THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS
I
At ten minutes to eleven the next morning Mr. Prohack rushed across the
pavement, and sprang head-first into the original Eagle (now duly
repaired) with the velocity and agility of a man long accustomed to the
fact that seconds are more precious than six-pences and minutes than
banknotes. And Carthew slammed the door on him like a conjuror
performing the final act of a trick before an audience of three thousand
people.
Mr. Prohack was late. He was late on this the first full day of his
career as a consciously and scientifically idle man. Carthew knew that
his employer was late; and certainly the people in his house knew that
he was late. Mr. Prohack's breakfast in bed had been late, which meant
that his digestive and reposeful hour of newspaper reading was thrown
forward. And then he had actually been kept out of his own bathroom,
through the joint fault of Sissie and her mother, who had apparently
determined to celebrate Sissie's definite release from the dance-studio,
and Mrs. Prohack's astonishing recovery from traumatic neurasthenia, by
a thorough visitation and reorganisation of the house and household.
Those two, re-established in each other's affection, had been holding an
inquisition in the bathroom, of all rooms, at the very moment when Mr.
Prohack needed the same, with the consequence that he found the bath
empty instead of full, and the geyser not even lighted. Yet they well
knew that he had a highly important appointment at the tailor's at ten
forty-five, followed by other just as highly important appointments! The
worst of it was that he could not take their crime seriously because he
was on such intimate and conspiratorial terms with each of them
separately. On the previous evening he had exchanged wonderful and
rather dangerous confidences with his daughter, and, further on in the
night he and her mother had decided that the latter's fantastic
excursion to the Grand Babylon Hotel should remain a secret. And Sissie,
as much as her mother, had taken advantage of his helplessness in the
usual unscrupulous feminine manner. They went so far as to smile
quasi-maternally at his boyish busy-ness.
Now no sooner had Carthew slammed the door of the Eagle and got into the
driving-seat than a young woman, a perfect stranger to Mr. Prohack,
appeared, and through the open window asked in a piteous childlike voice
if Mr. Prohack was indeed Mr. Prohack, and, having been informed that
this was so, expressed the desire to speak with him. Mr. Prohack was
beside himself with annoyance and thwarted energy. Was the entire
universe uniting against the execution of his programme?
"I have a most important appointment," said he, raising his hat and
achieving politeness by an enormous effort, "and if your business is
urgent you'd better get into the car. I'm going to Conduit Street."
She slipped into the car like a snake, and Carthew, beautifully unaware
that he had two passengers, simultaneously drove off.
If a snake, she was a very slim, blushing and confused snake,--short,
too, for a python. And she had a turned-up nose, and was quite young.
Her scales were stylish. And, although certainly abashed, apprehensive
and timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs of
terrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothing
could thwart. Mr. Prohack might have been alarmed, but fortunately he
was getting used to driving in closed cars with young women, and so
could keep his nerve. Moreover, he enjoyed these experiences, being a
man of simple tastes and not too analytical of good fortune when it came
his way.
"It's very good of you to see me like this," said the girl, in the voice
of a rapid brook with a pebbly bed. "My name is Winstock, and I've
called about the car."
"The car? What car?"
"The motor-car accident at Putney, you know."
"Ah!"
"Yes."
"Just so. Just so. You are the owner-driver of the other car."
"Yes."
"I think you ought to have seen my wife. It is really she who is the
owner of this car. As you are aware, I wasn't in the accident myself,
and I don't know anything about it. Besides, it's entirely in the hands
of the insurance company and the solicitors. You are employing a
solicitor, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then I suppose it's by his advice that you've come to see me."
"Well, I'm afraid it isn't."
"What!" cried Mr. Prohack. "If it isn't by his advice you may well be
afraid. Do you know you've done a most improper thing? Most improper. I
can't possibly listen to you. _You_ may go behind your lawyer's back.
But I can't. And also there's the insurance company." Mr. Prohack lifted
the rug which had fallen away from her short skirts.
"I think solicitors and companies and things are so silly," said Miss
Winstock, whose eyes had not moved from the floor-mat. "Thank you." The
'thank you' was in respect to the rug.
"So they are," Mr. Prohack agreed.
"That was why I thought it would be better to come straight to you." For
the first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance that
somehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in her
own breast to that of Mr. Prohack.
"Well," said he, in a departmental tone recalling Whitehall. "Will you
kindly say what you have to say?"
