"Dad," said she, "you're the most wonderful dad that ever was. Oh! If everybody would talk like that!"

"Not at all! Not at all!" he deprecated, delighted with himself and her. "I'm simply telling you what you know already. I needn't say any more. You'll do exactly as you think best, and whatever you do will please me. I don't want you to be happy in my way—I want you to be happy in your own way. Possibly you'll decide to tell Mr. Morfey to wait for three months."

"I most decidedly shall, dad," Sissie interrupted him, "and I'm most frightfully obliged to you."

He had always held that she was a marvellous girl, and here was the proof. He had spoken with the perfection of tact and sympathy and wisdom, but his success astonished him. At this point he perceived that Sissie was not really sitting in the chair at all and that the chair was empty. So that the exhibition of sagacity had been entirely wasted.

"Anyhow I've had a sleep," said the philosopher in him.

The door opened. Machin appeared, defying her mistress's orders.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but a Mr. Morfey is on the telephone and asks whether it would be convenient for you to see him to-night. He says it's urgent." Mr. Prohack braced himself, but where his stomach had been there was a void.

V

"Had an accident to your eye-glass?" asked Mr. Prohack, shaking hands with Oswald Morfey, when the latter entered, by appointment, Mr. Prohack's breakfast-room after dinner. Miss Warburton having gone home, Mr. Prohack had determined to employ her official room for formal interviews. With her woman's touch she had given it an air of business which pleasantly reminded him of the Treasury.

Ozzie was not wearing an eye-glass, and the absence of the broad black ribbon that usually ran like a cable-connection between his eye and his supra-umbilical region produced the disturbing illusion that he had forgotten an essential article of attire.

"Yes," Ozzie replied, opening his eyes with that mien of surprise that was his response to all questions, even the simplest. "Miss Sissie has cracked it."

"I'm very sorry my daughter should be so clumsy."

"It was not exactly clumsiness. I offered her the eye-glass to do what she pleased with, and she pleased to break it."

"Surely an impertinence?"

"No. A favour. Miss Sissie did not care for my eye-glass."

"You must be considerably incommoded."

"No. The purpose of my eye-glass was decorative, not optical." Ozzie smiled agreeably, though nervously.

Mr. Prohack was conscious of a certain surprising sympathy for this chubby simpering young man with the peculiar vocation, whom but lately he had scorned and whom on one occasion he had described as a perfect ass.

"Well, shall we sit down?" suggested the elder, whom the younger's nervousness had put into an excellent state of easy confidence.

"The fact is," said Ozzie, obeying, "the fact is that I've come to see you about Sissie. I'm very anxious to marry her, Mr. Prohack."

"Indeed! Then you must excuse this old velvet coat. If I'd had notice of the solemnity of your visit, my dear Morfey, I'd have met you in a dinner jacket. May I just put one question? Have you kissed Sissie already?"

"I—er—have."

"By force or by mutual agreement?"

"Neither."

"She made no protest?"

"No."

"The reverse rather?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you come here to me?"

"To get your consent."

"I suppose you arranged with Sissie that you should come here?"

"Yes, I did. We thought it would be best if I came alone."

"Well, all I can say is that you're a very old-fashioned pair. I'm afraid that you must have forgotten to alter your date calendar when the twentieth century started. Let me assure you that this is not by any means the nineteenth. I admit that I only altered my own date calendar this afternoon, and even then only as the result of an unusual dream."

"Yes?" said Ozzie politely, and he said nothing else, but it seemed to Mr. Prohack that Ozzie was thinking: "This queer old stick is taking advantage of his position to make a fool of himself in his queer old way."

"Let us examine the circumstances," Mr. Prohack proceeded. "You want to marry Sissie. Therefore you respect her. Therefore you would not have invited her to marry unless you had been reasonably sure that you possessed the brains and the material means to provide for her physical and moral comfort not merely during the next year but till the end of her life. It would be useless, not to say impolite, for me to question you as to your situation and your abilities, because you are convinced about both, and if you failed to convince me about both you would leave here perfectly sure that the fault was mine and not yours, and you would pursue your plans just the same. Moreover, you are a man of the world—far more a man of the world than I am myself—and you are unquestionably the best judge of your powers to do your duty towards a wife. Of course some might argue that I, being appreciably older than you, am appreciably wiser than you and that my opinion on vital matters is worth more than yours. But you know, and perhaps I know too, that in growing old a man does not really become wiser; he simply acquires a different sort of wisdom—whether it is a better or a worse sort nobody can decide. All we know is that the extremely young and the extremely old are in practice generally foolish. Which leads you nowhere at all. But looking at history we perceive that the ideas of the moderately young have always triumphed against the ideas of the moderately old. And happily so, for otherwise there could be no progress. Hence the balance of probability is that, assuming you and I were to differ, you would be more right than I should be."

"But I hope that we do not differ, sir," said Ozzie. And Mr. Prohack found satisfaction in the naturalness, the freedom from pose, of Ozzie's diffident and disconcerted demeanour. His sympathy for the young man was increased by the young man's increasing consternation.

"Again," resumed Mr. Prohack, ignoring Ozzie's hope. "Take the case of Sissie herself. Sissie's education was designed and superintended by myself. The supreme aim of education should be to give sound judgment in the great affairs of life, and moral stamina to meet the crises which arrive when sound judgment is falsified by events. If I were to tell you that in my opinion Sissie's judgment of you as a future husband was unsound, it would be equivalent to admitting that my education of Sissie had been unsound. And I could not possibly admit such a thing. Moreover, just as you are a man of the world, so Sissie is a woman of the world. By heredity and by natural character she is sagacious, and she has acquainted herself with all manner of things as to which I am entirely ignorant. Nor can I remember any instance of her yielding, from genuine conviction, to my judgment when it was opposed to hers. From all which it follows, my dear Morfey, that your mission to me here this evening is a somewhat illogical, futile, and unnecessary mission, and that the missioner must be either singularly old-fashioned and conventional—or laughing in his sleeve at me. No!" Mr. Prohack with a nineteenth century wave of the hand deprecated Ozzie's interrupting protest. "No! There is a third alternative, and I accept it. You desired to show me a courtesy. I thank you."

"But have you no questions to ask me?" demanded Ozzie.

"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "How did you first make the acquaintance of my daughter?"

"Do you mean to say you don't know? Hasn't Sissie ever told you?"

"Never. What is more, she has never mentioned your name in any conversation until somebody else had mentioned it. Such is the result of my educational system, and the influence of the time-spirit."

"Well, I'm dashed!" exclaimed Ozzie sincerely.

"I hope not, Morfey. I hope not, if by dashed you mean 'damned.'"

"But it was the most wonderful meeting, Mr. Prohack," Ozzie burst out, and he was in such an enthusiasm that he almost forgot to lisp. "You knew I was in M.I. in the war, after my trench fever."

"M.I., that is to say, Secret Service."

"Yes. Secret Service if you like. Well, sir, I was doing some work in the East End, in a certain foreign community, and I had to get away quickly, and so I jumped into a motor-van that happened to be passing. That van was driven by Sissie!"

"An example of fact imitating fiction!" remarked Mr. Prohack, seeking, not with complete success, to keep out of his voice the emotion engendered in him by Ozzie's too brief recital. "Now that's one question, and you have answered it brilliantly. My second and last question is this: Are you in love with Sissie—"

"Please, Mr. Prohack!" Ozzie half rose out of his chair.

"Or do you love her? The two things are very different."

"I beg your pardon, sir. I hadn't quite grasped," said Ozzie apologetically, subsiding. "I quite see what you mean. I'm both."

"You are a wonder!" Mr. Prohack murmured.

"Anyway, sir, I'm glad you don't object to our engagement."

"My dear Oswald," said Mr. Prohack in a new tone. "Do you imagine that after my daughter had expressed her view of you by kissing you I could fail to share that view. You have a great opinion of Sissie, but I doubt whether your opinion of her is greater than mine. We will now have a little whiskey together."

Ozzie's chubby face shone as in his agreeable agitation he searched for the eye-glass ribbon that was not there.

"Well, sir," said he, beaming. "This interview has not been at all like what I expected."

"Nor like what I expected either," said Mr. Prohack. "But who can foresee the future?" And he added to himself: "Could I foresee when I called this youth a perfect ass that in a very short time I should be receiving him, not unpleasantly, as a prospective son-in-law? Life is marvellous."

At the same moment Mrs. Prohack entered the room.

"Oh!" cried she, affecting to be surprised at the presence of Ozzie.

