NEURASTHENIA CURED
I
Three days later Mr. Prohack came home late with his daughter in the
substituted car. He had accompanied Sissie to Putney for the final
disposition of the affairs of the dance-studio, and had witnessed her
blighting politeness to Eliza Brating and Eliza Brating's blighting
politeness to her. The last kiss between these two young women would
have desolated the heart of any man whose faith in human nature was less
strong than Mr. Prohack's. "I trust that the excellent Eliza is not
disfigured for life," he had observed calmly in the automobile. "What
are you talking about, father?" Sissie had exclaimed, suspicious. "I was
afraid her lips might be scorched. You feel no pain yourself, my child,
I hope?" He made the sound of a kiss. After this there was no more
conversation in the car during the journey. Arrived home, Sissie said
nonchalantly that she was going to bed.
"Burn my lips first," Mr. Prohack implored.
"Father!" said she, having kissed him. "You are simply terrible."
"I am a child," he replied. "And you are my grandmother."
"You wait till I give you your next dancing-lesson," Sissie retorted,
turning and threatening him from the stairs. "It won't be as mild as
this afternoon's."
He smiled, giving an imitation of the sphinx. He was happy enough as
mortals go. His wife was perhaps a little better. And he was gradually
launching himself into an industrious career of idleness. Also, he had
broken the ice,--the ice, that is to say, of tuition in dancing. Not a
word had been spoken abroad in the house about the first dancing-lesson.
He had had it while Mrs. Prohack was, in theory at least, paying calls;
at any rate she had set forth in the car. Mr. Prohack and Sissie had
rolled up the drawing-room carpet and moved the furniture themselves.
Mr. Prohack had unpacked the gramophone in person. They had locked the
drawing-room door. At the end of the lesson they had relaid the carpet
and replaced the furniture and enclosed the gramophone and unlocked the
door, and Mr. Prohack had issued from the drawing-room like a criminal.
The thought in his mind had been that he was no end of a dog and of a
brave dog at that. Then he sneered at himself for thinking such a
foolish thought. After all, what was there in learning to dance? But the
sneer was misplaced. His original notion that he had done something
courageous and wonderful was just a notion.
The lesson had favoured the new nascent intimacy with his daughter.
Evidently she was a born teacher as well as a born dancer. He perceived
in two minutes how marvellous her feet were. She guided him with
pressures light as a feather. She allowed herself to be guided with an
intuitive responsiveness that had to be felt to be believed. Her
exhortations were delicious, her reprimands exquisite, her patience was
infinite. Further, she said that he had what she called "natural
rhythm," and would learn easily and satisfactorily. Best of all, he had
been immediately aware of the physical benefit of the exercise. The
household was supposed to know naught of the affair, but the kitchen
knew a good deal about it somehow; the kitchen was pleasantly and rather
condescendingly excited, and a little censorious, for the reason that
nobody in the kitchen had ever before lived in a house the master of
which being a parent of adult children took surreptitious lessons in
dancing; the thing was unprecedented, and therefore of course
intrinsically reprehensible. Mr. Prohack guessed the attitude of the
kitchen, and had met Machin's respectful glance with a self-conscious
eye.
He now bolted the front-door and went upstairs extinguishing the lights
after him. Eve had told her husband and child that she should go to bed
early. He meant to have a frolicsome, teasing chat with her, for the
doctor had laid it down that light conversation would assist the cure of
traumatic neurasthenia. She would not be asleep, and even if she were
asleep she would be glad to awaken, because she admired his style of
gossip when both of them were in the vein for it. He would describe for
her the evening at the studio humorously, in such a fashion as to
confirm her in her righteous belief that the misguided Sissie had seen
the maternal wisdom and quitted dance-studios for ever.
The lamps were out in the bedroom. She slept. He switched on a light,
but her bed was empty; it had not been occupied!
"Marian!" he called in a low voice, thinking that she might be in the
boudoir.
And if she was in the boudoir she must be reclining in the dark there.
