Mr. Prohack

"And so shall mine be," said Mr. Prohack.

III

When at length Mr. Prohack escorted Dr. Veiga out into the hall he saw Sissie kissing Eliza Brating with much affection on the front-door step.

They made an elegant group for a moment and then Eliza Brating departed hurriedly, disappearing across the street behind Dr. Veiga's attendant car.

"Now I'll just repeat once more to both of you," resumed Dr. Veiga, embracing father and daughter in one shrewd glance. "You've nothing to worry about upstairs." He indicated the boudoir by a movement of his somewhat tousled head. "But you've got just a little to worry about here." And he indicated Mr. Prohack.

"I know," said Sissie with a.s.surance. "But I shall look after him, doctor. You can rely on me. I understand--both cases."

"Well, there's one good thing," said Sissie, following her father into the dining-room after the doctor had gone. "I've done with that foolish Eliza. I knew it couldn't last and it hasn't. Unless I'm there all the time to keep my eye on everything--of course it all goes to pieces. That girl is the biggest noodle...!"

"But haven't I just seen you and her joined in the deepest affection?"

"Naturally I had to kiss her. But I've finished with her. And what's more, she knows what I think of her. She never liked me."

"Sissie," said Mr. Prohack, "you shock me." And indeed he was genuinely shocked, for he had always thought that Sissie was different from other girls; that she had all the feminine qualities without any of the feminine defects. Yes, he had thought that she might develop into a creature more perfect even than Marian. And here she was talking and behaving exactly as men at the club would relate of their own conventional women.

Sissie gazed firmly at her father, as it were half in pity and half in disdain. Did the innocent fellow not then understand the nature of women? Or was he too sentimental to admit it, too romantic to be a realist?

"Would you believe," said Sissie, "that although I was there last night and told her exactly what to do, she's had a quarrel this morning with the landlord of the studio? Well, she has. You know the A.R.A. on the first floor has been making a lot of silly complaints about the noise--music and so on--every night. And some other people have complained. _I_ could have talked the landlord round in ten minutes!

Eliza doesn't merely not talk him round,--she quarrels with him! Of course it's all up. And as if that wasn't enough, a County Council inspector has been round asking about a music and dancing licence. We shall either have to give up business altogether or else move somewhere else. Eliza says she knows of another studio. Well, I shall write her to-night and tell her she can have my share of the fittings and furniture and go where she likes, but I shan't go with her. And if she never liked me I can honestly say I never liked her. And I don't want to run a dancing studio any more, either. Why should I, after all? We _were_ the new poor. Now we're the new rich. Well, we may as well _be_ the new rich."

Mr. Prohack was now still more shocked. Nay, he was almost frightened.

And yet he wasn't either shocked or frightened, in the centre of his soul. He was rather triumphant,--not about his daughter with the feet of clay, but about himself.

"But I shan't give up teaching dancing entirely," said Sissie.

"No?" He wondered what would come next.

"No! I shall teach you."

"Indeed you won't!" He instinctively recoiled.

"Yes, I shall. I promised the doctor he could rely on me. You'll buy a gramophone, and we'll have the carpet up in the drawing-room. Oh! You startled deer, do you want to run back into the depths of the forest?...

Father, you are the funniest father that ever was." She marched to him and put her hand on his shoulder and just twitched his beard. "I can look after you quite as well as mother can. We're pals, aren't we?"

"Yes. Like the tiger and the lamb. You've got hold of my silky fleece already."

IV

Mr. Prohack sat in the dining-room alone. The room was now heated by an electric radiator which Eve had just bought for the sake of economy. But her economy was the economy of the rich, for the amount of expensive current consumed by that radiator was prodigious, while the saving it effected in labour, cleanliness and atmospheric purity could certainly not have been measured without a scientific instrument adapted to the infinitely little. (Still, Machin admired and loved it.) Mr. Prohack perceived that all four bars of it were brightly incandescent, whereas three bars would have been ample to keep the room warm. He ought to get up and turn a bar off.... He had a hundred preoccupations. His daughter had cla.s.sed him with the new rich. He resented the description, but could he honestly reject it? All his recent troubles sprang from the new riches. If he had not inherited from a profiteer he would a.s.suredly have been at his office in the Treasury, earning an honest living, at that very moment. For

Yet he was uplifted, happy. Not because of his wealthy ease. No! A week or two ago he had only to think of his fortune to feel uplifted and happy. But now!

No! He was uplifted and happy now for the simple reason that he had caught the romance of the doctor's idea of taking idleness seriously and practising it as a profession. If circ.u.mstances forced him to be idle, he would be idle in the grand manner. He would do everything that the doctor had suggested, and more. (The doctor saw life like a poet. He might be a cross between a comedian and a mountebank, but he was a great fellow.) Every species of idleness should have its appointed hour. In the pursuit of idleness he would become the busiest man in London. A definite programme would be necessary. Strict routine would be necessary. No more loafing about! He hankered after routine as the drunkard after alcohol. Routine was what he had been missing. The absence of routine, and naught else, was r.e.t.a.r.ding his recovery. (Yes, he knew in his heart that what they all said was true,--he was not getting better.) His own daughter had taught him wisdom. Inevitably, unavoidably, he was the new rich. Well, he would be the new rich thoroughly. No other aim was logical.... Let the radiator burn!

