After an eventful night Mr. Prohack woke up late to breakfast in bed. Theoretically he hated breakfast in bed, but in practice he had recently found that the inconveniences to himself were negligible compared to the intense and triumphant1 pleasure which his wife took in seeing him breakfast in bed, in being fully2 dressed while he was in pyjamas3 and dressing4-gown, and in presiding over the meal and over him. Recently Marian had formed the habit of rising earlier and appearing to be very busy upon various minute jobs at an hour when, a few weeks previously5, she would scarcely have decided6 that day had given place to night. Mr. Prohack, without being able precisely7 to define it, thought that he understood the psychology8 of the change in this unique woman. Under ordinary circumstances he would have been worried by his sense of fatigue9, but now, as he had nothing whatever to do, he did not much care whether he was tired or not. Neither the office nor the State would suffer through his lack of tone.
The events of the night had happened exclusively inside Mr. Prohack's head. Nor were they traceable to the demeanour of his wife when he returned home from the studio. She had mysteriously behaved to him as though nocturnal excursions to disgraceful daughters in remote quarters of London were part of his daily routine. She had been very sweet and very incurious. Whereon Mr. Prohack had said to himself: "She has some diplomatic reason for being an angel." And even if she had not been an angel, even if she had been the very reverse of an angel, Mr. Prohack would not have minded, and his night would not have been thereby10 upset; for he regarded her as a beautiful natural phenomenon is regarded by a scientist, lovingly and wonderingly, and he was incapable11 of being irritated for more than a few seconds by anything that might be done or said by this forest creature of the prime who had strayed charmingly into the twentieth century. He was a very fortunate husband.
No! The eventfulness of the night originated in reflection upon the relations between Sissie and Ozzie Morfey. If thoughts could take physical shape and solidity, the events of the night would have amounted to terrible collisions and catastrophes12 in the devil-haunted abysses of Mr. Prohack's brain. The forces of evil were massacring all opponents between three and four a.m. It was at this period Mr. Prohack was convinced that Sissie, in addition to being an indescribably heartless daughter, was a perfect fool hoodwinked by a perfect ass13, and that Ozzie's motive14 in the affair was not solely15 or chiefly admiration16 for Sissie, but admiration of the great fortune which, he had learnt, had fallen into the lap of Sissie's father. After five o'clock, according to the usual sequence, the forces of evil lost ground, and at six-thirty, when the oblong of the looking-glass glimmered17 faintly in the dawn, Mr. Prohack said roundly: "I am an idiot," and went to sleep.
"Now, darling," said Eve when he emerged from the bathroom. "Don't waste any more time. I want you to give me your opinion about something downstairs."
"Child," said Mr. Prohack. "What on earth do you mean—'wasting time'? Haven't you insisted, and hasn't your precious doctor insisted, that I must read the papers for an hour in bed after I've had my breakfast in bed? Talk about 'wasting time' indeed!"
"Yes, of course darling," Eve concurred19, amazingly angelic. "I don't mean you've been wasting time; only I don't want you to waste any more time."
"My mistake," said Mr. Prohack.
From mere18 malice20 and wickedness he spun21 out the business of dressing to nearly its customary length, and twice Eve came uneasily into the bedroom to see if she could be of assistance to him. No nurse could have been so beautifully attentive22. During one of her absences he slipped furtively23 downstairs into the drawing-room, where he began to strum on the piano, though the room was yet by no means properly warm. She came after him, admirably pretending not to notice that he was behaving unusually. She was attired24 for the street, and she carried his hat and his thickest overcoat.
"You're coming out," said she, holding up the overcoat cajolingly.
"That's just where you're mistaken," said he.
"But I want to show you something."
"What do you want to show me?"
"You shall see when you come out."
"Is it by chance the bird of the mountains that I am to see?"
"The bird of the mountains? My dear Arthur! What are you driving at now?"
"Is it the Eagle car?" And as she staggered speechless under the blow he proceeded: "Ah! Did you think you could deceive me with your infantile conspiracies25 and your tacit deceits and your false smiles?"
She blushed.
"Some one's told you. And I do think it's a shame!"
"And who should have told me? Who have I seen? I suppose you think I picked up the information at Putney last night. And haven't you opened all my letters since I was ill, on the pretext26 of saving me worry? Shall I tell you how I know? I knew from your face. Your face, my innocent, can't be read like a book. It can be read like a newspaper placard, and for days past I've seen on it, 'Extra special. Exciting purchase of a motor-car by a cunning wife.'" Then he laughed. "No, chit. That fellow Oswald Morfey, let it out last night."
