Mr. Prohack

Then Mr. Prohack observed his wife's face crumble to pieces, and she moved aside from him, sat down and began to cry.

"Now what next? What next?" he demanded with impatient amiability, for he was completely at a loss to keep pace with the twistings of her mind.

"Arthur, why did you deceive me about that girl? How could you do it? I hadn't the slightest idea it was M--miss W--instock. I can't make you out sometimes, Arthur--really I can't!"

The fellow had honestly forgotten that he had in fact grossly deceived his wife to the point of planting Mimi Winstock upon her as somebody else. He had been nouris.h.i.+ng imaginary and absurd grievances against Eve for many hours, but her grievance against himself was genuine enough and large enough. No wonder she could not make him out. He could not make himself out. His conscience awoke within him and became exceedingly unpleasant. But being a bad man he laughed somewhat coa.r.s.ely.

"Oh!" he said. "That was only a bit of a joke. But how did you find out, you silly child?"

"Ozzie saw her yesterday. He knew her. You can't imagine how awkward it was. Naturally I had to laugh it off. But I cried half the night."

"But why? What did it matter? Ozzie's one of the family. The girl's not at all a bad sort, and I did it for her sake."

Eve dried her eyes and looked up at him reproachfully with wet cheeks.

"When I think," said she, "that that girl might so easily have killed me in that accident! And it would have been all her fault. And then where would you have been without me? Where _would_ you have been? You'd never have got over it. Never, never! You simply don't know what you'd be if you hadn't got me to look after you! And you bring her into the house under a false name, and you call it a joke! No, Arthur. Frankly I couldn't have believed it of you."

Mr. Prohack was affected. He was not merely dazzled by the new light which she was shedding on things,--he was emotionally moved.... Would Lady Ma.s.sulam be capable of such an att.i.tude as Eve's in such a situation? The woman was astounding. She was more romantic than any creature in any bungalow of romantic Frinton. She beat him. She rent his heart. So he said:

"Well, my beloved infant, if it's any use to you I'm prepared to admit once for all that I was an a.s.s. We'll never have the wretched Mimi in the house again. I'll give the word to Charlie."

"Oh, not at all!" she murmured, smiling sadly. "I've got over it. And you must think of my dignity. How ridiculous it would be of me to make a fuss about her being here! Now, wouldn't it? But I'm glad I've told you.

I didn't mean to, really. I meant never to say a word. But the fact is I can't keep anything from you."

She began to cry again, but differently. He soothed her, as none but he could, thinking exultantly: "What a power I have over this chit!" They were perfectly happy. They lunched alone together, talking exclusively for the benefit of Eve's majestic butler. And Mr. Prohack, with that many-sidedness that marked his strange regrettable mind, said to himself at intervals: "Nevertheless she's still hiding from me her disgusting scheme for a big reception. And she knows jolly well I shall hate it."

CHAPTER XIX

THE RECEPTION

The reception pleased Mr. Prohack as a spectacle, and it cost him almost no trouble. He announced his decision that it must cost him no trouble, and everybody in the house, and a few people outside it, took him at his word--which did not wholly gratify him. Indeed the family and its connections seemed to be conspiring to give him a life of ease.

Responsibilities were lifted from him. He did not even miss his secretary. Sissie, who returned home--by a curious coincidence--on the very day that Mimi Winstock was transferred to Charlie's service in the Grand Babylon, performed what she called 'secretarial stunts' for her father as and when required. On the afternoon of the reception, which was timed to begin at 9 p.m., he had an attack of fright, but, by a process well known to public executants, it pa.s.sed off long before it could develop into stage-fright; and he was quite at ease at 9 p.m.

The first arrivals came at nine thirty. He stood by Eve and greeted them; and he had greeted about twenty individuals when he yawned (for a good reason) and Eve said to him:

"You needn't stay here, you know. Go and amuse yourself." (This suggestion followed the advent of Lady Ma.s.sulam.)

