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

had been mysteriously engaged in the boudoir. She now came into the dark bedroom.

"What?" she softly murmured, hearing Mr. Prohack's restlessness. "Not asleep, darling?" She bent over him and kissed him and her kiss was even softer, more soporific, than her voice. "Now do go to sleep."

And Mr. Prohack went to sleep, and his last waking thought was, with the feel of the kiss on his nose (the poor woman had aimed badly in the dark): "Anyway this tragedy has one compensation, of which a hundred quarter of a millions can't deprive me."


CHAPTER XV


THE HEAVY FATHER

I


Within a few moments of his final waking up the next morning, Mr. Prohack beheld Eve bending over him, the image of solicitude. She was dressed for outdoor business.

"How do you feel?" she asked, in a tender tone that demanded to know the worst at once.

"Why?" asked Mr. Prohack, thus with one word, and a smile to match, criticising her tone.

"You looked so dreadfully tired last night. I did feel sorry for you, darling. Don't you think you'd better stay in bed to-day?"

"Can you seriously suggest such a thing?" he cried. "What about my daily programme if I stay in bed? I have undertaken to be idle, and nobody can be scientifically idle in bed. I'm late already. Where's my breakfast? Where are my newspapers? I must begin the day without the loss of another moment. Please give me my dressing-gown."

"I very much wonder how your blood-pressure is," Eve complained.

"And you, I suppose, are perfectly well?"

"Oh, yes, I am. I'm absolutely cured. Dr. Veiga is really very marvellous. But I always told you he was."

"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "What's sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander. If you're perfectly well, so am I. You can't have the monopoly of good health in this marriage. What's that pamphlet you've got in your hand, my dove?"

"Oh! It's nothing. It's only about the League of all the Arts. Mr. Morfey gave it to me."

"I suppose it was that pamphlet you were reading last night in the boudoir instead of coming to bed. Eve, you're hiding something from me. Where are you going to in such a hurry?"

"I'm not hiding anything, you silly boy.... I thought I'd just run along and have a look at that house. You see, if it isn't at all the kind of thing to suit us, me going first will save you the trouble of going."

"_What house?_" exclaimed Mr. Prohack with terrible emphasis.

"But Charlie told me he'd told you all about it," Eve protested innocently.

"Charlie told you no such thing," Mr. Prohack contradicted her. "If he told you anything at all, he merely told you that he'd mentioned a house to me in the most casual manner."

Eve proceeded blandly:

"It's in Manchester Square, very handy for the Wallace Gallery, and you know how fond you are of pictures. It's on sale, furniture and all; but it can be rented for a year to see how it suits us. Of course it may not suit us a bit. I understand it has some lovely rooms. Charlie says it would be exactly the thing for big receptions."

"_Big receptions_! I shall have nothing to do with it. Now we've lost our children even this house is too big for us. And I know what the houses in Manchester Square are. You've said all your life you hate receptions."

"So I do. They're so much trouble. But one never knows what may happen...! And with plenty of servants...!"

"You understand me. I shall have nothing to do with it. Nothing!"

"Darling, please, please don't excite yourself. The decision will rest entirely with you. You know I shouldn't dream of influencing you. As if I could! However, I've promised to meet Charlie there this morning. So I suppose I'd better go. Carthew is late with the car." She tapped her foot. "And yet I specially told him to be here prompt."

"Well, considering the hour he brought us home, he's scarcely had time to get into bed yet. He ought to have had the morning off."

"Why? A chauffeur's a chauffeur after all. They know what they have to do. Besides, Carthew would do anything for me."

"Yes, that's you all over. You deliberately bewitch him, and then you shamelessly exploit him. I shall compare notes with Carthew. I can give him a useful tip or two about you."

"Oh! Here he is!" said Eve, who had been watching out of the window. "Au revoir, my pet. Here's Machin with your breakfast and newspapers. I daresay I shall be back before you're up. But don't count on me."

As he raised himself against pillows for the meal, after both she and Machin had gone, Mr. Prohack remembered what his mind had said to him a few hours earlier about fighting against further complications of his existence, and he set his teeth and determined to fight hard.

Scarcely had he begun his breakfast when Eve returned, in a state of excitement.

"There's a young woman downstairs waiting for you in the dining-room. She wouldn't give her name to Machin, it seems, but she says she's your new secretary. Apparently she recognised my car on the way from the garage and stopped it and got into it; and then she found out she'd forgotten something and the car had to go back with her to where she lives, wherever that is, and that's why Carthew was late for _me_." Eve delivered these sentences with a tremendous air of ordinariness, as though they related quite usual events and disturbances, and as though no wife could possibly see in them any matter for astonishment or reproach. Such was one of her methods of making an effect.