"Wife!" said Mr. Prohack, "Mr. Oswald Morfey has done you the honour to solicit the hand of your daughter in marriage. You are staggered!

"How ridiculous you are, Arthur!" said Mrs. Prohack, and impulsively kissed Ozzie.

VI

The wedding festivities really began the next evening with a family dinner to celebrate Sissie's betrothal. The girl arrived magnificent from the Grand Babylon, escorted by her lover, and found Mrs. Prohack equally magnificent—indeed more magnificent by reason of the pearl necklace. It seemed to Mr. Prohack that Eve had soon become quite used to that marvellous necklace; he had already had to chide her for leaving it about. Ozzie also was magnificent; even lacking his eye-glass and ribbon he was magnificent. Mr. Prohack, esteeming that a quiet domestic meal at home demanded no ceremony, had put on his old velvet, but Eve had sharply corrected his sense of values—so shrewishly indeed that nobody would have taken her for the recent recipient of a marvellous necklace at his hands—and he had yielded to the extent of a dinner-jacket. Charlie had not yet come. Since the previous afternoon he had been out of town on mighty enterprises, but Sissie had seen him return to the hotel before she left it, and he was momently expected. Mr. Prohack perceived that Eve was treating Ozzie in advance as her son, and Ozzie was responding heartily: a phenomenon which Mr. Prohack in spite of himself found agreeable. Sissie showed more reserve than her mother towards Ozzie; but then Sissie was a proud thing, which Eve never was. Mr. Prohack admitted privately that he was happy—yes, he was happy in the betrothal, and he had most solemnly announced and declared that he would have naught to do with the wedding beyond giving a marriage gift to his daughter and giving his daughter to Ozzie. And when Sissie said that as neither she nor Ozzie had much use for the state of being merely engaged the wedding would occur very soon, Mr. Prohack rejoiced at the prospect of the upset being so quickly over. After the emotions and complications of the wedding he would settle down to simplicity,—luxurious possibly, but still simplicity: the plain but perfect. And let his fortune persist in accumulating, well it must accumulate and be hanged to it!

"But what about getting a house?" he asked his daughter.

"Oh, we shall live in Ozzie's flat," said Sissie.

"Won't it be rather small?"

"The smaller the better," said Sissie. "It will match our income."

"Oh, my dear girl," Eve protested, with a glance at Mr. Prohack to indicate that for the asking Sissie could have all the income she wanted. "And I'll give you an idea," Eve brightly added. "You can have this house rent free."

Sissie shook her head.

"Don't make so sure that they can have this house," said Mr. Prohack.

"But, Arthur! You've agreed to go and look at Manchester Square! And it's all ready excepting the servants. I'm told that if you don't want less than seven servants, including one or two menservants, there's no difficulty about servants at all. I shall be very disappointed if we don't have the wedding from Manchester Square."

Mr. Prohack writhed, though he knew himself safe. Seven servants; two menservants? No! And again no! No complications!

"I shall only agree to Manchester Square," said he with firmness and solemnity, "subject to the drains being all right. Somebody in the place must show a little elementary sagacity and restraint."

"But the drains are bound to be all right!"

"I hope so," said the deceitful father. "And I believe they will be. But until we're sure—nothing can be done." And he laughed satanically to himself.

"Haven't you had the report yet?" Sissie complained. "Miss Warburton was to try to get hold of it to-night."

A moment later Machin, in a condition of high excitement due to the betrothal, brought in a large envelope, saying that Miss Warburton had just left it. The envelope contained the report of Messrs. Doy and Doy on the drains of the noble mansion. Mr. Prohack read it, frowned, and pursed his judicial lips.

"Read it, my dear," he said to Eve.

Eve read that Messrs. Doy and Doy found themselves unable, after a preliminary inspection, which owing to their instructions to be speedy had not been absolutely exhaustive, to certify the drains of the noble mansion. They feared the worst, but there was of course always a slight hope of the best, or rather the second best. (They phrased it differently but they meant that.) In the meantime they would await further instructions. Mr. Prohack reflected calmly: "My new secretary is an adept of the first conspiratorial order." Eve was shocked into silence. (Doy and Doy used very thick and convincing note-paper.) The entrance of Charlie loosed her tongue.

"Charlie!" she cried. "The drains are all wrong. Look at this. And didn't you say the option expired to-morrow?"

Charlie read the report.

"Infernal rascals!" he muttered. "Whose doing is this? Who's been worrying about drains?" He looked round accusingly.

"I have," said Mr. Prohack bravely, but he could not squarely meet the boy's stern glance.

"Well, dad, what did you take me for? Did you suppose I should buy an option on a house without being sure of the drains? My first act was to have the drains surveyed by Flockers, the first firm in London, and I've got their certificate. As for Doy and Doy, they're notorious. They want to stop everybody else but themselves getting a commission on that house, and this—" he slapped the report—"this is how they're setting about it."

Eve adored her son.

"You see," she said victoriously to Mr. Prohack, who secretly trembled.

"I shall bring an action against Doy and Doy," Charlie continued. "I'll show the whole rascally thing up."

"I hope you'll do no such thing, my boy," said Mr. Prohack, foolishly attempting the grandiose.

"I most positively shall, dad."

Mr. Prohack realised desperately that all was lost except honour, and he was by no means sure about even honour.



CHAPTER XVI

TRANSFER OF MIMI

I

Mr. Prohack passed a very bad night—the worst for months, one of the outstanding bad nights of his whole existence.

"Why didn't I have it out with Charlie before he left?" he asked himself some scores of times while listening to the tranquil regular breathing of Eve, who of course was now sure of her house and probably had quite forgotten the meaning of care. "I'm bound to have it out with him sooner or later, and if I'd done it at once I should at any rate have slept. They're all sleeping but me."

He simply could not comprehend life; the confounded thing called life baffled him by its mysterious illogicalness. He was adored by his spouse, beloved by his children, respected by the world. He had heaps of money, together with the full control of it. His word, if he chose, was law. He had only to say: "I will not take the house in Manchester Square," and nobody could thwart him. He powerfully desired not to take it. There was no sensible reason why he should take it. And yet he would take it, under the inexplicable compulsion of circumstances. In those sombre hours he had a fellow-feeling for Oriental tyrants, who were absolute autocrats but also slaves of exactly the same sinister force that had gripped himself. He perceived that in practice there is no such thing as an autocrat....

Not that his defeat in regard to the house really disturbed him. He could reconcile himself to the house, despite the hateful complications which it would engender. What disturbed him horribly was the drains business, the Doy and Doy business, the Mimi business; he could see no way out of that except through the valley of humiliation. He remembered, with terrible forebodings, the remark of his daughter after she heard of the heritage: "You'll never be as happy again."

When the household day began and the familiar comfortable distant noises of domestic activity announced that the solar system was behaving much as usual in infinite and inconceivable space, he decided that he was too tired to be scientifically idle that day—even though he had a trying-on appointment with Mr. Melchizidek. He decided, too, that he would not get up, would in fact take everything lying down, would refuse to descend a single step of the stairs to meet trouble. And he had a great wish to be irritated and angry. But, the place seemed to be full of angels who turned the other cheek—and the other cheek was marvellously soft and bewitching.

Eve, Sissie (who had called), and Machin—they were all in a state of felicity, for the double reason that Sissie was engaged to be married, and that the household was to move into a noble mansion. Machin saw herself at the head of a troup of sub-parlourmaids and housemaids and tweenies, and foretold that she would stand no nonsense from butlers. They all treated Mr. Prohack as a formidable and worshipped tyrant, whose smile was the sun and whose frown death, and who was the fount of wisdom and authority. They knew that he wanted to be irritated, and they gave him no chance to be irritated. Their insight into his psychology was uncanny. They knew that he was beaten on the main point, and with their detestable feminine realism they exquisitely yielded on all the minor points. Eve, fresh as a rose, bent over him and bedewed him, and said that she was going out and that Sissie had gone again.

When he was alone he rang the bell for Machin as though the bell had done him an injury.

"What time is it?"

"Eleven o'clock, sir."

"Eleven o'clock! Good God! Why hasn't Miss Warburton come?"

As if Machin was responsible for Miss Warburton!... No! Mr. Prohack was not behaving nicely, and it cannot be hidden that he lacked the grandeur of mind which distinguishes most of us.

"Miss Warburton was here before ten o'clock, sir."

"Then why hasn't she come up?"

"She was waiting for orders, sir."

"Send her up immediately."

"Certainly, sir."

Miss Warburton was the fourth angel—an angel with another spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the sound of it in her purling voice.

