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

Carthew.

"Carthew," said he, through the side-window, which he let down without opening the door, "we're by ourselves. Will you kindly explain to me why you concealed from Mrs. Prohack that I was in London?"

"Well, sir," Carthew answered, very erect and slightly frowning, "I didn't know you were in London, if you understand what I mean."

"Didn't you bring me to London? Of course you knew I was in London."

"No, sir. Not if you understand what I mean."

"I emphatically do not understand what you mean," said Mr. Prohack, who, however, was not speaking the truth.

"May I put a question, sir?" Carthew suggested. "Having regard to all the circumstances--I say having regard as it were to all the circumstances, in a manner of speaking, what should you have done in my place, sir?"

"How do I know?" cried Mr. Prohack. "I'm not a chauffeur. What _did_ you say to Mrs. Prohack?"

"I said that you had instructed me to return to London, as you didn't need the car, and that I was just going to the house for orders. And by the way, sir," Carthew added, glancing at the car-clock, "Madam told me to be back at twelve fifteen--I told her I ought to go to the garage to get something done to the carbureter--so that there is not much time."

Mr. Prohack jumped out of the car and said: "Go."

Wandering alone in the chilly Park he reflected upon the potentialities of human nature as exhibited in chauffeurs. The fellow Carthew had evidently come to the conclusion that there was something wrong in the more intimate relationships of the Prohack family, and, faced with a sudden contretemps, he had acted according to the best of his wisdom and according to his loyalty to his employer, but he had acted wrongly. But of course the original sinner was Mr. Prohack himself. Respectable State officials, even when on sick leave, do not call at empty houses and stay at hotels within a stone's throw of their own residences unknown to their families. No! Mr. Prohack saw that he had been steering a crooked course. Error existed and must be corrected. He decided to walk direct to Manchester Square. If Eve wanted the car at twelve fifteen she would be out of the house at twelve thirty, and probably out for lunch. So much the better. She should find him duly established on her return.

Reconnoitring later at Manchester Square he saw no car, and rang the bell of the noble mansion. On account of the interview of the previous evening he felt considerably nervous and foolish, and the butler suffered through no fault of the butler's.

"I'm Mr. Prohack," said he, with self-conscious fierceness. "What's your name? Brool, eh? Take my overcoat and send Machin to me at once." He lit a cigarette to cover himself. The situation, though transient, had been sufficiently difficult.

Machin came leaping and bounding down the stairs as if by magic. She had heard his voice, and her joy at his entry into his abode caused her to forget her parlour-maidenhood and to exhibit a humanity which pained Mr. Brool, who had been brought up in the strictest traditions of flunkeyism. Her joy pleased Mr. Prohack and he felt better.

"Good morning, Machin," said he, quite blithely. "I just want to see how things have been fixed up in my rooms." He had not the least notion where or what his rooms were in the vast pile.

"Yes, sir," Machin responded eagerly, delighted that Mr. Prohack was making to herself, as an old friend, an appeal which he ought to have made to the butler. Mr. Prohack, guided by the prancing Machin, discovered that, in addition to a study, he had a bedroom and a dressing-room and a share in Eve's bath-room. The dressing-room had a most agreeable aspect. Machin opened a huge and magnificent wardrobe, and in drawer after drawer displayed his new hosiery marvellously arranged, and in other portions of the wardrobe his new suits and hats and boots. The whole made a wondrous spectacle.

"And who did all this?" he demanded.

"Madam, sir. But Miss Warburton came to help her at nine this morning, and I helped too. Miss Warburton has put the lists in your study, sir."

"Thank you, Machin. It's all very nice." He was touched. The thought of all these women toiling in secret to please him was exceedingly sweet. It was not as though he had issued any requests. No! They did what they did from enthusiasm, unknown to him.

"Wait a second," he stopped Machin, who was leaving him. "Which floor did you say my study is on?"

She led him to his study. An enormous desk, and in the middle of it a little pile of papers crushed by a block of crystal! The papers were all bills. The amounts of them alarmed him momentarily, but that was only because he could not continuously and effectively remember that he had over three hundred pounds a week coming in. Still, the bills did somewhat dash him, and he left them without getting to the bottom of the pile. He thought he would voyage through the house, but he got no further than his wife's boudoir. The boudoir also had an enormous desk, and on it also was a pile of papers. He offended the marital code by picking up the first one, which read as follows:--"Madam. We beg to enclose as requested estimate for buffet refreshments for one hundred and fifty persons, and hire of one hundred gilt cane chairs and bringing and taking away same. Trusting to be honoured with your commands--" This document did more than alarm him; it shook him. Clearly Eve was planning a great reception. Even to attend a reception was torture to him, always had been; but to be the host at a reception...! No, his mind refused to contemplate a prospect so appalling. Surely Eve ought to have consulted him before beginning to plan a reception. Why a reception? He glimpsed matters that might be even worse than a reception. And this was the same woman who had so touchingly arranged his clothes.


