The reception pleased Mr. Prohack as a spectacle, and it cost him almost no trouble. He announced his decision that it must cost him no trouble, and everybody in the house, and a few people outside it, took him at his word—which did not wholly gratify him. Indeed the family and its connections seemed to be conspiring1 to give him a life of ease. Responsibilities were lifted from him. He did not even miss his secretary. Sissie, who returned home—by a curious coincidence—on the very day that Mimi Winstock was transferred to Charlie's service in the Grand Babylon, performed what she called 'secretarial stunts2' for her father as and when required. On the afternoon of the reception, which was timed to begin at 9 p.m., he had an attack of fright, but, by a process well known to public executants, it passed off long before it could develop into stage-fright; and he was quite at ease at 9 p.m.
The first arrivals came at nine thirty. He stood by Eve and greeted them; and he had greeted about twenty individuals when he yawned (for a good reason) and Eve said to him:
"You needn't stay here, you know. Go and amuse yourself." (This suggestion followed the advent3 of Lady Massulam.)
He didn't stay. Ozzie Morfey and Sissie supplanted4 him. At a quarter to eleven he was in the glazed5 conservatory6 built over the monumental portico7, with Sir Paul Spinner. He could see down into the Square, which was filled with the splendid and numerous automobiles8 incident to his wife's reception. Guests—and not the least important among them—were still arriving. Cars rolled up to the portico, gorgeous women and plain men jumped out on to the red cloth, of which he could just see the extremity9 near the kerb, and vanished under him, and the cars hid themselves away in the depths of the Square. Looking within his home he admired the vista10 of brilliantly illuminated11 rooms, full of gilt12 chairs, priceless furniture, and extremely courageous13 toilettes. For, as the reception was 'to meet the Committee of the League of all the Arts.' (Ozzie had placed many copies of the explanatory pamphlet on various tables), artists of all kinds and degrees abounded14, and the bourgeois15 world (which chiefly owned the automobiles) thought proper to be sartorially16 as improper17 as fashion would allow; and fashion allowed quite a lot. The affair might have been described as a study in shoulder-blades. It was a very great show, and Mr. Prohack appreciated all of it, the women, the men, the lionesses, the lions, the kaleidoscope of them, the lights, the reflections in the mirrors and in the waxed floors, the discreetly18 hidden music, the grandiose19 buffet20, the efficient valetry. He soon got used to not recognising, and not being recognised by, the visitors to his own house. True, he could not conceive that the affair would serve any purpose but one,—namely the purpose of affording innocent and expensive pleasure to his wife.
"You've hit on a pretty good sort of a place here," grunted21 Sir Paul Spinner, whose waistcoat buttons were surpassed in splendour only by his carbuncles.
"Well," said Mr. Prohack, "to me, living here is rather like being on the stage all the time. It's not real."
"What the deuce do you mean, it's not real? There aren't twenty houses in London with a finer collection of genuine bibelots than you have here."
"Yes, but they aren't mine, and I didn't choose them or arrange them."
"What does that matter? You can look at them and enjoy the sight of them. Nobody can do more."
"Paul, you're talking neo-conventional nonsense again. Have you ever in your career as a city man stood outside a money-changer's and looked at the fine collection of genuine banknotes in the window? Supposing I told you that you could look at them and enjoy the sight of them, and nobody could do more?... No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got to own it. And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of all the Arts." He gave another enormous yawn. "Excuse my yawning, Paul, but this house is a perfect Inferno22 for me. The church of St. Nicodemus is hard by, and the church of St. Nicodemus has a striking clock, and the clock strikes all the hours and all the quarters on a half cracked bell or two bells. If I am asleep every hour wakes me up, and most of the quarters. The clock strikes not only the hours and the quarters but me. I regulate my life by that clock. If I'm beginning to repose23 at ten minutes to the hour, I say to myself that I must wait till the hour before really beginning, and I do wait. It is killing24 me, and nobody can see that it is killing me. The clock annoys some individuals a little occasionally; they curse, and then go to sleep and stay asleep. For them the clock is a nuisance; but for me it's an assassination25. However, I can't make too much fuss. Several thousands of people must live within sound of the St. Nicodemus clock; yet the rector has not been murdered nor the church razed26 to the ground. Hence the clock doesn't really upset many people. And there are hundreds of such infernal clocks in London, and they all survive. It follows therefore that I am peculiar27. Nobody has a right to be peculiar. Hence I do not complain. I suffer. I've tried stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, and stuffing the windows of my bedroom with eiderdowns. No use. I've tried veronal. No use either. The only remedy would be for me to give the house up. Which would he absurd. My wife soothes28 me and says that of course I shall get used to the clock. I shall never get used to it. Lately she has ceased even to mention the clock. My daughter thinks I am becoming a grumbler29 in my latter years. My son smiles indifferently. I admit that my son's secretary is more sympathetic. Like most people who are both idle and short of sleep, I usually look very well, spry and wideawake. My friends remark on my healthy appearance. You did. The popular mind cannot conceive that I am merely helplessly waiting for death to put me out of my misery31; but so it is. There must be quite a few others in the same fix as me in London, dying because rectors and other clergymen and officials insist on telling them the time all through the night. But they suffer in silence as I do. As I do, they see the uselessness of a fuss."