"Good morning," the gruff brute started. "Did I hear the telephone-bell just now?"

"Yes, sir. Doy and Doy have telephoned to say that Mr. Charles Prohack has just been in to see them, and they've referred him to you, and—and—"

"And what? And what? And what?" (A machine-gun.)

"They said he was extremely unpleasant."

Instinctively Mr. Prohack threw away shame. Mimi was his minion. He treated her as an Oriental tyrant might treat the mute guardian of the seraglio, and told her everything,—that Charlie had forestalled them in the matter of the drains of the noble mansion, that Charlie had determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a trap, that there was the devil to pay, and that the finest lies that ingenuity could invent would have to be uttered. He abandoned all pretence of honesty and uprightness. Mimi showed no surprise whatever, nor was she apparently in the least shocked. She seemed to regard the affair as a quite ordinary part of the day's routine. Her insensitive calm frightened Mr. Prohack.

"Now we must think of something," said the iniquitous monster.

"I don't see that there need be any real difficulty," Mimi replied. "You didn't know anything about my plot with Doy and Doy. I got the notion—quite wrongly—that you preferred not to have the house, and I acted as I did through an excess of zeal. I must confess the plot. I alone am to blame, and I admit that what I did was quite inexcusable."

"What a girl! What a girl!" thought Mr. Prohack. But there were limits to his iniquity, and he said aloud, benevolently, grandiosely: "But I did know about it. You as good as told me exactly what you meant to do, and I let you do it. I approved, and I am responsible. Nothing will induce me to let you take the responsibility. Let that be clearly understood, please."

He looked squarely at the girl, and watched with apprehension her aspiring nose rise still further, her delicate ruthless mouth become still more ruthless.

"Excuse me," she said. "My plan is the best. It's the obvious plan. Mr. Carrel Quire often adopted it. I'm afraid you're hesitating to trust me as I expect to be trusted. Please don't forget that you sacrificed an empire for me—I shall always remember that. And what's more, you said you expected from me absolute loyalty to your interests. I can stand anything but not being trusted—fully!"

Mr. Prohack sank deeper into the bed, and laughed loudly, immoderately, titanically. His ill-humour vanished as a fog will vanish. Nevertheless he was appalled by the revelation of the possibilities of the girl's character.

The strange scene was interrupted by the arrival of Charlie, who, thanks to his hypnotic influence over Machin, came masterfully straight upstairs, entered the bedroom without asking permission to do so, and, in perfect indifference to the alleged frailty of his father's health, proceeded to business.

II

"Dad," said he, after Mimi had gone through her self-ordained martyrdom and left the room. "I wonder whether you quite realise what a top-hole creature that Warburton girl is. She's perfectly astounding."

"She is," Mr. Prohack admitted.

"She's got ideas."

"She has."

"And she isn't afraid of carrying them out."

"She is not."

"She's much too good for you, dad."

"She is."

"I mean, you can't really make full use of her, can you? She's got no scope here."

"She makes her own scope," said Mr. Prohack.

"Now I honestly do need a good secretary," Charlie at last unmasked his attack. "I've got a temporary idiot, and I want a first-rater, preferably a woman. I wish you'd be decent and turn Miss Warburton over to me. She'd be invaluable to me, and with me she really would have scope for her talents." Charlie laughed.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I was only thinking of her having the notion of queering the drains like that because she wanted to please you. It was simply great. It's the best thing I ever heard." He laughed again. "Now, dad, will you turn her over to me?"

"You appear to think she's a slave to be bought and sold and this room the slave-market," said Mr. Prohack. "It hasn't occurred to you that she might object to the transfer."

"Oh! I can soon persuade her." said Charlie, lightly.

"But you couldn't easily persuade me. And I may as well inform you at once, my poor ingenuous boy, that I won't agree. I will never agree. Miss Warburton is necessary to my existence."

"All in two or three days, is she?" Charlie observed sarcastically.

"Yes."

"Well, father, as we're talking straight, let's talk straight. I'm going to take her from you. It's a very little help I'm asking you for, and that you should refuse is a bit thick. I shall speak to the mater."

"And what shall you say?"

"I shall tell her all about the plot against the new house. It was really a plot against her, because she wants the house—the house is nothing to me. I may believe that you knew nothing about the plot yourself, but I'll lay you any odds the mater won't."

"Speaking as man to man, my boy, I lay you any odds you can't put your mother against me."

"Oh!" cried Charlie, "she won't say she believes you're guilty, but she'll believe it all the same. And it's what people think that matters, not what they say they think."

"That's wisdom," Mr. Prohack agreed. "I see that I brought you up not so badly after all. But doesn't it strike you that you're trying to blackmail your father? I hope I taught you sagacity, but I never encouraged you in blackmail—unless my memory fails me."

"You can call it by any name you please," said Charlie.

"Very well, then, I will. I'll call it blackmail. Give me a cigarette." He lit the offered cigarette. "Anything else this morning?"

Father and son smiled warily at one another. Both were amused and even affectionate, but serious in the battle.

"Come along, dad. Be a sport. Anyhow, let's ask the girl."

"Do you know what my answer to blackmail is?" Mr. Prohack blandly enquired.

"No."

"My answer is the door. Drop the subject entirely. Or sling your adventurous book."

Mr. Prohack was somewhat startled to see Charlie walk straight out of the bedroom. A disturbing suspicion that there might be something incalculable in his son was rudely confirmed.

He said to himself: "But this is absurd."

III

That morning the Prohack bedroom seemed to be transformed into a sort of public square. No sooner had Charlie so startlingly left than Machin entered again.

"Dr. Veiga, sir."

And Dr. Veiga came in. The friendship between Mr. Prohack and his picturesque quack had progressed—so much so that Eve herself had begun to twit her husband with having lost his head about the doctor. Nevertheless Eve was privately very pleased with the situation, because it proved that she had been right and Mr. Prohack wrong concerning the qualities of the fat, untidy, ironic Portuguese. Mr. Prohack was delighted to see him, for an interview with Dr. Veiga always meant an unusual indulgence in the sweets of candour and realism.

"This is my wife's doing, no doubt," said Mr. Prohack, limply shaking hands.

"She called to see me, ostensibly about herself, but of course in fact about you. However, I thought she needed a tonic, and I'll write out the prescription while I'm here. Now what's the matter with you?"

"No!" Mr. Prohack burst out, "I'm hanged if I'll tell you. I'm not going to do your work for you. Find out."

Dr. Veiga examined, physically and orally, and then said: "There's nothing at all the matter with you, my friend."

"That's just where you're mistaken," Mr. Prohack retorted. "There's something rather serious the matter with me. I'm suffering from grave complications. Only you can't help me. My trouble is spiritual. Neither pills nor tonics can touch it. But that doesn't make it any better."

"Try me," said Dr. Veiga. "I'm admirable on the common physical ailments, and by this time I should have been universally recognised as a great man if common ailments were uncommon; because you know in my profession you never get any honour unless you make a study of diseases so rare that nobody has them. Discover a new disease, and save the life of some solitary nigger who brought it to Liverpool, and you'll be a baronet in a fortnight and a member of all the European academies in a month. But study colds, indigestion and insomnia, and change a thousand lives a year from despair to felicity, and no authority will take the slightest notice of you ... As with physical, so with mental diseases—or spiritual, if you like to call them so. You don't suspect that in the common mental diseases I'm a regular benefactor of mankind; but I am. I don't blame you for not knowing it, because you're about the last person I should have thought susceptible to any mental disease, and so you've had no chance of finding out. Now, what is it?"

"Don't I tell you I'm suffering from horrible complications?" cried Mr. Prohack.

"What kind of complications?"

"Every kind. My aim has always been to keep my life simple, and I succeeded very well—perhaps too well—until I inherited money. I don't mind money, but I do mind complications. I don't want a large house—because it means complications. I desire Sissie's happiness, but I hate weddings. I desire to be looked after, but I hate strange servants. I can find pleasure in a motor-car, but I hate even the risk of accidents. I have no objection to an income, but I hate investments. And so on. All I ask is to live simply and sensibly, but instead of that my existence is transformed into a quadratic equation. And I can't stop it. My happiness is not increasing—it's decreasing. I spend more and more time in wondering whither I am going, what I am after, and where precisely is the point of being alive at all. That's a fact, and now you know it."

Dr. Veiga rose from his chair and deliberately sat down on the side of his patient's bed. The gesture in itself was sufficiently unprofessional, but he capped it with another of which probably no doctor had ever been guilty in a British sick-room before; he pulled out a pocket-knife and became his own manicure, surveying his somewhat neglected hands with a benevolently critical gaze, smiling at them as if to say: "What funny hands you are!"

