"I ought to have thought of all that before," he said to himself. "And if I had I should have bought houses, something for her to look at and touch. And even then she would have suggested that if I hadn't been a coward I could have done better than houses. She would have found in The Times every day instances of companies paying twenty and thirty per cent ... No! It would have been impossible for me to invest the money without losing her esteem for me as a man of business. I wish to heaven I hadn't got any money. So here goes!"

And he burst with assumed confidence into the bedroom. And simultaneously, to intensify his unease, the notion that profiteering was profiteering, whether in war or in peace, and the notion that F.F. was a man of lofty altruistic ideals, surged through his distracted mind.

Eve was lying on the bed. She looked very small on the bed, smaller than usual. At the sound of the door opening she said, without moving her head—he could not see her face from the door:

"Is that you, Arthur?"

"Yes, what's the matter?"

"Just put my cloak over my feet, will you?"

He came forward and took the cloak off a chair.

"What's the matter?" he repeated, arranging the cloak.

"I'm not hurt, dearest, I assure you I'm not—not at all." She was speaking in a faint, weak voice, like a little child's.

"Then you've had an accident?"

She glanced up at him sideways, timidly, compassionately, and nodded.

"You mustn't be upset. I told Machin to go on with her work and not to say anything to you about it. I preferred to tell you myself. I know how sensitive you are where I'm concerned."

Mr. Prohack had to adjust his thoughts, somewhat violently, to the new situation, and he made no reply; but he was very angry about the mere existence of motor-cars. He felt that he had always had a prejudice against motor-cars, and that the prejudice was not a prejudice because it was well-founded.

"Darling, don't look so stern. It wasn't Carthew's fault. Another car ran into us. I told Carthew to drive in the Park, and we went right round the Park in about five minutes. So as I felt sure you'd be a long time with that fat man, I had the idea of running down to Putney—to see Sissie." Eve laughed nervously. "I thought I might possibly bring her home with me.... After the accident Carthew put me into a taxi and I came back. Of course he had to stay to look after the car. And then you weren't here when I arrived! Where are you going, dearest?"

"I'm going to telephone for the doctor, of course," said Mr. Prohack quietly, but very irritably.

"Oh, darling! I've sent for the doctor. He wasn't in, they said, but they said he'd be back quite soon and then he'd come at once. I don't really need the doctor. I only sent for him because I knew you'd be so frightfully angry if I didn't."

Mr. Prohack had returned to the bed. He took his wife's hand.

"Feel my pulse. It's all right, isn't it?"

"I can't feel it at all."

"Oh, Arthur, you never could! I can feel your hand trembling, that's what I can feel. Now please don't be upset, Arthur."

"I suppose the car's smashed?"

She nodded:

"It's a bit broken."

"Where was it?"

"It was just on the other side of Putney Bridge, on the tramlines there."

"Carthew wasn't hurt?"

"Oh, no! Carthew was simply splendid."

"How did it happen, exactly?"

"Oh, Arthur, you with your 'exactlys'! Don't ask me. I'm too tired. Besides, I didn't see it. My eyes were shut" She closed her eyes.

Suddenly she sat up and put her hand on his shoulder, in a sort of appeal, vaguely smiling. He tried to smile, but could not. Then her hand dropped. A totally bewildered expression veiled the anxious kindness in her eyes. The blood left her face until her cheeks were nearly as white as the embroidered cloth on the night-tabla. Her eyes closed. She fell back. She had fainted. She was just as if dead. Her hand was as cold as the hand of a corpse.

Such was Mr. Prohack's vast experience of life that he had not the least idea what to do in this crisis. But he tremendously regretted that Angmering, Bishop, and the inventor of the motor-car had ever been born. He rushed out on to the landing and loudly shouted: "Machin! Machin! Ring up that d——d doctor again, and if he can't come ring up Dr. Plott at once."

"Yes, sir. Yes, sir."

He rushed back into the bedroom, discovered Eve's smelling-salts, and held them to her nose. Already the blood was mounting again.

"Well, she's not dead, anyway!" he said to himself grimly.

He could see the blood gently mounting, mounting. It was a wonderful, a mysterious and a reassuring sight.

"I don't care so long as she isn't injured internally," he said to himself.

Eve opened her eyes in a dazed look. Then she grinned as if apologetically. Then she cried copiously.

Mr. Prohack heard a car outside. It was Dr. Veiga's. The mere sound of Dr. Veiga's car soothed Mr. Prohack, accused him of losing his head, and made a man of him.

Dr. Veiga entered the bedroom in exactly the same style as on his first visit to Mr. Prohack himself. He had heard the nature of the case from Machin on his way upstairs. He listened to Mr. Prohack, who spoke, in the most deceitful way, as if he had been through scores of such affairs.

"Exactly," said Dr. Veiga, examining Eve summarily. "She sat up. The blood naturally left her head, and she fainted. Fainting is nothing but a withdrawing of blood from the head. Will you ring for that servant of yours, please?"

"I'm positive I'm quite all right, Doctor," Eve murmured.

"Will you kindly not talk," said he. "If you're so positive you're all right, why did you send for me? Did you walk upstairs? Then your legs aren't broken, at least not seriously." He laughed softly.

But shortly afterwards, when Mr. Prohack, admirably dissembling his purposes, crept with dignity out of the room, Dr. Veiga followed him, and shut the door, leaving Machin busy within.

"I don't think that there is any internal lesion," said Dr. Veiga, with seriousness. "But I will not yet state absolutely. She has had a very severe shock and her nerves are considerably jarred."

"But it's nothing physical?"

"My dear sir, of course it's physical. Do you conceive the nerves are not purely physical organs? I can't conceive them as anything but physical organs. Can you?"

Mr. Prohack felt schoolboyish.

"It's you that she's upset about, though. Did you notice she motioned me to give you some of the brandy she was taking? Very sweet of her, was it not?... What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to fetch my daughter."

"Excellent. But have something before you go. You may not know it, but you have been using up nervous tissue, which has to be replaced."

As he was driving down to Putney in a taxi, Mr. Prohack certainly did feel very tired. But he was not so tired as not to insist on helping the engine of the taxi. He pushed the taxi forward with all his might all the way to Putney. He pushed it till his arms ached, though his hands were in his pockets. The distance to Putney had incomprehensibly stretched to nine hundred and ninety-nine miles.

He found Sissie in the studio giving a private lesson to a middle-aged gentleman who ought, Mr. Prohack considered, to have been thinking of his latter end rather than of dancing. He broke up the lesson very abruptly.

"Your mother has had a motor accident. You must come at once."

Sissie came.

"Then it must have been about here," said she, as the taxi approached Putney Bridge on the return journey.

