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

know they haven't got room to move."

"I don't know anything about that and I don't care. All I know is that I've finished with that squint-eyed woman, and you can choose right now between her and me. And so that's that."

Miss Fiddle's fragile complexion had approached to within six inches of the stage-manager's broad and shiny features, and it had little resemblance to any of the various faces which audiences associated with the figure of Eliza Fiddle; it was a face voluptuously distorted by the violence of emotion. As Miss Fiddle appeared to be under the impression that she was alone with the stage-manager, Mr. Prohack rendered justice to that impression by softly departing. Ozzie followed. The stage-manager also followed. "Where are you going?" they heard Eliza's voice behind them addressing the stage-manager.

"I'm going to tell your under-study to get ready quick."

An enormous altercation uprose, and faces peeped from every door in the corridor; but Mr. Prohack stayed not. Ozzie led him to Mr. Asprey Chown's private room. The Terror of the departments was shaken. Ozzie laughed gently as he shut the door.

"What will happen?" asked Mr. Prohack, affecting a gaiety he did not feel.

"What do you think will happen?" simpered Ozzie blandly, "having due regard to the fact that Miss Fiddle has to choose between three hundred and fifty pounds a week and a law-suit with Chown involving heavy damages? I must say there's nobody like Blaggs for keeping these three hundred and fifty pound a week individuals in order. Chown would sooner lose forty of them than lose Blaggs. And Eliza knows it. By the way, what do you think of the show?"

"Will it succeed?"

"You should see the advance booking. There's a thousand pounds in the house to-night. Chown will be clearing fifteen hundred a week when he's paid off his production."

"Well, it's marvellous."

"You don't mean the show?"

"No. The profit."

"I agree," simpered Ozzie.

"I'm beginning to like this sizzling idiot," thought Mr. Prohack, as it were regretfully. They left the imperial richness of Mr. Chown's private room like brothers.


IV


When Mr. Prohack touched the handle of the door of the box, he felt as though he were returning to civilisation; he felt less desolated by the immediate past and by the prospect of the immediate future; he was yearning for the society of mere women after his commerce with a star at three hundred and fifty pounds a week. True, he badly wanted to examine his soul and enquire into his philosophy of life, but he was prepared to postpone that inquest until the society of mere women had had a beneficial effect on him.

Charlie, who had been paying a state visit to his mother and sister was just leaving the box and the curtain was just going up.

"Hullo, dad!" said the youth, "you're the very man I was looking for," and he drew his father out into the corridor. "You've got two of the finest ballroom dancers I ever saw," he added to Ozzie.

"Haven't we!" Ozzie concurred, with faint enthusiasm.

"But the rest of the show ..." Charlie went on, ruthless. "Well, if Chown's shows were only equal to his showmanship...! Only they aren't!"

Ozzie raised his eyebrows--a skilful gesture that at once defended his employer and agreed with Charles.

"By the way, dad, I've got a house for you. I've told the mater about it and she's going to see it to-morrow morning."

"A house!" Mr. Prohack exclaimed weakly, foreseeing new vistas of worry. "I've got one. I can't live in two."

"But this one's a _house_. You know about it, don't you, Morfey?"

Ozzie gave a nod and a vague smile.

"See here, dad! Come out here a minute."

Ozzie discreetly entered the box and closed the door.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Prohack.

"It's this," Charlie replied, handing his parent a cheque. "I've deducted what I paid for you to-night from what you lent me not long since. I've calculated interest on the loan at ten per cent. You can get ten practically anywhere in these days, worse luck."

"But I don't want this, my boy," Mr. Prohack protested, holding the cheque as he might have held a lady's handkerchief retrieved from the ground.

"Well, I'm quite sure I don't," said Charlie, a little stiffly.

There was a pause.

"As you please," said Mr. Prohack, putting the cheque--interest and all--into his pocket.

"Thanks," said Charlie. "Much obliged. You're a noble father, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you've laid the foundation of my fortunes. But of course you never know--in my business."

"What _is_ your business?" Mr. Prohack asked timidly, almost apologetically. He had made up his mind on the previous evening that he would talk to Charlie as a father ought to talk to a son, that is to say, like a cross-examining barrister and a moralist combined. He had decided that it was more than his right--it was his duty to do so. But now the right, if not the duty, seemed less plain, and he remembered what he had said to Eve concerning the right attitude of parents to children. And chiefly he remembered that Charlie was not in his debt.

"I'm a buyer and seller. I buy for less than I sell for. That's how I live."

"It appears to be profitable."