He didn't stay. Ozzie Morfey and Sissie supplanted him. At a quarter to eleven he was in the glazed conservatory built over the monumental portico, with Sir Paul Spinner. He could see down into the Square, which was filled with the splendid and numerous automobiles incident to his wife's reception. Guests--and not the least important among them--were still arriving. Cars rolled up to the portico, gorgeous women and plain men jumped out on to the red cloth, of which he could just see the extremity near the kerb, and vanished under him, and the cars hid themselves away in the depths of the Square. Looking within his home he admired the vista of brilliantly illuminated rooms, full of gilt chairs, priceless furniture, and extremely courageous toilettes. For, as the reception was 'to meet the Committee of the League

(Ozzie had placed many copies of the explanatory pamphlet on various tables), artists of all kinds and degrees abounded, and the bourgeois world (which chiefly owned the automobiles) thought proper to be sartorially as improper as fas.h.i.+on would allow; and fas.h.i.+on allowed quite a lot. The affair might have been described as a study in shoulder-blades. It was a very great show, and Mr. Prohack appreciated all of it, the women, the men, the lionesses, the lions, the kaleidoscope of them, the lights, the reflections in the mirrors and in the waxed floors, the discreetly hidden music, the grandiose buffet, the efficient valetry. He soon got used to not recognising, and not being recognised by, the visitors to his own house. True, he could not conceive that the affair would serve any purpose but one,--namely the purpose of affording innocent and expensive pleasure to his wife.

"You've hit on a pretty good sort of a place here," grunted Sir Paul Spinner, whose waistcoat b.u.t.tons were surpa.s.sed in splendour only by his carbuncles.

"Well," said Mr. Prohack, "to me, living here is rather like being on the stage all the time. It's not real."

"What the deuce do you mean, it's not real? There aren't twenty houses in London with a finer collection of genuine bibelots than you have here."

"Yes, but they aren't mine, and I didn't choose them or arrange them."

"What does that matter? You can look at them and enjoy the sight of them. n.o.body can do more."

"Paul, you're talking neo-conventional nonsense again. Have you ever in your career as a city man stood outside a money-changer's and looked at the fine collection of genuine banknotes in the window? Supposing I told you that you could look at them and enjoy the sight of them, and n.o.body could do more?... No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got to own it. And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of all the Arts." He gave another enormous yawn. "Excuse my yawning, Paul, but this house is a perfect Inferno for me. The church of St. Nicodemus is hard by, and the church of St. Nicodemus has a striking clock, and the clock strikes all the hours and all the quarters on a half cracked bell or two bells. If I am asleep every hour wakes me up, and most of the quarters. The clock strikes not only the hours and the quarters but me. I regulate my life by that clock. If I'm beginning to repose at ten minutes to the hour, I say to myself that I must wait till the hour before really beginning, and I do wait. It is killing me, and n.o.body can see that it is killing me. The clock annoys some individuals a little occasionally; they curse, and then go to sleep and stay asleep. For them the clock is a nuisance; but for me it's an a.s.sa.s.sination. However, I can't make too much fuss. Several thousands of people must live within sound of the St. Nicodemus clock; yet the rector has not been murdered nor the church razed to the ground. Hence the clock doesn't really upset many people. And there are hundreds of such infernal clocks in London, and they all survive. It follows therefore that I am peculiar. n.o.body has a right to be peculiar. Hence I do not complain. I suffer. I've tried stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, and stuffing the windows of my bedroom with eiderdowns. No use. I've tried veronal. No use either. The only remedy would be for me to give the house up. Which would he absurd. My wife soothes me and says that of course I shall get used to the clock. I shall never get used to it.

Lately she has ceased even to mention the clock. My daughter thinks I am becoming a grumbler in my latter years. My son smiles indifferently. I admit that my son's secretary is more sympathetic. Like most people who are both idle and short of sleep, I usually look very well, spry and wideawake. My friends remark on my healthy appearance. You did. The popular mind cannot conceive that I am merely helplessly waiting for death to put me out of my misery; but so it is. There must be quite a few others in the same fix as me in London, dying because rectors and other clergymen and officials insist on telling them the time all through the night. But they suffer in silence as I do. As I do, they see the uselessness of a fuss."