And Mr. Prohack felt that the doctor was saying: "What a funny Prohack you are!"

"My friend," said Dr. Veiga at length (with his voice), "my friend, I will not conceal from you that your alarm was justified. You are suffering from one of the commonest and one of the gravest mental derangements. I'm surprised, but there it is. You haven't yet discovered that it's the earth you're living on. You fancy it may be Sirius, Uranus, Aldebaran or Jupiter—let us say Jupiter. Perhaps in one of these worlds matters are ordered differently, and their truth is not our truth; but let me assure you that the name of your planet is the Earth and that on the earth one great unalterable truth prevails. Namely:—You can't do this"—here Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit the consequences. You knew when you accepted a fortune that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit them too. You want to alter the rules after the game has started. You set in motion circumstances which were bound to influence the development of the members of your family, and when the inevitable new developments begin, you object, simply because you hadn't foreseen them. You knew that money doesn't effectively exist until it's spent and that you can't spend money without causing consequences, and when your family causes consequences by bringing the money to life you complain that you're a martyr to the consequences and that you hadn't bargained for complications. My poor friend, you have made one crucial mistake in your career,—the mistake of being born. Happily the mistake is curable. I can give you several prescriptions. The first is prussic acid. If you don't care for that you can donate the whole of your fortune to the Sinking Fund for extinguishing the National Debt and you can return to the Treasury. If you don't care for that you can leave your family mysteriously and go and live in Timbuctoo by yourself. If you don't care for that you can buy a whip and forbid your wife and daughter to grow older or change in any way on pain of a hundred lashes. And if you don't like that you can acquaint yourself with the axioms that neither you nor anybody else are the centre of the universe and that what you call complications are simply another name for life itself. Worry is life, and life is worry. And the absence of worry is death. I won't say to you that you're rich and beloved and therefore you've nothing to worry about. I'll say to you, you've got a lot to worry about because you're rich and beloved.... I'll leave the other hand for to-morrow." Dr. Veiga snapped down the blade of the pocket-knife.

"Platitudes!" ejaculated Mr. Prohack.

"Certainly," agreed the quack. "But I've told you before that it's by telling everybody what everybody knows that I earn my living."

"I'll get up," said Mr. Prohack.

"And not too soon," said the quack. "Get up by all means and deal with your worries. All worries can be dealt with."

"It doesn't make life any better," said Mr. Prohack.

"Nothing makes life any better, except death—and there's a disgusting rumour that there is no death. Where shall I find a pencil, my dear fellow? I've forgotten mine, and I want to prescribe Mrs. Prohack's tonic."

"In the boudoir there," said Mr. Prohack. "What the deuce are you smiling at?"

"I'm smiling because I'm so glad to find you aren't so wise as you look." And Dr. Veiga disappeared blithely into the boudoir.

Almost at the same moment Mimi knocked and entered. She entered, stared harshly at Mr. Prohack, and then the corners of her ruthless mouth twitched and loosened and she began to cry.

"Doctor," called Mr. Prohack, "come here at once." The doctor came. "You say all worries can be dealt with? How should you deal with this one?"

The doctor dropped a slip of paper on to the bed and walked silently out of the room, precisely as Charlie had done.



IV

In regard to the effect of the sermon of Dr. Veiga on Mr. Prohack, it was as if Mr. Prohack had been a desk with many drawers and one drawer open, and the sermon had been dropped into the drawer and the drawer slammed to and nonchalantly locked. The drawer being locked, Mr. Prohack turned to the weeping figure in front of him, which suddenly ceased to weep and became quite collected and normal.

"Now, my child," said Mr. Prohack, "I have just been informed that everything has a consequence. I've seen the consequence. What is the thing?"

He was rather annoyed by Mimi's tears, but in his dangerous characteristic desire to please, he could not keep kindness out of his tone, and Mimi, reassured and comforted, began feebly to smile, and also Mr. Prohack remarked that her mouth was acquiring firmness again.

"I ought to tell you in explanation of anything of a personal nature that I may have said to him in your presence, that the gentleman just gone is my medical adviser, and I have no secrets from him; in that respect he stands equal with you and above everybody else in the world without exception. So you must excuse my freedom in directing his attention to you."

"It's I who ought to apologise," said Miss Warburton, positively. "But the fact is I hadn't the slightest idea that you weren't alone. I was just a little bit upset because I understand that you want to get rid of me."

"Ah!" murmured Mr. Prohaek, "who put that notion into your absurd head?"

He knew he was exercising his charm, but he could not help it.

"Mr. Charles. He's just been down to my room and told me."

"I hope you remembered what I said to you about your duty so far as he is concerned."

"Of course, Mr. Prohack." She smiled anew; and her smile, so clever, so self-reliant, so enigmatic, a little disturbed Mr. Prohack.

"What did my son say to you?"

"He said that he was urgently in need of a thoroughly competent secretary at once—confidential—and that he was sure I was the very woman to suit him, and that he would give me double the salary I was getting."

"Did you tell him how much you're getting?"

"No."

"Well, neither did I! And then?"

"Then he told me all about his business, how big it was, and growing quickly, too, and how he was after a young woman who had tact and resource and could talk to any one from a bank director to a mechanic or a clergyman, and that tens of thousands of pounds might often depend on my tact, and that you wouldn't mind my being transferred from you to him."

"And I suppose he asked you to go off with him immediately?"

"No, at the beginning of next week."

"And what did you say?" demanded Mr. Prohack, amazed and frightened at the manoeuvres of his unscrupulous son.

"Naturally I said that I couldn't possibly leave you—unless you told me to go, and that I owed everything to you. Then he asked me what I did for you, and I said I was particularly busy at present making a schedule of all your new purchases and checking the outfitters' accounts, and so on. That reminds me, I haven't been able to get the neckties right yet."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack. "Not been able to get the neckties right! But this is very serious. The neckties are most important. Most important!"

"Oh!" said Mimi. "If necessary I shall run round to Bond Street in my lunch-hour."

At this point the drawer in the desk started to unlock itself and open of its own accord, and Mr. Prohack's eye caught a glimpse of a page of the sermon.

Mimi continued:

"We mustn't forget there'll be hundreds of things to see to about the new house."

"Will there?"

"Well, Mrs. Prohack told Machin, and Machin has just told me, that it's all settled about taking the house. And I know what taking a house is. Mr. Carrel Quire was always taking new houses."

"But perhaps you could keep an eye on the house even if you went over to Mr. Charles?"

"Then it's true," said Mimi. "You do want me to go." But she showed no sign of weeping afresh.

"You must understand," Mr. Prohack said with much benevolence, "that my son is my son. Of course my clothes are also my clothes. But Charles is in a difficult position. He's at the beginning of his career, whereas I'm at the end of mine. He needs all the help he can get, and he can afford to pay more than I can. And even at the cost of having to check my own neckties I shouldn't like to stand in his way. That's how I look at it. Mind you, I have certainly not told Charlie that I'll set you free."

"I quite see," said Mimi. "And naturally if you put it like that—"

"You'll still be in the family."

"I shall be very sorry to leave you, Mr. Prohack."

"Doubtless. But you'll be even gladder to go over to Charles, though with him you'll be more like a kettle tied to the tail of a mad dog than a confidential secretary."

Mimi raised the tip of her nose.

"Excuse me, Mr. Prohack, I shall not be gladder to go over to Mr. Charles. Any girl will tell you that she prefers to work for a man of your age than for a boy. Boys are not interesting."

"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack. "A comfortable enough theory. And I've already heard it more than once from girls. But I've never seen any confirmation of it in practice. And I don't believe it. I'll tell you something about yourself you don't know. You're delighted to go over to my son. And if I'd refused to let you go I should have had a martyr instead of a secretary. You want adventure. You want a field for your remarkable talent for conspiracy and chicane. You know by experience there's little scope for it here. But under my son your days will be breathless.... No, no! I don't wish to hear anything. Run away and get on with your work. And you can telephone my decision to Charles. I'm now going to get up and wear all my new neckties at once."

Miss Warburton departed in a state of emotion.

As, with all leisureliness, Mr. Prohack made himself beautiful to behold, he reflected: "I'm very impulsive. I've simply thrown that girl into the arms of that boy. Eve will have something to say about it. Still, there's one complication off my chest."

Eve returned home as he was descending the stairs, and she blew him upstairs again and shut the door of the bedroom and pushed him into the privacy of the boudoir.

