Mr. Prohack

On every hand the horizon was dark, and the glitter of seventeen thousand pounds per annum did not lighten it by the illuminative power of a single candle.... But his feverish hand gratefully remembered Mimi's kiss.

VI

Nevertheless, as the day waxed and began to wane, it was obvious even to Mr. Prohack that the domestic climate grew sunnier and more bracing. A weight seemed to have been lifted from the hearts of all Mr. Prohack's entourage. The theft of the twenty thousand pound necklace was a grave event, but it could not impair the beauty of the great fact that the church-clock had ceased to strike, and that therefore the master would be able to sleep. The shadow of a menacing calamity had pa.s.sed, and everybody's spirits, except Mr. Prohack's, reacted to the news; Machin, restored to duty, was gaiety itself; but Mr. Prohack, unresponsive, kept on absurdly questioning his soul and the universe: "What am I getting out of life? Can it be true that I am incapable of arranging my existence in such a manner that the worm shall not feed so gluttonously on my damask cheek?"

Eve's att.i.tude to him altered. In view of the persistent silence of the clock she had to admit to herself that her husband was still a long way off insanity, and she was ashamed of her suspicion and did all that she could to make compensation to him, while imitating his discreet example and not referring even distantly to the clock. When she mentioned the necklace, suggesting a direct appeal to Scotland Yard, and he discountenanced the scheme, she at once in the most charming way accepted his verdict and praised his superior wisdom. When he placed before her the invitation from Mr. Softly Bishop, she beautifully offered to disentangle him from it if he should so desire. When she told him that she had been asked to preside over the Social Amenities Committee of the League of all the Arts, and he advised her not to bind herself by taking any official position, and especially one which would force her into contact with a pack of self-seeking sn.o.bbish women, she beamed acquiescence and heartily concurred with him about the pack of women. In fact the afternoon became one of those afternoons on which every caprice was permitted to Mr. Prohack and he could do no wrong. But the worm still fed on his cheek.

Before tea he enjoyed a sleep, without having to time his repose so as to avoid being wakened by the clock. And then tea for one was served with full pomp in his study. This meant either that his tireless women were out, or that Eve had judged it prudent to indulge him in a solitary tea; and, after the hurried thick-cupped teas at the Treasury, he certainly did not dislike a leisurely tea replete with every luxury proper to the repast. He ate, drank, and read odd things in odd corners of _The Times_, and at last he smoked.

He was on the edge of felicity in his miserableness when his indefatigable women entered, all smiles. They had indeed been out, and they were still arrayed for the street. On by one they removed or cast aside such things as gloves, hats, coats, bags, until the study began to bear some resemblance to a boudoir. Mr. Prohack, though cheerfully grumbling at this, really liked it, for he was of those who think that nothing furnishes a room so well as a woman's hat, provided it be not permanently established.

Sissie even took off one shoe, on the plea that it hurt her, and there the trifling article lay, fragile, gleaming and absurd. Mr. Prohack appreciated it even more than the hats. He understood, perhaps better than ever before, that though he had a vast pa.s.sion for his wife, there was enough emotion left in him to nourish an affection almost equally vast for his daughter. She was a proud piece, was that girl, and he was intensely proud of her. Nor did a realistic estimate of her faults of character seem in the least to diminish his pride in her. She

"You look much better, Arthur," said Eve, artfully preparing.

"I am," said he. "I've had a bath."

"Had you given up baths, dad?" asked Sissie, with a curl of the lips.

"No! But I mean I've had two baths. One in water and the other in resignation."

"How dull!"

"I've been thinking about the arrangements for the wedding," Eve started in a new, falsely careless tone, ignoring the badinage between her husband and daughter, which she always privately regarded as tedious.

There it was! They had come to worry him about the wedding. He had not recovered from one social martyrdom before they were plotting to push him into another. They were implacable, insatiable, were his women. He got up and walked about.

"Now, dad," Sissie addressed him. "Don't pretend you aren't interested."

And then she burst into the most extraordinary laughter--laughter that bordered on the hysterical--and twirled herself round on the shod foot.

Her behaviour offended Eve.

"Of course if you're going on like that, Sissie, I warn you I shall give it all up. After all, it won't be my wedding."

Sissie clasped her mother's neck.

"Don't be foolish, you silly old mater. It's a wedding, not a funeral."

"Well, what about it?" asked Mr. Prohack, sniffing with pleasure the new atmosphere created in his magnificent study by these feminine contacts.

"Do you think we'd better have the wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square, or at St. Nicodemus's?"