Mr. Prohack collected himself. On several occasions during the previous afternoon and evening he had meditated somewhat uneasily upon the domestic difficulties which might inhere in this impulsive engagement of Miss Winstock as a private secretary, but since waking up the affair had not presented itself to his mind. He had indeed completely forgotten it.

"Who told you all this?" he asked warily.

"Well, she told Machin and Machin told me."

"Let me see now," said Mr. Prohack. "Yes. It's quite true. After ordering a pair of braces yesterday morning, I did order a secretary. She was recommended to me."

"You didn't say anything about it yesterday."

"My dove, had I a chance to do so? Had we a single moment together? And you know how I was when we reached home, don't you?... You see, I always had a secretary at the Treasury, and I feel sort of lost without one. So I--"

"But, darling, _of course_! I always believe in letting you do exactly as you like. It's the only way.... Au revoir, my pet. Charlie will be frightfully angry with me." And then, at the door: "If she hasn't got anything to do she can always see to the flowers for me. Perhaps when I come back you'll introduce us."

As soon as he had heard the bang of the front-door Mr. Prohack rang his bell.

"Machin, I understand that my secretary is waiting in the dining-room."

"Yes, sir."

"Ask her to take her things off and then bring her up here."

"Up here, sir?"

"That's right."

In seven movements of unimaginable stealthy swiftness Machin tidied the worst disorders of the room and departed. Mr. Prohack continued his breakfast.

Miss Winstock appeared with a small portable typewriter in her arms and a notebook lodged on the typewriter. She was wearing a smart black skirt and a smart white blouse with a high collar. In her unsullied freshness of attire she somewhat resembled a stage secretary on a first night; she might have been mistaken for a brilliant imitation of a real secretary.


II


"Good morning. So you're come," Mr. Prohack greeted her firmly.

"Good morning. Yes, Mr. Prohack."

"Well, put that thing down on a chair somewhere."

Machin also had entered the room. She handed a paper to Mr. Prohack.

"Mistress asked me to give you that, sir."

It was a lengthy description, typewritten, of a house in Manchester Square.

"Pass me those matches, please," said Mr. Prohack to Mimi when they were alone. "By the way, why wouldn't you give your name when you arrived?"

"Because I didn't know what it was."

"Didn't know what it was?"

"When I told you my Christian name yesterday you said it wouldn't do at all, and I was never to mention it again. In the absence of definite instructions about my surname I thought I had better pursue a cautious policy of waiting. I've told the chauffeur that he will know my name in due course and that until I tell him what it is he mustn't know it. I was not sure whether you would wish the members of your household to know that I'm the person who had a collision with your car. Mrs. Prohack and I were both in a state of collapse after the accident, and I was removed before she could see me. Therefore she did not recognise me this morning. But on the other hand she has no doubt heard my name often enough since the accident and would recognise _that_."

Mr. Prohack lit the first cigarette of the day.

"Why did you bring that typewriter?" he asked gravely.

"It's mine. I thought that if you didn't happen to have one here it might be useful. It was the typewriter that the car had to go back for. I'd forgotten it. I can take it away again. But if you like you can either buy it or hire it from, me."

The girl could not have guessed it from his countenance, but Mr. Prohack was thunderstruck. She was bringing forward considerations which positively had not presented themselves to him. That she had much initiative was clear from her conduct of the previous day. She now disclosed a startling capacity for intrigue. Mr. Prohack, however, was not intimidated. The experience of an official life had taught him the value of taciturnity, and moreover a comfortable feeling of satisfaction stole over him as he realised that once again he had a secretary under his thumb. He seemed to be delightfully resuming the habits which ill-health had so ruthlessly broken.

"Mary Warburton," said he at length.

"Certainly," said she. "I'll tell your chauffeur."

"The initials will correspond--in case--"

"Yes," said she. "I'd noticed that."

"We will see what your typewriting machine is capable of, and then I'll decide about it."

"Certainly."

"Please take down some letters."

"Mr. Carrel Quire always told me what he wanted said, and I wrote the letters myself."

"That is very interesting," said Mr. Prohack. "Perhaps you can manage to sit at the dressing-table. Mind that necklace there. It's supposed to be rather valuable. Put it in the case, and put the case in the middle drawer."

"Don't you keep it in a safe?" said Miss Warburton, obeying.

"All questions about necklaces should be addressed direct to Mrs. Prohack."

"I prefer to take down on my knee," said Miss Warburton, opening her notebook, "if I am to take down."

"You are. Now. 'Dear Madam. I am requested by my Lords of the Treasury to forward to you the enclosed cheque for one hundred pounds for your Privy Purse.' New line. 'I