So it must. He certainly had not thought of the locus of the accident. He had merely pictured it, in his own mind, according to his own frightened fancy. Yes, it must have been just about there. And yet there was no sign of it in the roadway. Carthew must have had the wounded Eagle removed. Mr. Prohack sat stern and silent. A wondrous woman, his wife! Absurd, possibly, about such matters as investments; but an angel! Her self-forgetfulness, her absorption in him,—staggering! The accident was but one more proof of it. He was greatly alarmed about her, for the doctor had answered for nothing. He seemed to have a thousand worries. He had been worried all his life, but the worries that had formed themselves in a trail to the inheritance were worse worries than the old simple ones. No longer did the thought of the inheritance brighten his mind. He somehow desired to go back to former days. Glancing askance at Sissie, he saw that she too was stern. He resumed the hard pushing of the taxi. It was not quite so hard as before, because he knew that Sissie also was pushing her full share.



CHAPTER X

THE THEORY OF IDLENESS

I

Within the next seven days Mr. Prohack had reason to lose confidence in himself as an expert in human nature. "After all," he reflected, "I must have been a very simple-minded man to have thought that I thoroughly understood another human being. Every human being is infinite, and will beat your understanding in the end."

The reference of course was to his wife. Since the automobile accident she had become another person and a more complex person. The climax, or what seemed to be the climax, came one cold morning when she and Mr. Prohack and Sissie and Dr. Veiga were sitting together in the little boudoir beyond the bedroom. They were packed in there because Eve (otherwise Marian) had taken a fancy to the sofa.

Eve was relating to the admired and trusted doctor all her peculiar mental and moral symptoms. She was saying that she could no longer manage the house, could not concentrate her mind on anything, could not refrain from strange caprices, could not remain calm, could not keep her temper, and was the worst conceivable wife for such a paragon as Arthur Prohack. Her daughter alone had saved the household organism from a catastrophe; her daughter Sissie—

"Come here, Sissie!"

Sissie obeyed the call and was suddenly embraced by her mother with deep tenderness. This in front of the doctor! Still more curious was the fact that Sissie, of late her mother's frigid critic, came forward and responded to the embrace almost effusively. The spectacle was really touching. It touched Mr. Prohack, who yet felt as if the floor had yielded under his feet and he was falling into the Tube railway underground. Indeed Mr. Prohack had never had such sensations as drew and quartered him then.

"Well," said Dr. Veiga to Mrs. Prohack in his philosophical-realistic manner, "I've been marking time for a week. I shall now proceed to put you right. You can't sleep. You will sleep to-night—I shall send you something. I suppose it isn't your fault that you've been taking the digestive tonic I sent you last thing at night under the impression that it was a sedative, in spite of the label. But it is regrettable. As for your headaches, I will provide a pleasing potion. As for this sad lack of application, don't attempt application. As for your strange caprices, indulge them. One thing is essential. You must go away to the sea. You must go to Frinton-on-Sea. It is an easy journey. There is a Pullman car on the morning train, and the air is unrivalled for your—shall I say?—idiosyncrasy."

"Yes, darling mother," said Sissie. "You must go away, and father and I will take you."

"Of course!" confirmed Mr. Prohack, with an imitation of pettishness, as though he had been steadily advocating a change of scene for days past; but he had done nothing of the kind.

"Oh!" Eve cried piteously, "that's the one thing I can't do!"

Dr. Veiga laughed. "Afraid of the expense, I suppose?"

"No," Eve answered with seriousness. "My husband has just made a very fortunate investment, which means a profit of at least a hundred thousand pounds—like that!" She snapped her fingers and laughed lightly.

Here was another point to puzzle an expert in human nature. Instead of being extremely incredulous and apprehensive about the vast speculation with Sir Paul, Eve had in truth accepted it for a gold-mine. She did not assume satisfaction; she really was satisfied. Her satisfaction was absurd, and nothing that Mr. Prohack could say would diminish it. She had already begun to spend the financial results of the speculation with enormous verve. For instance, she had hired another Eagle to take the place of the wounded Eagle, without uttering a word to her husband of what she had done. Mr. Prohack could see the dregs of his bank-balance; and in a dream he had had glimpses of a sinister edifice at the bottom of a steep slope, the building being the Bankruptcy Court.

"Is it a railway strike you're afraid of?" demanded Dr. Veiga cruelly.

And Eve replied with sweetness:

"I can't leave London until my son Charlie comes back from Glasgow, and he's written me to say he'll be here next week."

A first-rate example, this, of her new secretiveness! She had said absolutely nothing to Mr. Prohack about a letter from Charlie.

"When did you hear that?" Mr. Prohack might well have asked; but he was too loyal to her to betray her secretiveness by such a question. He did not wish the Portuguese quack to know that he, the husband, was kept in the dark about anything whatever. He had his ridiculous dignity, had Mr. Prohack, and all his motives were mixed motives. Not a perfectly pure motive in the whole of his volitional existence!

However, Sissie put the question in her young blundering way. "Oh, mother dear! You never told us!"

"I received the letter the day before yesterday," Eve continued gravely. "And Charlie is certainly not coming home to find me away."

For two entire days she had had the important letter and had concealed it. Mr. Prohack was disturbed.

"Very well," Dr. Veiga concurred. "It doesn't really matter whether you go to Frinton now or next month, or even next year but one. You're a powerful woman and you'll last a long time yet, especially if you don't worry. I won't call for about a week, and if you'd like to consult another doctor, do." He smiled on her in an avuncular manner, and rose.

Whereupon Mr. Prohack also jumped up.

"I'm not worrying," she protested, with a sweet, pathetic answering smile. "Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I'm worrying because I know I'm worrying my poor husband." She went quickly to her poor husband and kissed him lavishly. Eve was an artist in kissing, and never a greater artist than at that moment. And now Mr. Prohack, though still to the physical eye a single individual, became two Mr. Prohacks. There was the Mr. Prohack who strongly deprecated this departure from the emotional reserve which is one of the leading and sublimest characteristics of the British governing-class. And there was the Mr. Prohack, all nerves and heart and humanity, who profoundly enjoyed the demonstration of a woman's affection, disordered and against the rules though the demonstration might be. The first Mr. Prohack blushed and hated himself for blushing. The second was quite simply enraptured and didn't care who knew it.

"Dr. Veiga," Eve appealed, clinging to Mr. Prohack's coat. "It is my husband who needs looking after. He is not making any progress, and it is my fault. And let me tell you that you've been neglecting him for me."

She was a dramatic figure of altruism, of the everlasting sacrificial feminine. She was quite possibly absurd, but beyond doubt she was magnificent. Mr. Prohack felt ashamed of himself, and the more ashamed because he considered that he was in quite tolerable health.

"Mother," murmured Sissie, with a sweetness of which Mr. Prohack had imagined her to be utterly incapable. "Come and sit down."

And Eve, guided by her daughter, the callous, home-deserting dancing-mistress, came and sat down.

* * * * *

II

"My dear sir," said Dr. Veiga. "There is nothing at all to cause alarm. She will gradually recover. Believe me."

He and Mr. Prohack and Sissie were conspiring together in the dining-room, the drawing-room being at that hour and on that day under the dominion of servants with brushes.

"But what's the matter with her? What is it?"

"Merely neurasthenia—traumatic neurasthenia."

"But what's that?" Mr. Prohack spoke low, just as though his wife could overhear from the boudoir above and was listening to them under the impression that they were plotting against her life.