He ascertained that she was not in the boudoir. Then he visited both
the drawing-room and the dining-room. No Marian anywhere! He stood a
moment in the hall and was in a mind to ring for Machin--he could see
from a vague illumination at the entrance to the basement steps that the
kitchen was still inhabited--but just then all the servants came upwards
on the way to the attics, and at the strange spectacle of their dancing
master in the hall they all grew constrained and either coughed or
hurried as though they ought not to be caught in the act of retiring to
bed.
Mr. Prohack, as it were, threw a lasso over Machin, who was the last of
the procession.
"Where is your mistress, Machin?" He tried to be matter-of-fact, but
something unusual in his tone apparently started her.
"She's gone to bed, sir. She told me to put her hot-water bag in the bed
early."
"Oh! Thanks! Good-night."
"Good-night, sir."
He could not persuade himself to call an alarm. He could not even inform
Machin that she was mistaken, for to do so would have been equivalent to
calling an alarm. Hesitating and inactive he allowed the black-and-white
damsels and the blue cook to disappear. Nor would he disturb
Sissie--yet. He had first to get used to the singular idea that his wife
had vanished from home. Could this vanishing be one of the effects of
traumatic neurasthenia? He hurried about and searched all the rooms
again, looking with absurd carefulness, as if his wife were an
insignificant object that might have dropped unperceived under a chair
or behind a couch.
Then he telephoned to her sister, enquiring in a voice of studied
casualness. Eve was not at her sister's. He had known all the while that
she would not be at her sister's. Being unable to recall the number, he
had had to consult the telephone book. His instinct now was to fetch
Sissie, whose commonsense had of late impressed him more and more; but
he repressed the instinct, holding that he ought to be able to manage
the affair alone. He could scarcely say to his daughter: "Your mother
has vanished. What am I to do?" Moreover, feeling himself to be the
guardian of Marian's reputation for perfect sanity, he desired not to
divulge her disappearance, unless obliged to do so. She might return at
any moment. She must return very soon. It was inconceivable that
anything should have "happened" in the Prohack family....
Almost against his will he looked up "Police Stations" in the
telephone-book. There were scores of police stations. The nearest seemed
to be that of Mayfair. He demanded the number. To demand the number of
the police station was like jumping into bottomless cold water. In a
detestable dream he gave his name and address and asked if the police
had any news of a street accident. Yes, several. He described his wife.
He said, reflecting wildly, that she was not very tall and rather plump;
dark hair. Dress? Dark blue. Hat and mantle? He could not say. Age? A
queer impulse here. He knew that she hated the mention of her real age,
and so he said thirty-nine. No! The police had no news of such a person.
But the polite firm voice on the wire said that it would telephone to
other stations and would let Mr. Prohack hear immediately if there was
anything to communicate. Wonderful organisation, the London police
force!
As he hung up the receiver he realised what had occurred and what he had
done. Marian had mysteriously disappeared and he had informed the
police,--he, Arthur Prohack, C.B. What an awful event!
His mind ran on the consequences of traumatic neurasthenia. He put on
his hat and overcoat and unbolted the front-door as silently as he
could--for he still did not want anybody in the house to know the
secret--and went out into the street. What to do? A ridiculous move! Did
he expect to find her lying in the gutter? He walked to the end of the
dark street and peered into the cross-street, and returned. He had left
the front-door open. As he re-entered the house he descried in a corner
of the hall, a screwed-up telegraph-envelope. Why had he not noticed it
before? He snatched at it. It was addressed to "Mrs. Prohack."
Mr. Prohack's soul was instantaneously bathed in heavenly solace.
Traumatic neurasthenia had nothing to do with Eve's disappearance! His
bliss was intensified by the fact that he had said not a word to the
servants and had not called Sissie. And it was somewhat impaired by the
other fact that he had been ass enough to tell the police. He was just
puzzling his head to think what misfortune could have called his wife
away--not that the prospect of any misfortune much troubled him now that
Eve's vanishing was explained--when through the doorway he saw a taxi
drive up. Eve emerged from the taxi.
II
He might have gone out and paid the fare for her, but he stayed where he
was, in the doorway, thinking with beatific relief that after all
nothing had "happened" in the family.
