CHAPTER XVIII
A HOMELESS NIGHT
I
How exhilarating (Mr. Prohack found it) to be on the road without adestination! It was Sunday morning, and the morning was marvellous forthe time of year. Mr. Prohack had had a very fine night, and he now felta curious desire to defy something or somebody, to defend himself, andto point out, if any one accused him of cowardice, that he had notretreated from danger until after he had fairly affronted it. Morecurious still was the double, self-contradictory sensation of feelingboth righteous and sinful. He would have spurned a charge of wickedness,and yet the feeling of being wicked was really very jolly. He seemed tohave begun a new page of life, and then to have ripped the pageaway--and possibly spoilt the whole book. Deference to Eve, of course!Respect for Eve! Or was it merely that he must always be able to lookEve in the face? In sending the car for his idle use, Eve had performeda master-stroke which laid him low by its kindliness, its wifeliness,its touches of perverse self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice.Lady Massulam hung in the vast hollow of his mind, a brilliant andintensely seductive figure; but Eve hung there too, and Mr. Prohack wasobliged to admit that the simple Eve was holding her own.
"My sagacity is famous," said Mr. Prohack to himself. "And I nevershowed more of it than in leaving Frinton instantly. Few men would havehad the sense and the resolution to do it." And he went on praisinghimself to himself. Such was the mood of this singular man.
Hunger--Mr. Prohack's hunger--drew them up at Frating, a village a fewmiles short of Colchester. The inn at Frating had been constructed agesearlier entirely without reference to the fact that it is improper forcertain different types of humanity to eat or drink in each other'spresence. In brief, there was obviously only one dining-room, and not aseries of dining-rooms classified according to castes. Mr. Prohack,free, devil-may-care and original, said to his chauffeur:
"You'd better eat with me, Carthew."
"You're very kind, sir," said Carthew, and at once sat down and ceasedto be a chauffeur.
"Well, I haven't been seeing much of you lately," Mr. Prohack edgedforward into the fringes of intimacy when three glasses of beer andthree slices of Derby Round had been unequally divided between them,"have I?"
"No, sir."
Mr. Prohack had in truth been seeing Carthew almost daily; but on thisoccasion he used the word "see" in a special sense.
"That boy of yours getting on all right?"
"Pretty fair, considering he's got no mother, if you understand what Imean, sir," replied Carthew, pushing back his chair, stretching out hislegs, and picking his teeth with a fork.
"Ah! yes!" said Mr. Prohack commiseratingly. "Very awkward situation foryou, that is."
"It isn't awkward for me, sir. It's my boy it's awkward for. I'm asright as rain."
"No chance of the lady coming back, I suppose?"
"Well, she'd better not try," said Carthew grimly.
"But does this mean you've done with the sex, at your age?" cried Mr.Prohack.
"I don't say as I've _done_ with the sex, sir. Male and female createdHe them, as the good old Book says; and I'm not going behind that. No,not me! All I say is, I'm as right as rain--_for_ the present--and she'dbetter not try."
"I bet you anything you won't keep it up," said Mr. Prohack, impetuouslyexceeding the limits of inter-caste decorum.
"Keep what up?"
"This attitude of yours."
"I won't bet, sir," said Carthew. "Because nobody can see round acorner. But I promise you I'll never take a woman _seriously_ again.That's the mistake we make, taking 'em seriously. You see, sir, being achauffeur in the early days of motor-cars, I've had a tidy bit ofexperience, if you understand what I mean. Because in them days achauffeur was like what an air-pilot is to-day. He didn't have to ask,he didn't. And what I say is this--I say we're mugs to take 'emseriously."
"You think we are!" bubbled Mr. Prohack emptily, perceiving that he hadto do with an individual whom misfortune had rendered impervious toargument.
"I do, sir. And what's more, I say you never know where you are with anywoman."
"That I agree with," said Mr. Prohack, with a polite show of eagerness."But you're cutting yourself off from a great deal you know, Carthew,"he added, thinking magnificently upon his adventure with Lady Massulam.
"There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place," murmured Carthewwith bland superiority. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll just goand give her a look over before we start again." He scraped his chaircruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority onwomen.
It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and payingthe bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of thelong, empty dining-room table, a copy of _The Sunday Picture_, which wasthe 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 newand fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance atits pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, bothknown to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of theWest End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-knownTreasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, becauseMiss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square toMrs. Arthur Prohack.