"It's a morbid condition due to a violent shock."

"But how? You told me the other day that it was purely physical."

"Well," said Dr. Veiga. "It is, because it must be. But I assure you that if a post-mortem were to be held on Mrs. Prohack—"

"Oh, doctor, please!" Sissie stopped him resentfully.

The doctor paused and then continued: "There would be no trace of any morbid condition in any of the organs."

"Then how do you explain it?"

"We don't explain it," cried Dr. Veiga, suddenly throwing the onus on the whole medical profession. "We can't. We don't know."

"It's very, very unsatisfactory, all this ignorance."

"It certainly is. But did you suppose that medical science, alone among all sciences, had achieved finality and omniscience? We've reached the state of knowing that we don't know, and that's something. I hope I'm not flattering you by talking like this. I only do it to people whom I suspect to be intelligent. But of course if you'd prefer the omniscient bedside manner you can have it without extra charge."

Mr. Prohack thought, frightened: "I shall be making a friend of this quack soon, if I'm not careful."

"And by the way, about your health," Dr. Veiga proceeded, after having given further assurances as to his other patient. "Mrs. Prohack was perfectly correct. You're not making progress. The fact is, you're bored. You haven't organised your existence, and the lack of organisation is reacting on your health."

"Something is reacting on his health," Sissie put in. "I'm not at all pleased." She was now not Mr. Prohack's daughter but his aunt.

"How can I organise my existence?" Mr. Prohack burst out crossly. "I haven't got any existence to organise. I haven't got anything to do. I thought I had too much to do, the other day. Illusion. Of course I'm bored. I feel all right, but bored I am. And it's your fault."

"It is," the doctor admitted. "It is my fault. I took you for a person of commonsense, and so I didn't tell you that two and two make four and a lot more important things of the same sort. I ought to have told you. You've taken on the new profession of being idle—it's essential for you—but you aren't treating it seriously. You have to be a professionally idle man. Which means that you haven't got a moment to spare. When I advised you to try idleness, I didn't mean you to be idle idly. That's worse than useless. You've got to be idle busily. You aren't doing half enough. Do you ever have a Turkish bath?"

"No. Never could bear the idea of them."

"Well, you will kindly take two Turkish baths a week. You can be massaged at the same time. A Turkish bath is as good as a day's hunting, as far as exercise goes, but you must have more exercise. Do you dance? I see you don't. You had better begin dancing. There is no finer exercise. I absolutely prescribe it."

At this juncture Mr. Prohack was rather relieved that the sound of an unaccustomed voice in the hall drew his daughter out of the dining-room. When she had gone Dr. Veiga went on, in a more confidential tone:

"There's another point. An idle man who really knows his business will visit his tailor's, his hosier's, his bootmaker's, his barber's much oftener and much more conscientiously than you do. You've got a mind above clothes—of course. So have I. I take a wicked pleasure in being picturesquely untidy. But I'm not a patient. My life is a great lark. Yours isn't. Yours is serious. You have now a serious profession, idleness. Bring your mind down to clothes. I say this, partly because to be consistently well-dressed means much daily expenditure of time, and partly because really good clothes have a distinctly curative effect on the patient who wears them. Then again—"

Mr. Prohack was conscious of a sudden joyous uplifting of the spirit.

"Here!" said he, interrupting Dr. Veiga with a grand gesture. "Have a cigar."

"I cannot, my friend." Dr. Veiga looked at his watch.

"You must. Have a corona." Mr. Prohack moved to the cigar cabinet which he had recently purchased.

"No. My next patient is awaiting me in Hyde Park Gardens at this moment."

"Let him die!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack ruthlessly. "You've got to have a cigar with me. Look. I'll compromise. I'll make it a half-corona. You can charge me as if for another consultation."

The doctor's foreign eyes twinkled as he sat down and struck a match.

"You thought I was a quack," he said maliciously, and maliciously he seemed to intensify his foreign accent.

"I did," admitted Mr. Prohack with candour.

"So I am," said Dr. Veiga. "But I'm a fully qualified quack, and all really good doctors are quacks. They have to be. They wouldn't be worth anything if they weren't. Medicine owes a great deal to quacks."

"Tell me something about some of your cases," said Mr. Prohack imperatively. "You're one of the most interesting men I've ever met. So now you know. We want some of your blood transfused, into the English character. You've got a soul above medicine as well as clothes."

"All good doctors have," said Dr. Veiga. "My life is a romance."

"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 assurance. "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 classed 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 assuredly have been at his office in the Treasury, earning an honest living, at that very moment. For only sick persons of plenteous independent means are ever prescribed for as he had been prescribed for; the others either go on working and making the best of such health as is left to them, or they die. If he had not inherited from a profiteer he would not have had a car and the car would not have had an accident and he would not have been faced with the prospect (as he was faced with it) of a legal dispute, to be fought by him on behalf of the insurance company, with the owner of the colliding car. (The owner of the colliding car was a young woman as to whose veracity Carthew had had some exceedingly hard things to say.) Mr. Prohack would have settled the matter, but neither Eve nor the insurance company would let him settle it. And if the car had not had an accident Eve would not have had traumatic neurasthenia, with all its disconcerting reactions on family life. And if he had not inherited from a profiteer, Charlie would not have gone off to Glasgow,—he had heard odds and ends of strange tales as to Charlie's doings in Glasgow,—not in the least reassuring! And if he had not inherited from a profiteer Sissie would not have taken a share in a dancing studio and might never have dangerously danced with that worm Oswald Morfey. And if he had not inherited from a profiteer he would not have been speculating, with a rich chance of more profiteering, in Roumanian oil with Paul Spinner. In brief—well, he ought to get up and turn off a bar of that wasteful radiator.

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 circumstances 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 retarding 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 substituted 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 nobody in the kitchen had ever before lived in a house the master of which being a parent of adult children took surreptitious lessons in dancing; the thing was unprecedented, and therefore of course intrinsically reprehensible. Mr. Prohack guessed the attitude of the kitchen, and had met Machin's respectful glance with a self-conscious eye.

He now bolted the front-door and went upstairs extinguishing 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 assist 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 fashion 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 basement 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 lasso 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 vanishing 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.

Then he telephoned to her sister, enquiring in a voice of studied casualness. Eve was not at her sister's. He had known all the while that she would not be at her sister's. Being unable to recall the number, he had had to consult the telephone book. His instinct now was to fetch Sissie, whose commonsense had of late impressed him more and more; but he repressed the instinct, holding that he ought to be able to manage the affair alone. He could scarcely say to his daughter: "Your mother has vanished. What am I to do?" Moreover, feeling himself to be the guardian of Marian's reputation for perfect sanity, he desired not to divulge her disappearance, unless obliged to do so. She might return at any moment. She must return very soon. It was inconceivable that anything should have "happened" in the Prohack family....

