FROM THE DEAD
I
"WELL, Milton, had a good holiday?" said Mr. Prohack to the hall-porter
on entering his chief club for lunch that day.
"No, sir," said the hall-porter, who was a realist.
"Ah, well," said Mr. Prohack soothingly. "Perhaps not a bad thing.
There's nothing like an unsatisfactory holiday for reconciling us all to
a life of toil, is there?"
"No, sir," said Milton, impassively, and added: "Mr. Bishop has just
called to see you, sir. I told him you'd probably be in shortly. He said
he wouldn't wait but he might look in again."
"Thanks," said Mr. Prohack. "If he does, I shall be either in the
coffee-room or upstairs."
Mr. Prohack walked into the majestic interior of the Club, which had
been closed, rather later than usual, for its annual cleaning. He
savoured anew and more sharply the beauty and stateliness of its
architecture, the elaboration of its conveniences, the severe splendour
of its luxury. And he saw familiar and congenial faces, and on every
face was a mild joy similar to the joy which he himself experienced in
the reopening of the Club. And he was deliciously aware of the "club
feeling," unlike, and more agreeable than, any other atmosphere of an
organism in the world.
The Club took no time at all to get into its stride after the closure.
It opened its doors and was instantly its full self. For hundreds of
grave men in and near London had risen that very morning from their beds
uplifted by the radiant thought: "To-day I can go to the Club again."
Mr. Prohack had long held that the noblest, the most civilised
achievement of the British character was not the British Empire, nor the
House of Commons, nor the steam-engine, nor aniline dyes, nor the
music-hall, but a good West End club. And somehow at the doors of a good
West End club there was an invisible magic sieve, through which the
human body could pass but through which human worries could not pass.
This morning, however, Mr. Prohack perceived that one worry could pass
through the sieve, namely a worry concerning the Club itself.... Give
up the Club? Was the sacrifice to be consummated? Impossible! Could he
picture himself strolling down St. James's Street without the right to
enter the sacred gates--save as a guest? And supposing he entered as a
guest, could he bear the hall-porter to say to him: "If you'll take a
seat, sir, I'll send and see if Mr. Blank is in the Club. What name,
sir?" Impossible! Yet Milton would be capable of saying just that.
Milton would never pardon a defection.... Well, then, he must give up
the other club. But the other--and smaller--Club had great qualities of
its own. Indeed it was indispensable. And could he permit the day to
dawn on which he would no longer be entitled to refer to "my other
club"? Impossible! Nevertheless he had decided to give up his other
club. He must give it up, if only to keep even with his wife. The
monetary saving would be unimportant, but the act would be spectacular.
And Mr. Prohack perfectly comprehended the value of the spectacular in
existence.
II
He sat down to lunch among half a dozen cronies at one of the larger
tables in a window-embrasure of the vaulted coffee-room with its
precious portrait of that historic clubman, Charles James Fox, and he
ordered himself the cheapest meal that the menu could offer, and poured
himself out a glass of water.
"Same old menu!" remarked savagely Mr. Prohack's great crony, Sir Paul
Spinner, the banker, who suffered from carbuncles and who always drove
over from the city in the middle of the day.
"Here's old Paul grumbling again!" said Sims of Downing Street. "After
all, this is the best club in London."
"It certainly is," said Mr. Prohack, "when it's closed. During the past
four weeks this club has been the most perfect institution on the face
of the earth."
They all laughed. And they began recounting to each other the
unparalleled miseries and indignities which such of them as had remained
in London had had to endure in the clubs that had "extended their
hospitality" to members of the closed club. The catalogue of ills was
terrible. Yes, there was only one club deserving of the name.
"Still," said Sir Paul. "They might give us a rest from prunes and
rice."
"This club," said Mr. Prohack, "like all other clubs, is managed by a
committee of Methuselahs who can only digest prunes and rice." And
after a lot more talk about the idiosyncrasies of clubs he said, with a
casual air: "For myself, I belong to too many clubs."
Said Hunter, a fellow official of the Treasury:
"But I thought you only had two clubs, Arthur."
"Only two. But it's one too many. In fact I'm not sure if it isn't two
too many."
"Are you getting disgusted with human nature?" Sims suggested.
"No," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm getting hard up. I've committed the
greatest crime in the world. I've committed poverty. And I feel guilty."
And the truth was that he did feel guilty. He was entirely innocent; he
was a victim; he had left undone nothing that he ought to have done; but
he felt guilty, thus proving that poverty is indeed seriously a crime
and that those who in sardonic jest describe it as a crime are deeper
philosophers than they suppose.
"Never say die," smiled the monocled Mixon, a publisher of scientific
works, and began to inveigh against the Government as an ungrateful and
unscrupulous employer and exploiter of dutiful men in an inferno of
rising prices. But the rest thought Mixon unhappy in his choice of
topic. Hunter of the Treasury said nothing. What was there to say that
would not tend to destroy the true club atmosphere? Even the beloved
Prohack had perhaps failed somewhat in tact. They all understood, they
all mildly sympathised, but they could do no more--particularly in a
miscellaneous assemblage of eight members. No, they felt a certain
constraint; and in a club constraint should be absolutely unknown. Some
of them glanced uneasily about the crowded, chattering room.