"It's all settled," said she. "I've signed the tenancy agreement for a year. Charlie said I could, and it would save you trouble. It doesn't matter the cheque for the first half-year's rent being signed by you, only of course the house will be in my name. How handsome you are, darling!" And she kissed him and re-tied one of the new cravats. "But that's not what I wanted to tell you, darling." Her face grew grave. "Do you know I'm rather troubled about Charlie—and your friend Lady Massulam. They're off again this morning."

"My friend?"

"Well, you know she adores you. It would be perfectly awful if—if—well, you understand what I mean. I hear she really is a widow, so that—well, you understand what I mean! I'm convinced she's at least thirty years older than Charlie. But you see she's French, and French women are so clever.... You can never be sure with them."

"Fluttering heart," said Mr. Prohack, suddenly inspired. "Don't get excited. I've thought of all that already, and I've taken measures to guard against it. I'm going to give Charlie my secretary. She'll see that Lady Massulam doesn't make any more headway, trust her!"

"Arthur, how clever you are! Nobody but you would have thought of that. But isn't it a bit dangerous, too? You see—don't you?"

Mr. Prohack shook his head.

"I gather you've been reading the love-story in The Daily Picture," said he. "In The Daily Picture the typist always marries the millionaire. But outside The Daily Picture I doubt whether these romantic things really happen. There are sixty-five thousand girls typists in the City alone, besides about a million in Whitehall. The opportunities for espousing millionaires and ministers of state are countless. But no girl-typist has been married at St. George's, Hanover Square, since typewriters were invented."



CHAPTER XVII

ROMANCE

I

The very next day Mr. Prohack had a plutocratic mood of overbearingness, which led to a sudden change in his location—the same being transferred to Frinton-on-Sea. The mood was brought about by a visit to the City, at the summons of Paul Spinner; and the visit included conversations not only with Paul, but with Smathe and Smathe, the solicitors, and with a firm of stockbrokers. Paul handed over to his crony saleable securities, chiefly in the shape of scrip of the greatest oil-combine and its subsidiaries, for a vast amount, and advised Mr. Prohack to hold on to them, as, owing to the present depression due to the imminence of a great strike, they were likely to be "marked higher" before Mr. Prohack was much older. Mr. Prohack declined the advice, and he also declined the advice of solicitors and stockbrokers, who were both full of wisdom and of devices for increasing capital values. What these firms knew about the future, and about the consequences of causes and about "the psychology of the markets" astounded the simple Terror of the departments; and it was probably unanswerable. But, being full of riches, Mr. Prohack did not trouble to answer it; he merely swept it away with a tyrannical and impatient gesture, which gesture somehow mysteriously established him at once as a great authority on the art of investment.

"Now listen to me," said he imperiously, and the manipulators of shares listened, recalling to themselves that Mr. Prohack had been a Treasury official for over twenty years and must therefore be worth hearing—although the manipulators commonly spent many hours a week in asserting, in the press and elsewhere, that Treasury officials comprehended naught of finance. "Now listen to me. I don't care a hang about my capital. It may decrease or increase, and I shan't care. All I care for is my interest. I want to be absolutely sure that my interest will tumble automatically into my bank on fixed dates. No other consideration touches me. I'm not a gambler. I'm not a usurer. Industrial development leaves me cold, and if I should ever feel any desire to knit the Empire closer together I'll try to do it without making a profit out of it. At the moment all I'm after is certain, sure, fixed interest. Hence—Government securities, British Government or Colonial! Britain is of course rotten to the core, always was, always will be. Still, I'll take my chances. I'm infernally insular where investment is concerned. There's one thing to be said about the British Empire—you do know where you are in it. And I don't mind some municipal stocks. I even want some. I can conceive the smash-up of the British Empire, but I cannot conceive Manchester defaulting in its interest payments. Can you?" And he looked round and paused for a reply, and no reply came. Nobody dared to boast himself capable of conceiving Manchester's default.

Towards the end of the arduous day Mr. Prohack departed from the City, leaving behind him an immense reputation for financial sagacity, and a scheme of investment under which he could utterly count upon a modest regular income of L17,000 per annum. He was sacrificing over L5,000 per annum in order to be free from an investor's anxieties, and he reckoned that his peace of mind was cheap at a hundred pounds a week. This detail alone shows to what an extent the man's taste for costly luxuries had grown.

Naturally he arrived home swollen. Now it happened that Eve also, by reason of her triumph in regard to the house in Manchester Square, had swelled head. A conflict of individualities occurred. A trifle, even a quite pleasant trifle! Nothing that the servants might not hear with advantage. But before you could say 'knife' Mr. Prohack had said that he would go away for a holiday and abandon Eve to manage the removal to Manchester Square how she chose, and Ere had leapt on to the challenge and it was settled that Mr. Prohack should go to Frinton-on-Sea.

Eve selected Frinton-on-Sea for him because Dr. Veiga had recommended it for herself. She had a broad notion of marriage as a commonwealth. She loved to take Mr. Prohack's medicines, and she was now insisting on his taking her watering-places. Mr. Prohack said that the threatened great strike might prevent his journey. Pooh! She laughed at such fears. She drove him herself to Liverpool Street.

"You may see your friend Lady Massulam," said she, as the car entered the precincts of the station. (Once again he was struck by the words 'your friend' prefixed to Lady Massulam; but he offered no comment on them.)

"Why Lady Massulam?" he asked.

"Didn't you know she's got a house at Frinton?" replied Mrs. Prohack. "Everybody has in these days. It's the thing."

She didn't see him into the train, because she was in a hurry about butlers. Mr. Prohack was cast loose in the booking-hall and had a fine novel sensation of freedom.

II

Never since marriage had he taken a holiday alone—never desired to do so. He felt himself to be on the edge of romance. Frinton, for example, presented itself as a city of romance. He knew it not, knew scarcely any English seaside, having always managed to spend his holidays abroad; but Frinton must, he was convinced, be strangely romantic. The train thither had an aspect which strengthened this conviction. It consisted largely of first-class coaches, and in the window of nearly every first-class compartment and saloon was exhibited a notice: "This compartment (or saloon) is reserved for members of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association." Mr. Prohack, being still somewhat swollen, decided that he was a member of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association and acted accordingly. Otherwise he might never have reached Frinton.

He found himself in a sort of club, about sixty feet by six, where everybody knew everybody except Mr. Prohack, and where cards and other games, tea and other drinks, tobacco and other weeds, were being played and consumed in an atmosphere of the utmost conviviality. Mr. Prohack was ignored, but he was not objected to. His fellow-travellers regarded him cautiously, as a new chum. The head attendant and dispenser was very affable, as to a promising neophyte. Only the ticket-inspector singled him out from all the rest by stopping in front of him.

"My last hour has come," thought Mr. Prohack as he produced his miserable white return-ticket.

All stared; the inspector stared; but nothing happened. Mr. Prohack had a sense of reprieve, and also of having been baptised or inducted into a secret society. He listened heartily to forty conversations about physical diversions and luxuries and about the malignant and fatuous wrong-headedness of men who went on strike, and about the approaching catastrophic end of all things.

Meanwhile, at any rate in the coach, the fabric of society seemed to be holding together fairly well. Before the train was half-way to Frinton Mr. Prohack judged—and rightly—that he was already there. The fact was that he had been there ever since entering the saloon. After two hours the train, greatly diminished in length, came to rest in the midst of a dark flatness, and the entire population of the coach vanished out of it in the twinkling of an eye, and Mr. Prohack saw the name 'Frinton' on a flickering oil-lamp, and realised that he was at the gates of the most fashionable resort in England, a spot where even the ozone was exclusive. The station staff marvelled at him because he didn't know where the Majestic Hotel was and because he asked without notice for a taxi, fly, omnibus or anything on wheels. All the other passengers had disappeared. The exclusive ozone was heavy with exciting romance for Mr. Prohack as the station staff considered his unique and incomprehensible case. Then a tiny omnibus materialised out of the night.

"Is this the Majestic bus?" Mr. Prohack enquired of the driver.

"Well, it is if you like, sir," the driver answered.

Mr. Prohack did like....

The Majestic was large and prim, resembling a Swiss hotel in its furniture, the language and composition of the menu, the dialect of the waiters; but it was about fifteen degrees colder than the highest hotel in Switzerland. The dining-room was shaded with rose-shaded lamps and it susurrated with the polite whisperings of elegant couples and trios, and the entremet was cabinet pudding: a fine display considering the depth of winter and of the off-season.

