Mr. Prohack

"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.

n.o.body 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 t.i.tbit 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sion. 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-a.n.a.lyst

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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.s 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.

V

"Had an accident to your eye-gla.s.s?" 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-gla.s.s, 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-gla.s.s 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-gla.s.s."

"You must be considerably incommoded."

"No. The purpose of my eye-gla.s.s 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 a.s.s.

"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."