Mr. Prohack by Arnold Bennett (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

you still to baptise me, in spite of my protest--that's the first real nip."

She caught her breath.

"Arthur," she said. "If you go on like that I shall scream."

"Do," Mr. Prohack encouraged her. "But of course not too loud. At the same time don't forget that I'm a humourist. Humourists make jokes when they're happy, and when they're unhappy they make jokes."

"But it's horribly serious."

"Horribly."

Mrs. Prohack slipped off the arm of the chair. Her body seemed to vibrate within the Chinese gown, and she effervesced into an ascending and descending series of sustained laughs.

"That's hysteria," said Mr. Prohack. "And if you don't stop I shall be reluctantly compelled to throw the coffee over you. Water would be better, but there is none."

Then Eve ceased suddenly.

"To think," she remarked with calmness, "that you're called the Terror of the Departments, and you're a great authority on finance, and you've been in the Government service for nearly twenty-five years, and always done your duty--"

"Child," Mr. Prohack interrupted her. "Don't tell me what I know. And try not to be surprised at any earthly phenomena. There are people who are always being astonished by the most familiar things. They live on earth as if they'd just dropped from Mars on to a poor foreign planet. It's not a sign of commonsense. You've lived on earth now for--shall we say?--some twenty-nine or thirty years, and if you don't know the place you ought to. I assure you that there is nothing at all unusual in our case. We are perfectly innocent; we are even praiseworthy; and yet--we shall have to suffer. It's quite a common case. You've read of thousands and millions of such cases; you've heard of lots personally; and you've actually met a few. Well, now, you yourself _are_ a case. That's all."

Mrs. Prohack said impatiently:

"I consider the Government's treated you shamefully. Why, we're much worse off than we were before the war."

"The Government has treated me shamefully. But then it's treated hundreds of thousands of men shamefully. All Governments do."

"But we have a position to keep up!"

"True. That's where the honest poor have the advantage of us. You see, we're the dishonest poor. We've been to the same schools and universities and we talk the same idiom and we have the same manners and like the same things as people who spend more in a month or a week than we spend in a year. And we pretend, and they pretend, that they and we are exactly the same. We aren't, you know. We're one vast pretence. Has it occurred to you, lady, that we've never possessed a motor-car and most certainly never shall possess one? Yet look at the hundreds of thousands of cars in London alone! And not a single one of them ours! This detail may have escaped you."

"I wish you wouldn't be silly, Arthur."

"I am not silly. On the contrary, my real opinion is that I'm the wisest man you ever met in your life--not excepting your son It remains that we're a pretence. A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. We probably shall burst. Still, we have one great advantage over the honest poor, who sometimes have no income at all; and also over the rich, who never can tell how big their incomes are going to be. _We know exactly where we are_. We know to the nearest sixpence."

"I don't see that that helps us. I consider the Government has treated you shamefully. I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven't formed a Trade Union before now."

"Oh, Eve! After all you've said about Trade Unions this last year! You shock me! We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade Union. But we shall never form a Trade Union, because we're too proud. And we'd sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride. That's a fact."

"There's one thing--we can't move into a cheaper house."

"No," Mr. Prohack concurred. "Because there isn't one."

Years earlier Mr. Prohack had bought the long lease of his house from the old man who, according to the logical London system, had built the house upon somebody else's land on the condition that he paid rent for the land and in addition gave the house to the somebody else at the end of a certain period as a free gift. By a payment of twelve pounds per annum Mr. Prohack was safe for forty years yet and he calculated that in forty years the ownership of the house would be a matter of some indifference both to him and to his wife.

"Well, as you're so desperately wise, perhaps you'll kindly tell me what we _are_ to do."

"I might borrow money on my insurance policy--and speculate," said Mr. Prohack gravely.

"Oh! Arthur! Do you really think you--" Marian showed a wild gleam of hope.

"Or I might throw the money into the Serpentine," Mr. Prohack added.

"Oh! Arthur! I could kill you. I never know how to take you."

"No, you never do. That's the worst of a woman like you marrying a man like me."

They discussed devices. One servant fewer. No holiday. Cinemas instead of theatres. No books. No cigarettes. No taxis. No clothes. No meat. No telephone. No friends. They reached no conclusion. Eve referred to Adam's great Treasury mind. Adam said that his great Treasury mind should function on the problem during the day, and further that the problem must be solved that very night.

"I'll tell you one thing I shall do," said Mrs. Prohack in a decided tone as Mr. Prohack left the table. "I shall countermand Sissie'a new frock."