The shock of meeting Eve in _The Sunday Picture_ was terrible, butequally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance inregard to the ownership of the noble mansion. He had understood--or morecorrectly he had been given to understand--that the house and itscontents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was ascelebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been. Assuredly neitherEliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for theexquisite decorations and furnishings of that house. On the other hand,it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave thehouse as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluablebibelots lying about all over the place. Almost certainly Eliza Fiddlemust have had some sort of effective ownership of the place. He knewthat dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding andmysterious luck in the matter of luxurious homes, and that some of themprogressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable thanthe last. He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind. He hadof course no grudge against the efficient and strenuous Eliza, for hewas perfectly at liberty not to pay money in order to see her. She mustbe an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones.Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should beopposite his wife in _The Sunday Picture...._ Eve! Eve! A few shortweeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into _TheDaily Picture_. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, wasthe siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish thing, criticism of life!)
And there was another point, as sharp as any. Ozzie Morfey must haveknown, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself musthave known, that the _de facto_ owner of the noble mansion was ElizaFiddle. And none had vouchsafed the truth to him.
"We'll struggle back to town I think," said Mr. Prohack to Carthew, witha pitiable affectation of brightness. And instead of sitting byCarthew's side, as previously, he sat behind, and reflected upon thewisdom of Carthew. He had held that Carthew's views were warped by apeculiar experience. He now saw that they were not warped at all, butshapely, sane and incontrovertible.
II
That evening, soon after dark, the Eagle, dusty and unkempt from ajourney which had not been free from mishaps, rolled up to thefront-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 anywindow. Mr. Prohack produced his familiar latch-key, scraped round theedge 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 thethreshold, and then his hand instinctively sought the electric switchand 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 anempty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-roomdoor, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. Thedining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and anewspaper 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 stoodhesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.
How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthewwas no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was aservitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should notspeak until spoken to.
"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.
"Yes, sir."
At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by giganticuniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring theguards, 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 andreceived a ticket.
"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur Ishall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should takethe car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will havesome tea at once in my sitting-room."
The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew hismind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirablyserved.
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 footto Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followedthe side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed withlights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of apyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then heobserved 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 lightover 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 thenoble mansion and audaciously rang the bell. He had to wait. He shookguiltily, as though he, and no member of his family, had sinned. Alittle more, and his tongue would have cleaved to the gold of his upperdenture. The double portals swung backwards. Mr. Prohack beheld theportly form of an intensely traditional butler, and behind the butler avista of outer and inner halls and glimpses of the soaring staircase. Heheard, somewhere in the distance of the interior, the ringing laugh ofhis daughter Sissie.
The butler looked carelessly down upon him, and, as Mr. Prohack utteredno 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'sa month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, vergingsometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous rapidityof his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations had dazed himinto a sort of numbed idiocy. In two days, in a day, with no warning tohim 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-eatinghis dinner, Mr. Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, thoughhe regained ground towards the end by means of champagne and liqueurs.The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who wereapparently in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the socialfabric had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everythingwas gay except Mr. Prohack--the sole living being in the place whoconformed in face and heart to the historical conception of the BritishSunday.
But Mr. Prohack was not now a man,--he was a grievance; he was the mostdeadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively finecigar did a little--not much--to solace him. He smoked it withscientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He wasthe last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundredand fifty electric lamps were keeping him in countenance. Then hiswandering, enfeebled attention heard music afar off, and he rememberedsome remark of Sissie's to the effect that Claridge's was the best placefor dancing in London on Sunday nights. He would gaze Byronically uponthe dance. He signed his bill and mooned towards the ball-room, whichwas full of radiant couples: a dazzling scene, fit to mark the end of anepoch and of a society.
The next thing was that he had an absurd delusion of seeing Sissie andCharlie locked together amid the couples. He might have conquered thisdelusion, but it was succeeded by another,--the illusion of seeing OzzieMorfey and Eve locked together amid the couples.... Yes, they werethere, all four of them. At first Mr. Prohack was amazed, as at anunprecedented coincidence. But he perceived that the coincidence was notafter all so amazing. They had done what they had to do in the way ofsettling Eve into the noble mansion, and then they had betakenthemselves to the nearest and the best dancing resort for the rest ofthe evening. Nothing could be more natural.
Mr. Prohack might have done all manner of feats. What he actually did dowas 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 hotelclocks showed the hour and Mr. Prohack's watch showed the hour, andCarthew was not there with the car. Mr. Prohack could not understandthis unnatural failure to appear on the part of Carthew, for Carthew hadnever been known to be late (save when interfered with by Mimi), andtherefore never could be late. Mr. Prohack fretted for a quarter of anhour, and then caused the hotel-garage to be telephoned to. The car hadleft the garage at nine-fifty. Mr. Prohack went out for a walk, notostensibly, but really, to look for the car in the streets of London!(Such was his diseased mentality.) He returned at half past eleven, andat eleven thirty-two the car arrived. Immediately Mr. Prohack becamecalm; his exterior was apt to be very deceptive; and he said gently toCarthew, 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 waslooking 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 stoppedit, and, tapping on the front window, summoned Carthew.