"Yes. I made over ten thousand in Glasgow, buying an option on an engineering business--with your money--from people who wanted to get rid of it, and then selling what I hadn't paid for to people in London who wanted to get hold of an engineering business up there. Seems simple enough, and the only reason everybody isn't doing it is that it isn't as simple as it seems. At least, it's simple, but there's a knack in it. I found out I'd got the knack through my little deals in motor-bikes and things. As a matter of fact I didn't find out,--some one told me, and I began to think.... But don't be alarmed if I go bust. I'm on to a much bigger option now, in the City. Oh! Very much bigger. If it comes off ... you'll see. Lady Massulam is keen on it, and she's something of a judge.... Any remarks?"

Mr. Prohack looked cautiously at the young man, his own creation, to whom, only the other day as it seemed, he had been in the habit of giving one pound per school-term for pocket-money. And he was affrighted--not by what he had created, but by the astounding possibilities of fatherhood, which suddenly presented itself to him as a most dangerous pursuit.

"No remarks," said he, briefly. What remarks indeed could he offer? Wildly guessing at the truth about his son, in that conversation with Eve on the previous evening, he had happened to guess right. And his sermon to Eve prevented now the issue of remarks.

"Oh! Of course!" Charlie burst out. "You can't tell me anything I don't know already. I'm a pirate. I'm not producing. All the money I make has to be earned by somebody else before I get hold of it. I'm not doing any good to my beautiful country. But I did try to find a useful job, didn't I? My beautiful country wouldn't have me. It only wanted me in the trenches. Well, it's got to have me. I'll jolly well make it pay now. I'll squeeze every penny out of it. I'll teach it a lesson. And why not? I shall only be shoving its own ideas down its throat. Supposing I hadn't got this knack and I hadn't had _you_. I might have been wearing all my ribbons and playing a barrel organ in Oxford Street to-day instead of living at the Grand Babylon."

"You're becoming quite eloquent in your old age," said Mr. Prohack, tremulously jocular while looking with alarm into his paternal heart. Was not he himself a pirate? Had not the hundred and fifty thousand that was coming to him had to be earned by somebody else? Money did not make itself.

"Well," retorted Charlie, with a grim smile. "There's one thing to be said for me. When I _do_ talk, I talk."

"And so at last you've begun to read?"

"I'm not going to be the ordinary millionaire. No fear! Make your mind easy on that point. Besides, reading isn't so bad after all."

"And what about that house you were speaking of? You aren't going to plant any of your options on me."

"We'll discuss that to-morrow. I must get back to my seat," said Charlie firmly, moving away. "So long."

"I say," Mr. Prohack summoned him to return. "I'm rather curious about the methods of you millionaires. Just when did you sign that cheque for me? You only lent me the money as we were leaving the hotel."

"I made it out while I was talking to the mater and Sis in your box, of course."

"How simple are the acts of genius--after they're accomplished!" observed Mr. Prohack. "Naturally you signed it in the box."

As he rejoined his family he yawned, surprising himself. He began to feel a mysterious fatigue. The effect of the Turkish bath, without doubt! The remainder of the evening stretched out in front of him, interminably tedious. The title of the play was misleading. He could not smack his face. He wished to heaven he could.... And then, after the play, the ball! Eliza might tell him to dance with her. She would be quite capable of such a deed. And by universal convention her suggestions were the equivalent of demands. Nobody ever could or would refuse to dance with Eliza.... There she was, all her four limbs superbly displayed, sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth, just as if the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and Virginia. The excited audience, in the professional phrase, was "eating" her.


V


Mr. Prohack was really a most absurd person. _Smack Your Face_, when it came to an end, towards midnight, had established itself as an authentic enormous success; and because Mr. Prohack did not care for it, because it bored him, because he found it vulgar and tedious and expensive, because it tasted in his mouth like a dust-and-ashes sandwich, the fellow actually felt sad; he felt even bitter. He hated to see the fashionable and splendid audience unwilling to leave the theatre, cheering one super-favourite, five arch-favourites and fifteen favourites, and cheering them again and again, and sending the curtain up and down and up and down time after time. He could not bear that what he detested should be deliriously admired. He went so far as to form views about the decadence of the theatre as an institution. Most of all he was disgusted because his beloved Eve was not disgusted. Eve said placidly that she did not think much of the affair, but that she had thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn't mind coming on the next night to see it afresh. He said gloomily:

"And I've been bringing you up for nearly twenty-five years."

As for Sissie, she was quietly and sternly enthusiastic about a lot of the dancing. She announced her judgment as an expert, and Charlie agreed with her, and there was no appeal, and Mr. Prohack had the air of an ignorant outsider whose opinions were negligible. Further, he was absurd in that, though he assuredly had no desire whatever to go to the dance, he fretted at the delay in getting there. Even when they had all got out to the