Almost against his will he looked up "Police Stations" in the telephone-book. There were scores of police stations. The nearest seemed to be that of Mayfair. He demanded the number. To demand the number of the police station was like jumping into bottomless cold water. In a detestable dream he gave his name and address and asked if the police had any news of a street accident. Yes, several. He described his wife. He said, reflecting wildly, that she was not very tall and rather plump; dark hair. Dress? Dark blue. Hat and mantle? He could not say. Age? A queer impulse here. He knew that she hated the mention of her real age, and so he said thirty-nine. No! The police had no news of such a person. But the polite firm voice on the wire said that it would telephone to other stations and would let Mr. Prohack hear immediately if there was anything to communicate. Wonderful organisation, the London police force!

As he hung up the receiver he realised what had occurred and what he had done. Marian had mysteriously disappeared and he had informed the police,—he, Arthur Prohack, C.B. What an awful event!

His mind ran on the consequences of traumatic neurasthenia. He put on his hat and overcoat and unbolted the front-door as silently as he could—for he still did not want anybody in the house to know the secret—and went out into the street. What to do? A ridiculous move! Did he expect to find her lying in the gutter? He walked to the end of the dark street and peered into the cross-street, and returned. He had left the front-door open. As he re-entered the house he descried in a corner of the hall, a screwed-up telegraph-envelope. Why had he not noticed it before? He snatched at it. It was addressed to "Mrs. Prohack."

Mr. Prohack's soul was instantaneously bathed in heavenly solace. Traumatic neurasthenia had nothing to do with Eve's disappearance! His bliss was intensified by the fact that he had said not a word to the servants and had not called Sissie. And it was somewhat impaired by the other fact that he had been ass enough to tell the police. He was just puzzling his head to think what misfortune could have called his wife away—not that the prospect of any misfortune much troubled him now that Eve's vanishing was explained—when through the doorway he saw a taxi drive up. Eve emerged from the taxi.



II

He might have gone out and paid the fare for her, but he stayed where he was, in the doorway, thinking with beatific relief that after all nothing had "happened" in the family.

"Ah!" he said, in the most ordinary, complacent, quite undisturbed tone, "I was just beginning to wonder where you'd got to. We've been back about five minutes, Sissie and I, and Sissie's gone to bed. I really don't believe she knows you were out."

Mrs. Prohack came urgently towards him, pushing the door to behind her with a careless loud bang. The bang might waken the entire household, but Mrs. Prohack did not care. Mrs. Prohack kissed him without a word. He possessed in his heart a barometric scale of her kisses, and this was a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, to hide himself from himself.

He thought:

"It's a positive fact that I've been kissing this girl of a woman for a quarter of a century, and she's fat."

But beneath his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he would have expressed thus:

"If anything did happen to her, it would be the absolute ruin of me."

The truth was that his felicity frightened him. Never before had he been seriously concerned for her well-being. The reaction from grave alarm lighted up the interior of his mysterious soul with a revealing flash of unique intensity.

"What are all these lights burning for?" she murmured. Lights were indeed burning everywhere. He had been in a mood to turn on but not to turn off.

"Oh!" he said, "I was just wandering about."

"I'll go straight upstairs," she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as her Arthur appeared to be.

When he had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and was sitting on the sofa.

"There came a telegram from Charlie," she began. "I was crossing the hall just as the boy reached the door. So I opened the door myself. It was from Charlie to say that he would be at the Grand Babylon Hotel to-night."

"Charlie! The Grand Babylon!... Not Buckingham Palace." Eve ignored his crude jocularity.

"It seems I ought to have received it early in the afternoon. I was so puzzled I didn't know what to do—I just put my things on and went off to the hotel at once. It wasn't till after I was in the taxi that I remembered I ought to have told the servants where I was going. That's why I hurried back. I wanted to get back before you did. Charlie suggested telephoning from the hotel, but I wouldn't let him on any account."

"Why not?"

"Well, I thought you might be upset and wonder what on earth was going on."

"What was going on?" Mr. Prohack repeated, gazing at her childlike maternal serious face, whose wistfulness affected him in an extraordinary way. "What on earth are you insinuating?"

No! It was inconceivable that this pulsating girl perched on the sofa should be the mother of the mature and independent Charles.

"Charlie's staying at the Grand Babylon Hotel," said Eve, as though she were saying that Charlie had forged a cheque or blown up the Cenotaph.

Even the imperturbable man of the world in front of her momentarily blenched at the news.

"More fool him!" observed Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, and he's got a bedroom and a private sitting-room and a bathroom, and a room for a secretary—"

"Hence a secretary," Mr. Prohack put in.

"Yes, and a secretary. And he dictates things to the secretary all the time, and the telephone's always going,—yes, even at this time of night. He must be spending enormous sums. So of course I hurried back to tell you."

"You did quite right, my pet," said Mr. Prohack. "A good wife should share these tit-bits with her husband at the earliest possible moment."

He was really very like what in his more conventional moments he would have said a woman was like. If Eve had taken the affair lightly he would without doubt have remonstrated, explaining that such an affair ought by no means to be taken lightly. But seeing that she took it very seriously, his instinct was to laugh at it, though in fact he was himself extremely perturbed by this piece of news, which confirmed, a hundredfold and in the most startling manner, certain sinister impressions of his own concerning Charlie's deeds in Glasgow. And he assumed the gay attitude, not from a desire to reassure his wife, but from mere contrariness. Positively the strangest husband that ever lived, and entirely different from normal husbands!

Then he saw tears hanging in Eve's eyes,—tears not of resentment against his lack of sympathy, tears of bewilderment and perplexity. She simply did not understand his attitude. And he sat down close by her on the sofa and solaced her with three kisses. She was singularly attractive in her alternations of sagacity and helplessness.

"But it's awful," she whimpered. "The boy must be throwing money away at the rate of twenty or twenty-five pounds a day."

"Very probably," Mr. Prohack agreed.

"Where's he getting it from?" she demanded. "He must be getting it from somewhere."

"I expect he's made it. He's rather clever, you know."

"But he can't have made money like that."

"People do, sometimes."

"Not honestly,—you know what I mean, Arthur!" This was an earthquaking phrase to come from a mother's lips.

"And yet," said Mr. Prohack, "everything Charlie did used to be right for you."

"But he's carrying on just like an adventurer! I've read in reports of trials about people carrying on just like that. A fortnight ago he hadn't got fifty pounds cash in the world, and now he's living like a millionaire at the Grand Babylon Hotel! Arthur, what are you going to do about it? Couldn't you go and see him; to-night?"

"Now listen to me," Mr. Prohack began in a new tone, taking her hands. "Supposing I did go and see him to-night, what could I say to him?"

"Well, you're his father."

"And you're his mother. What did you say to him?"

"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 snobbishness 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 fate of the speculation in which he had joined Sir Paul Spinner. Nor did he worry about the malady called traumatic neurasthenia. As for himself he fancied that he had not for years felt better than he felt at that moment. He was aware of the most delicious sensation of sharing a perfect nocturnal solitude with his wife. He drew her towards him until her acquiescent head lay against his waistcoat. He held her body in his arms, and came deliberately to the conclusion that to be alive was excellent.

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 surpassing 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 astonishing 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 passengers, simultaneously drove off.

If a snake, she was a very slim, blushing 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 analytical 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?"