At the name of Nicodemus, Mr. Prohack started, as it were guiltily.

"Because," Eve continued, "we can have it at either place. You see Ozzie lives in one parish and Sissie in the other. St. Nicodemus has been getting rather fas.h.i.+onable lately, I'm told."

"What saith the bride?"

"Oh, don't ask me!" answered Sissie lightly. "I'm prepared for anything.

It's mother's affair, not mine, in spite of what she says. And n.o.body shall be able to say after I'm married that I wasn't a dutiful daughter.

I should love St. George's and I should love St. Nicodemus's too." And then she exploded again into disconcerting laughter, and the fit lasted longer than the first one.

Eve protested again and Sissie made peace again.

"St. Nicodemus would be more original," said Eve.

"Not so original as you," said Mr. Prohack.

Sissie choked on a lace handkerchief. St. Nicodemus was selected for the august rite. Similar phenomena occurred when Eve introduced the point whether the reception should be at Manchester Square or at Claridge's Hotel. And when Eve suggested that it might be well to enliven the mournfulness of a wedding with an orchestra and dancing, Sissie leaped up and seizing her father's hand whizzed him dangerously round the room to a tuna of her own singing. The girl's mere physical force amazed him The dance was brought to a conclusion by the overturning of an occasional table and a Tanagra figure. Whereupon Sissie laughed more loudly and hysterically than ever.

Mr. Prohack deemed that masculine tact should be applied. He soothed the outraged mother and tranquillised the ecstatic daughter, and then in a matter-of-fact voice asked: "And what about the date? Do let's get it over."

"We must consult Ozzie," said the pacified mamma.

Off went Sissie again into shrieks.

"You needn't," she spluttered. "It's not Ozzie's wedding. It's mine. You fix your own date, dearest, and leave Ozzie to me, Ozzie's only function at my wedding is to be indispensable." And still laughing in the most crude and shocking way she ran on her uneven feet out of the room, leaving the shoe behind on the hearth-rug to prove that she really existed and was not a hallucination.

"I can't make out what's the matter with that girl," said Eve.

"The sooner she's married the better," said Mr. Prohack, thoroughly reconciled now to the tedium of the ceremonies.

"I daresay you're right. But upon my word I don't know what girls are coming to," said Eve.

"n.o.body ever did know that," said Mr. Prohack easily, though he also was far from easy in his mind about the bridal symptoms.

VII

"Can Charlie speak to you for a minute?" The voice was Eve's, diplomatic, apologetic. Her smiling and yet serious face, peeping in through the bedroom door, seemed to say: "I know we're asking a great favour and that your life is hard."

"All right," said Mr. Prohack, as a gracious, long-suffering autocrat, without moving his eyes from the book he was reading.

He had gone to bed. He had of late got into the habit of going to bed.

He would go to bed on the slightest excuse, and would justify himself by pointing out that Voltaire used to do the same. He was capable of going to bed several times a day. It was early evening. The bed, though hired for a year only, was of extreme comfortableness. The light over his head was in exactly the right place. The room was warm. The book, by a Roman Emperor popularly known as Marcus Aurelius, counted among the world's masterpieces. It was designed to suit the case of Mr. Prohack, for its message was to the effect that happiness and content are commodities which can be manufactured only in the mind, from the mind's own ingredients, and that if the mind works properly no external phenomena can prevent the manufacture of the said commodities. In short, everything was calculated to secure Mr. Prohack's felicity in that moment. But he would not have it. He said to himself: "This book is all very fine, immortal, supreme, and so on. Only it simply isn't true.

Human nature won't work the way this book says it ought to work; and what's more the author was obviously afraid of life, he was never really alive and he was never happy. Finally the tendency of the book is mischievously anti-social." Thus did Mr. Prohack seek to destroy a reputation of many centuries and to deny opinions which he himself had been expressing for many years.

"I don't want to live wholly in myself," said Mr. Prohack. "I want to live a great deal in other people. If you do that you may be infernally miserable but at least you aren't dull. Marcus Aurelius was more like a potato than I should care to be."

And he shoved the book under the pillow, turned half-over from his side to the flat of his back, and prepared with gusto for the evil which Charlie would surely bring. And indeed one glance at Charlie's preoccupied features confirmed his prevision.

"You're in trouble, my lad," said he.

"I am," said Charlie.

"And the hour has struck when you want your effete father's help," Mr.

Prohack smiled benevolently.

"Put it like that," said Charlie amiably, taking a chair and smoothing out his trousers.