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Mr. Prohack, a novel by Arnold Bennett |
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Chapter 4. Eve's Headache |
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_ CHAPTER IV. EVE'S HEADACHE I That afternoon Mr. Prohack just got back to his bank before closing time. He had negligently declined to comprehend a very discreet hint from Mr. Percy Smathe that if he desired ready money he could have it--in bulk. Nevertheless he did desire to feel more money than usual in his pocket, and he satisfied this desire at the bank, where the September quarter of his annual salary lay almost intact. His bank was near Hanover Square, a situation inconvenient for him, but he had chosen that particular branch because its manager happened to be a friend of his. The Prohack account did no good to the manager personally, and only infinitesimal good to the vast corporation of which the branch-manager was the well-dressed, well-spoken serf. The corporation was a sort of sponge prodigiously absorbent but incapable of being squeezed. The manager could not be of the slightest use to Mr. Prohack in a financial crisis, for the reason that he was empowered to give no accommodation whatever without the consent of the head office. Still, Mr. Prohack, being a vigorous sentimentalist, as all truly wise men are, liked to bank with a friend. On the present occasion he saw the branch-manager, Insott by name, explained that he wanted some advice, and made an appointment to meet the latter at the latter's club, the Oriental, at six-thirty. Thereupon he returned to the Treasury, and from mere high fantasy spread the interesting news that he had broken a back tooth at lunch and had had to visit his dentist at Putney. His colleague, Hunter, remarked to him that he seemed strangely gay for a man with a broken tooth, and Mr. Prohack answered that a philosopher always had resources of fortitude within himself. He then winked--a phenomenon hitherto unknown at the Treasury. He stayed so late at his office that he made the acquaintance of two charwomen, whom he courteously chaffed. He was defeated in the subsequent encounter, and acknowledged the fact by two half-crowns. At the Oriental Club he told Insott that he might soon have some money to invest; and he was startled and saddened to discover that Insott knew almost nothing about exciting investments, or about anything at all, except the rigours of tube travel to Golder's Green. Insott had sunk into a deplorable groove. When, confidential, Insott told him the salary of a branch-manager of a vast corporation near Hanover Square, and incidentally mentioned that a bank-clerk might not marry without the consent in writing of the vast corporation, Mr. Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a free and easy plutocrat. As he departed from the Oriental Mr. Prohack sighed: "Poor Insott!" A sturdy and even exultant cheerfulness was, however, steadily growing in him. Poor Insott, unaware that he had been talking to a man with an assured income of ten thousand pounds a year, had unconsciously helped that man to realise the miracle of his own good fortune. Mr. Prohack's route home lay through a big residential square or so and along residential streets of the first quality. All the houses were big, and they seemed bigger in the faint October mist. It was the hour after lighting up and before the drawing of blinds and curtains. Mr. Prohack had glimpses of enormous and magnificent interiors,--some right in the sky, some on the ground--with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily framed pictures, mighty furniture, statuary, and superb and nonchalant menials engaged in the pleasant task of shutting away those interiors from the vulgar gaze. The spectacle continued furlong upon furlong, monotonously. There was no end to the succession of palaces of the wealthy. Then it would be interrupted while Mr. Prohack crossed a main thoroughfare, where scores of young women struggled against a few men for places in glittering motor-buses that were already packed with successful fighters for room in them. And then it would be resumed again in its majesty. The sight of the street-travellers took Mr. Prohack's mind back to Insott. He felt a passionate sympathy for the Insotts of the world, and also for the Prohacks of six hours earlier. Once Mr. Prohack had been in easier circumstances; but those circumstances, thanks to the ambitions of statesmen and generals, and to the simplicity of publics, had gradually changed from easy to distressed. He saw with terrible clearness from what fate the Angmering miracle had saved him and his. He wanted to reconstruct society in the interest of those to whom no miracle had happened. He wanted to do away with all excessive wealth; and by "excessive" he meant any degree of wealth beyond what would be needed for the perfect comfort of himself, Mr. Prohack,--a reasonable man if ever there was one! Ought he not to devote his fortune to the great cause of reconstructing society? Could he enjoy his fortune while society remain unreconstructed? Well, societies were not to be reconstructed by the devoting of fortunes to the work. Moreover, if he followed such an extreme course he would be regarded as a crank, and he could not have borne to be regarded as a crank. He detested cranks more than murderers or even profiteers. As for enjoying his fortune in present circumstances, he thought that he might succeed in doing so, and that anyhow it was his duty to try. He was regrettably inconsistent.