III
It was then, that a remarkable coincidence occurred.
"I saw Bishop at Inverness last week," said Sir Paul Spinner to Mr.
Prohack, apropos of nothing whatever. "Seems he's got a big moor this
year in Sutherlandshire. So I suppose he's recovered from his overdose
of shipping shares."
Bishop (Fred Ferrars) was a financier with a cheerful, negligent
attitude towards the insecurities and uncertainties of a speculative
existence. He was also a close friend of Prohack, of Sir Paul, and of
several others at the table, and a member of Prohack's secondary club,
though not of his primary club.
"That's strange," said Mr. Prohack. "I hear he's in London."
"He most positively isn't in London," said Sir Paul. "He's not coming
back until November."
"Then that shows how little the evidence of the senses can be relied
upon," remarked Mr. Prohack gently. "According to the hall-porter he
called here for me a few minutes ago, and he may call again."
The banker grunted. "The deuce he did! Does that mean he's in some fresh
trouble, I wonder?"
At the same moment a page-girl, the smart severity of whose uniform was
mitigated by a pig-tail and a bow of ribbon, approached Mr. Prohack's
chair, and, bending her young head to his ear, delivered to him with the
manner of a bearer of formidable secrets:
"Mr. Bishop to see you, sir."
"There he is!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack. "Now he's bound to want lunch. Why
on earth can't we bring guests in here? Waitress, have the lunch I've
ordered served in the guests' dining-room, please.... No doubt Bishop
and I'll see you chaps upstairs later."
He went off to greet and welcome Bishop, full of joy at the prospect of
tasting anew the rich personality of his old friend. It is true that he
had a qualm about the expense of standing Bishop a lunch--a fellow who
relished his food and drink and could distinguish between the best and
the second best; but on the other hand he could talk very freely to
Bishop concerning the crisis in which he found himself; and he knew that
Bishop would not allow Bishop's affairs, however troublesome they might
be, unduly to bother _him_.
Bishop was not on the bench in the hall where visitors were appointed to
wait. Only one man was on the bench, a spectacled, red-faced person. Mr.
Prohack glanced about. Then the page-girl pointed to the spectacled
person, who jumped up and approached Mr. Prohack somewhat effusively.
"How d'ye do, Prohack?"
"Well, _Bishop_!" Mr. Prohack responded. "It's _you_!"
It was another Bishop, a Bishop whom he had forgotten, a Bishop who had
resigned from the club earlier and disappeared. Mr. Prohack did not like
him. Mr. Prohack said to himself: "This fellow is after something, and I
always knew he was an adventurer."
"Funny feeling it gives you to be asked to wait in the hall of a club
that you used to belong to!" said Bishop.
The apparently simple words, heavy with sinister significance, sank
like a depth-charge into Mr. Prohack's consciousness.
"Among other things," said Mr. Prohack to himself, "this fellow is very
obviously after a free lunch."
Now Mr. Prohack suffered from a strange form of insincerity, which he
had often unsuccessfully tried to cure, partly because it advantaged
unsympathetic acquaintances at his expense, and partly because his wife
produced unanswerable arguments against it with mortal effect. Although
an unconceited man (as men go), and a very honest man, he could not help
pretending to like people whom he did not like. And he pretended with a
histrionic skill that deceived everybody--sometimes even himself. There
may have been some good-nature in this moral twist of his; but he well
knew that it originated chiefly in three morbid desires,--the desire to
please, the desire to do the easiest thing, and the desire to nourish
his reputation for amiability.
So that when the unexpected Mr. Bishop (whose Christian name was Softly)
said to him: "I won't keep you now. Only I was passing and I want you to
be kind enough to make an early appointment with me at some time and
place entirely convenient to yourself," Mr. Prohack proceeded to
persuade Mr. Bishop to stay to lunch, there being no sort of reason in
favour of such a course, and various sound reasons against it. Mr.
Prohack deceived Mr. Softly Bishop as follows:
"No time and place like the present. You must stay to lunch. This is
your old club and you must stay to lunch."
"But you've begun your lunch," Bishop protested.
"I've not. The fact is, I was half expecting you to look in again. The
hall-porter told me...." And Mr. Prohack actually patted Mr. Bishop on
the shoulder--a trick he had. "Come now, don't tell me you've got
another lunch appointment. It's twenty-five to two." And to himself,
leading Mr. Bishop to the strangers' dining-room, he said: "Why should I
further my own execution in this way?"
He ordered a lunch as copious and as costly as he would have ordered for
the other, the real Bishop. Powerful and vigorous in some directions,
Mr. Prohack's mentality was deplorably weak in at least one other.
Mr. Softly Bishop was delighted with his reception, and Mr. Prohack
began to admit that Mr. Bishop had some personal charm. Nevertheless
when the partridge came, Mr. Prohack acidly reflected:
"I'm offering this fellow a portion of my daughter's new frock on a
charger!"
They talked of the club, Mr. Bishop as a former member being surely
entitled to learn all about it, and then they talked about clubs in the
United States, where Mr. Bishop had spent recent years. But Mr. Bishop
persisted in giving no hint of his business.
