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

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"Well," said Mr. Prohaek, holding his hat in his hand. "I'm a tolerably two-faced person myself, but for sheer heartless duplicity I give you the palm. You can beat me. Has it occurred to you that this dodge of yours will cost you about fifty per cent of the wedding presents you might otherwise have had?"

"It has," said Sissie. "That was one reason why we tried the dodge. Nothing is more horrible than about fifty per cent of the wedding presents that brides get in these days. And we've had the two finest presents anybody could wish for."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Ozzie gave me Ozzie, and I gave him me."

"I suppose the idea was yours?"

"Of course. Didn't I tell you yesterday that Ozzie's only function at my wedding was to be indispensable. He was very much afraid at first when I started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it. I'll give him credit for seeing that secrecy was the only thing. If we'd announced it beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten. You see that yourself, don't you, dearest? And after all, it's our affair and nobody else's."

"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack grandly. "A marriage, even yours, is an affair of the State's. It concerns society. It is full of reactions on society. And society has been very wise to invest it with solemnity--and a certain grotesque quality. All solemnities are a bit grotesque, and so they ought to be. All solemnities ought to produce self-consciousness in the performers. As things are, you'll be ten years in convincing yourself that you're really a married woman, and till the day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive feeling that there's something fishy about you, or about Ozzie. And it's your own fault."

"Oh, dad! What a fraud you are!" And the girl smiled. "You know perfectly well that if you'd been in my place, and had had the pluck--which you wouldn't have had--you'd have done the same."

"I should," Mr. Prohack immediately admitted. "Because I always want to be smarter than other people. It's a cheap ambition. But I should have been wrong. And I'm exceedingly angry with you and I'm suffering from a sense of outrage, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over between us. The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world. If your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I'll talk to him as he's never been talked to before. He's the elder, he's a man, and he's the most to blame."

"Take your overcoat off," said Sissie laughing and kissing him again. "And don't you dare to say a word to Ozzie. Besides, he isn't in. He's gone off to business. He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually."

There was a pause.

"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "All I wish to state is that if you had a feather handy, you could knock me down with it."

"I can see all over your face," Sissie retorted, "that you're so pleased and relieved you don't know what to do with yourself."

Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true. His relief that the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up. He loathed all ceremonies, and the prospect of having to escort an orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile to a fashionable church, and up the aisle thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a thousand gapers at a starchy reception,--this prospect had increasingly become a nightmare to him. Often had he dwelt on it in a condition resembling panic. And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable daughter for her shameless effrontery. He desired greatly to do something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.

"Step in and see my home," she said.

The home consisted of two rooms, one of them a bedroom and the other a sitting-room, together with a small bathroom that was as dark and dank as a cell of the Spanish Inquisition, and another apartment which he took for a cupboard, but which Sissie authoritatively informed him was a kitchen. The two principal rooms were beyond question beautifully Japanese in the matter of pictures, prints and cabinets--not otherwise. They showed much taste; they were unusual and stimulating and jolly and refined; but Mr. Prohack did not fancy that he personally could have lived in them with any striking success. The lack of space, of light, and of air outweighed all considerations of charm and originality; the upper staircase alone would have ruined any flat for Mr. Prohack.

"Isn't it lovely!" Sissie encouraged him.

"Yes, it is," he said feebly. "Got any servants yet?"

"Oh! We can't have servants. No room for them to sleep, and I couldn't stand charwomen. You see, it's a service flat, so there's really nothing to do."

"So I noticed when I came in," said Mr. Prohack. "And I suppose you intend to eat at restaurants. Or do they send up meals from the cellar?"

"We shan't go to restaurants," Sissie replied. "You may be sure of that. Too expensive for us. And I don't count much on the cookery downstairs. No! I shall do the cooking in a chaffing-dish--here it is, you see. I've been taking lessons in chafing-dish cookery every day for weeks, and it's awfully amusing, it is really. And it's much better than ordinary cooking, and cheaper too. Ozzie loves it."

Mr. Prohack was touched, and more than ever determined to "be generous in the grand manner and start the simple-minded couple in married life on a scale befitting the general situation.

"You'll soon be clearing out of this place, I expect," he began cautiously.