II Having entered his house as it were surreptitiously, and avoided his children, Mr. Prohack peeped through the half-open door between the conjugal bedroom and the small adjoining room, which should Lave been a dressing-room, but which Mrs. Prohack styled her boudoir. He espied her standing sideways in front of the long mirror, her body prettily curved and her head twisted over her shoulder so that she could see three-quarters of her back in the mirror. An attitude familiar to Mr. Prohack and one that he liked! She was wearing the Chinese garment of the morning, but he perceived that she had done something to it. He made a sharp noise with the handle of the door. She shrieked and started, and as soon as she had recovered she upbraided him, and as soon as she had upbraided him she asked him anxiously what he thought of the robe, explaining that it was really too good for a dressing-gown, that with careful treatment it would wear for ever, that it could not have been bought now for a hundred pounds or at least eighty, that it was in essence far superior to many frocks worn by women who had more money and less taste than herself, that she had transformed it into a dinner-dress for quiet evenings at home, and that she had done this as part of her part of the new economy scheme. It would save all her other frocks, and as for a dressing-gown, she had two old ones in her reserves. Mr. Prohack kissed her and told her to sit down on the little sofa. "To see the effect of it sitting down?" she asked. "If you like," said he. "Then you don't care for it? You think it's ridiculous?" said she anxiously, when she had sat down. He replied, standing in front of her: "You know that Oxford Concise Dictionary that I bought just before the war? Where is it?" "Arthur!" she said. "What's the matter with you? You look so queer. I suppose the dictionary's where you keep it. _I_ never touch it." "I want you to be sure to remind me to cross the word 'economy' out of it to-night. In fact I think I'd better tear out the whole page." "Arthur!" she exclaimed again. "Are you ill? Has anything serious happened? I warn you I can't stand much more to-day." "Something very serious has happened," answered the incorrigible Mr. Prohack. "It may be all for the best; it may be all for the worst. Depends how you look at it. Anyway I'm determined to tell you. Of course I shouldn't dream of telling anybody else until I'd told you." He seated himself by her side. There was just space enough for the two of them on the sofa. "Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Prohack, with apprehension, and instinctively she stretched her arm out and extinguished one of the lights. He had been touched by her manoeuvre, half economy and half coquetry, with the Chinese dress. He was still more touched by the gesture of extinguishing a light. For a year or two past Mrs. Prohack had been putting forward a theory that an average degree of illumination tried her eyes, and the household was now accustomed to twilit rooms in the evening. Mr. Prohack knew that the recent taste for obscurity had nothing to do with her eyes and everything to do with her years, but he pretended to be deceived by her duplicity. Not for millions would he have given her cause to suspect that he was not perfectly deceived. He understood and sympathised with her in all her manifestations. He did not select choice pieces of her character for liking, and dislike or disapprove of the rest. He took her undivided, unchipped, and liked the whole of her. It was very strange. When he married her he had assumed, but was not sure, that he loved her. For thirteen or fourteen years she had endangered the bond between them by what seemed to him to be her caprices, illogicalities, perversities, and had saved it by her charming demonstrations of affection. During this period he had remained as it were neutral--an impassive spectator of her union with a man who happened to be himself. He had observed and weighed all her faults, and had concluded that she was not worse than other wives whom he respected. He continued to wonder what it was that held them together. At length, and very slowly indeed, he had begun to have a revelation, not of her but of himself. He guessed that he must be profoundly in love with her and that his original assumption was much more than accurate,--it was a bull's-eye. His love developed into a passion, not one of your eruptive, scalding affairs, but something as placid as an English landscape, with white heat far, far below the surface. He felt how fine and amusing it was to have a genuine, incurable, illogical passion for a woman,--a passion that was almost an instinct. He deliberately cultivated it and dwelt on it and enjoyed it. He liked reflecting upon it. He esteemed that it must be about the most satisfying experience in the entire realm of sentiment, and that no other earthly experience of any sort could approach it. He made this discovery for himself, with the same sensations as if he had discovered a new star or the circulation of the blood. Of course he knew that two-thirds of the imaginative literature of the world was based on, and illustrative of, this great human discovery, and therefore that he was not exactly a pioneer. No matter! He was a pioneer all the same. "Do you remember a fellow named Angmering?" he began, on a note of the closest confiding intimacy--a note which always flattered and delighted his wife. "Yes." "What was he like?" "Wasn't he the man that started to run away with Ronnie Philps' wife and thought better of it and got her out of the train at Crewe and put her into the London train that was standing at the other platform and left her without a ticket? Was it Crewe or Rugby--I forget which?" "No, no. You're all mixed up. That wasn't Angmering." "Well, you have such funny friends, darling. Tell me, then." "Angmering never ran away with anybody except himself. He went to America and before he left I lent him a hundred pounds." "Arthur, I'll swear you never told me that at the time. In fact you always said positively you wouldn't lend money to anybody. You promised me. I hope he's paid you back." "He hasn't. And I've just heard he's dead." "I felt that was coming. Yes. I knew from the moment you began to talk that it was something of that kind. And just when we could do with that hundred pounds--heaven knows! Oh, Arthur!" "He's dead," said Mr. Prohack clinchingly, "but he's left me ten thousand a year. Ha, ha!--Ha, ha!" He put his hand on her soft shoulder and gave a triumphant wink. * * * * *