"The motor-car accident at Putney, you know."

"Ah!"

"Yes."

"Just so. Just so. You are the owner-driver of the other car."

"Yes."

"I think you ought to have seen my wife. It is really she who is the owner of this car. As you are aware, I wasn't in the accident myself, and I don't know anything about it. Besides, it's entirely in the hands of the insurance company and the solicitors. You are employing a solicitor, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then I suppose it's by his advice that you've come to see me."

"Well, I'm afraid it isn't."

"What!" cried Mr. Prohack. "If it isn't by his advice you may well be afraid. Do you know you've done a most improper thing? Most improper. I can't possibly listen to you. You may go behind your lawyer's back. But I can't. And also there's the insurance company." Mr. Prohack lifted the rug which had fallen away from her short skirts.

"I think solicitors and companies and things are so silly," said Miss Winstock, whose eyes had not moved from the floor-mat. "Thank you." The 'thank you' was in respect to the rug.

"So they are," Mr. Prohack agreed.

"That was why I thought it would be better to come straight to you." For the first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance that somehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in her own breast to that of Mr. Prohack.

"Well," said he, in a departmental tone recalling Whitehall. "Will you kindly say what you have to say?"

"Can I speak confidentially?"

Mr. Prohack raised his hands and laughed in what he hoped was a sardonic manner.

"I give you young women up," he murmured. "Yes, I give you up. You're my enemy. We're at law. And you want to talk confidentially! How can I tell whether I can let you talk confidentially until I've heard what you're going to say?"

"Oh! I was only going to say that I'm not really the owner-driver of the car. I'm personal secretary to Mr. Carrel Quire, and it's really his car. You see he has three cars, but as there's been such a fuss about waste lately and he's so prominent in the anti-squandermania campaign, he prefers to keep only one car in his own name."

"You don't mean to sit there and tell me you're talking about the Secretary for Foreign Affairs!"

"Yes, of course. Who else? You know he's on the continent at present. He wouldn't take me with him because he wanted to create an effect of austerity in Paris—that's what he said; and I must get this accident affair settled up before he comes back, or he may dismiss me. I don't think he will, because I'm a cousin of the late Lady Queenie Paulle—that's how I got the place—but he may. And then where should I be? I was told you were so kind and nice—that's why I came."

"I am not kind and I am not nice," remarked Mr. Prohack, in an acid tone, but laughing to himself because the celebrated young statesman, Mr. Carrel Quire (bald at thirty-five) was precisely one of the ministers who, during the war, had defied and trampled upon the Treasury. He now almost demoniacally contemplated the ruin of Mr. Carrel Quire.

"You have made a serious mistake in coming to me. Unfortunately you cannot undo it. Be good enough to understand that you have not been talking confidentially."

Miss Winstock ought to have been intimidated and paralysed by the menacing manner of the former Terror of the Departments. But she was not.

"Please, please, Mr. Prohack," she said calmly, "don't talk in that strain. I distinctly told you I was talking confidentially, and I'm sure I can rely on you—unless all that I've heard about you is untrue; which it can't be. I only want matters to be settled quietly, and when Mr. Quire returns he will pay anything that has to be paid—if it isn't too much."

"My chauffeur asserts that you have told a most naughty untruth about the accident. You say that he ran into you, whereas the fact is that he was nearly standing still while you were going too fast and you skidded badly into him off the tramlines. And he's found witnesses to prove what he says."

"I may have been a little mistaken," Miss Winstock admitted with light sadness. "I won't say I wasn't. You know how you are in an accident."

"I've never been in an accident in my life," Mr. Prohack objected.

"If you had, you'd sympathise with me."

At this moment the Eagle drew up at the desired destination in Conduit Street. Mr. Prohack looked at his watch.

"I'm sorry to seem inhospitable," he said, "but my appointment is extremely important. I cannot wait."

"Can I wait?" Miss Winstock suggested. "I'm quite used to waiting for Mr. Carrel Quire. If I might wait in the car till you came out.... You see I want to come to an understanding."

"I don't know how long I shall be."

"That doesn't matter, truly. I haven't got anything else in the world to do, as Mr. Carrel Quire is away."

Mr. Prohack left Miss Winstock in the car.

The establishment into which Mr. Prohack disappeared was that of his son's tailors. He slipped into it with awe, not wholly because the tailors were his son's tailors, but in part because they were tailors to various august or once-august personages throughout Europe. Till that day Mr. Prohack had bought his clothes from an insignificant though traditional tailor in Maddox Street, to whom he had been taken as a boy by his own father. And he had ordered his clothes hastily, negligently, anyhow, in intervals snatched from meal-hours or on the way from one more important appointment to another more important appointment. Indeed he had thought no more of ordering a suit than of ordering a whiskey and soda. Nay, he had on one occasion fallen incredibly low, and his memory held the horrid secret for ever,—on one occasion he had actually bought a ready-made suit. It had fitted him, for he was slimmish and of a good stock size, but he had told nobody, not even his wife, of this shocking defection from the code of true British gentlemanliness,—and he had never repeated the crime; the secret would die with him. And now he was devoting the top of the morning to the commandment of a suit. The affair was his chief business, and he had come to it in a great car whose six cylinders were working harmoniously for nothing else, and with the aid of an intelligent and experienced and expert human being whose sole object in life that morning was to preside over Mr. Prohack's locomotion to and from the tailors'!

Mr. Prohack perceived that he was only beginning to comprehend the wonder of existence. The adepts at the tailors', however, seemed to see nothing wonderful in the matter. They showed no surprise that he had written to make an appointment with a particular adept named Melchizidek, who had been casually mentioned weeks earlier by Charles as the one man in London who really comprehended waistcoats. They took it as a matter of course that Mr. Prohack had naught else to do with the top of the morning but order clothes, and that while he did so he should keep a mature man and a vast and elaborate machine waiting for him in the street outside. And Mr. Melchizidek's manner alone convinced Mr. Prohack that what he had told his family, and that what he had told Miss Winstock in the car, was strictly true and not the invention of his fancy—namely that the appointment was genuinely of high importance.

Mr. Melchizidek possessed the strange gift of condescending majestically to Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as to an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and it was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practice referred to Mr. Melchizidek, and that this same Melchizidek, fawning and masterful, had seen monarchs in their shirt sleeves and spoken to princes with pins in his mouth, and made marks in white chalk between the shoulder-blades of grand-dukes; and that revolutions and cataclysms were nothing to Mr. Melchizidek.

When Mr. Melchizidek had decided by hypnotic suggestion and magic power what Mr. Prohack desired in the way of stuffs and patterns, he led Mr. Prohack mysteriously to a small chamber, and a scribe followed them carrying pencil and paper, and Mr. Prohack removed, with assistance, his shabby coat and his waistcoat, and Mr. Melchizidek measured him in unexampled detail and precision, and the scribe, writing, intoned aloud all Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr. Prohack was asking in his heart: "How much will these clothes cost?" And he, once the Terror of the departments, who would have held up the war to satisfy his official inquisitiveness on a question of price,—he dared not ask how much the clothes would cost. He felt that in that unique establishment money was simply not mentioned,—it could never be more than the subject of formal and stately correspondence.