When she had indignantly enquired27 how Oswald Morfey came to be mixed up in her private matters, she said:
"Well, darling, I hope I needn't tell you that my sole object was to save you trouble. The car simply had to be bought, and as quickly as possible, so I did it. Need I tell you—"
"You needn't, certainly," Mr. Prohack agreed, and going to the window he lifted the curtain. Yes. There stood a real car, a landaulette, with the illustrous eagle on the front of its radiator28, and a real chauffeur29 by its side. The thing seemed entirely30 miraculous31 to Mr. Prohack; and he was rather impressed by his wife's daring and enterprise. After all, it was somewhat of an undertaking32 for an unworldly woman to go out alone into the world and buy a motor-car and engage a chauffeur, not to mention clothing the chauffeur. But Mr. Prohack kept all his imperturbability33.
"Isn't it lovely?"
"Is it paid for?"
"Oh, no!"
"Didn't you have to pay any deposit?"
"Of course I didn't. I gave your name, and that was sufficient. We needn't keep it if we don't like it after the trial run."
"And is it insured?"
"Of course, darling."
"And what about the licence?"
"Oh! The Eagle Company saw to all those stupid things for me."
"And how many times have you forged my signature while I've been lying on a bed of pain?"
"The fact is, darling, I made the purchase in my own name. Now come along. We're going round the park."
The way she patted his overcoat when she had got it on to him...! The way she took him by the hand and pulled him towards the drawing-room door...! She had done an exceedingly audacious deed, and her spirits rose as she became convinced from his demeanour that she had not pushed audacity34 too far. (For she was never absolutely sure of him.)
"Wait one moment," said Mr. Prohack releasing himself and slipping back to the window.
"What's the matter?"
"I merely desired to look at the chauffeur's face. Is it a real chauffeur? Not an automaton35?"
"Arthur!"
"You're sure he's quite human?" Mrs. Prohack closed the piano, and then stamped her foot.
"Listen," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm about to trust my life to the mysterious being inside that uniform. Did you imagine that I would trust my life to a perfect stranger? In another half hour he and I may be lying in hospital side by side. And I don't even know his name! Fetch him in, my dove, and allow me to establish relations with him. But confide36 to me his name first." The expression on Mrs. Prohack's features was one of sublime37 forbearance under ineffable38 provocation39.
"This is Carthew," she announced, bringing the chauffeur into the drawing-room.
Carthew was a fairly tall, fairly full-bodied, grizzled man of about forty; he carried his cap and one gauntleted glove in one gloved hand, and his long, stiff green overcoat slanted40 down from his neck to his knees in an unbroken line. He had the impassivity of a policeman.
"Good morning, Carthew," Mr. Prohack began, rising. "I thought that you and I would like to make one another's acquaintance."
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Prohack held out his hand, which Carthew calmly took.
"Will you sit down?"
"Thank you, sir."
"Have a cigarette?" Carthew hesitated.
"Do you mind if I have one of my own, sir?"
"These are Virginian."
"Oh! Thank you, sir." And Carthew took a cigarette from Mr. Prohack's case.
"Light?"
"After you, sir."
"No, no."
"Thank you, sir."
Carthew coughed, puffed41, and leaned back a little in his chair. At this point Mrs. Prohack left the room. (She said afterwards that she left the room because she couldn't have borne to be present when Carthew's back broke the back of the chair.)
Carthew sat silent.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "What do you think of the car? I ought to tell you I know nothing of motors myself, and this is the first one I've ever had."
"The Eagle is a very good car, sir. If you ask me I should say it was light on tyres and a bit thirsty with petrol. It's one of them cars as anybody can drive—if you understand what I mean. I mean anybody can make it go. But of course that's only the beginning of what I call driving."
"Just so," agreed Mr. Prohack, drawing by his smile a very faint smile from Carthew. "My son seems to think it's about the best car on the market."
"Well, sir, I've been mixed up with cars pretty well all my life—I mean since I was twenty—"
"Have you indeed!"
"I have, sir—" Carthew neatly42 flicked43 some ash on the carpet, and Mr. Prohack thoughtfully did the same—"I have, sir, and I haven't yet come across the best car on the market, if you understand what I mean."
"Perfectly," said Mr. Prohack.
Carthew sat silent.
"But it's a very good car. Nobody could wish for a better. I'll say that," he added at length.
"Had many accidents in your time?"
"I've been touched, sir, but I've never touched anything myself. You can have an accident while you're drawn44 up alongside the kerb. It rather depends on how many fools have been let loose in the traffic, doesn't it, sir, if you understand what I mean."
