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

clear, he added: "And a better one."

"I don't want another one," said Eve. "I'd sooner be without one. I know it was all my own fault. But you're horrid, and I can't make you out, and I never could make you out. I never did know where I am with you. And I believe you're hiding something from me. I believe you picked up the necklace, and that's why you sent the detective away."

Mr. Prohack had to assume his serious voice which always carried conviction to Eve, and which he had never misused. "I haven't picked your necklace up. I haven't seen it. And I know nothing about it." Then he changed again. "And if you'll kindly step forward and kiss me good morning I'll try to snatch a few moments' unconsciousness."


IV


Mr. Prohack's life at this wonderful period of his career as a practising philosopher at grips with the great world seemed to be a series of violent awakenings. He was awakened, with even increased violence, at about eight o'clock the next--or rather the same--morning, and he would have been awakened earlier if the servants had got up earlier. The characteristic desire of the servants to rise early had, however, been enfeebled by the jolly vigils of the previous night. It was, of course, Eve who rushed in to him--nobody else would have dared. She had hastily cast about her plumpness the transformed Chinese gown, which had the curious appearance of a survival from some former incarnation.

"Arthur!" she called, and positively shook the victim. "Arthur!"

Mr. Prohack looked at her, dazed by the electric light which she had ruthlessly turned on over his head.

"There's a woman been caught in the area. She's a fat woman, and she must have been there all night. The cook locked the area gate and the woman was too fat to climb over. Brool's put her in the servants' hall and fastened the door, and what do you think we ought to do first? Send for the police or telephone to Mr. Crewd--he's the detective you saw last night?"

"If she's been in the area all night you'd better put her to bed, and give her some hot brandy and water," said Mr. Prohack.

"Arthur, please, please, be serious!" Eve supplicated.

"I'm being as serious as a man can who has been disturbed in this pleasant fashion by a pretty woman," said Mr. Prohack attentively examining the ceiling. "You go and look after the fat lady. Supposing she died from exposure. There'd have to be an inquest. Do you wish to be mixed up in an inquest? What does she want? Whatever it is, give it her, and let her go, and wake me up next week. I feel I can sleep a bit."

"Arthur! You'll drive me mad. Can't you see that she must be connected with the necklace business. She _must_ be. It's as clear as day-light!"

"Ah!" breathed Mr. Prohack, thoughtfully interested. "I'd forgotten the necklace business."

"Yes, well, I hadn't!" said Eve, rather shrewishly. "I had not."

"Quite possibly she may be mixed up in the necklace business," Mr. Prohack admitted. "She may be a clue. Look here, don't let's tell anybody outside--not even Mr. Crewd. Let's detect for ourselves. It will be the greatest fun. What does she say for herself?"

"She said she was waiting outside the house to catch a young lady with a snub-nose going away from my reception--Mimi Winstock, of course."

"Why Mimi Winstock?"

"Well, hasn't she got a turned-up nose? And she didn't go away from my reception. She's sleeping here," Eve rejoined triumphantly.

"And what else does the fat woman say?"

"She says she won't say anything else--except to Mimi Winstock."

"Well, then, wake up Mimi as you wakened me, and send her to the servants' hall--wherever that is--I've never seen it myself!"

Eve shook her somewhat tousled head vigorously.

"Certainly not. I don't trust Miss Mimi Winstock--not one bit--and I'm not going to let those two meet until you've had a talk with the burglar."

"Me!" Mr. Prohack protested.

"Yes, you. Seeing that you don't want me to send for the police. Something has to be done, and somebody has to do it. And I never did trust that Mimi Winstock, and I'm very sorry she's gone to Charlie. That was a great mistake. However, it's got nothing to do with me." She shrugged her agreeable shoulders. "But my necklace has got something to do with me."

Mr. Prohack thought "What would Lady Massulam do in such a crisis? And how would Lady Massulam look in a dressing-gown and her hair down? I shall never know." Meanwhile he liked Eve's demeanour--its vivacity and simplicity. "I'm afraid I'm still in love with her," the strange fellow reflected, and said aloud: "You'd better kiss me. I shall have an awful headache if you don't." And Eve reluctantly kissed him, with the look of a martyr on her face.

Within a few minutes Mr. Prohack had dismissed his wife, and was descending the stairs in a dressing-gown which rivalled hers. The sight of him in the unknown world of the basement floor, as he searched unaided for the servants' hall, created an immense sensation,--far greater than he had anticipated. A nice young girl, whom he had never seen before and as to whom he knew nothing except that she was probably one of his menials, was so moved that she nearly had an accident with a tea-tray which she was carrying.

"What is your name?" Mr. Prohack benignly asked.

"Selina, sir."

"Where are you going with that tea-tray and newspaper?"

"I was just taking it upstairs to Machin, sir. She's not feeling well enough to get up yet, sir."