"It must be something rather big and annoying," thought Mr. Prohack, and
ordered another portion of his daughter's new frock in the shape of
excellent cigars.
"You don't mean to say we can smoke _here_," exclaimed Mr. Bishop.
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "Not in the members' coffee-room, but we can
here. Stroke of genius on the part of the Committee! You see it tends to
keep guests out of the smoking-room, which for a long time has been
getting uncomfortably full after lunch."
"Good God!" murmured Mr. Bishop simply.
IV
And he added at once, as he lighted the Corona Corona: "Well, I'd better
tell you what I've come to see you about. You remember that chap, Silas
Angmering?"
"Silas Angmering? Of course I do. Used to belong here. He cleared off to
America ages ago."
"He did. And you lent him a hundred pounds to help him to clear off to
America."
"Who told you?"
"He did," said Mr. Bishop, with a faint, mysterious smile.
"What's happened to him?"
"Oh! All sorts of things. He made a lot of money out of the war. He
established himself in Cincinnati. And there were opportunities...."
"How came he to tell you that I'd lent him anything?" Mr. Prohack
interrupted sharply.
"I had business with him at one time--before the war and also just after
the war began. Indeed I was in partnership with him." Mr. Bishop spoke
with a measured soothing calmness.
"And you say he's made a lot of money out of the war. What do you
mean--a lot?"
"Well," said Mr. Bishop, looking at the tablecloth through his
glittering spectacles, "I mean a _lot_."
His tone was confidential; but then his tone was always confidential.
He continued: "He's lost it all since."
"Pity he didn't pay me back my hundred pounds while he'd got it! How did
he lose his money?"
"In the same way as most rich men lose their money," answered Mr.
Bishop. "He died."
Although Mr. Prohack would have been capable of telling a similar story
in a manner very similar to Mr. Bishop's, he didn't quite relish his
guest's theatricality. It increased his suspicion of his guest, and
checked the growth of friendliness which the lunch had favoured. Still,
he perceived that there was a good chance of getting his hundred pounds
back, possibly with interest--and the interest would mount up to fifty
or sixty pounds. And a hundred and fifty pounds appeared to him to be an
enormous sum. Then it occurred to him that probably Mr. Bishop was not
indeed "after" anything and that he had been unjust to Mr. Bishop.
"Married?" he questioned, casually.
"Angmering? No. He never married. You know as well as anybody, I expect,
what sort of a card he was. No relations, either."
"Then who's come into his money?"
"Well," said Mr. Bishop, with elaborate ease and smoothness of quiet
delivery. "I've come into some of it. And there was a woman--actress
sort of young thing--about whom perhaps the less said the better--she's
come into some of it. And you've come into some of it. We share it in
equal thirds."
"The deuce we do!"
"Yes."
"How long's he been dead?"
"About five weeks or less. I sailed as soon as I could after he was
buried. I'd arranged before to come. I daresay I ought to have stayed a
bit longer, as I'm the executor under the will, but I wanted to come,
and I've got a very good lawyer over there--and over here too. I landed
this morning, and here I am. Strictly speaking I suppose I should have
cabled you. But it seemed to me that I could explain better by word of
mouth."
"I wish you would explain," said Mr. Prohack. "You say he's been rich a
long time, but he didn't pay his debt to me, and yet he goes and makes a
will leaving me a third of his fortune. Wants some explaining, doesn't
it?"
Mr. Bishop replied:
"It does and it doesn't. You knew he was a champion postponer, poor old
chap. Profoundly unbusinesslike. It's astonishing how unbusinesslike
successful men are! He was always meaning to come to England to see you;
but he never found time. He constantly talked of you--"
"But do you know," Mr. Prohack intervened, "that from that day to this
I've never heard one single word from him? Not even a picture-postcard.
And what's more I've never heard a single word _of_ him."
"Just like Silas, that was! Just!... He died from a motor accident. He
was perfectly conscious and knew he'd only a few hours to live. Spine.
He made his will in hospital, and died about a couple of hours after
he'd made it. I wasn't there myself. I was in New York."
"Well, well!" muttered Mr. Prohack. "Poor fellow! Well, well! This is
the most amazing tale I ever heard in my life."
"It _is_ rather strange," Mr. Bishop compassionately admitted.
A silence fell--respectful to the memory of the dead. The members'
coffee-room seemed to Mr. Prohack to be a thousand miles off, and the
chat with his cronies at the table in the window-embrasure to have
happened a thousand years ago. His brain was in anarchy, and waving like
a flag above the anarchy was the question: "How much did old Silas
leave?" But the deceitful fellow would not permit the question to utter
itself,--he had dominion over himself at any rate to that extent. He
would not break the silence; he would hide his intense curiosity; he
would force Softly Bishop to divulge the supreme fact upon his own
initiative.
And at length Mr. Bishop remarked, musingly:
"Yes. Thanks to the exchange being so low, you stand to receive at the
very least a hundred thousand pounds clear--after all deductions have
been made."
"Do I really?" said Mr. Prohack, also musingly.