Mr. Prohack went off after dinner for a sharp walk in the east wind. Solitude! Blackness! Night! East wind in the bushes of gardens that shielded the facades of large houses! Not a soul! Not a policeman! He descended precariously to the vast, smooth beach. The sound of the sea! Romance! Mr. Prohack seemed to walk for miles, like Ozymandias, on the lone and level sands. Then he fancied he descried a moving object. He was not mistaken. It approached him. It became a man and a woman. It became a man and a young woman arm-in-arm and soul-in-soul. And there was nothing but the locked couple, and the sound of the invisible, immeasurable sea, and the east wind, and Mr. Prohack. Romance thrilled through Mr. Prohack's spine.

"So I said to him," the man was saying to the young woman as the pair passed Mr. Prohack, "I said to him 'I could do with a pint o' that,' I said."



III

The next morning Mr. Prohack rose with alacrity from a hard bed, and was greeted in the hall by the manager of the hotel, an enormous, middle-aged, sun-burnt, jolly person in flannels and an incandescent blazer, who asked him about his interests in golf and hard-court tennis. Mr. Prohack, steeped as he felt himself to be in strange romance, was prepared to be interested in these games, but the self-protective instinct warned him that since these games could not be played alone they would, if he indulged in them, bring him into contact with people who might prove tedious. He therefore changed the conversation and asked whether he could have strawberry jam to his breakfast. The manager's face instantly changed, hardening to severity. Was Mr. Prohack eccentric? Did he desire to disturb the serene habits of the hotel? The manager promised to see. He did see, and announced that he was 'afraid' that Mr. Prohack could not have strawberry jam to his breakfast. And Mr. Prohack said to himself: "What would my son Charles have done?" During a solitary breakfast (with blackberry jam) in the huge dining-room, Mr. Prohack decided that Charles would have approached the manager differently.

After breakfast he saw the manager again, and he did not enquire from the manager whether there was any chance of hiring a motor-car. He said briefly:

"I want to hire a car, please. It must be round here in half an hour, sharp."

"I will attend to the matter myself," said the manager humbly.

The car kept the rendezvous, and Mr. Prohack inspected Frinton from the car. He admired the magnificent reserve of Frinton, which was the most English place he had ever seen. The houses gave nothing away; the shivering shopping ladies in the streets gave nothing away; and certainly the shops gave nothing away. The newspaper placards announced what seemed to be equivalent to the end of the existing social order; but Frinton apparently did not blench nor tremble; it went calmly and powerfully forward into the day (which was Saturday), relying upon the great British axiom: "To ignore is to destroy." It ignored the end of the existing social order, and lo! there was no end. Up and down various long and infinitely correct avenues of sheltered homes drove Mr. Prohack, and was everywhere baffled in his human desire to meet Frinton half-way. He stopped the car at the Post Office and telegraphed to his wife: "No strawberry jam in this city. Love. Arthur." The girl behind the counter said: "One and a penny, please," and looked hard at him. Five minutes later he returned to the Post Office and telegraphed to his wife: "Omitted to say in previous telegram that Frinton is the greatest expression of Anglo-Saxon character I have ever encountered. Love. Arthur." The girl behind the counter said: "Two and three, please," stared harder at him, and blushed. Perceiving the blush, Mr. Prohack at once despatched a third telegram to his wife: "But it has charming weaknesses. Love. Arthur." Extraordinarily happy and gay, he drove out of Frinton to see the remainder of North East Essex in the enheartening east wind.

In the evening he fell asleep in the lounge while waiting for dinner, having dressed a great deal too soon and being a great deal too full of east wind. When he woke up he noticed a different atmosphere in the hotel. Youth and brightness had entered it. The lounge had vivacity and expectation; and Mr. Prohack learned that Saturday night was gala, with a dance and special bridge. Not even the news that the star-guest of the hotel, Lord Partick, was suddenly indisposed and confined to his room could dash the new optimism of the place.

At dinner the manager walked around the little tables and gorgeously babbled with diners about the sportive feats of the day. And Mr. Prohack, seeing that his own turn was coming, began to feel as if he was on board a ship. He feared the worst and the worst came.

"Perhaps you'd like to make a fourth at bridge. If so—" said the manager jollily. "Or perhaps you dance. If so—"

Mr. Prohack shut his eyes and gave forth vague affirmatives.

And as soon as the manager had left him he gazed around the room at the too-blonde women young and old and wondered fearfully which would be his portion for bridge or dance. In the lounge after dinner he ignited a cigar and watched the lighting up of the ball-room (ordinarily the drawing-room) and the entry of the musicians therein. Then he observed the manager chatting with two haughty beldames and an aged gentleman, and they all three cast assaying glances upon Mr. Prohack, and Mr. Prohack knew that he had been destined for bridge, not dancing, and the manager moved towards him, and Mr. Prohack breathed his last sigh but one....

But the revolving doors at the entrance revolved, and out of the Frintonian night appeared Lady Massulam, magnificently enveloped. Seldom had Mr. Prohack's breast received a deeper draught of mingled astonishment and solace. Hitherto he had not greatly cared for Lady Massulam, and could not see what Charlie saw in her. Now he saw what Charlie saw and perhaps more also. She had more than dignity,—she had style. And she femininely challenged. She was like a breeze oil the French shore to a British barque cruising dully in the Channel. She welcomed the sight of Mr. Prohack, and her greeting of him made a considerable change in the managerial attitude towards the unassuming Terror of the departments. The manager respectfully informed Lady Massulam that Lord Partick was indisposed, and respectfully took himself off. Lady Massulam and Mr. Prohack then proceeded to treat each other like new toys. Mr. Prohack had to explain why he was at Frinton, and Lady Massulam explained that whenever she was in Frinton at the week-end she always came to the Majestic to play bridge with old Lord Partick. It flattered him; she liked him, though he had bought his peerage; he was a fine player—so was she; and lastly they had had business relations, and financially Lord Partick watched over her as over a young girl.

Mr. Prohack was relieved thus to learn that Lady Massulam had not strolled into the Majestic Hotel, Frinton, to play bridge with nobody in particular. Still, she was evidently well known to the habitues, several of whom approached to greet her. She temporised with them in her calm Latin manner, neither encouraging nor discouraging their advances, and turning back to Mr. Prohack by her side at every surcease.

"We shall be compelled to play bridge if we do not take care," she murmured in his ear, as a dowager larger than herself loomed up.

"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack, "I've been feeling the danger ever since dinner. Will you dance with me,—not of course as a pleasure—I won't flatter myself—but as a means of salvation?"

The dowager bore down with a most definite suggestion for bridge in the card-room. Lady Massulam definitely stated that she was engaged to dance....

Well, of course Lady Massulam was something of a galleon herself; but she was a beautiful dancer; that is to say, she responded perfectly to the male volition; she needed no pushing and no pulling; she moved under his will as lightly as a young girl. Her elaborately dressed hair had an agreeable scent; her complexion was a highly successful achievement; everything about her had a quiet and yet a dazzling elegance which had been obtained regard-less of expense. As for her figure, it was on a considerable scale, but its important contours had a soft and delicate charm. And all that was nothing in the estimation of Mr. Prohack compared with her glance. At intervals in the fox-trot he caught the glance. It was arch, flirtatious, eternally youthful, challenging; and it expressed pleasure in the fox-trot. Mr. Prohack was dancing better than ever before in his career as a dancer. She made him dance better. She was not the same woman whom he had first met at lunch at the Grand Babylon Hotel. She was a new revelation, packed with possibilities. Mr. Prohack recalled his wife's phrase: "You know she adores you." He hadn't known. Honestly such an idea had not occurred to him. But did she adore him? Not "adore"—naturally—but had she a bit of a fancy for him?

Mr. Prohack became the youngest man in the room,—an extraordinary case of rejuvenescence. He surveyed the room with triumph. He sniffed up the brassy and clicking music into his vibrating nostrils. He felt no envy of any man in the room. When the band paused he clapped like a child for another dose of fox-trot. At the end of the third dose they were both a little breathless and they had ices. After a waltz they both realised that excess would be imprudent, and returned to the lounge.

"I wish you'd tell me something about my son," said Mr. Prohack. "I think you must be the greatest living authority on him."

"Here?" exclaimed Lady Massulam.

"Anywhere. Any time."

"It would be safer at my house," said Lady Massulam. "But before I go I must just write a little note to Lord Partick. He will expect it."

That was how she invited him to The Lone Cedar, the same being her famous bungalow on the Front.

IV

"Your son," said Lady Massulam, in a familiar tone, but most reassuringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful capacity, "your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now playing a dangerous game—far more dangerous than he imagines, and he will not be warned. He is selling something he hasn't got before he knows what price he will have to pay for it."

