Mr. Prohack

"Oh! I didn't say anything. I only said I should have been very glad if he could have arranged to sleep at home as usual, and he said he was sorry he couldn't because he was so busy."

"You didn't tell him he was carrying on like an adventurer?"

"Arthur! How could I?"

"But you'd like _me_ to tell him something of the sort. All that I can say, you could say--and that is, enquire in a friendly way what he has done, is doing, and hopes to do."

"But--"

"Yes, my innocent creature. You may well pause." He caressed her, and she tried to continue in unhappiness, but could not. "You pause because there is nothing to say."

"You're his father at any rate," she burst out triumphantly.

"That's not his fault. You ought to have thought of all this over twenty years ago, before Charlie was born, before we were married, before you met me. To become a parent is to accept terrible risks. I'm Charlie's father. What then? Am I to give him orders as to what he must do and what he mustn't? This isn't China and it isn't the eighteenth century.

He owes nothing whatever to me, or to you. If we were starving and he had plenty, he would probably consider it his duty to look after us; but that's the limit of what he owes us. Whereas nothing can put an end to our responsibility towards him. You see, we brought him here. We thought it would be so nice to have children, and so Charlie arrived. He didn't choose his time, and he didn't choose his character, nor his education, nor his chance. If he had his choice you may depend he'd have chosen differently. Do you want me, on the top of all that, to tell him that he must obediently accept something else from us--our code of conduct? It would be mere cheek, and with all my shortcomings I'm incapable of impudence, especially to the young. He was our slave for nearly twenty years. We did what we liked with him; and if Charlie fails now it simply means that we've failed. Besides, how can you be sure that he's carrying on like an adventurer? He may be carrying on like a financial genius.

Perhaps we have brought a giant to earth. We can't believe it of course, because we haven't got enough faith in ourselves, but later on we may be compelled to believe it. Naturally if Charlie crashes after a showy flight, then he won't be a financial genius,--he'll only be an adventurer, and there may he some slight trouble in the law courts,--there usually is. That is where we shall have to come forward and pay for the nice feeling of having children. And, remember, we shan't be in a position to upbraid Charlie. He could silence us with one question, to which we could find no answer: 'Why did you get married, you two?' However, my pet, let us hope for the best. It's not yet a crime to live at great price at the Grand Babylon Hotel. Quite possibly your son has not yet committed any crime, whatever. If he succeeds in making a huge fortune and in keeping it, he will not commit any crime.

Rich men never do. They can't. They never even commit murder. There is no reason why they should. Whatever they do, it is no worse than an idiosyncrasy. Now tell me what our son talked about."

"Well, he didn't talk much. He--he wasn't expecting me."

"Did he ask after me?"

"I told him about you. He asked about the car."

"He didn't ask after me, but he asked after the car. Nothing very original there, is there? Any son would behave like that. He must do better than that if he doesn't mean to end as an adventurer. I must go and see him, and offer him, very respectfully, some advice."

"Arthur, I insist that he shall come here. It is not proper that you should go running after _him_."

"Pooh, my dear! I'm rich enough myself to run after him without being accused of sn.o.bbishness or lion-hunting or anything of that kind."

"Oh! Arthur!" sobbed Eve. "Don't you think you're been funny quite long enough?" She then openly wept.

The singular Mr. Prohack was apparently not in the least moved by his wife's tears. He and she alone in the house were out of bed; there was no chance of their being disturbed. He did not worry about his adventurous son. He did not worry about the possibility of Oswald Morfey having a design to convert his daughter into Mrs. Oswald Morfey. He did not worry about the

Eve's body was as yielding as that of a young girl. To Mr. Prohack, who of course was the dupe of an illusion, it had an absolutely enchanting girlishness. She sobbed and she sobbed, and Mr. Prohack let her sob. He loosed the grip of his arms a little, so that her face, free of his waistcoat, was turned upwards in the direction of the ceiling; and then he very caressingly wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief. He gave an elaborate care to the wiping of her eyes. For some minutes it was a Sisyphean labour, for what he did she immediately undid; but after a time the sobs grew less frequent, and at length they ceased; only her lips trembled at intervals.

Mr. Prohack said ingratiatingly:

"And whose fault is it if I'm funny? Answer, you witch."

"I don't know," Eve murmured tremblingly and not quite articulately.

"It's your fault. Do you know that you gave me the fright of my life to-night, going out without saying where you were going to? Do you know that you put me into such a state that I've been telephoning to police-stations to find out whether there'd been any street accidents happening to a woman of your description? I was so upset that I daren't even go upstairs and call Sissie."

"You said you'd only been back five minutes when I came," Eve observed in a somewhat firmer voice.

"I did," said Mr. Prohack. "But that was neither more nor less than a downright lie. You see I was in such a state that I had to pretend, to both you and myself, that things aren't what they are.... And then, without the slightest warning, you suddenly arrive without a scratch on you. You aren't hurt. You aren't even dead. It's a scandalous shame that a woman should be able, by merely arriving in a taxi, to put a sensible man into such a paroxysm of satisfaction as you put me into a while ago.

