able to look Eve in the face? In sending the car for his idle use, Eve had performed a master-stroke which laid him low by its kindliness, its wifeliness, its touches of perverse self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice. Lady Massulam hung in the vast hollow of his mind, a brilliant and intensely seductive figure; but Eve hung there too, and Mr. Prohack was obliged to admit that the simple Eve was holding her own.
"My sagacity is famous," said Mr. Prohack to himself. "And I never showed more of it than in leaving Frinton instantly. Few men would have had the sense and the resolution to do it." And he went on praising himself to himself. Such was the mood of this singular man.
Hunger—Mr. Prohack's hunger—drew them up at Frating, a village a few miles short of Colchester. The inn at Frating had been constructed ages earlier entirely without reference to the fact that it is improper for certain different types of humanity to eat or drink in each other's presence. In brief, there was obviously only one dining-room, and not a series of dining-rooms classified according to castes. Mr. Prohack, free, devil-may-care and original, said to his chauffeur:
"You'd better eat with me, Carthew."
"You're very kind, sir," said Carthew, and at once sat down and ceased to be a chauffeur.
"Well, I haven't been seeing much of you lately," Mr. Prohack edged forward into the fringes of intimacy when three glasses of beer and three slices of Derby Round had been unequally divided between them, "have I?"
"No, sir."
Mr. Prohack had in truth been seeing Carthew almost daily; but on this occasion he used the word "see" in a special sense.
"That boy of yours getting on all right?"
"Pretty fair, considering he's got no mother, if you understand what I mean, sir," replied Carthew, pushing back his chair, stretching out his legs, and picking his teeth with a fork.
"Ah! yes!" said Mr. Prohack commiseratingly. "Very awkward situation for you, that is."
"It isn't awkward for me, sir. It's my boy it's awkward for. I'm as right as rain."
"No chance of the lady coming back, I suppose?"
"Well, she'd better not try," said Carthew grimly.
"But does this mean you've done with the sex, at your age?" cried Mr. Prohack.
"I don't say as I'vedonewith the sex, sir. Male and female created He them, as the good old Book says; and I'm not going behind that. No, not me! All I say is, I'm as right as rain—forthe present—and she'd better not try."
"I bet you anything you won't keep it up," said Mr. Prohack, impetuously exceeding the limits of inter-caste decorum.
"Keep what up?"
"This attitude of yours."
"I won't bet, sir," said Carthew. "Because nobody can see round a corner. But I promise you I'll never take a womanseriouslyagain. That's the mistake we make, taking 'em seriously. You see, sir, being a chauffeur in the early days of motor-cars, I've had a tidy bit of experience, if you understand what I mean. Because in them days a chauffeur was like what an air-pilot is to-day. He didn't have to ask, he didn't. And what I say is this—I say we're mugs to take 'em seriously."
"You think we are!" bubbled Mr. Prohack emptily, perceiving that he had to do with an individual whom misfortune had rendered impervious to argument.
"I do, sir. And what's more, I say you never know where you are with any woman."
"That I agree with," said Mr. Prohack, with a polite show of eagerness. "But you're cutting yourself off from a great deal you know, Carthew," he added, thinking magnificently upon his adventure with Lady Massulam.
"There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place," murmured Carthew with bland superiority. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll just go and give her a look over before we start again." He scraped his chair cruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority on women.
It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and paying the bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of the long, empty dining-room table, a copy ofThe Sunday Picture, which was the Sabbath edition ofThe Daily Picture. He got up and seized it, expecting it to be at least a week old. It proved, however, to be as new and fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.
The shock of meeting Eve inThe Sunday Picturewas terrible, but equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in regard to the ownership of the noble mansion. He had understood—or more correctly he had been given to understand—that the house and its contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as celebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been. Assuredly neither Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the exquisite decorations and furnishings of that house. On the other hand, it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave the house as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluable bibelots lying about all over the place. Almost certainly Eliza Fiddle must have had some sort of effective ownership of the place. He knew that dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding and mysterious luck in the matter of luxurious homes, and that some of them progressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable than the last. He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind. He had of course no grudge against the efficient and strenuous Eliza, for he was perfectly at liberty not to pay money in order to see her. She must be an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones. Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife inThe Sunday Picture....Eve! Eve! A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get intoThe Daily Picture. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish thing, criticism of life!)
And there was another point, as sharp as any. Ozzie Morfey must have known, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself must have known, that thede factoowner of the noble mansion was Eliza Fiddle. And none had vouchsafed the truth to him.