IV


He was idly regarding himself in an immense mirror that topped the fireplace, and thinking that despite the stylishness of his accoutrement he presented the appearance of a rather tousled and hairy person of unromantic middle-age, when, in the glass, he saw the gilded door open and a woman enter the room. He did not move,--only stared at the image. He knew the woman intimately, profoundly, exhaustively, almost totally. He knew her as one knows the countryside in which one has grown up, where every feature of the scene has become a habit of the perceptions. And yet he had also a strange sensation of seeing her newly, of seeing her for the first time in his life and estimating her afresh. In a flash he had compared her, in this boudoir, with Lady Massulam in Lady Massulam's bungalow. In a flash all the queer, frightening romance of 2 a.m. in Frinton had swept through his mind. Well, she had not the imposingness nor the mystery of Lady Massulam, nor perhaps the challenge of Lady Massulam; she was very much more prosaic to him. But still he admitted that she had an effect on him, that he reacted to her presence, that she was at any rate at least as incalculable as Lady Massulam, and that there might be bits of poetry gleaming in her prose, and that after a quarter of a century he had not arrived at a final judgment about her. Withal Lady Massulam had a quality which she lacked,--he did not know what the quality was, but he knew that it excited him in an unprecedented manner and that he wanted it and would renounce it with regret. "Is it conceivable," he thought, shocked at himself, "that all three of us are on the road to fifty years?"

Then he turned, and blushed, feeling exactly like an undergraduate.

"I knew you'd be bored up there in that hole." Eve greeted him.

"I wasn't bored for a single moment," said he.

"Don't tell me," said she.

She was very smart in her plumpness. The brim of her spreading hat bumped against his forehead as he bent to kiss her. The edge of the brown veil came half-way down her face, leaving her mouth unprotected from him, but obscuring her disturbing eyes. As he kissed her all his despondency and worry fell away from him, and he saw with extraordinary clearness that since the previous evening he had been an irrational ass. The creature had done nothing unusual, nothing that he had not explicitly left her free to do; and everything was all right.

"Did you see your friend Lady Massulam?" was her first question.

Marvellous the intuition--or the happy flukes--of women! Yet their duplicity was still more marvellous. The creature's expressed anxiety about the danger of Lady Massulam's society to Charlie must have been pure, wanton, gratuitous pretence.

He told her of his meeting with Lady Massulam.

"I left her at 2 a.m.," said he, with well-feigned levity.

"I knew she wouldn't leave you alone for long. But I've no doubt you enjoyed it. I hope you did. You need adventure, my poor boy. You were getting into a regular rut."

"Oh, was I!" he opposed. "And what are you doing here? Machin told me you were out for lunch."

"Oh! You've been having a chat with your friend Machin, have you? It seems she's shown you your beautiful dressing-room. Well, I was going out for lunch. But when I heard you'd returned I gave it up and came back. I knew so well you'd want looking after."

"And who told you I'd returned?"

"Carthew, of course! You're a very peculiar pair, you two. When I first saw him Carthew gave me to understand he'd left you at Frinton. But when I see him again I learn that you're in town and that you spent last night at Claridge's. You did quite right, my poor boy. Quite right. I want you to feel free. It must have been great fun stopping at Claridge's, with your own home close by. I'll tell you something. We were dancing at Claridge's last night, but I suppose you'd gone to bed."

"The dickens you were!" said he. "By the way, you might instruct one of your butlers to telephone to the hotel for my things and have the bill paid."

"So you'll sleep here to-night?" said she, archly.

"If there's room," said he. "Anyway you've arranged all my clothes with the most entrancing harmony and precision."

"Oh!" Eve exclaimed, in a tone suddenly changed. "That was Miss Warburton more than me. She took an hour off from Charlie this morning in order to do it."

Then Mr. Prohack observed his wife's face crumble to pieces, and she moved aside from him, sat down and began to cry.

"Now what next? What next?" he demanded with impatient amiability, for he was completely at a loss to keep pace with the twistings of her mind.

"Arthur, why did you deceive me about that girl? How could you do it? I hadn't the slightest idea it was M--miss W--instock. I can't make you out sometimes, Arthur--really I can't!"

The fellow had honestly forgotten that he had in fact grossly deceived his wife to the point of planting Mimi Winstock upon her as somebody else. He had been nourishing imaginary and absurd grievances against Eve for many hours, but her grievance against himself was genuine enough and large enough. No wonder she could