"You _will_ get used to it, Arthur," said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack's disquisition. "You're in a nervous state and your judgment's warped. Now, I never even heard your famous clock strike ten."

"No, you wouldn't, Paul! And my judgment's warped, is it?" There was irritation in Mr. Prohack's voice. He took out his watch. "In sixty or seventy seconds you shall hear that clock strike eleven, and you shall give me your honest views about it. And you shall apologise to me."

Sir Paul obediently and sympathetically listened, while the murmur of the glowing reception and the low beat of music continued within.

"You tell me when it starts to strike," said he.

"You won't want any telling," said Mr. Prohack, who knew too well the riving, rending, smas.h.i.+ng sound of the terrible bells.

"It's a pretty long seventy seconds," observed Sir Paul.

"My watch must be fast," said Mr. Prohack, perturbed.

But at eighteen minutes past eleven the clock had audibly struck neither the hour nor the quarter. Sir Paul was a man of tact. He said simply:

"I should like a drink, dear old boy."

"_The clock's not striking_," said Mr. Prohack, with solemn joy, as the wonderful truth presented itself to him. "Either it's stopped, or they've cut off the striking attachment." And to one of the maids on the landing he said as they pa.s.sed towards the buffet: "Run out and see what time it is by the church clock, and come back and tell me, will you?" A few minutes later he was informed that the church clock showed half-past eleven. The clock therefore was still going but had ceased to strike.

Mr. Prohack at once drank two gla.s.ses of champagne at the buffet, while Sir Paul had the customary whiskey.

"I say, old thing, I say!" Sir Paul protested.

"_I shall sleep!_" said Mr. Prohack in a loud, gay, triumphant voice. He was a new man.

The reception now seemed to him far more superb than ever. It was almost at its apogee. All the gilt chairs were occupied; all the couches and fauteuils of the room were occupied, and certain delicious toilettes were even spread on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors. On every hand could be heard artistic discussions, serious and informed and yet lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional quality of the best sculpture, and if not that then the influence on British life of the fox-trot, and if not that then the prospects of bringing modern poets home to the largest public by means of the board schools, and if not that then the evil effects of the twin great London inst.i.tutions for teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian Ballet. And always there ran like a flame through the conversations the hot breath of a pa.s.sionate intention to make Britain artistic in the eyes of the civilised world.

What especially pleased Mr. Prohack about the whole affair, as he moved to and fro seeking society now instead of avoiding it, was the perfect futility of the affair, save as it affected Eve's reputation. He perceived the beauty of costly futility, and he was struck again, when from afar he observed his wife's conquering mien, by the fact that the reception did not exist for the League, but the League for the reception. The reception was a real and a resplendent thing; n.o.body could deny it. The League was a fog of gush. The League would be dear at twopence half-penny. The reception was cheap if it stood him in five hundred pounds. Eve was an infant; Eve was pleased with gewgaws; but Eve had found herself and he was well content to pay five hundred pounds for the look on her ingenuous face.

"And nothing of this would have happened," he thought, impressed by the wonders of life, "if in a foolish impulse of generosity I hadn't once lent a hundred quid to that chap Angmering."

He descried Lady Ma.s.sulam in converse with a tall, stout and magnificently dressed gentleman, who bowed deeply and departed as Mr.

Prohack approached.

"Who is your fat friend?" said Mr. Prohack.

"He's from _The Daily Picture_.... But isn't this rather a strange way of greeting a guest after so long a separation? Do you know that I'm in your house and you haven't shaken hands with me?"

There was a note of intimacy and of challenge in Lady Ma.s.sulam's demeanour that pleased Mr. Prohack immensely, and caused him to see that the romance of Frinton was neither fact.i.tious nor at an end. He felt pleasantly, and even thrillingly, that they had something between them.