During the latter part of the operation Mr. Prohack heard, outside in the shop, the sharp sounds of an imperial and decisive voice, and he was thereby well-nigh thunderstruck. And even Mr. Melchizidek seemed to be similarly affected by the voice,—so much so that the intimate of sovereigns unaffectedly hastened the business of enduing Mr. Prohack into the shameful waistcoat and coat, and then, with a gesture of apology, passed out of the cubicle, leaving Mr. Prohack with the attendant scribe.

Mr. Prohack, pricked by a fearful curiosity, followed Mr. Melchizidek; and the voice was saying:

"Oh! You're there, Melchizidek. Just come and look at this crease."

Mr. Melchizidek, pained, moved forward. Three acolytes were already standing in shocked silence round about a young man who stretched forth one leg so that all might see.

"I ask you," the young man proceeded, "is it an inch out or isn't it? And how many times have I tried these things on? I'm a busy man, and here I have to waste my time coming here again and again to get a thing right that ought to have been right the first time. And you call yourselves the first tailors in Europe.... Correct me if I'm inaccurate in any of my statements."

Mr. Melchizidek, who unlike an Englishman knew when he was beaten, said in a solemn bass:

"When can I send for them, sir?"

"You can send for them this afternoon at the Grand Babylon, and be sure that I have them back to-morrow night."

"Certainly, sir. It's only fair to ourselves, sir, to state that we have a great deal of trouble with our workmen in these days."

"No doubt. And I have a great deal of trouble to find cash in these days, but I don't pay your bills with bad money, I think."

A discreet sycophantic smile from the group at this devastating witticism!

Mr. Prohack cautiously approached; the moment had awkwardness, but Mr. Prohack owed it to himself to behave with all presence of mind.

"Hullo, Charlie!" said he casually.

"Hello, dad! How are you?" And Charlie, wearing the very suit in which he had left home for Glasgow, shook hands boyishly.

Looking into his firm, confident eyes, Mr. Prohack realised, perhaps for the first time, that the fruit of his loins was no common boy. The mere fact that as an out-of-work ex-officer, precariously making a bit in motor-bicycle deals, he had dared to go to Melchizidek's firm for clothes, and that he was now daring to affront Melchizidek,—this sole fact separated him from the ruck of sons.

"I warn you, dad, that if you're ordering clothes here you're ordering trouble."

Mr. Melchizidek's interjected remarks fitted to the occasion. The group dissipated. The males of the Prohack family could say nothing interesting to each other in such a situation. They could only pretend that their relations were purely normal; which they did quite well.

"I say, dad, I'm awfully busy this morning. I can't stop now. I've telephoned the mater and she's coming to the Grand Babylon for lunch—one thirty. Sis too, I think. Do come. You haven't got anything else to do." The boy murmured all this.

"Oh! Haven't I! I'm just as busy as you are, and more."

However, Mr. Prohack accepted the invitation. Charlie went off in haste. Mr. Prohack arrived on the pavement in time to see him departing in an open semi-racing car driven by a mature, handsome and elegant woman, with a chauffeur sitting behind. Mr. Prohack's mind was one immense interrogation concerning his son. He had seen him, spoken with him, and—owing to the peculiar circumstances—learnt nothing whatever. Indeed, the mystery of Charlie was deepened. Had Charles hurried away in order to hide the mature handsome lady from his father?... Mr. Prohack might have moralised, but he suddenly remembered that he had a lady in his own car, and that the disparity between their ages was no less than the disparity between the ages of the occupants of the car in which Charles had fled.

III

Turning to his own car, he observed with a momentary astonishment that Carthew, the chauffeur, leaning a little nonchalantly through the open off-window of the vehicle, was engaged in conversation with Miss Winstock. The astonishment passed when he reflected that as these two had been in the enforced intimacy of an accident together they were necessarily on some kind of speaking terms. Before Carthew had noticed Mr. Prohack, Mr. Prohack noticed that Carthew's attitude to Miss Winstock showed a certain tolerant condescension, while Miss Winstock's girlish gestures were of a subtly appealing nature. Then in an instant Carthew, the easy male tolerator of inaccurate but charming young women, disappeared from the window—disappeared indeed, entirely from the face of the earth—and a perfectly non-human, impassive automaton emerged from behind the back of the car and stood attentive at the door, holding the handle thereof. Mr. Prohack, with a gift of dissimulation equal to Carthew's own, gave him an address in Bond Street.

"I have another very urgent appointment," said Mr. Prohack to Miss Winstock as he sat down beside her. And he took his diary from his pocket and gazed at it intently, frowning, though there was nothing whatever on its page except the printed information that the previous Sunday was the twenty-fourth after Trinity, and a warning: "If you have omitted to order your new diary it would be well to do so NOW to prevent disappointment."

"It's awfully good of you to have me here," said Miss Winstock.

"It is," Mr. Prohack admitted. "And so far as I can see you've done nothing to deserve it. You were very wrong to get chatting with my chauffeur, for example."

"I felt that all the time. But he has such a powerful individuality."

"He may have. But what I pay him for is to drive my car, not to put his passengers into a semi-hypnotic state. Do you know why I am taking you about like this?"

"I hope it's because you are kind-hearted."

"Not at all. Do you think I should do it if you were fifty, fat and a fright? Of course I shouldn't. And no one knows that better than you. I'm doing it because you're young and charming and slim and attractive and smart. Though forty-six, I am still a man. The chief difference between me and most other men is that I know and openly admit my motives. That's what makes me so dangerous. You should beware of me. Take note that I haven't asked you what you're been saying to Carthew. Nor shall I ask him. Now what exactly do you want me to do?"

"Only not to let the law case about the accident go any further."

"And are you in a position to pay the insurance company for the damage to my car?"

"Oh! Mr. Carrel Quire will pay."

"Are you sure? Are you quite sure that Mr. Carrel Quire is not spending twice as much as his ministerial salary, that salary being the whole of his financial resources except loans from millionaires who will accept influence instead of interest? I won't enquire whether Mr. Carrel Quire pays your salary regularly. If he does, it furnishes the only instance of regularity in the whole of his gorgeous career. If our little affair becomes public it might ruin Mr. Carrel Quire as a politician—at the least it would set him back for ten years. And I am particularly anxious to ruin Mr. Carrel Quire. In doing so I shall accomplish a patriotic act."

"Oh, Mr. Prohack!"

"Yes. Mr. Carrel Quire may be—probably is—a delightful fellow, but he is too full of brains, and he constitutes the gravest danger that has threatened the British Empire for a hundred years. Hence it is my duty to ruin him if I get the chance; and I've got the chance. I don't see how he could survive the exposure of the simple fact that while preaching anti-waste he is keeping motor-cars in the names of young women."

The car had stopped in front of a shop over whose door a pair of gilded animals like nothing in zoology were leaping amiably at each other. Miss Winstock began to search neurotically in a bag for a handkerchief.

