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

too, I think. Do come. You haven't got anything else to do." The boy murmured all this.

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

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


III


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh! Mr. Carrel Quire will pay."

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

"Oh, Mr. Prohack!"

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

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

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

Miss Winstock hesitated.

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

"I want a necktie," he began gently.

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

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

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

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

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

"_No!_" he said coldly, and soon afterwards left the shop.

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

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

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

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

"No," answered Miss Winstock weakly but sincerely.

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

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

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

"I will agree to anything."

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

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

"Have the Winstocks no money?"

"Not a penny."

"And have the Paulles no money?"

"None for me."

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

After a quarter of an hour spent in learning that suits were naught, neckties