"Ah!" breathed Mr. Prohack.

They were sitting together in the richly ornamented bungalow drawing-room, by the fire. Lady Massulam sat up straight Sn her sober and yet daring evening frock. Mr. Prohack lounged with formless grace in a vast easy-chair neighbouring a whiskey-and-soda. She had not asked him to smoke; he did not smoke, and he had no wish to smoke. She was a gorgeously mature specimen of a woman. He imagined her young, and he decided that he preferred the autumn to the spring. She went on talking of finance.

"She is moving in regions that Eve can never know," he thought. "But how did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?"

The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him. Her appreciation or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a vehicle for the expression of her personality. He had never met such a woman. He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself. He looked surreptitiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied sumptuosity aptly illustrated her mind and heart. His own heart was full of quite new sensations.

"Of course," she was saying, "if Charles is to become the really great figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and perhaps it is incurable."

"I know what that is," said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.

"What is it?" Her glance met his.

"His confounded reserve, lack of elasticity, lack of adaptability. The old British illusion that everything will come to him who won't budge. Why, it's a ten-horse-power effort for him even to smile!"

Lady Massulam seemed to leap from her chair, and she broke swiftly into French:

"Oh! You comprehend then, you? If you knew what I have suffered in your terrible England! But you do not suspect what I have suffered! I advance myself. They retire before me. I advance myself again. They retire again. I open. They close. Do they begin? Never! It is always I who must begin! Do I make a natural gesture—they say to themselves, 'What a strange woman! How indiscreet! But she is foreign.' They lift their shoulders. Am I frank—they pity me. They give themselves never! They are shut like their lips over their long teeth. Ah, but they have taught me. In twenty years have I not learnt the lesson? There is nobody among you who can be more shut-tight than me. I flatter myself that I can be more terrible than any English woman or man. You do not catch me now! But what a martyrdom!... I might return to France? No! I am become too English. In Paris I should resemble an emigree. And people would say: 'What is that? It is like nothing at all. It has no name.' Besides, I like you English. You are terrible, but one can count on you.... Vous y etes?"

"J'y suis," replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.

Lady Massulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped.

"Pardon!" she cried, aghast. "It is yours," and planked the tumbler down again on the lacquered table.

Mr. Prohack had the wit to drink also. They went on talking.... A silver tongue vibrated from the hall with solemn British deliberation—One! Two! The air throbbed to the sound for many seconds.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, rising in alarm. "And this is Frinton!" She let him out herself, with all soft precautions against shocking the Frintonian world. His manner of regaining the Majestic Hotel can only be described by saying that he 'effected an entrance' into it. He went to bed but not to sleep.

"What the deuce has happened to me?" he asked himself amazed. "Is it anything serious? Or am I merely English after all?"

V

Late the next morning, when he was dreaming, a servant awoke him with the information that a chauffeur was demanding him. But he was sleepy and slept again. Between noon and one o'clock he encountered the chauffeur. It was Carthew, who stated that his mistress had sent him with the car. She felt that he would need the car to go about in. As for her, she would manage without it.

Mr. Prohack remained silent for a few moments and then said:

"Be ready to start in a quarter of an hour."

"Before lunch, sir?"

"Before lunch."

Mr. Prohack paid his bill and packed.

"Which way, sir?" Carthew asked, as the Eagle moved from under the portico of the hotel.

"There is only one road out of Frinton," said Mr. Prohack. "It's the road you came in by. Take it. I want to get off as quickly as possible. The climate of this place is the most dangerous and deceptive I was ever in."

"Really, sir!" responded Carthew, polite but indifferent. "The east wind I suppose, sir?"

"Not at all. The south wind."



CHAPTER XVIII

A HOMELESS NIGHT

I

How exhilarating (Mr. Prohack found it) to be on the road without a destination! It was Sunday morning, and the morning was marvellous for the time of year. Mr. Prohack had had a very fine night, and he now felt a curious desire to defy something or somebody, to defend himself, and to point out, if any one accused him of cowardice, that he had not retreated from danger until after he had fairly affronted it. More curious still was the double, self-contradictory sensation of feeling both righteous and sinful. He would have spurned a charge of wickedness, and yet the feeling of being wicked was really very jolly. He seemed to have begun a new page of life, and then to have ripped the page away—and possibly spoilt the whole book. Deference to Eve, of course! Respect for Eve! Or was it merely that he must always be able to look Eve in the face? In sending the car for his idle use, Eve had performed a master-stroke which laid him low by its kindliness, its wifeliness, its touches of perverse self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice. Lady Massulam hung in the vast hollow of his mind, a brilliant and intensely seductive figure; but Eve hung there too, and Mr. Prohack was obliged to admit that the simple Eve was holding her own.

"My sagacity is famous," said Mr. Prohack to himself. "And I never showed more of it than in leaving Frinton instantly. Few men would have had the sense and the resolution to do it." And he went on praising himself to himself. Such was the mood of this singular man.

Hunger—Mr. Prohack's hunger—drew them up at Frating, a village a few miles short of Colchester. The inn at Frating had been constructed ages earlier entirely without reference to the fact that it is improper for certain different types of humanity to eat or drink in each other's presence. In brief, there was obviously only one dining-room, and not a series of dining-rooms classified according to castes. Mr. Prohack, free, devil-may-care and original, said to his chauffeur:

"You'd better eat with me, Carthew."

"You're very kind, sir," said Carthew, and at once sat down and ceased to be a chauffeur.

"Well, I haven't been seeing much of you lately," Mr. Prohack edged forward into the fringes of intimacy when three glasses of beer and three slices of Derby Round had been unequally divided between them, "have I?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Prohack had in truth been seeing Carthew almost daily; but on this occasion he used the word "see" in a special sense.

"That boy of yours getting on all right?"

"Pretty fair, considering he's got no mother, if you understand what I mean, sir," replied Carthew, pushing back his chair, stretching out his legs, and picking his teeth with a fork.

"Ah! yes!" said Mr. Prohack commiseratingly. "Very awkward situation for you, that is."

"It isn't awkward for me, sir. It's my boy it's awkward for. I'm as right as rain."

"No chance of the lady coming back, I suppose?"

"Well, she'd better not try," said Carthew grimly.

"But does this mean you've done with the sex, at your age?" cried Mr. Prohack.

"I don't say as I've done with the sex, sir. Male and female created He them, as the good old Book says; and I'm not going behind that. No, not me! All I say is, I'm as right as rain—for the present—and she'd better not try."

"I bet you anything you won't keep it up," said Mr. Prohack, impetuously exceeding the limits of inter-caste decorum.

"Keep what up?"

"This attitude of yours."

"I won't bet, sir," said Carthew. "Because nobody can see round a corner. But I promise you I'll never take a woman seriously again. That's the mistake we make, taking 'em seriously. You see, sir, being a chauffeur in the early days of motor-cars, I've had a tidy bit of experience, if you understand what I mean. Because in them days a chauffeur was like what an air-pilot is to-day. He didn't have to ask, he didn't. And what I say is this—I say we're mugs to take 'em seriously."

"You think we are!" bubbled Mr. Prohack emptily, perceiving that he had to do with an individual whom misfortune had rendered impervious to argument.

"I do, sir. And what's more, I say you never know where you are with any woman."

"That I agree with," said Mr. Prohack, with a polite show of eagerness. "But you're cutting yourself off from a great deal you know, Carthew," he added, thinking magnificently upon his adventure with Lady Massulam.

"There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place," murmured Carthew with bland superiority. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll just go and give her a look over before we start again." He scraped his chair cruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority on women.

It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and paying the bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of the long, empty dining-room table, a copy of The Sunday Picture, which was the Sabbath edition of The Daily Picture. He got up and seized it, expecting it to be at least a week old. It proved, however, to be as new and fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.

The shock of meeting Eve in The Sunday Picture was terrible, but equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in regard to the ownership of the noble mansion. He had understood—or more correctly he had been given to understand—that the house and its contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as celebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been. Assuredly neither Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the exquisite decorations and furnishings of that house. On the other hand, it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave the house as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluable bibelots lying about all over the place. Almost certainly Eliza Fiddle must have had some sort of effective ownership of the place. He knew that dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding and mysterious luck in the matter of luxurious homes, and that some of them progressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable than the last. He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind. He had of course no grudge against the efficient and strenuous Eliza, for he was perfectly at liberty not to pay money in order to see her. She must be an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones. Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife in The Sunday Picture.... Eve! Eve! A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into The Daily Picture. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish thing, criticism of life!)