"This is the scene of my next appointment," Mr. Prohack continued. "Would you prefer to leave me at once or will you wait again?"

Miss Winstock hesitated.

"You had better wait," Mr. Prohack decided. "You'll be crying in fifteen seconds and your handkerchief is sadly inadequate to the crisis. Try a little self-control, and don't let Carthew hypnotise you. I shan't be surprised if you're gone when I come back."

A commissionaire was now holding open the door of the car.

"Carthew," said Mr. Prohack privily, after he had got out. "Oblige me by imagining that during my absence the car is empty."

Carthew quivered for a fraction of eternity, but was exceedingly quick to recover.

"Yes, sir."

The shop was all waxed parquetry, silks, satins, pure linen and pure wool, diversified by a few walking-sticks and a cuff link or so. Faced by a judge-like middle-aged authority in a frock-coat, Mr. Prohack suddenly lost the magisterial demeanour which he had exhibited to a defenceless girl in the car. He comprehended in a flash that suits of clothes were a detail in the existence of an idle man and that neckties and similar supremacies alone mattered.

"I want a necktie," he began gently.

"Certainly, sir," said the judge. But the judge's eyes, fixed on Mr. Prohack's neck, said: "I should just think you did."

Life was enlarged to a bewildering, a maddening maze of neckties. Mr. Prohack considered in his heart that one of the needs of the day was an encyclopaedia of neckties. As he bought neckties he felt as foolish as a woman buying cigars. Any idiot could buy a suit, but neckties baffled the intelligence of the Terror of the departments, though he had worn something in the nature of a necktie for forty years. The neckties which he bought inspired him with fear—the fear lest he might lack the courage to wear them. In a nightmare he saw himself putting them on in his bedroom and proceeding downstairs to breakfast, and then, panic-stricken, rushing back to the bedroom to change into one of his old neckties.

And when he had bought neckties he apprehended that neckties without shirts were like butter without bread, and he bought shirts. And then he surmised that shirts without collars would be indecent. And when he had bought collars a still small voice told him that the logical foundation of all things was socks, and that really he had been trying to build a house from the fourth story downwards. Fortunately he had less hesitation about the socks, for he could comfort himself with the thought that socks did not jump to the eye as neckties did, and that by constant care their violence might even be forever concealed from the gaze of his household. He sighed with relief at the end of the sock episode. But he had forgotten braces, as to which he surrendered unconditionally to the frock-coated judge. He brooked the most astounding braces, for none but Eve would see them, and he could intimidate Eve.

"Shall we make you a quarter of a dozen pairs to measure, sir?"

This extraordinary question miraculously restored all Mr. Prohack's vanished aplomb. That at the end of the greatest war in the history of the earth, amid decapitated empires and cities of starvation, braces should be made to measure,—this was too much for Mr. Prohack, who had not dreamed that braces ever had been made to measure. It shocked him back into sense.

"No!" he said coldly, and soon afterwards left the shop.

Miss Winstock, in the car, sat for the statue of wistful melancholy.

"Heavens!" breathed Mr. Prohack to himself. "The little thing is taking me seriously. With all her experience of the queer world, and all her initiative and courage, she is taking me seriously!" He was touched; his irony became sympathetic, and he thought: "How young the young are!"

Her smile as he rejoined her had pathos in it. The totality of her was delicious.

"You cannot be all bad, Miss Winstock," said he to her, after instructing the chauffeur, "because nobody is. You are undisciplined. You do wild and rash things—you have already accomplished several this morning. But you have righteous instincts, though not often enough. Of course, with one word to the insurance company I could save you. The difficulty is that I could not save you without saving Mr. Carrel Quire also. And it would be very wrong of me to save Mr. Carrel Quire, for to save him would be to jeopardise the future of the British Empire, because unless he is scotched, that man's frantic egotism and ruthless ambition will achieve political disaster for four hundred million human beings. I should like to save you. But can I weigh you in the balance against an Empire? Can I, I say?"

"No," answered Miss Winstock weakly but sincerely.

"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack. "I can. And you are shamefully ignorant of history. Never yet when empire, any empire, has been weighed in the balance against a young and attractive woman has the young woman failed to win! That is a dreadful fact, but men are thus constituted. Had you been a hag, I should not have hesitated to do my duty to my country. But as you are what you are, and sitting so agreeably in my car, I will save you and let my country go."

"Oh! Mr. Prohack, you are very kind—but every one told me you were."

"No! I am a knave. Also there is a condition."

"I will agree to anything."

"You must leave Mr. Carrel Quire's service. That man is dangerous not only to empires. The entire environment is the very worst decently possible for a girl like you. Get away from it. If you don't undertake to give him notice at once, and withdraw entirely from his set, then I will ruin both you and him."

"But I shall starve," cried Miss Winstock. "I shall never find another place without influence, and I have no more influence."

"Have the Winstocks no money?"

"Not a penny."

"And have the Paulles no money?"

"None for me."

"You are the ideal programme-girl in a theatre," said Mr. Prohack. "You will never starve. Excuse me for a few minutes. I have another very important appointment," he added, as the car stopped in Piccadilly.

After a quarter of an hour spent in learning that suits were naught, neckties were naught, shirts, collars, socks and even braces were naught, but that hats alone made a man of fashion and idleness, Mr. Prohack returned to Miss Winstock and announced:

"I will engage you as my private secretary. I need one very badly indeed. In fact I cannot understand how, with all my engagements, I have been able to manage without one so long. Your chief duties will be to keep on good terms with my wife and daughter, and not to fall in love with my son. If you were not too deeply preoccupied with my chauffeur, you may have noticed a young man who came out of the tailors' just before I did. That was my son."

"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Winstock, "the boy who drove off in Lady Massulam's car?"

"Was that Lady Massulam?" asked Mr. Prohack before he had had time to recover from the immense effect of hearing the startling, almost legendary name of Lady Massulam in connection with his son.

"Of course," said Miss Winstock. "Didn't you know?"

Mr. Prohack ignored her pertness.

"Well," he proceeded, having now successfully concealed his emotion, "after having dealt as I suggest with my wife and children, you will deal with my affairs. You shall have the same salary as Mr. Carrel Quire paid—or forgot to pay. Do you agree or not?"

"I should love it," replied Miss Winstock with enthusiasm.

"What is your Christian name?"

"Mimi."

"So it is. I remember now. Well, it won't do at all. Never mention it again, please."

When he had accompanied Mimi to a neighbouring post office and sent off a suitable telegram of farewell to Mr. Carrel Quire in her name, Mr. Prohack abandoned her till the morrow, and drove off quickly to pick up his wife for the Grand Babylon lunch.

"I am a perfect lunatic," said he to himself. "It must be the effect of riches. However, I don't care."

He meant that he didn't care about the conceivable consequences of engaging Mimi Winstock as secretary. But what he did care about was the conjuncture of Lady Massulam and Charlie.