"Ah!" he said, in the most ordinary, complacent, quite undisturbed
tone, "I was just beginning to wonder where you'd got to. We've been
back about five minutes, Sissie and I, and Sissie's gone to bed. I
really don't believe she knows you were out."
Mrs. Prohack came urgently towards him, pushing the door to behind her
with a careless loud bang. The bang might waken the entire household,
but Mrs. Prohack did not care. Mrs. Prohack kissed him without a word.
He possessed in his heart a barometric scale of her kisses, and this was
a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a
reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and
lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an
immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not
aloud, but secretly, to hide himself from himself.
He thought:
"It's a positive fact that I've been kissing this girl of a woman for a
quarter of a century, and she's fat."
But beneath his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a
lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he would have expressed
thus:
"If anything _did_ happen to her, it would be the absolute ruin of me."
The truth was that his felicity frightened him. Never before had he been
seriously concerned for her well-being. The reaction from grave alarm
lighted up the interior of his mysterious soul with a revealing flash of
unique intensity.
"What are all these lights burning for?" she murmured. Lights were
indeed burning everywhere. He had been in a mood to turn on but not to
turn off.
"Oh!" he said, "I was just wandering about."
"I'll go straight upstairs," she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as
her Arthur appeared to be.
When he had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he
followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed
her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and was
sitting on the sofa.
"There came a telegram from Charlie," she began. "I was crossing the
hall just as the boy reached the door. So I opened the door myself. It
was from Charlie to say that he would be at the Grand Babylon Hotel
to-night."
"Charlie! The Grand Babylon!... Not Buckingham Palace." Eve ignored his
crude jocularity.
"It seems I ought to have received it early in the afternoon. I was so
puzzled I didn't know what to do--I just put my things on and went off
to the hotel at once. It wasn't till after I was in the taxi that I
remembered I ought to have told the servants where I was going. That's
why I hurried back. I wanted to get back before you did. Charlie
suggested telephoning from the hotel, but I wouldn't let him on any
account."
"Why not?"
"Well, I thought you might be upset and wonder what on earth was going
on."
"What was going on?" Mr. Prohack repeated, gazing at her childlike
maternal serious face, whose wistfulness affected him in an
extraordinary way. "What on earth are you insinuating?"
No! It was inconceivable that this pulsating girl perched on the sofa
should be the mother of the mature and independent Charles.
"Charlie's _staying_ at the Grand Babylon Hotel," said Eve, as though
she were saying that Charlie had forged a cheque or blown up the
Cenotaph.
Even the imperturbable man of the world in front of her momentarily
blenched at the news.
"More fool him!" observed Mr. Prohack.
"Yes, and he's got a bedroom and a private sitting-room and a bathroom,
and a room for a secretary--"
"Hence a secretary," Mr. Prohack put in.
"Yes, and a secretary. And he dictates things to the secretary all the
time, and the telephone's always going,--yes, even at this time of
night. He must be spending enormous sums. So of course I hurried back to
tell you."
"You did quite right, my pet," said Mr. Prohack. "A good wife should
share these tit-bits with her husband at the earliest possible moment."
He was really very like what in his more conventional moments he would
have said a woman was like. If Eve had taken the affair lightly he would
without doubt have remonstrated, explaining that such an affair ought by
no means to be taken lightly. But seeing that she took it very
seriously, his instinct was to laugh at it, though in fact he was
himself extremely perturbed by this piece of news, which confirmed, a
hundredfold and in the most startling manner, certain sinister
impressions of his own concerning Charlie's deeds in Glasgow. And he
assumed the gay attitude, not from a desire to reassure his wife, but
from mere contrariness. Positively the strangest husband that ever
lived, and entirely different from normal husbands!
Then he saw tears hanging in Eve's eyes,--tears not of resentment
against his lack of sympathy, tears of bewilderment and perplexity. She
simply did not understand his attitude. And he sat down close by her on
the sofa and solaced her with three kisses. She was singularly
attractive in her alternations of sagacity and helplessness.
"But it's awful," she whimpered. "The boy must be throwing money away at
the rate of twenty or twenty-five pounds a day."
"Very probably," Mr. Prohack agreed.
