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

were naught, shirts, collars, socks and even braces were naught, but that hats alone made a man of fashion and idleness, Mr. Prohack returned to Miss Winstock and announced:

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

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

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

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

Mr. Prohack ignored her pertness.

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

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

"What is your Christian name?"

"Mimi."

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER XIII


FURTHER IDLENESS

I


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

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

"Hullo, kid!" he greeted his sister.

"Hullo yourself," responded Sissie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sissie was obliged to admit that she had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Prohack thought suspiciously and apprehensively:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


II


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

Mr. Prohack noticed anew that Eve's attitude to Lady Massulam was still a flattering one. Indeed Eve showed that in her opinion the meeting with so great a personage as Lady Massulam was not quite an ordinary episode in her simple existence. And Lady Massulam was now talking with a free flow to Eve. As soon as the colloquy had closed and Eve had at length joined her simmering husband in the lift, Charlie must have a private chat with Lady Massulam, apart, mysterious, concerning their affairs, whatever their affairs might be! In spite of himself, Mr. Prohack was impressed by the demeanour of the young man and the mature blossom of womanhood to each other. They exhibited a mutual trust; they understood each other; they liked each other. She was more than old enough to be his mamma, and yet as she talked to