"Carthew," said he, through the side-window, which he let down withoutopening the door, "we're by ourselves. Will you kindly explain to me whyyou concealed from Mrs. Prohack that I was in London?"
"Well, sir," Carthew answered, very erect and slightly frowning, "Ididn'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 allthe circumstances--I say
having regard as it were to all thecircumstances, in a manner of speaking, what should you have done in myplace, sir?"
"How do I know?" cried Mr. Prohack. "I'm not a chauffeur. What _did_ yousay to Mrs. Prohack?"
"I said that you had instructed me to return to London, as you didn'tneed the car, and that I was just going to the house for orders. And bythe way, sir," Carthew added, glancing at the car-clock, "Madam told meto be back at twelve fifteen--I told her I ought to go to the garage toget 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 potentialitiesof human nature as exhibited in chauffeurs. The fellow Carthew hadevidently come to the conclusion that there was something wrong in themore intimate relationships of the Prohack family, and, faced with asudden contretemps, he had acted according to the best of his wisdom andaccording to his loyalty to his employer, but he had acted wrongly. Butof course the original sinner was Mr. Prohack himself. Respectable Stateofficials, even when on sick leave, do not call at empty houses and stayat hotels within a stone's throw of their own residences unknown totheir families. No! Mr. Prohack saw that he had been steering a crookedcourse. Error existed and must be corrected. He decided to walk directto Manchester Square. If Eve wanted the car at twelve fifteen she wouldbe out of the house at twelve thirty, and probably out for lunch. Somuch the better. She should find him duly established on her return.
Reconnoitring later at Manchester Square he saw no car, and rang thebell of the noble mansion. On account of the interview of the previousevening he felt considerably nervous and foolish, and the butlersuffered through no fault of the butler's.
"I'm Mr. Prohack," said he, with self-conscious fierceness. "What's yourname? Brool, eh? Take my overcoat and send Machin to me at once." He lita cigarette to cover himself. The situation, though transient, had beensufficiently difficult.
Machin came leaping and bounding down the stairs as if by magic. She hadheard his voice, and her joy at his entry into his abode caused her toforget her parlour-maidenhood and to exhibit a humanity which pained Mr.Brool, who had been brought up in the strictest traditions offlunkeyism. Her joy pleased Mr. Prohack and he felt better.
"Good morning, Machin," said he, quite blithely. "I just want to see howthings have been fixed up in my rooms." He had not the least notionwhere or what his rooms were in the vast pile.
"Yes, sir," Machin responded eagerly, delighted that Mr. Prohack wasmaking to herself, as an old friend, an appeal which he ought to havemade to the butler. Mr. Prohack, guided by the prancing Machin,discovered that, in addition to a study, he had a bedroom and adressing-room and a share in Eve's bath-room. The dressing-room had amost agreeable aspect. Machin opened a huge and magnificent wardrobe,and in drawer after drawer displayed his new hosiery marvellouslyarranged, and in other portions of the wardrobe his new suits and hatsand 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 ofall 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 theydid from enthusiasm, unknown to him.
"Wait a second," he stopped Machin, who was leaving him. "Which floordid you say my study is on?"
She led him to his study. An enormous desk, and in the middle of it alittle pile of papers crushed by a block of crystal! The papers wereall bills. The amounts of them alarmed him momentarily, but that wasonly because he could not continuously and effectively remember that hehad over three hundred pounds a week coming in. Still, the bills didsomewhat dash him, and he left them without getting to the bottom of thepile. He thought he would voyage through the house, but he got nofurther 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 bypicking up the first one, which read as follows:--"Madam. We beg toenclose as requested estimate for buffet refreshments for one hundredand fifty persons, and hire of one hundred gilt cane chairs and bringingand taking away same. Trusting to be honoured with your commands--" Thisdocument did more than alarm him; it shook him. Clearly Eve was planninga great reception. Even to attend a reception was torture to him, alwayshad been; but to be the host at a reception...! No, his mind refused tocontemplate a prospect so appalling. Surely Eve ought to have consultedhim before beginning to plan a reception. Why a reception? He glimpsedmatters that might be even worse than a reception. And this was the samewoman who had so touchingly arranged his clothes.