"Where's he getting it from?" she demanded. "He must be getting it from
somewhere."
"I expect he's made it. He's rather clever, you know."
"But he can't have made money like that."
"People do, sometimes."
"Not honestly,--you know what I mean, Arthur!" This was an earthquaking
phrase to come from a mother's lips.
"And yet," said Mr. Prohack, "everything Charlie did used to be right
for you."
"But he's carrying on just like an adventurer! I've read in reports of
trials about people carrying on just like that. A fortnight ago he
hadn't got fifty pounds cash in the world, and now he's living like a
millionaire at the Grand Babylon Hotel! Arthur, what are you going to do
about it? Couldn't you go and see him to-night?"
"Now listen to me," Mr. Prohack began in a new tone, taking her hands.
"Supposing I did go and see him to-night, what could I say to him?"
"Well, you're his father."
"And you're his mother. What did _you_ say to him?"
"Oh! I didn't say anything. I only said I should have been very glad if
he could have arranged to sleep at home as usual, and he said he was
sorry he couldn't because he was so busy."
"You didn't tell him he was carrying on like an adventurer?"
"Arthur! How could I?"
"But you'd like _me_ to tell him something of the sort. All that I can
say, you could say--and that is, enquire in a friendly way what he has
done, is doing, and hopes to do."
"But--"
"Yes, my innocent creature. You may well pause." He caressed her, and
she tried to continue in unhappiness, but could not. "You pause because
there is nothing to say."
"You're his father at any rate," she burst out triumphantly.
"That's not his fault. You ought to have thought of all this over twenty
years ago, before Charlie was born, before we were married, before you
met me. To become a parent is to accept terrible risks. I'm Charlie's
father. What then? Am I to give him orders as to what he must do and
what he mustn't? This isn't China and it isn't the eighteenth century.
He owes nothing whatever to me, or to you. If we were starving and he
had plenty, he would probably consider it his duty to look after us; but
that's the limit of what he owes us. Whereas nothing can put an end to
our responsibility towards him. You see, we brought him here. We thought
it would be so nice to have children, and so Charlie arrived. He didn't
choose his time, and he didn't choose his character, nor his education,
nor his chance. If he had his choice you may depend he'd have chosen
differently. Do you want me, on the top of all that, to tell him that he
must obediently accept something else from us--our code of conduct? It
would be mere cheek, and with all my shortcomings I'm incapable of
impudence, especially to the young. He was our slave for nearly twenty
years. We did what we liked with him; and if Charlie fails now it simply
means that we've failed. Besides, how can you be sure that he's carrying
on like an adventurer? He may be carrying on like a financial genius.
Perhaps we have brought a giant to earth. We can't believe it of course,
because we haven't got enough faith in ourselves, but later on we may be
compelled to believe it. Naturally if Charlie crashes after a showy
flight, then he won't be a financial genius,--he'll only be an
adventurer, and there may he some slight trouble in the law
courts,--there usually is. That is where we shall have to come forward
and pay for the nice feeling of having children. And, remember, we
shan't be in a position to upbraid Charlie. He could silence us with one
question, to which we could find no answer: 'Why did you get married,
you two?' However, my pet, let us hope for the best. It's not yet a
crime to live at great price at the Grand Babylon Hotel. Quite possibly
your son has not yet committed any crime, whatever. If he succeeds in
making a huge fortune and in keeping it, he will not commit any crime.
Rich men never do. They can't. They never even commit murder. There is
no reason why they should. Whatever they do, it is no worse than an
idiosyncrasy. Now tell me what our son talked about."
"Well, he didn't talk much. He--he wasn't expecting me."
"Did he ask after me?"
"I told him about you. He asked about the car."
"He didn't ask after me, but he asked after the car. Nothing very
original there, is there? Any son would behave like that. He must do
better than that if he doesn't mean to end as an adventurer. I must go
and see him, and offer him, very respectfully, some advice."
"Arthur, I insist that he shall come here. It is not proper that you
should go running after _him_."
"Pooh, my dear! I'm rich enough myself to run after him without being
accused of snobbishness or lion-hunting or anything of that kind."
