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

very ground trembled for a second under his feet and then was solid and moveless again. No sooner had the quartette reached the conservatory than Eliza left it to go and discuss important affairs with Mr. Asprey Chown, who had summoned Ozzie to his elbow. They might not have seen one another for many years, and they might have been settling the fate of continents.

Mr. Prohack took out his watch, which showed a minute to twelve. He experienced a minute's agony. The clock did not strike.

"Well," said Mr. Softly Bishop, who during the minute had been whispering information about the historic Square to Miss Fancy, who hung with all her weight on his words, "Well, it's very interesting and even amusing, we three being alone here together isn't it?... The three heirs of the late Silas Angmering! How funny life is!" And he examined his nose with new curiosity.

All Mr. Prohack's skin tingled, and his face flushed, as he realised that Miss Fancy was the mysterious third beneficiary under Angmering's will. Yes, she was in fact jewelled like a woman who had recently been handling a hundred thousand pounds or so. And Mr. Softly Bishop might be less fascinated by the steely blue eyes than Mr. Prohack had imagined. Mr. Softly Bishop might in fact win the duel. The question, however, had no interest for Mr. Prohack, who was absorbed in a sense of gloomy humiliation. He rushed away from his co-heirs. He simply had to rush away right to bad.


CHAPTER XX


THE SILENT TOWER

The fount of riches and the Terror of the departments, clothed in the latest pattern of sumptuous pyjamas, lay in the midst of his magnificent and spacious bed, and, with the shaded electric globe over his brow, gazed at the splendours of the vast bedroom which Eve had allotted to him. It was full, but not too full, of the finest Directoire furniture, and the walls were covered with all manner of engravings and watercolours. Evidently this apartment had been the lair of the real owner and creator of the great home. Mr. Prohack could appreciate the catholicity and sureness of taste which it displayed. He liked the cornice as well as the form of the dressing-table, and the Cumberland landscape by C.J. Holmes as well as the large Piranesi etching of an imaginary prison, which latter particularly interested him because it happened to be an impression between two "states"--a detail which none but a true amateur could savour. The prison depicted was a terrible place of torment, but it was beautiful, and the view of it made Mr. Prohack fancy, very absurdly, that he too was in prison, just as securely as if he had been bolted and locked therein. His eye ranged about the room and saw nothing that was not lovely and that he did not admire. Yet he derived little or no authentic pleasure from what he beheld, partly because it was the furnishing of a prison and partly because he did not own it. He had often preached against the mania for owning things, but now--and even more clearly than when he had sermonised Paul Spinner--he perceived, and hated to perceive, that ownership was probably an essential ingredient of most enjoyments. The man, foolishly priding himself on being a philosopher, was indeed a fleshly mass of strange inconsistencies.

More important, he was losing the assurance that he would sleep soundly that night. He could not drag his mind off his co-heiress and his co-heir. The sense of humiliation at being intimately connected and classed with them would not leave him. He felt himself--absurdly once again--to be mysteriously associated with them in a piece of sharp practice or even of knavery. They constituted another complication of his existence. He wanted to disown them and never to speak to them again, but he knew that he could not disown them. He was living in gorgeousness for the sole reason that he and they were in the same boat.

Eve came in, opening the door cautiously at first and then rushing forward as soon as she saw that the room was not in darkness. He feared for an instant that she might upbraid him for deserting her. But no! Triumphant happiness sat on her forehead, and affectionate concern for him was in her eyes. She plumped down, in her expensive radiance, on the bed by his side.

"Well?" said he.

"I'm so glad you decided to go to bed," said she. "You must be tired, and late nights don't suit you. I just slipped away for a minute to see if you were all right. Are you?" She puckered her shining brow exactly as of old, and bent and kissed him as of old. One of her best kisses.

But the queer fellow, though touched by her attention, did not like her being so glad that he had gone to bed. The alleged philosopher would have preferred her to express some dependence upon his manly support in what was for her a tremendous event.

"I feel I shall sleep," he lied.

"I'm sure you will, darling," she agreed. "Don't you think it's all been a terrific success?" she asked naively.

He answered, smiling:

"I'm dying to see _The Daily Picture_ to-morrow. I think I shall tell the newsagent in future only to deliver it on the days when you're in it."

"Don't be silly," she said, too pleased with herself, however, to resent his irony. She was clothed in mail that night against all his shafts.

He admitted, what he had always secretly known, that she was an elementary creature; she would have been just as at home in the Stone Age as in the twentieth century--and perhaps more at home. (Was Lady Massulam equally elementary? No? Yes?) Still, Eve was necessary to him.