"Exactly," said Mr. Prohack.
Carthew sat silent.
"I gather you've been through the war," Mr. Prohack began again.
"I was in the first Territorial45 regiment46 that landed in France, and I got my discharge July 1919."
"Wounded?"
"Well, sir, I've been blown up twice and buried once and pitched into the sea once, but nothing ever happened to me."
"I see you don't wear any ribbons."
"It's like this, sir. I've seen enough ribbons on chests since the armistice47. It isn't as if I was one of them conscripts."
"No," murmured Mr. Prohack thoughtfully; then brightening: "And as soon as you were discharged you went back to your old job?"
"I did and I didn't, sir. The fact is, I've been driving an ambulance for the City of London, but as soon as I heard of something private I chucked that. I can't say as I like these Corporations. There's a bit too much stone wall about them Corporations, for my taste."
"Family man?" asked Mr. Prohack lightly. "I've two children myself and both of them can drive."
"Really, sir, I am a family man, as ye might say, but my wife and me, we're best apart."
"Sorry to hear that. I didn't want to—"
"Oh, not at all, sir! That's all right. But you see—the war—me being away and all that—I've got the little boy. He's nine."
"Well," said Mr. Prohack, jumping up nervously48, "suppose we go and have a look at the car, shall we?"
"Certainly, sir," said Carthew, throwing the end of his cigarette into the fender, and hastening.
"My dove," said Mr. Prohack to his wife in the hall. "I congratulate you on your taste in chauffeurs49. Carthew and I have laid the foundations of a lasting50 friendship."
"I really wonder you asked him to smoke in the drawing-room," Mrs. Prohack critically observed.
"Why? He saved England for me; and now I'm trusting my life to him."
"I do believe you'd like there to be a revolution in this country."
"Not at all, angel! And I don't think there'll be one. But I'm taking my precautions in case there should be one."
"He's only a chauffeur."
"That's very true. He was doing some useful work, driving an ambulance to hospitals. But we've stopped that. He's now only a chauffeur to the idle rich."
"Oh, Arthur! I wish you wouldn't try to be funny on such subjects. You know you don't mean it."
Mrs. Prohack was now genuinely reproachful, and the first conjugal51 joy-ride might have suffered from a certain constraint52 had it taken place. It did not, however, take place. Just as Carthew was holding out the rug (which Eve's prodigious53 thoroughness had remembered to buy) preparatory to placing it on the knees of his employers, a truly gigantic automobile54 drove up to the door, its long bonnet55 stopping within six inches of the Eagle's tail-lantern. The Eagle looked like nothing at all beside it. Mr. Prohack knew that leviathan. He had many times seen it in front of the portals of his principal club. It was the car of his great club crony, Sir Paul Spinner, the "city magnate."
Sir Paul, embossed with carbuncles, got out, and was presently being presented to Eve,—for the friendship between Mr. Prohack and Sir Paul had been a purely56 club friendship. Like many such friendships it had had no existence beyond the club, and neither of the cronies knew anything of real interest about the domestic circumstances of the other. Sir Paul was very apologetic to Eve, but he imperiously desired an interview with Mr. Prohack at once. Eve most agreeably and charmingly said that she would take a little preliminary airing in the car by herself, and return for her husband. Mr. Prohack would have preferred her to wait for him; but, though Eve was sagacious enough at all normal times, when she got an idea into her head that idea ruthlessly took precedence of everything else in the external world. Moreover the car was her private creation, and she was incapable of resisting its attractions one minute longer.
II
"I hear you've come into half a million, Arthur," said Paul Spinner, after he had shown himself very friendly and optimistic about Mr. Prohack's health and given the usual bulletin about his own carbuncles and the shortcomings of the club.
"But you don't believe it, Paul."
"I don't," agreed Paul. "Things get about pretty fast in the City and we can size them up fairly well; and I should say, putting two and two together, that a hundred and fifty thousand would be nearer the mark."
"It certainly is," said Mr. Prohack.
If Paul Spinner had suggested fifty thousand, Mr. Prohack would have corrected him, but being full of base instincts he had no impulse to correct the larger estimate, which was just as inaccurate57.
"Well, well! It's a most romantic story and I congratulate you on it. No such luck ever happened to me." Sir Paul made this remark in a tone to indicate that he had had practically no luck himself. And he really believed that he had had no luck, though the fact was that he touched no enterprise that failed. Every year he signed a huger cheque for super-tax, and every year he signed it with a gesture signifying that he was signing his own ruin.