"Can I speak confidentially?"
Mr. Prohack raised his hands and laughed in what he hoped was a sardonic
manner.
"I give you young women up," he murmured. "Yes, I give you up. You're my
enemy. We're at law. And you want to talk confidentially! How can I tell
whether I can let you talk confidentially until I've heard what you're
going to say?"
"Oh! I was only going to say that I'm not really the owner-driver of the
car. I'm personal secretary to Mr. Carrel Quire, and it's really his
car. You see he has three cars, but as there's been such a fuss about
waste lately and he's so prominent in the anti-squandermania campaign,
he prefers to keep only one car in his own name."
"You don't mean to sit there and tell me you're talking about the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs!"
"Yes, of course. Who else? You know he's on the continent at present. He
wouldn't take me with him because he wanted to create an effect of
austerity in Paris--that's what he said; and I must get this accident
affair settled up before he comes back, or he _may_ dismiss me. I don't
think he will, because I'm a cousin of the late Lady Queenie
Paulle--that's how I got the place--but he may. And then where should I
be? I was told you were so kind and nice--that's why I came."
"I am not kind and I am not nice," remarked Mr. Prohack, in an acid
tone, but laughing to himself because the celebrated young statesman,
Mr. Carrel Quire (bald at thirty-five) was precisely one of the
ministers who, during the war, had defied and trampled upon the
Treasury. He now almost demoniacally contemplated the ruin of Mr. Carrel
Quire.
"You have made a serious mistake in coming to me. Unfortunately you
cannot undo it. Be good enough to understand that you have not been
talking confidentially."
Miss Winstock ought to have been intimidated and paralysed by the
menacing manner of the former Terror of the Departments. But she was
not.
"Please, please, Mr. Prohack," she said calmly, "don't talk in that
strain. I distinctly told you I was talking confidentially, and I'm sure
I can rely on you--unless all that I've heard about you is untrue; which
it can't be. I only want matters to be settled quietly, and when Mr.
Quire returns he will pay anything that has to be paid--if it isn't too
much."
"My chauffeur asserts that you have told a most naughty untruth about
the accident. You say that he ran into you, whereas the fact is that he
was nearly standing still while you were going too fast and you skidded
badly into him off the tramlines. And he's found witnesses to prove what
he says."
"I may have been a little mistaken," Miss Winstock admitted with light
sadness. "I won't say I wasn't. You know how you are in an accident."
"I've never been in an accident in my life," Mr. Prohack objected.
"If you had, you'd sympathise with me."
At this moment the Eagle drew up at the desired destination in Conduit
Street. Mr. Prohack looked at his watch.
"I'm sorry to seem inhospitable," he said, "but my appointment is
extremely important. I cannot wait."
"Can _I_ wait?" Miss Winstock suggested. "I'm quite used to waiting for
Mr. Carrel Quire. If I might wait in the car till you came out.... You
see I want to come to an understanding."
"I don't know how long I shall be."
"That doesn't matter, truly. I haven't got anything else in the world to
do, as Mr. Carrel Quire is away."
Mr. Prohack left Miss Winstock in the car.
The establishment into which Mr. Prohack disappeared was that of his
son's tailors. He slipped into it with awe, not wholly because the
tailors were his son's tailors, but in part because they were tailors to
various august or once-august personages throughout Europe. Till that
day Mr. Prohack had bought his clothes from an insignificant though
traditional tailor in Maddox Street, to whom he had been taken as a boy
by his own father. And he had ordered his clothes hastily, negligently,
anyhow, in intervals snatched from meal-hours or on the way from one
more important appointment to another more important appointment. Indeed
he had thought no more of ordering a suit than of ordering a whiskey and
soda. Nay, he had on one occasion fallen incredibly low, and his memory
held the horrid secret for ever,--on one occasion he had actually bought
a ready-made suit. It had fitted him, for he was slimmish and of a good
stock size, but he had told nobody, not even his wife, of this shocking
defection from the code of true British gentlemanliness,--and he had
never repeated the crime; the secret would die with him. And now he was
devoting the top of the morning to the commandment of a suit. The affair
was his chief business, and he had come to it in a great car whose six
cylinders were working harmoniously for nothing else, and with the aid
of an intelligent and experienced and expert human being whose sole
object in life that morning was to preside over Mr. Prohack's locomotion
to and from the tailors'!