Only, up to a short while ago, she had been his complement; whereas now he appeared to be her complement. He, the philosopher and the source of domestic wisdom, was fully aware, in a superior and lofty manner, that she was the eternal child deceived by toys, gewgaws, and illusions; nevertheless he was only her complement, the indispensable husband and payer-out. She was succeeding without any brain-work from him. He noticed that she was not wearing the pearls he had given her. No doubt she had merely forgotten at the last moment to put them on. She was continually forgetting them and leaving them about. But this negligent woman was the organiser in chief of the great soiree! Well, if it had succeeded, she was lucky.

"I must run off," said she, starting up, busy, proud, falsely calm, the general of a victorious army as the battle draws to a close. She embraced him again, and he actually felt comforted.... She was gone.

"As I grow older," he reflected, "I'm hanged if I don't understand life less and less."

* * * * *


He was listening to the distant rhythm of the music when he mistily comprehended that there was no music and that the sounds in his ear were not musical. He could not believe that he had been asleep and had awakened, but the facts were soon too much for his delusion and he said with the air of a discoverer: "I've been asleep," and turned on the light.

There were voices and footsteps in the corridors or on the landing,--whispers, loud and yet indistinct talking, tones indicating that the speakers were excited, if not frightened, and that their thoughts had been violently wrenched away from the pursuit of pleasure. His watch showed two o'clock. The party was over, the last automobile had departed, and probably even the tireless Eliza Fiddle was asleep in her new home. Next Mr. Prohack noticed that the door of his room was ajar.

He had no anxiety. Rather he felt quite gay and careless,--the more so as he had wakened up with the false sensation of complete refreshment produced by short, heavy slumber. He thought:

"Whatever has happened, I have had and shall have nothing to do with it, and they must deal with the consequences themselves as best they can." And as a measure of precaution against being compromised, he switched off the light. He heard Eve's voice, surprisingly near his door:

"I simply daren't tell him! No, I daren't!"

The voice was considerably agitated, but he smiled maliciously to himself, thinking:

"It can't be anything very awful, because she only talks in that strain when it's nothing at all. She loves to pretend she's afraid of me. And moreover I don't believe there's anything on earth she daren't tell me."

He heard another voice, reasoning in reply, that resembled Mimi's. Hadn't that girl gone home yet? And he heard Sissie's voice and Charlie's. But for him all these were inarticulate.

Then his room was filled with swift blinding light. Somebody had put a hand through the doorway and turned the light on. It must be Eve.... It was Eve, scared and distressed, but still in complete war-paint.

"I'm so relieved you're awake, Arthur," she said, approaching the bed as though she anticipated the bed would bite her.

"I'm not awake. I'm asleep, officially. My poor girl, you've ruined the finest night I was ever going to have in all my life."

She ignored his complaint, absolutely.

"Arthur," she said, her face twitching in every direction, and all her triumph fallen from her, "Arthur, I've lost my pearls. They're gone! Some one must have taken them!"

Mr. Prohack's reaction to this piece of more-than-midnight news was to break into hearty and healthy laughter; he appeared to be genuinely diverted; and when Eve protested against such an attitude he said:

"My child, anything that strikes you as funny after being wakened up at two o'clock in the morning is very funny, very funny indeed. How can I help laughing?" Eve thereupon began to cry, weakly.

"Come here, please," said he.

And she came and sat on the bed, but how differently from the previous visit! She was now beaten by circumstances, and she turned for aid to his alleged more powerful mind and deeper wisdom. In addition to being amused, the man was positively happy, because he was no longer a mere complement! So he comforted her, and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Don't worry," said he, gently. "And after all I'm not surprised the necklace has been pinched."

"Not surprised? Arthur!"

"No. You collect here half the notorious smart people in London. Fifty per cent of them go through one or other of the Courts; five per cent end by being detected criminals, and goodness knows what per cent end by being undetected criminals. Possibly two per cent treat marriage seriously, and possibly one per cent is not in debt. That's the atmosphere you created, and it's an atmosphere in which pearls are apt to melt away. Hence I am not surprised, and you mustn't be. Still, it would be interesting to know _how_ the things melted away. Were you wearing them?"

"Of course I was wearing them. There was nothing finer here to-night--that _I_ saw."

"You hadn't got them on when you came in here before."

"Hadn't I?" said Eve, thoughtful.

"No, you hadn't."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" Eve demanded suddenly, almost fiercely, through her tears, withdrawing her shoulders from his hands.

"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "I thought you'd know what you'd got on, or what you hadn't got