"Clearing out!" Sissie repeated. "Why should we? We've got all we need. We haven't the slightest intention of trying to live as you live. Ozzie's very prudent, I'm glad to say, and so am I. We're going to save hard for a few years, and then we shall see how things are."

"But you can't possibly stay on living in a place like this!" Mr. Prohack protested, smiling diplomatically to soften the effect of his words.

"Who can't?"

"You can't."

"But when you say me, do you mean your daughter or Ozzie's wife? Ozzie's lived here for years, and he's given lots of parties here--tea-parties, of course."

Mr. Prohack paused, perceiving that he had put himself in the wrong.

"This place is perfectly respectable," Sissie continued, "and supposing you hadn't got all that money from America or somewhere," she persisted, "would you have said that I couldn't 'possibly go on living in a place like this?'" She actually imitated his superior fatherly tone. "You'd have been only too pleased to see me living in a place like this."

Mr. Prohack raised both arms on high.

"All right," said the young spouse, absurdly proud of her position. "I'll let you off with your life this time, and you can drop your arms again. But if anybody had told me that you would come here and make a noise like a plutocrat I wouldn't have believed it. Still, I'm frightfully fond of you and I know you'd do anything for me, and you're nearly as much of a darling as Ozzie, but you mustn't be a rich man when you call on me here. I couldn't bear it twice."

"I retire in disorder, closely pursued by the victorious enemy," said Mr. Prohack. And in so saying he accurately described the situation. He had been more than defeated--he had been exquisitely snubbed. And yet the singular creature was quite pleased. He looked at the young girl, no longer his and no longer a girl either, set in the midst of a japanned and lacquered room that so resembled Ozzie in its daintiness; he saw the decision on her brow, the charm in her eyes, and the elegance in her figure and dress, and he came near to bursting with pride. "She's got character enough to beat even me," he reflected contentedly, thus exhibiting an ingenuousness happily rare among fathers of brilliant daughters. And even the glimpse of the cupboard kitchen, where the washing-up after a chafing-dish breakfast for two had obviously not yet been accomplished--even this touch seemed only to intensify the moral and physical splendour of his child in her bridal setting.

"At the same time," he added to the admission of defeat, "I seem to have a sort of idea that lately you've been carrying on rather like a plutocrat's daughter."

"That was only my last fling," she replied, quite unperturbed.

"I see," said Mr. Prohack musingly. "Now as regards my wedding present to you. Am I permitted to offer any gift, or is it forbidden? Of course with all my millions I couldn't hope to rival the gift which Ozzie gave you, but I might come in a pretty fair second, mightn't I?"

"Dad," said she. "I must leave all that to your good taste. I'm sure that it won't let you make any attack on our independence."

"Supposing that I were to find some capital for Ozzie to start in business for himself as a theatrical manager? He must know a good deal about the job by this time."

Sissie shook her delicious head.

"No, that would be plutocratic. And you see I've only just married Ozzie. I don't know anything about him yet. When I do, I shall come and talk to you. While you're waiting I wish you'd give me some crockery. One breakfast cup isn't quite enough for two people, after the first day. I saw a set of things in a shop in Oxford Street for L1. 19. 6 which I should love to have.... What's happened to the mater? Is she in a great state about me? Hadn't you better run off and put her out of her misery?"

He went, thoughtful.


III


He was considerably dashed on his return home, to find the door of his study still locked on the outside. The gesture which on his leaving the room seemed so natural, brilliant and excusable, now presented itself to him as the act of a coarse-minded idiot. He hesitated to unlock the door, but of course he had to unlock it. Eve eat as if at the stake, sublime.

"Arthur, why do you play these tricks on me--and especially when we are in such trouble?"

Why did he, indeed?

"I merely didn't want you to run after me," said he. "I made sure of course that you'd ring the bell at once and have the door opened."

"Did you imagine for a moment that I would let any of the servants know that you'd locked me in a room? No! You couldn't have imagined that. I've too much respect for your reputation in this house to do such a thing, and you ought to know it."

"My child," said Mr. Prohack, once again amazed at Eve's extraordinary gift for putting him in the wrong, and for making him still more wrong when he was wrong. "This is the second time this morning that I've had to surrender to overwhelming force. Name your own terms of peace. But let me tell you in extenuation that I've discovered your offspring. The fact is, I got her in one."

"Where is she?" Eve asked, not eagerly, rather negligently, for she was now