"If you do I shall divorce you," was the reply.

"But why?"

Mr. Prohack answered:

"In 1917 I saw that girl in dirty overalls driving a thundering great van down Whitehall. Yesterday I met her in her foolish high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so futile and so sure of her power that--that--well, you aren't going to countermand any new frock. That chit has the right to ruin me--not because of anything she's done, but because she _is_. I am ready to commit peccadilloes, but not crimes. Good morning, my dove."

And at the door, discreetly hiding her Chinese raiment behind the door, Eve said, as if she had only just thought of it, though she had been thinking of it for quite a quarter of an hour:

"Darling, there's your clubs."

"What about my clubs?"

"Don't they cost you a lot of money?"

"No. Besides I lunch at my clubs--better and cheaper than at any restaurant. And I shouldn't have time to come home for lunch."

"But do you need two clubs?"

"I've always belonged to two clubs. Every one does."

"But why _two_?"

"A fellow must have a club up his sleeve."

"_Couldn't_ you give up one?"

"Lady, it's unthinkable. You don't know what you're suggesting. Abandon one of my clubs that my father put me up for when I was a boy! I'd as soon join a Trade Union. No! My innocent but gluttonous children shall starve first."

"I shall give up _my_ club!"

"Ah! But that's different."

"How is it different?" "You scarcely ever speak to a soul in your club. The food's bad in your club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your club. I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night of the most formidable spinsters each eating at a table alone. Give up your club by all means. Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count the act as a renunciation. You hate your club. Good morning, my dove."


IV


One advantage of the situation of Mr. Prohack's house was that his path therefrom to the Treasury lay almost entirely through verdant parks--Hyde Park, the Green Park, St. James's Park. Not infrequently he referred to the advantage in terms of bland satisfaction. True, in wet weather the advantage became a disadvantage.

During his walk through verdant parks that morning, the Terror of the Departments who habitually thought in millions was very gloomy. Something resembling death was in his heart. Humiliation also was certainly in his heart, for he felt that, no matter whose the fault, he was failing in the first duty of a man. He raged against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He sliced off the head of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his stick. (But it was only an innocent autumn wildflower, perilously blooming.) And the tang in the air foretold the approach of winter and the grip of winter--the hell of the poor.

Near Whitehall he saw the advertisement of a firm of shop-specialists:

"BRING YOUR BUSINESS TROUBLES TO US."


CHAPTER II


FROM THE DEAD

I


"WELL, Milton, had a good holiday?" said Mr. Prohack to the hall-porter on entering his chief club for lunch that day.

"No, sir," said the hall-porter, who was a realist.

"Ah, well," said Mr. Prohack soothingly. "Perhaps not a bad thing. There's nothing like an unsatisfactory holiday for reconciling us all to a life of toil, is there?"

"No, sir," said Milton, impassively, and added: "Mr. Bishop has just called to see you, sir. I told him you'd probably be in shortly. He said he wouldn't wait but he might look in again."

"Thanks," said Mr. Prohack. "If he does, I shall be either in the coffee-room or upstairs."

Mr. Prohack walked into the majestic interior of the Club, which had been closed, rather later than usual, for its annual cleaning. He savoured anew and more sharply the beauty and stateliness of its architecture, the elaboration of its conveniences, the severe splendour of its luxury. And he saw familiar and congenial faces, and on every face was a mild joy similar to the joy which he himself experienced in the reopening of the Club. And he was deliciously aware of the "club feeling," unlike, and more agreeable than, any other atmosphere of an organism in the world.

The Club took no time at all to get into its stride after the closure. It opened its doors and was instantly its full self. For hundreds of grave men in and near London had risen that very morning from their beds uplifted by the radiant thought: "To-day I can go to the Club again." Mr. Prohack had long held that the noblest, the most civilised achievement of the British character was not the British Empire, nor the House of Commons, nor the steam-engine, nor aniline dyes, nor the music-hall, but a good West End club. And somehow at the doors of a good West End club there was an invisible magic sieve, through which the human body could pass but through which human worries could not pass.

This morning, however, Mr. Prohack perceived that one worry could pass through the sieve, namely a worry concerning the Club itself.... Give up the Club? Was the sacrifice to be consummated? Impossible! Could he picture himself strolling down St. James's Street without the right to enter the sacred gates--save as a guest? And supposing he entered as a guest, could he bear the hall-porter to say to him: "If you'll take a seat, sir, I'll send and see if Mr. Blank is in the Club. What name, sir?" Impossible! Yet Milton would be capable of saying just that. Milton would never pardon