Mr. Prohack perceived that he was only beginning to comprehend the
wonder of existence. The adepts at the tailors', however, seemed to see
nothing wonderful in the matter. They showed no surprise that he had
written to make an appointment with a particular adept named
Melchizidek, who had been casually mentioned weeks earlier by Charles as
the one man in London who really comprehended waistcoats. They took it
as a matter of course that Mr. Prohack had naught else to do with the
top of the morning but order clothes, and that while he did so he should
keep a mature man and a vast and elaborate machine waiting for him in
the street outside. And Mr. Melchizidek's manner alone convinced Mr.
Prohack that what he had told his family, and that what he had told Miss
Winstock in the car, was strictly true and not the invention of his
fancy--namely that the appointment was genuinely of high importance.
Mr. Melchizidek possessed the strange gift of condescending majestically
to Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as to
an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew
not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed
abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the
walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and
it was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practice
referred to Mr. Melchizidek, and that this same Melchizidek, fawning
and masterful, had seen monarchs in their shirt sleeves and spoken to
princes with pins in his mouth, and made marks in white chalk between
the shoulder-blades of grand-dukes; and that revolutions and cataclysms
were nothing to Mr. Melchizidek.
When Mr. Melchizidek had decided by hypnotic suggestion and magic power
what Mr. Prohack desired in the way of stuffs and patterns, he led Mr.
Prohack mysteriously to a small chamber, and a scribe followed them
carrying pencil and paper, and Mr. Prohack removed, with assistance, his
shabby coat and his waistcoat, and Mr. Melchizidek measured him in
unexampled detail and precision, and the scribe, writing, intoned aloud
all Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr. Prohack was asking in
his heart: "How much will these clothes cost?" And he, once the Terror
of the departments, who would have held up the war to satisfy his
official inquisitiveness on a question of price,--he dared not ask how
much the clothes would cost. He felt that in that unique establishment
money was simply not mentioned,--it could never be more than the subject
of formal and stately correspondence.
During the latter part of the operation Mr. Prohack heard, outside in
the shop, the sharp sounds of an imperial and decisive voice, and he was
thereby well-nigh thunderstruck. And even Mr. Melchizidek seemed to be
similarly affected by the voice,--so much so that the intimate of
sovereigns unaffectedly hastened the business of enduing Mr. Prohack
into the shameful waistcoat and coat, and then, with a gesture of
apology, passed out of the cubicle, leaving Mr. Prohack with the
attendant scribe.
Mr. Prohack, pricked by a fearful curiosity, followed Mr. Melchizidek;
and the voice was saying:
"Oh! You're there, Melchizidek. Just come and look at this crease."
Mr. Melchizidek, pained, moved forward. Three acolytes were already
standing in shocked silence round about a young man who stretched forth
one leg so that all might see.
"I ask you," the young man proceeded, "is it an inch out or isn't it?
And how many times have I tried these things on? I'm a busy man, and
here I have to waste my time coming here again and again to get a thing
right that ought to have been right the first time. And you call
yourselves the first tailors in Europe.... Correct me if I'm inaccurate
in any of my statements."
Mr. Melchizidek, who unlike an Englishman knew when he was beaten, said
in a solemn bass:
"When can I send for them, sir?"
"You can send for them this afternoon at the Grand Babylon, and be sure
that I have them back to-morrow night."
"Certainly, sir. It's only fair to ourselves, sir, to state that we have
a great deal of trouble with our workmen in these days."
"No doubt. And I have a great deal of trouble to find cash in these
days, but I don't pay your bills with bad money, I think."
A discreet sycophantic smile from the group at this devastating
witticism!
Mr. Prohack cautiously approached; the moment had awkwardness, but Mr.
Prohack owed it to himself to behave with all presence of mind.
"Hullo, Charlie!" said he casually.
"Hello, dad! How are you?" And Charlie, wearing the very suit in which
he had left home for Glasgow, shook hands boyishly.
Looking into his firm, confident eyes, Mr. Prohack realised, perhaps for
the first time, that the fruit of his loins was no common boy. The mere
fact that as an out-of-work ex-officer, precariously making a bit in
motor-bicycle deals, he had dared to go to Melchizidek's firm for
clothes, and that he was now daring to affront Melchizidek,--this sole
fact separated him from the ruck of sons.
"I warn you, dad, that if you're ordering clothes here you're ordering
trouble."