"You will get used to it, Arthur," said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack's disquisition. "You're in a nervous state and your judgment's warped32. Now, I never even heard your famous clock strike ten."
"No, you wouldn't, Paul! And my judgment's warped, is it?" There was irritation33 in Mr. Prohack's voice. He took out his watch. "In sixty or seventy seconds you shall hear that clock strike eleven, and you shall give me your honest views about it. And you shall apologise to me."
Sir Paul obediently and sympathetically listened, while the murmur34 of the glowing reception and the low beat of music continued within.
"You tell me when it starts to strike," said he.
"You won't want any telling," said Mr. Prohack, who knew too well the riving, rending35, smashing sound of the terrible bells.
"It's a pretty long seventy seconds," observed Sir Paul.
"My watch must be fast," said Mr. Prohack, perturbed36.
But at eighteen minutes past eleven the clock had audibly struck neither the hour nor the quarter. Sir Paul was a man of tact37. He said simply:
"I should like a drink, dear old boy."
"The clock's not striking," said Mr. Prohack, with solemn joy, as the wonderful truth presented itself to him. "Either it's stopped, or they've cut off the striking attachment38." And to one of the maids on the landing he said as they passed towards the buffet: "Run out and see what time it is by the church clock, and come back and tell me, will you?" A few minutes later he was informed that the church clock showed half-past eleven. The clock therefore was still going but had ceased to strike. Mr. Prohack at once drank two glasses of champagne39 at the buffet, while Sir Paul had the customary whiskey.
"I say, old thing, I say!" Sir Paul protested.
"I shall sleep!" said Mr. Prohack in a loud, gay, triumphant40 voice. He was a new man.
The reception now seemed to him far more superb than ever. It was almost at its apogee41. All the gilt chairs were occupied; all the couches and fauteuils of the room were occupied, and certain delicious toilettes were even spread on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors. On every hand could be heard artistic42 discussions, serious and informed and yet lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality43 of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens44 of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional45 quality of the best sculpture, and if not that then the influence on British life of the fox-trot, and if not that then the prospects46 of bringing modern poets home to the largest public by means of the board schools, and if not that then the evil effects of the twin great London institutions for teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted47 to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian Ballet. And always there ran like a flame through the conversations the hot breath of a passionate48 intention to make Britain artistic in the eyes of the civilised world.
What especially pleased Mr. Prohack about the whole affair, as he moved to and fro seeking society now instead of avoiding it, was the perfect futility49 of the affair, save as it affected50 Eve's reputation. He perceived the beauty of costly51 futility, and he was struck again, when from afar he observed his wife's conquering mien52, by the fact that the reception did not exist for the League, but the League for the reception. The reception was a real and a resplendent thing; nobody could deny it. The League was a fog of gush53. The League would be dear at twopence half-penny. The reception was cheap if it stood him in five hundred pounds. Eve was an infant; Eve was pleased with gewgaws; but Eve had found herself and he was well content to pay five hundred pounds for the look on her ingenuous54 face.
"And nothing of this would have happened," he thought, impressed by the wonders of life, "if in a foolish impulse of generosity55 I hadn't once............