III "Dollars, naturally," said Mrs. Prohack, after listening to various romantic details. "No, pounds." "And do you believe it? Are you sure this man Bishop isn't up to some game? You know anybody can get the better of you, sweetest." "Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "I know I'm the greatest and sweetest imbecile that the Almighty ever created. But I believe it." "But _why_ should he leave you all this money? It doesn't stand to reason." "It doesn't. But you see the poor fellow had to leave it to _some_ one. And he'd no time to think. I expect he just did the first thing that came into his head and was glad to get it over. I daresay he rather enjoyed doing it, even if he was in great pain, which I don't think he was." "And who do you say the woman is that's got as much as you have?" "I don't say because I don't know." "I guarantee _she_ hadn't lent him a hundred pounds," said Mrs. Prohack with finality. "And you can talk as long as you like about real property in Cincinnati--what is real property? Isn't all property real?--I shall begin to believe in the fortune the day you give me a pearl necklace worth a thousand pounds. And not before." "Lady," replied Mr. Prohack, "then I will never give you a pearl necklace." Mrs. Prohack laughed. "I know that," she said. After a long meditative pause which her husband did not interrupt, she murmured: "So I suppose we shall be what you call rich?" "Some people will undoubtedly call us rich. Others won't." "You know we shan't be any happier," she warned him. "No," Mr. Prohack agreed. "It's a great trial, besides being a great bore. But we must stick it." "_I_ shan't be any different. So you mustn't expect it." "I never have expected it." "I wonder what the children will say. Now, Arthur, don't go and tell them at dinner while the maid's there. I think I'll fetch them up now." "You'll do nothing of the kind," said Mr. Prohack sharply. "Why not?" "Because I can't stand the strain of telling them to-night. Ha-ha!" He laughed. "I intend to think things over and tell them to-morrow. I've had quite enough strain for one day." "Strain, darling?" "Strain. These extremes of heat and cold would try a stronger man than me." "Extremes of heat and cold, darling?" "Well, just think how cold it was this morning and how warm it is to-night." "You quaint boy!" she murmured, admiring him. "I quite understand. Quite. How sensitive you are! But then you always were. Now listen here. Shall _I_ tell the children?" She gave him a long kiss. "No," said he, making prods at her cheek with his finger, and smiling vaguely. "No. You'll do nothing of the kind. But there's something you _can_ do for me." "Yes?" "Will you do it?" "Yes." "Whatever it is?" "If you aren't going to play a trick on me." "No. It's no trick. "Very well, then." "First, you must have one of your best headaches. Second, you must go to bed at once. Third, you must sprinkle some eau-de-cologne on the bed, to deceive the lower orders. Fourth, you must be content with some soup for your dinner, and I'll smuggle you up some dessert in my pocket if you're hungry. Fifth, you must send word to those children of yours that you don't wish to be disturbed." "But you want to treat me like a baby." "And supposing I do! For once, can't you be a baby to oblige me?" "But it's too ridiculous! Why do you want me to go to bed?" "You know why. Still, I'll tell you. You always like to be told what you know,--for instance, that I'm in love with you. I can't tell those kids to-night, and I'm not going to. The rumpus, the conflict of ideas, the atmospheric disturbance when they do get to know will be terrific, and I simply won't have it to-night. I must have a quiet evening to think in or else I shan't sleep. On the other hand, do you suppose I could sit through dinner opposite you, and you knowing all about it and me knowing all about it, and both of us pretending that there was nothing unusual in the air? It's impossible. Either you'd give the show away, or I should. Or I should burst out laughing. No! I can manage the situation alone, but I can't manage it if you're there. Hence, lady, you will keep your kind promise and hop into bed." Without another word, but smiling in a most enigmatic manner, Mrs. Prohack passed into the bedroom. The tyrant lit a cigarette, and stretched himself all over the sofa. He thought: "She's a great woman. She understands. Or at any rate she acts as if she did. Now how many women in similar circumstances would have--" Etc. Etc. He listened to her movements. He had not told her everything, for example, the profiteering origin of the fortune, and he wondered whether he had behaved quite nicely in not doing so. "Arthur," she called from the bedroom. "Hullo?" "I do think this is really too silly." "You're not paid to think, my girl." A pause. "Arthur," she called from the bedroom. "Hullo?" "You're sure you won't blurt it out to them when I'm not there?" He only replied: "I'm sorry you've got such a frightful headache, Marian. You wouldn't have these headaches if you took my advice." A pause. "I'm in bed." "All right. Stay there." When he had finished his cigarette, he went into the bedroom. Yes, she was veritably in bed. "You are a pig, Arthur. I wonder how many wives--" He put his hand over her mouth. "Stop," he said. "I'm not like you. I don't need to be told what I know already." "But really--!" She dropped her head on one side and began to laugh, and continued to laugh, rather hysterically, until she could not laugh any more. "Oh, dear! We are the queerest pair!" "It is possible," said he. "You're forgotten the eau-de-cologne." He handed her the bottle. "It is quite possible that we're the queerest pair, but this is a very serious day in the history of the Prohack family. The Prohack family has been starving, and some one's given it an enormous beefsteak. Now it's highly dangerous to give a beefsteak to a starving person. The consequences might be fatal. That's why it's so serious. That's why I must have time to think." The sound of Sissie playing a waltz on the piano came up from the drawing-room. Mr. Prohack started to dance all by himself in the middle of the bedroom floor. _ |
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