It's not right. It's not fair. Then you try to depress me with bluggy stories of your son's horrible opulence, and when you discover you can't depress me you burst into tears and accuse me of being funny. What did you expect me to be? Did you expect me to groan because you aren't lying dead in a mortuary? If I'm funny, you are at liberty to attribute it to hysteria, the hysteria of joy. But I wish you to understand that these extreme revulsions of feeling which you impose on me are very dangerous for a plain man who is undergoing a rest-cure."

Eve raised her arms about Mr. Prohack's neck, lifted herself up by them, and silently kissed him. Then she sank back to her former position.

"I've been a great trial to you lately, haven't I?" she breathed.

"Not more so than usual," he answered. "You know you always abuse your power."

"But I _have_ been queer?"

"Well," judicially, "perhaps you have. Perhaps five per cent or so above your average of queerness."

"Didn't the doctor say what I'd got was traumatic neurasthenia?"

"That or something equally absurd."

"Well, I haven't got it any more. I'm cured. You'll see."

Just then the dining-room clock entered upon its lengthy business of chiming the hour of midnight. And as it faintly chimed Mr. Prohack, supporting his wife, had a surpa.s.sing conviction of the beauty of existence and in particular of his own good fortune--though the matter of his inheritance never once entered his mind. He gazed down at Eve's ingenuous features, and saw in them the fastidious fineness which had caused her to recoil so sensitively from her son's display at the Grand Babylon. Yes, women had a spiritual beauty to which men could not pretend.

"Arthur," said she, "I never told you that you'd forgotten to wind up that clock on Sunday night. It stopped this evening while you were out, and I had to wind it and I only guessed what the time was."

CHAPTER XII

THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS

I

At ten minutes to eleven the next morning Mr. Prohack rushed across the pavement, and sprang head-first into the original Eagle (now duly repaired) with the velocity and agility of a man long accustomed to the fact that seconds are more precious than six-pences and minutes than banknotes. And Carthew slammed the door on him like a conjuror performing the final act of a trick before an audience of three thousand people.

Mr. Prohack was late. He was late on this the first full day of his career as a consciously and scientifically idle man. Carthew knew that his employer was late; and certainly the people in his house knew that he was late. Mr. Prohack's breakfast in bed had been late, which meant that his digestive and reposeful hour of newspaper reading was thrown forward. And then he had actually been kept out of his own bathroom, through the joint fault of Sissie and her mother, who had apparently determined to celebrate Sissie's definite release from the dance-studio, and Mrs. Prohack's astonis.h.i.+ng recovery from traumatic neurasthenia, by a thorough visitation and reorganisation of the house and household.

Those two, re-established in each other's affection, had been holding an inquisition in the bathroom, of all rooms, at the very moment when Mr.

Prohack needed the same, with the consequence that he found the bath empty instead of full, and the geyser not even lighted. Yet they well knew that he had a highly important appointment at the tailor's at ten forty-five, followed by other just as highly important appointments! The worst of it was that he could not take their crime seriously because he was on such intimate and conspiratorial terms with each of them separately. On the previous evening he had exchanged wonderful and rather dangerous confidences with his daughter, and, further on in the night he and her mother had decided that the latter's fantastic excursion to the Grand Babylon Hotel should remain a secret. And Sissie, as much as her mother, had taken advantage of his helplessness in the usual unscrupulous feminine manner. They went so far as to smile quasi-maternally at his boyish busy-ness.

Now no sooner had Carthew slammed the door of the Eagle and got into the driving-seat than a young woman, a perfect stranger to Mr. Prohack, appeared, and through the open window asked in a piteous childlike voice if Mr. Prohack was indeed Mr. Prohack, and, having been informed that this was so, expressed the desire to speak with him. Mr. Prohack was beside himself with annoyance and thwarted energy. Was the entire universe uniting against the execution of his programme?

"I have a most important appointment," said he, raising his hat and achieving politeness by an enormous effort, "and if your business is urgent you'd better get into the car. I'm going to Conduit Street."

She slipped into the car like a snake, and Carthew, beautifully unaware that he had two pa.s.sengers, simultaneously drove off.

If a snake, she was a very slim, blus.h.i.+ng and confused snake,--short, too, for a python. And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young.

Her scales were stylish. And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of terrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothing could thwart. Mr. Prohack might have been alarmed, but fortunately he was getting used to driving in closed cars with young women, and so could keep his nerve. Moreover, he enjoyed these experiences, being a man of simple tastes and not too a.n.a.lytical of good fortune when it came his way.

"It's very good of you to see me like this," said the girl, in the voice of a rapid brook with a pebbly bed. "My name is Winstock, and I've called about the car."

"The car? What car?"