CHAPTER XIII

FURTHER IDLENESS

I

Strange, inconceivable as it may appear to people of the great world and readers of newspapers, Mr. Prohack, C.B., had never in his life before been inside the Grand Babylon Hotel. Such may be the narrow and mean existence forced by circumstances upon secretly powerful servants of the Crown. He arrived late, owing to the intricate preparations of his wife and daughter for Charlie's luncheon. These two were unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous, and their nervousness reacted upon Mr. Prohack, who perceived with disgust that his gay and mischievous mood of the morning was slipping away from him despite his efforts to retain it. He knew now definitely that his health had taken the right turn, and yet he could not prod the youthful Sissie as he had prodded the youthful Mimi Winstock. Moreover Mimi was a secret which would have to be divulged, and this secret not only weighed heavy within him, but seemed disturbingly to counterbalance the secrets that Charlie was withholding.

On the present occasion he saw little of the Grand Babylon, for as soon as he mentioned his son's name to the nonchalant official behind the enquiry counter the official changed like lightning into an obsequious courtier, and Charles's family was put in charge of a hovering attendant boy, who escorted it in a lift and along a mile of corridors, and Charlie's family was kept waiting at a door until the voice of Charlie permitted the boy to open the door. A rather large parlour set with a table for five; a magnificent view from the window of a huge white-bricked wall and scores of chimney pots and electric wires, and a moving grey sky above! Charlie, too, was unsuccessfully pretending not to be nervous.

"Hullo, kid!" he greeted his sister.

"Hullo yourself," responded Sissie.

They shook hands. (They very rarely kissed. However, Charlie kissed his mother. Even he would not have dared not to kiss her.)

"Mater," said he, "let me introduce you to Lady Massulam."

Lady Massulam had been standing in the window. She came forward with a pleasant, restrained smile and made the acquaintance of Charlie's family; but she was not talkative. Her presence, coming as a terrific surprise to the ladies of the Prohack family, and as a fairly powerful surprise to Mr. Prohack, completed the general constraint. Mrs. Prohack indeed was somewhat intimidated by it. Mrs. Prohack's knowledge of Lady Massulam was derived exclusively from The Daily Picture, where her portrait was constantly appearing, on all sorts of pretexts, and where she was described as a leader of London society. Mr. Prohack knew of her as a woman credited with great feats of war-work, and also with a certain real talent for organisation; further, he had heard that she had a gift for high finance, and exercised it not without profit. As she happened to be French by birth, no steady English person was seriously upset by the fact that her matrimonial career was obscure, and as she happened to be very rich everybody raised sceptical eyebrows at the assertion that her husband (a knight) was dead; for The Daily Picture implanted daily in the minds of millions of readers the grand truth that to the very rich nothing can happen simply. The whole Daily Picture world was aware that of late she had lived at the Grand Babylon Hotel in permanence. That world would not have recognised her from her published portraits, which were more historical than actual. Although conspicuously anti-Victorian she had a Victorian beauty of the impressive kind; she had it still. Her hair was of a dark lustrous brown and showed no grey. In figure she was tall, and rather more than plump and rather less than fat. Her perfect and perfectly worn clothes proved that she knew just how to deal with herself. She would look forty in a theatre, fifty in a garden, and sixty to her maid at dawn.

This important person spoke, when she did speak, with a scarcely perceptible French accent in a fine clear voice. But she spoke little and said practically nothing: which was a shock to Marian Prohack, who had imagined that in the circles graced by Lady Massulam conversation varied from badinage to profundity and never halted. It was not that Lady Massulam was tongue-tied, nor that she was impolite; it was merely that with excellent calmness she did not talk. If anybody handed her a subject, she just dropped it; the floor around her was strewn with subjects.

The lunch was dreadful, socially. It might have been better if Charlie's family had not been tormented by the tremendous question: what had Charlie to do with Lady Massulam? Already Charlie's situation was sufficient of a mystery, without this arch-mystery being spread all over it. And inexperienced Charlie was a poor host; as a host he was positively pathetic, rivalling Lady Massulam in taciturnity.

Sissie took to chaffing her brother, and after a time Charlie said suddenly, with curtness:

"Have you dropped that silly dance-scheme of yours, kid?"

Sissie was obliged to admit that she had.

"Then I tell you what you might do. You might come and live here with me for a bit. I want a hostess, you know."

"I will," said Sissie, straight. No consultation of parents!

This brief episode overset Mrs. Prohack. The lunch worsened, to such a point that Mr. Prohack began to grow light-hearted, and chaffed Charlie in his turn. He found material for chaff in the large number of newly bought books that were lying about the room. There was even the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics in eleven volumes. Queer possessions for a youth who at home had never read aught but the periodical literature of automobilism! Could this be the influence of Lady Massulam? Then the telephone bell rang, and it was like a signal of salvation. Charlie sprang at the instrument.

"For you," he said, indicating Lady Massulam, who rose.

"Oh!" said she. "It's Ozzie."

"Who's Ozzie?" Charlie demanded, without thought.

"No doubt Oswald Morfey," said Mr. Prohack, scoring over his son.

"He wants to see me. May I ask him to come up for coffee?"

"Oh! Do!" said Sissie, also without thought. She then blushed.

Mr. Prohack thought suspiciously and apprehensively:

"I bet anything he's found out that my daughter is here."

Ozzie transformed the final act of the luncheon. An adept conversationalist, he created conversationalists on every side. Mrs. Prohack liked him at once. Sissie could not keep her eyes off him. Charlie was impressed by him. Lady Massulam treated him with the familiarity of an intimate. Mr. Prohack alone was sinister in attitude. Ozzie brought the great world into the room with him. In his simpering voice he was ready to discuss all the phenomena of the universe; but after ten minutes Mr. Prohack noticed that the fellow had one sole subject on his mind. Namely, a theatrical first-night, fixed for that very evening; a first-night of the highest eminence; one of Mr. Asprey Chown's first-nights, boomed by the marvellous showmanship of Mr. Asprey Chown into a mighty event. The competition for seats was prodigious, but of course Lady Massulam had obtained her usual stall.

"What a pity we can't go!" said Sissie simply.

"Will you all come in my box?" astonishingly replied Mr. Oswald Morfey, embracing in his weak glance the entire Prohack family.

"The fellow came here on purpose to fix this," said Mr. Prohack to himself as the matter was being effusively clinched.

"I must go," said he aloud, looking at his watch. "I have a very important appointment."

"But I wanted to have a word with you, dad," said Charlie, in quite a new tone across the table.

"Possibly," answered the superior ironic father in Mr. Prohack, who besides being sick of the luncheon party was determined that nothing should interfere with his Median and Persian programme. "Possibly. But that will be for another time."

"Well, to-night then," said Charlie, dashed somewhat.

"Perhaps," said Mr. Prohack. Yet he was burning to hear his son's word.



II

However, Mr. Prohack did not succeed in loosing himself from the embraces of the Grand Babylon Hotel for another thirty minutes. He offered to abandon the car, to abandon everything to his wife and daughter, and to reach his next important appointment by the common methods of conveyance employed by common people; but the ladies would permit no such thing; they announced their firm intention of personally escorting him to his destination. The party seemed to be unable to break up. There was a considerable confabulation between Eve and Lady Massulam at the entrance to the lift.