And there was another point, as sharp as any. Ozzie Morfey must have known, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself must have known, that the de facto owner of the noble mansion was Eliza Fiddle. And none had vouchsafed the truth to him.

"We'll struggle back to town I think," said Mr. Prohack to Carthew, with a pitiable affectation of brightness. And instead of sitting by Carthew's side, as previously, he sat behind, and reflected upon the wisdom of Carthew. He had held that Carthew's views were warped by a peculiar experience. He now saw that they were not warped at all, but shapely, sane and incontrovertible.

II

That evening, soon after dark, the Eagle, dusty and unkempt from a journey which had not been free from mishaps, rolled up to the front-door of Mr. Prohack's original modest residence behind Hyde Park; and Mr. Prohack jumped out; and Carthew came after him with two bags. The house was as dark as the owner's soul; not a gleam of light in any window. Mr. Prohack produced his familiar latch-key, scraped round the edge of the key-hole, savagely pushed in the key, and opened the door. There was still no light nor sign of life. Mr. Prohack paused on the threshold, and then his hand instinctively sought the electric switch and pulled it down. No responsive gleam!

"Machin!" called Mr. Prohack, as it were plaintively.

No sound.

"I am a fool," thought Mr. Prohack.

He struck a match and walked forward delicately, peering. He descried an empty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-room door, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. The dining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and a newspaper had been made into a cap over his favourite Chippendale clock. He retreated.

"Put those bags into the car again," he said to Carthew, who stood hesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.

How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthew was no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was a servitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should not speak until spoken to.

"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, sir."

At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by gigantic uniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring the guards, Mr. Prohack passed imperially within to the reception office.

"I want a bedroom, a sitting-room and a bath-room, please."

"A private suite, sir?"

"A private suite."

"What—er—kind, sir? We have—"

"The best," said Mr. Prohack, with finality. He signed his name and received a ticket.

"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur I shall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should take the car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will have some tea at once in my sitting-room."

The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew his mind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirably served.

After tea he took a bath because he could think of nothing else to do. The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude, poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light over the majestic portals, the noble mansion was now as dark as Mr. Prohack's other house.

He shut his lips, steeled himself, and walked round the Square to the noble mansion and audaciously rang the bell. He had to wait. He shook guiltily, as though he, and no member of his family, had sinned. A little more, and his tongue would have cleaved to the gold of his upper denture. The double portals swung backwards. Mr. Prohack beheld the portly form of an intensely traditional butler, and behind the butler a vista of outer and inner halls and glimpses of the soaring staircase. He heard, somewhere in the distance of the interior, the ringing laugh of his daughter Sissie.

The butler looked carelessly down upon him, and, as Mr. Prohack uttered no word, challenged him.

"Yes, sir?"

"Is Mrs. Prohack at home?"

"No, sir." (Positively.)

"Is Miss Prohack at home?"

"No, sir." (More positively.)

"Oh!"

"Will you leave your name, sir?"

"No."

Abruptly Mr. Prohack turned away. He had had black moments in his life. This was the blackest.

Of course he might have walked right in, and said to the butler: "Here's a month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, verging sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed him into a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary precipitancy, she had 'flitted'!

At Claridge's, through giving Monsieur Charles, the maitre d' hotel, carte blanche in the ordering of his dinner and then only half-eating his dinner, Mr. Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, though he regained ground towards the end by means of champagne and liqueurs. The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who were apparently in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the social fabric had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everything was gay except Mr. Prohack—the sole living being in the place who conformed in face and heart to the historical conception of the British Sunday.

But Mr. Prohack was not now a man,—he was a grievance; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little—not much—to solace him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundred and fifty electric lamps were keeping him in countenance. Then his wandering, enfeebled attention heard music afar off, and he remembered some remark of Sissie's to the effect that Claridge's was the best place for dancing in London on Sunday nights. He would gaze Byronically upon the dance. He signed his bill and mooned towards the ball-room, which was full of radiant couples: a dazzling scene, fit to mark the end of an epoch and of a society.

The next thing was that he had an absurd delusion of seeing Sissie and Charlie locked together amid the couples. He might have conquered this delusion, but it was succeeded by another,—the illusion of seeing Ozzie Morfey and Eve locked together amid the couples.... Yes, they were there, all four of them. At first Mr. Prohack was amazed, as at an unprecedented coincidence. But he perceived that the coincidence was not after all so amazing. They had done what they had to do in the way of settling Eve into the noble mansion, and then they had betaken themselves to the nearest and the best dancing resort for the rest of the evening. Nothing could be more natural.

Mr. Prohack might have done all manner of feats. What he actually did do was to fly like a criminal to the lift and seek his couch.

III

The next morning at ten o'clock a strange thing happened. The hotel clocks showed the hour and Mr. Prohack's watch showed the hour, and Carthew was not there with the car. Mr. Prohack could not understand this unnatural failure to appear on the part of Carthew, for Carthew had never been known to be late (save when interfered with by Mimi), and therefore never could be late. Mr. Prohack fretted for a quarter of an hour, and then caused the hotel-garage to be telephoned to. The car had left the garage at nine-fifty. Mr. Prohack went out for a walk, not ostensibly, but really, to look for the car in the streets of London! (Such was his diseased mentality.) He returned at half past eleven, and at eleven thirty-two the car arrived. Immediately Mr. Prohack became calm; his exterior was apt to be very deceptive; and he said gently to Carthew, just as if nothing in the least unusual had occurred:

"A little late, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," Carthew replied, with a calmness to match his employer's. "As I was coming here from the garage I met the mistress. She was looking for a taxi and she took me."

"But did you tell her that I asked you to be here at 10 o'clock?"

"No, sir."

"Did you tell her that I was in London?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Prohack hesitated a moment and then said:

"Drive into Hyde Park, please, and keep to the north side."

When the car had reached a quiet spot in the park, Mr. Prohack stopped it, and, tapping on the front window, summoned Carthew.

"Carthew," said he, through the side-window, which he let down without opening the door, "we're by ourselves. Will you kindly explain to me why you concealed from Mrs. Prohack that I was in London?"

"Well, sir," Carthew answered, very erect and slightly frowning, "I didn't know you were in London, if you understand what I mean."

"Didn't you bring me to London? Of course you knew I was in London."

"No, sir. Not if you understand what I mean."

"I emphatically do not understand what you mean," said Mr. Prohack, who, however, was not speaking the truth.

"May I put a question, sir?" Carthew suggested. "Having regard to all the circumstances—I say having regard as it were to all the circumstances, in a manner of speaking, what should you have done in my place, sir?"

"How do I know?" cried Mr. Prohack. "I'm not a chauffeur. What did you say to Mrs. Prohack?"

"I said that you had instructed me to return to London, as you didn't need the car, and that I was just going to the house for orders. And by the way, sir," Carthew added, glancing at the car-clock, "Madam told me to be back at twelve fifteen—I told her I ought to go to the garage to get something done to the carbureter—so that there is not much time."

Mr. Prohack jumped out of the car and said: "Go."

Wandering alone in the chilly Park he reflected upon the potentialities of human nature as exhibited in chauffeurs. The fellow Carthew had evidently come to the conclusion that there was something wrong in the more intimate relationships of the Prohack family, and, faced with a sudden contretemps, he had acted according to the best of his wisdom and according to his loyalty to his employer, but he had acted wrongly. But of course the original sinner was Mr. Prohack himself. Respectable State officials, even when on sick leave, do not call at empty houses and stay at hotels within a stone's throw of their own residences unknown to their families. No! Mr. Prohack saw that he had been steering a crooked course. Error existed and must be corrected. He decided to walk direct to Manchester Square. If Eve wanted the car at twelve fifteen she would be out of the house at twelve thirty, and probably out for lunch. So much the better. She should find him duly established on her return.

Reconnoitring later at Manchester Square he saw no car, and rang the bell of the noble mansion. On account of the interview of the previous evening he felt considerably nervous and foolish, and the butler suffered through no fault of the butler's.

"I'm Mr. Prohack," said he, with self-conscious fierceness. "What's your name? Brool, eh? Take my overcoat and send Machin to me at once." He lit a cigarette to cover himself. The situation, though transient, had been sufficiently difficult.

Machin came leaping and bounding down the stairs as if by magic. She had heard his voice, and her joy at his entry into his abode caused her to forget her parlour-maidenhood and to exhibit a humanity which pained Mr. Brool, who had been brought up in the strictest traditions of flunkeyism. Her joy pleased Mr. Prohack and he felt better.