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

other end of the long, empty dining-room table, a copy of _The Sunday Picture_, which was the Sabbath edition of _The Daily Picture_. He got up and seized it, expecting it to be at least a week old. It proved, however, to be as new and fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.

The shock of meeting Eve in _The Sunday Picture_ was terrible, but equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in regard to the ownership of the noble mansion. He had understood--or more correctly he had been given to understand--that the house and its contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as celebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been. Assuredly neither Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the exquisite decorations and furnishings of that house. On the other hand, it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave the house as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluable bibelots lying about all over the place. Almost certainly Eliza Fiddle must have had some sort of effective ownership of the place. He knew that dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding and mysterious luck in the matter of luxurious homes, and that some of them progressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable than the last. He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind. He had of course no grudge against the efficient and strenuous Eliza, for he was perfectly at liberty not to pay money in order to see her. She must be an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones. Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife in _The Sunday Picture...._ Eve! Eve! A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into _The Daily Picture_. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish thing, criticism of life!)

And there was another point, as sharp as any. Ozzie Morfey must have known, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself must have known, that the _de facto_ owner of the noble mansion was Eliza Fiddle. And none had vouchsafed the truth to him.

"We'll struggle back to town I think," said Mr. Prohack to Carthew, with a pitiable affectation of brightness. And instead of sitting by Carthew's side, as previously, he sat behind, and reflected upon the wisdom of Carthew. He had held that Carthew's views were warped by a peculiar experience. He now saw that they were not warped at all, but shapely, sane and incontrovertible.


II


That evening, soon after dark, the Eagle, dusty and unkempt from a journey which had not been free from mishaps, rolled up to the front-door of Mr. Prohack's original modest residence behind Hyde Park; and Mr. Prohack jumped out; and Carthew came after him with two bags. The house was as dark as the owner's soul; not a gleam of light in any window. Mr. Prohack produced his familiar latch-key, scraped round the edge of the key-hole, savagely pushed in the key, and opened the door. There was still no light nor sign of life. Mr. Prohack paused on the threshold, and then his hand instinctively sought the electric switch and pulled it down. No responsive gleam!

"Machin!" called Mr. Prohack, as it were plaintively.

No sound.

"I am a fool," thought Mr. Prohack.

He struck a match and walked forward delicately, peering. He descried an empty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-room door, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. The dining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and a newspaper had been made into a cap over his favourite Chippendale clock. He retreated.

"Put those bags into the car again," he said to Carthew, who stood hesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.

How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthew was no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was a servitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should not speak until spoken to.

"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, sir."

At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by gigantic uniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring the guards, Mr. Prohack passed imperially within to the reception office.

"I want a bedroom, a sitting-room and a bath-room, please."

"A private suite, sir?"

"A private suite."

"What--er--kind, sir? We have--"

"The best," said Mr. Prohack, with finality. He signed his name and received a ticket.

"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur I shall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should take the car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will have some tea at once in my sitting-room."

The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew his mind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirably served.

After tea he took a bath because he could think of nothing else to do. The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable, crude, poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light over the majestic portals, the noble mansion was now as dark as Mr. Prohack's other house.

He shut his lips, steeled himself, and walked round the Square to the noble mansion and audaciously rang the bell. He had to wait. He shook guiltily, as though he, and no member of his family, had sinned. A little more, and his tongue would have cleaved to the gold of his upper denture. The double portals swung backwards. Mr. Prohack beheld the portly form of an intensely traditional butler, and behind the butler a vista of outer and inner halls and glimpses of the soaring staircase. He heard, somewhere in the distance of the interior, the ringing laugh of his daughter Sissie.

The butler looked carelessly down upon him, and, as Mr. Prohack uttered no word, challenged him.

"Yes, sir?"

"Is Mrs. Prohack at home?"

"No, sir." (Positively.)

"Is Miss Prohack at home?"

"No, sir." (More positively.)

"Oh!"

"Will you leave your name, sir?"

"No."

Abruptly Mr. Prohack turned away. He had had black moments in his life. This was the blackest.

Of course he might have walked right in, and said to the butler: "Here's a month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, verging sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed him into a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary precipitancy, she had 'flitted'!

At Claridge's, through giving Monsieur Charles, the _maitre d' hotel_, carte blanche in the ordering of his dinner and then only half-eating his dinner, Mr. Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, though he regained ground towards the end by means of champagne and liqueurs. The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who were apparently in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the social fabric had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everything was gay except Mr. Prohack--the sole living being in the place who conformed in face and heart to the historical conception of the British Sunday.

But Mr. Prohack was not now a man,--he was a grievance; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little--not much--to solace him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundred and fifty electric lamps were keeping him in countenance. Then his wandering, enfeebled attention heard music afar off, and he remembered some remark of Sissie's to the effect that Claridge's was the best place for dancing in London on Sunday nights. He would gaze Byronically upon the dance. He signed his bill and mooned towards the ball-room, which was full of radiant couples: a dazzling scene, fit to mark the end of an epoch and of a society.

The next thing was that he had an absurd delusion of seeing Sissie and Charlie locked together amid the couples. He might have conquered this delusion, but it was succeeded by another,--the illusion of seeing Ozzie Morfey and Eve locked together amid the couples.... Yes, they were there, all four of them. At first Mr. Prohack was amazed, as at an unprecedented coincidence. But he perceived that the coincidence was not after all so amazing. They had done what they had to do in the way of settling Eve into the noble mansion, and then they had betaken themselves to the nearest and the best dancing resort for the rest of the evening. Nothing could be more natural.

Mr. Prohack might have done all manner of feats. What he actually did do was to fly like a criminal to the lift and seek his couch.


III


The next morning at ten o'clock a strange thing happened. The hotel clocks showed the hour and Mr. Prohack's watch showed the hour, and Carthew was not there with the car. Mr. Prohack could not understand this unnatural failure to appear on the part of Carthew, for Carthew had never been known to be late (save when interfered with by Mimi), and therefore never could be late. Mr. Prohack fretted for a quarter of an hour, and then caused the hotel-garage to be telephoned to. The car had left the garage at nine-fifty. Mr. Prohack went out for a walk, not ostensibly, but really, to look for the car in the streets of London! (Such was his diseased mentality.) He returned at half past eleven, and at eleven thirty-two the car arrived. Immediately Mr. Prohack became calm; his exterior was apt to be very deceptive; and he said gently to Carthew, just as if nothing in the least unusual had occurred:

"A little late, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," Carthew replied, with a calmness to match his employer's. "As I was coming here from the garage I met the mistress. She was looking for a taxi and she took me."

"But did you tell her that I asked you to be here at 10 o'clock?"

"No, sir."

"Did you tell her that I was in London?"

"No, sir."

Mr. Prohack hesitated a moment and then said:

"Drive into Hyde Park, please, and keep to the north side."

When the car had reached a quiet spot in the park, Mr. Prohack stopped it, and, tapping on the front window, summoned