Mr. Prohack comprehended the greatness of the height to which Machin had ascended. Machin, a parlourmaid, drinking tea in bed, and being served by a lesser creature, who evidently regarded Machin as a person of high power and importance on earth! Mr. Prohack saw that he was unacquainted with the fundamental realities of life in Manchester Square.

"Well," said he. "You can get some more tea for Machin. Give me that." And he took the tray. "No, you can keep the newspaper."

The paper was _The Daily Picture_. As he held the tray with one hand and gave the paper back to Selina with the other, his eye caught the headlines: "West End Sensation. Mrs. Prohack's Pearls Pinched." He paled; but he was too proud a man to withdraw the paper again. No doubt _The Daily Picture_ would reach him through the customary channels after Machin had done with it, accompanied by the usual justifications about the newsboy being late; he could wait.

"Which is the servants' hall," said he. Selina's manner changed to positive alarm as she indicated, in the dark subterranean corridor, the door that was locked on the prisoner. Not merely the presence of Mr. Prohack had thrilled the basement floor; there was a thrill greater even than that, and Mr. Prohack, by demanding the door of the servants' hall was intensifying the thrill to the last degree. The key was on the outside of the door, which he unlocked. Within the electric light was still burning in the obscure dawn.

The prisoner, who sprang up from a chair and curtsied fearsomely at the astonishing spectacle of Mr. Prohack, was fat in a superlative degree, and her obesity gave her a middle-aged air to which she probably had no right by the almanac. She looked quite forty, and might well have been not more than thirty. She made a typical London figure of the nondescript industrial class. It is inadequate to say that her shabby black-trimmed bonnet, her shabby sham-fur coat half hiding a large dubious apron, her shabby frayed black skirt, and her shabby, immense, amorphous boots,--it is inadequate to say that these things seemed to have come immediately out of a tenth-rate pawnshop; the woman herself seemed to have come, all of a piece with her garments, out of a tenth-rate pawnshop; the entity of her was at any rate homogeneous; it sounded no discord.

She did nothing so active as to weep, but tears, obeying the law of gravity, oozed out of her small eyes, and ran in zigzags, unsummoned and unchecked, down her dark-red cheeks.

"Oh, sir!" she mumbled in a wee, scarcely articulate voice. "I'm a respectable woman, so help me God!"

"You shall be respected," said Mr. Prohack. "Sit down and drink some of this tea and eat the bread-and-butter.... No! I don't want you to say anything just yet. No, nothing at all."

When she had got the tea into the cup, she poured it into the saucer and blew on it and began to drink loudly. After two sips she plucked at a piece of bread-and-butter, conveyed it into her mouth, and before doing anything further to it, sirruped up some more tea. And in this way she went on. Her table manners convinced Mr. Prohack that her claim to respectability was authentic.

"And now," said Mr. Prohack, gazing through the curtained window at the blank wall that ended above him at the edge of the pavement, so as not to embarrass her, "will you tell me why you spent the night in my area?"

"Because some one locked the gate on me, sir, while I was hiding under the shed where the dustbins are."

"I quite see," said Mr. Prohack, "I quite see. But why did you go down into the area? Were you begging, or what?"

"Me begging, sir!" she exclaimed, and ceased to cry, fortified by the tonic of aroused pride.

"No, of course you weren't begging," said Mr. Prohack. "You may have given to beggars--"

"That I have, sir." She cried again.

"But you don't beg. I quite see. Then what?"

"It's no use me a-trying to tell you, sir. You won't believe me." Her voice was extraordinarily thin and weak, and seldom achieved anything that could fairly be called pronunciation.

"I shall," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm a great believer. You try me. You'll see."

"It's like this. I was converted last night, and that's where the trouble began, if it's the last word I ever speak."

"Theology?" murmured Mr. Prohack, turning to look at her and marvelling at the romantic quality of basements.

"There was a mission on at the Methodists' in Paddington Street, and in I went. Seems strange to me to be going into a Methodists', seeing as I'm so friendly with Mr. Milcher."

"Who is Mr. Milcher?"

"Milcher's the sexton at St. Nicodemus, sir. Or I should say sacristan. They call him sacristan instead of sexton because St. Nicodemus is High, as I daresay _you_ know, sir, living so close."

Mr. Prohack was conscious of a slight internal shiver, which he could not explain, unless it might be due to a subconscious premonition of unpleasantness to come.

"I know that I live close to St. Nicodemus," he replied. "Very close. Too close. But I did not know how High St. Nicodemus was. However, I'm interrupting you." He perceived with satisfaction that his gift of inspiring people with confidence was not failing him on this occasion.

"Well, sir, as I was saying, it might, as you might say, seem strange me popping like that into the Methodists', seeing what Milcher's views are; but my mother was a Methodist in Canonbury,--a great place for dissenters, sir, North London, you know, sir, and they do say blood's thicker than water. So there I was, and the Mission a-going on, and as soon as ever I got inside