"We'll struggle back to town I think," said Mr. Prohack to Carthew, with a pitiable affectation of brightness. And instead of sitting by Carthew's side, as previously, he sat behind, and reflected upon the wisdom of Carthew. He had held that Carthew's views were warped by a peculiar experience. He now saw that they were not warped at all, but shapely, sane and incontrovertible.
That evening, soon after dark, the Eagle, dusty and unkempt from a journey which had not been free from mishaps, rolled up to the front-door of Mr. Prohack's original modest residence behind Hyde Park; and Mr. Prohack jumped out; and Carthew came after him with two bags. The house was as dark as the owner's soul; not a gleam of light in any window. Mr. Prohack produced his familiar latch-key, scraped round the edge of the key-hole, savagely pushed in the key, and opened the door. There was still no light nor sign of life. Mr. Prohack paused on the threshold, and then his hand instinctively sought the electric switch and pulled it down. No responsive gleam!
"Machin!" called Mr. Prohack, as it were plaintively.
No sound.
"I am a fool," thought Mr. Prohack.
He struck a match and walked forward delicately, peering. He descried an empty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-room door, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. The dining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and a newspaper had been made into a cap over his favourite Chippendale clock. He retreated.
"Put those bags into the car again," he said to Carthew, who stood hesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.
How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthew was no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was a servitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should not speak until spoken to.
"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.
"Yes, sir."
At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by gigantic uniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring the guards, Mr. Prohack passed imperially within to the reception office.
"I want a bedroom, a sitting-room and a bath-room, please."
"A private suite, sir?"
"A private suite."
"What—er—kind, sir? We have—"
"The best," said Mr. Prohack, with finality. He signed his name and received a ticket.
"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur I shall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should take the car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will have some tea at once in my sitting-room."
The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew his mind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirably served.
After tea he took a bath because he could think of nothing else to do. The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude, poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light over the majestic portals, the noble mansion was now as dark as Mr. Prohack's other house.
He shut his lips, steeled himself, and walked round the Square to the noble mansion and audaciously rang the bell. He had to wait. He shook guiltily, as though he, and no member of his family, had sinned. A little more, and his tongue would have cleaved to the gold of his upper denture. The double portals swung backwards. Mr. Prohack beheld the portly form of an intensely traditional butler, and behind the butler a vista of outer and inner halls and glimpses of the soaring staircase. He heard, somewhere in the distance of the interior, the ringing laugh of his daughter Sissie.
The butler looked carelessly down upon him, and, as Mr. Prohack uttered no word, challenged him.
"Yes, sir?"
"Is Mrs. Prohack at home?"
"No, sir." (Positively.)
"Is Miss Prohack at home?"
"No, sir." (More positively.)
"Oh!"
"Will you leave your name, sir?"
"No."
Abruptly Mr. Prohack turned away. He had had black moments in his life. This was the blackest.
Of course he might have walked right in, and said to the butler: "Here's a month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, verging sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed him into a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary precipitancy, she had 'flitted'!
At Claridge's, through giving Monsieur Charles, themaitre d' hôtel, carte blanche in the ordering of his dinner and then only half-eating his dinner, Mr. Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, though he regained ground towards the end by means of champagne and liqueurs. The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who were apparently in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the social fabric had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everything was gay except Mr. Prohack—the sole living being in the place who conformed in face and heart to the historical conception of the British Sunday.
But Mr. Prohack was not now a man,—he was a grievance; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little—not much—to solace him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundred and fifty electric lamps were keeping him in countenance. Then his wandering, enfeebled attention heard music afar off, and he remembered some remark of Sissie's to the effect that Claridge's was the best place for dancing in London on Sunday nights. He would gaze Byronically upon the dance. He signed his bill and mooned towards the ball-room, which was full of radiant couples: a dazzling scene, fit to mark the end of an epoch and of a society.
The next thing was that he had an absurd delusion of seeing Sissie and Charlie locked together amid the couples. He might have conquered this delusion, but it was succeeded by another,—the illusion of seeing Ozzie Morfey and Eve locked together amid the couples.... Yes, they were there, all four of them. At first Mr. Prohack was amazed, as at an unprecedented coincidence. But he perceived that the coincidence was not after all so amazing. They had done what they had to do in the way of settling Eve into the noble mansion, and then they had betaken themselves to the nearest and the best dancing resort for the rest of the evening. Nothing could be more natural.
Mr. Prohack might have done all manner of feats. What he actually did do was to fly like a criminal to the lift and seek his couch.