CHAPTER XI

NEURASTHENIA CURED

I

Three days later Mr. Prohack came home late with his daughter in the subst.i.tuted car. He had accompanied Sissie to Putney for the final disposition of the affairs of the dance-studio, and had witnessed her blighting politeness to Eliza Brating and Eliza Brating's blighting politeness to her. The last kiss between these two young women would have desolated the heart of any man whose faith in human nature was less strong than Mr. Prohack's. "I trust that the excellent Eliza is not disfigured for life," he had observed calmly in the automobile. "What are you talking about, father?" Sissie had exclaimed, suspicious. "I was afraid her lips might be scorched. You feel no pain yourself, my child, I hope?" He made the sound of a kiss. After this there was no more conversation in the car during the journey. Arrived home, Sissie said nonchalantly that she was going to bed.

"Burn my lips first," Mr. Prohack implored.

"Father!" said she, having kissed him. "You are simply terrible."

"I am a child," he replied. "And you are my grandmother."

"You wait till I give you your next dancing-lesson," Sissie retorted, turning and threatening him from the stairs. "It won't be as mild as this afternoon's."

He smiled, giving an imitation of the sphinx. He was happy enough as mortals go. His wife was perhaps a little better. And he was gradually launching himself into an industrious career of idleness. Also, he had broken the ice,--the ice, that is to say, of tuition in dancing. Not a word had been spoken abroad in the house about the first dancing-lesson.

He had had it while Mrs. Prohack was, in theory at least, paying calls; at any rate she had set forth in the car. Mr. Prohack and Sissie had rolled up the drawing-room carpet and moved the furniture themselves.

Mr. Prohack had unpacked the gramophone in person. They had locked the drawing-room door. At the end of the lesson they had relaid the carpet and replaced the furniture and enclosed the gramophone and unlocked the door, and Mr. Prohack had issued from the drawing-room like a criminal.

The thought in his mind had been that he was no end of a dog and of a brave dog at that. Then he sneered at himself for thinking such a foolish thought. After all, what was there in learning to dance? But the sneer was misplaced. His original notion that he had done something courageous and wonderful was just a notion.

The lesson had favoured the new nascent intimacy with his daughter.

Evidently she was a born teacher as well as a born dancer. He perceived in two minutes how marvellous her feet were. She guided him with pressures light as a feather. She allowed herself to be guided with an intuitive responsiveness that had to be felt to be believed. Her exhortations were delicious, her reprimands exquisite, her patience was infinite. Further, she said that he had what she called "natural rhythm," and would learn easily and satisfactorily. Best of all, he had been immediately aware of the physical benefit of the exercise. The household was supposed to know naught of the affair, but the kitchen knew a good deal about it somehow; the kitchen was pleasantly and rather condescendingly excited, and a little censorious, for the reason that n.o.body in the kitchen had ever before lived in a house the master of which being a parent of adult children took surrept.i.tious lessons in dancing; the thing was unprecedented, and therefore of course intrinsically reprehensible. Mr. Prohack guessed the att.i.tude of the kitchen, and had met Machin's respectful glance with a self-conscious eye.

He now bolted the front-door and went upstairs extinguis.h.i.+ng the lights after him. Eve had told her husband and child that she should go to bed early. He meant to have a frolicsome, teasing chat with her, for the doctor had laid it down that light conversation would a.s.sist the cure of traumatic neurasthenia. She would not be asleep, and even if she were asleep she would be glad to awaken, because she admired his style of gossip when both of them were in the vein for it. He would describe for her the evening at the studio humorously, in such a fas.h.i.+on as to confirm her in her righteous belief that the misguided Sissie had seen the maternal wisdom and quitted dance-studios for ever.

The lamps were out in the bedroom. She slept. He switched on a light, but her bed was empty; it had not been occupied!

"Marian!" he called in a low voice, thinking that she might be in the boudoir.

And if she was in the boudoir she must be reclining in the dark there.

He ascertained that she was not in the boudoir. Then he visited both the drawing-room and the dining-room. No Marian anywhere! He stood a moment in the hall and was in a mind to ring for Machin--he could see from a vague illumination at the entrance to the bas.e.m.e.nt steps that the kitchen was still inhabited--but just then all the servants came upwards on the way to the attics, and at the strange spectacle of their dancing master in the hall they all grew constrained and either coughed or hurried as though they ought not to be caught in the act of retiring to bed.

Mr. Prohack, as it were, threw a la.s.so over Machin, who was the last of the procession.

"Where is your mistress, Machin?" He tried to be matter-of-fact, but something unusual in his tone apparently started her.

"She's gone to bed, sir. She told me to put her hot-water bag in the bed early."

"Oh! Thanks! Good-night."

"Good-night, sir."

He could not persuade himself to call an alarm. He could not even inform Machin that she was mistaken, for to do so would have been equivalent to calling an alarm. Hesitating and inactive he allowed the black-and-white damsels and the blue cook to disappear. Nor would he disturb Sissie--yet. He had first to get used to the singular idea that his wife had vanished from home. Could this vanis.h.i.+ng be one of the effects of traumatic neurasthenia? He hurried about and searched all the rooms again, looking with absurd carefulness, as if his wife were an insignificant object that might have dropped unperceived under a chair or behind a couch.