"Oh! Arthur!" sobbed Eve. "Don't you think you're been funny quite long
enough?" She then openly wept.
The singular Mr. Prohack was apparently not in the least moved by his
wife's tears. He and she alone in the house were out of bed; there was
no chance of their being disturbed. He did not worry about his
adventurous son. He did not worry about the possibility of Oswald Morfey
having a design to convert his daughter into Mrs. Oswald Morfey. He did
not worry about the fate of the speculation in which he had joined Sir
Paul Spinner. Nor did he worry about the malady called traumatic
neurasthenia. As for himself he fancied that he had not for years felt
better than he felt at that moment. He was aware of the most delicious
sensation of sharing a perfect nocturnal solitude with his wife. He drew
her towards him until her acquiescent head lay against his waistcoat. He
held her body in his arms, and came deliberately to the conclusion that
to be alive was excellent.
Eve's body was as yielding as that of a young girl. To Mr. Prohack, who
of course was the dupe of an illusion, it had an absolutely enchanting
girlishness. She sobbed and she sobbed, and Mr. Prohack let her sob. He
loosed the grip of his arms a little, so that her face, free of his
waistcoat, was turned upwards in the direction of the ceiling; and then
he very caressingly wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief. He gave an
elaborate care to the wiping of her eyes. For some minutes it was a
Sisyphean labour, for what he did she immediately undid; but after a
time the sobs grew less frequent, and at length they ceased; only her
lips trembled at intervals.
Mr. Prohack said ingratiatingly:
"And whose fault is it if I'm funny? Answer, you witch."
"I don't know," Eve murmured tremblingly and not quite articulately.
"It's your fault. Do you know that you gave me the fright of my life
to-night, going out without saying where you were going to? Do you know
that you put me into such a state that I've been telephoning to
police-stations to find out whether there'd been any street accidents
happening to a woman of your description? I was so upset that I daren't
even go upstairs and call Sissie."
"You said you'd only been back five minutes when I came," Eve observed
in a somewhat firmer voice.
"I did," said Mr. Prohack. "But that was neither more nor less than a
downright lie. You see I was in such a state that I had to pretend, to
both you and myself, that things aren't what they are.... And then,
without the slightest warning, you suddenly arrive without a scratch on
you. You aren't hurt. You aren't even dead. It's a scandalous shame that
a woman should be able, by merely arriving in a taxi, to put a sensible
man into such a paroxysm of satisfaction as you put me into a while ago.
It's not right. It's not fair. Then you try to depress me with bluggy
stories of your son's horrible opulence, and when you discover you can't
depress me you burst into tears and accuse me of being funny. What did
you expect me to be? Did you expect me to groan because you aren't lying
dead in a mortuary? If I'm funny, you are at liberty to attribute it to
hysteria, the hysteria of joy. But I wish you to understand that these
extreme revulsions of feeling which you impose on me are very dangerous
for a plain man who is undergoing a rest-cure."
Eve raised her arms about Mr. Prohack's neck, lifted herself up by them,
and silently kissed him. Then she sank back to her former position.
"I've been a great trial to you lately, haven't I?" she breathed.
"Not more so than usual," he answered. "You know you always abuse your
power."
"But I _have_ been queer?"
"Well," judicially, "perhaps you have. Perhaps five per cent or so above
your average of queerness."
"Didn't the doctor say what I'd got was traumatic neurasthenia?"
"That or something equally absurd."
"Well, I haven't got it any more. I'm cured. You'll see."
Just then the dining-room clock entered upon its lengthy business of
chiming the hour of midnight. And as it faintly chimed Mr. Prohack,
supporting his wife, had a surpassing conviction of the beauty of
existence and in particular of his own good fortune--though the matter
of his inheritance never once entered his mind. He gazed down at Eve's
ingenuous features, and saw in them the fastidious fineness which had
caused her to recoil so sensitively from her son's display at the Grand
Babylon. Yes, women had a spiritual beauty to which men could not
pretend.
"Arthur," said she, "I never told you that you'd forgotten to wind up
that clock on Sunday night. It stopped this evening while you were out,
and I had to wind it and I only guessed what the time was."