This distressing58 illusion of Sir Paul's was probably due to his carbuncles, which of all pathological phenomena59 are among the most productive of a pessimistic philosophy. The carbuncles were well known up and down Harley Street. They were always to be cured and they never were cured. They must have cost their owner about as much as his motor-car for upkeep—what with medical fees, travelling and foreign hotels—and nobody knew whether they remained uncured because they were incurable60 or because the medical profession thought it would be cruel at one stroke to deprive itself of a regular income and Sir Paul of his greatest hobby. The strange thing was that Sir Paul with all his powerful general sagacity and shrewdness, continued firmly, despite endless disappointments, in the mystical faith that one day the carbuncles would be abolished.
"I won't beat about the bush," said he. "We know one another. I came here to talk frankly61 and I'll talk frankly."
"You go right ahead," Mr. Prohack benevolently62 encouraged him.
"First of all I should like to give you just the least hint of warning against that fellow Softly Bishop63. I daresay you know something' about him—"
"I know nothing about him, except the way he looks down his nose. But no man who looks down his nose the way he looks down his nose is going to influence me in the management of my financial affairs. I'm only an official; I should be a lamb in the City; but I have my safeguards, old chap. Thanks for the tip all the same."
Sir Paul Spinner laughed hoarsely64, as Mr. Prohack had made him laugh hundreds of times in the course of their friendship. And Mr. Prohack was aware of a feeling of superiority to Sir Paul. The feeling grew steadily65 in his breast, and he was not quite sure how it originated. Perhaps it was due to a note of dawning obsequiousness66 in Sir Paul's laugh, reminding Mr. Prohack of the ancient proverb that the jokes of the exalted67 are always side-splitting.
"As I say," Sir Paul proceeded, "you and I know each other."
Mr. Prohack nodded, with a trace of impatience68 against unnecessary repetition. Yet he was suddenly struck with the odd thought that Sir Paul certainly did not know him, but only odd bits of him; and he was doubtful whether he knew Sir Paul. He saw an obese69 man of sixty sitting in the very chair that a few moments ago had been occupied by Carthew the chauffeur, a man with big purplish features and a liverish eye, a man smoking a plutocratic70 and heavenly cigar and eating it at the same time, a man richly dressed and braided and jewelled, a man whose boots showed no sign of a crease71, an obvious millionaire of the old type, in short a man who was practically all prejudices and waste-products. And he wondered why and how that man had become his friend and won his affection. Sir Paul looked positively72 coarse in Mr. Prohack's frail73 Chippendale drawing-room, seeming to need for suitable environment the pillared marble and gilt74 of the vast Club. Well, after having eaten many hundreds of meals and drunk many hundreds of cups of coffee in the grunting75 society of Sir Paul, all that Mr. Prohack could be sure of knowing about Sir Paul was, first, that he had an absolutely unspotted reputation; second, that he was a very decent, simple-minded, kindly76, ignorant fellow (ignorant, that is, in the matters that interested Mr. Prohack); third, that he instinctively77 mistrusted intellect and brilliance78; fourth, that for nearly four years he had been convinced that Germany would win the war, and fifth, that he was capable of astounding79 freaks of generosity80. Stay, there was another item,—Sir Paul's invariable courtesy to the club servants, which courtesy he somehow contrived81 to combine with continual grumbling82. The club servants held him in affection. It was probably this sixth item that outweighed83 any of the others in Mr. Prohack's favourable84 estimate of the financier.
And then Mr. Prohack, as in a dream, heard from the lips of Paul Spinner the words, "oil concessions85 in Roumania." In a flash, in an earthquake, in a blinding vision, Mr. Prohack instantaneously understood the origin of his queer nascent86 feeling of superiority to old Paul. What he had previously known subconsciously87 he now knew consciously. Old Paul who had no doubt been paying in annual taxes about ten times the amount of Mr. Prohack's official annual salary; old Paul whose name was the synonym88 for millions and the rumours89 of whose views on the stock-markets caused the readers of financial papers to tremble; old Paul was after Mr. Prohack's money! Marvellous, marvellous, thrice marvellous money!... It was the most astounding, the most glorious thing that ever happened. Mr. Prohack immediately began to have his misgivings91 about Sir Paul Spinner. Simultaneously92 he felt sorry for old Paul. And such was his constraint that he made the motion of swallowing, and had all he could do not to blush.
Mr. Prohack might be a lamb in the City, but he had a highly trained mind, and a very firm grasp of the mere technique of finance. Therefore Sir Paul could explain himself
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