Mr. Melchizidek's interjected remarks fitted to the occasion. The group
dissipated. The males of the Prohack family could say nothing
interesting to each other in such a situation. They could only pretend
that their relations were purely normal; which they did quite well.
"I say, dad, I'm awfully busy this morning. I can't stop now. I've
telephoned the mater and she's coming to the Grand Babylon for
lunch--one thirty. Sis too, I think. Do come. You haven't got anything
else to do." The boy murmured all this.
"Oh! Haven't I! I'm just as busy as you are, and more."
However, Mr. Prohack accepted the invitation. Charlie went off in haste.
Mr. Prohack arrived on the pavement in time to see him departing in an
open semi-racing car driven by a mature, handsome and elegant woman,
with a chauffeur sitting behind. Mr. Prohack's mind was one immense
interrogation concerning his son. He had seen him, spoken with him,
and--owing to the peculiar circumstances--learnt nothing whatever.
Indeed, the mystery of Charlie was deepened. Had Charles hurried away in
order to hide the mature handsome lady from his father?... Mr. Prohack
might have moralised, but he suddenly remembered that he had a lady in
his own car, and that the disparity between their ages was no less than
the disparity between the ages of the occupants of the car in which
Charles had fled.
III
Turning to his own car, he observed with a momentary astonishment that
Carthew, the chauffeur, leaning a little nonchalantly through the open
off-window of the vehicle, was engaged in conversation with Miss
Winstock. The astonishment passed when he reflected that as these two
had been in the enforced intimacy of an accident together they were
necessarily on some kind of speaking terms. Before Carthew had noticed
Mr. Prohack, Mr. Prohack noticed that Carthew's attitude to Miss
Winstock showed a certain tolerant condescension, while Miss Winstock's
girlish gestures were of a subtly appealing nature. Then in an instant
Carthew, the easy male tolerator of inaccurate but charming young women,
disappeared from the window--disappeared indeed, entirely from the face
of the earth--and a perfectly non-human, impassive automaton emerged
from behind the back of the car and stood attentive at the door, holding
the handle thereof. Mr. Prohack, with a gift of dissimulation equal to
Carthew's own, gave him an address in Bond Street.
"I have another very urgent appointment," said Mr. Prohack to Miss
Winstock as he sat down beside her. And he took his diary from his
pocket and gazed at it intently, frowning, though there was nothing
whatever on its page except the printed information that the previous
Sunday was the twenty-fourth after Trinity, and a warning: "If you have
omitted to order your new diary it would be well to do so NOW to prevent
disappointment."
"It's awfully good of you to have me here," said Miss Winstock.
"It is," Mr. Prohack admitted. "And so far as I can see you've done
nothing to deserve it. You were very wrong to get chatting with my
chauffeur, for example."
"I felt that all the time. But he has such a powerful individuality."
"He may have. But what I pay him for is to drive my car, not to put his
passengers into a semi-hypnotic state. Do you know why I am taking you
about like this?"
"I hope it's because you are kind-hearted."
"Not at all. Do you think I should do it if you were fifty, fat and a
fright? Of course I shouldn't. And no one knows that better than you.
I'm doing it because you're young and charming and slim and attractive
and smart. Though forty-six, I am still a man. The chief difference
between me and most other men is that I know and openly admit my
motives. That's what makes me so dangerous. You should beware of me.
Take note that I haven't asked you what you're been saying to Carthew.
Nor shall I ask him. Now what exactly do you want me to do?"
"Only not to let the law case about the accident go any further."
"And are you in a position to pay the insurance company for the damage
to my car?"
"Oh! Mr. Carrel Quire will pay."
"Are you sure? Are you quite sure that Mr. Carrel Quire is not spending
twice as much as his ministerial salary, that salary being the whole of
his financial resources except loans from millionaires who will accept
influence instead of interest? I won't enquire whether Mr. Carrel Quire
pays your salary regularly. If he does, it furnishes the only instance
of regularity in the whole of his gorgeous career. If our little affair
becomes public it might ruin Mr. Carrel Quire as a politician--at the
least it would set him back for ten years. And I am particularly anxious
to ruin Mr. Carrel Quire. In doing so I shall accomplish a patriotic
act."
"Oh, Mr. Prohack!"
"Yes. Mr. Carrel Quire may be--probably is--a delightful fellow, but he
is too full of brains, and he constitutes the gravest danger that has
threatened the British Empire for a hundred years. Hence it is my duty
to ruin him if I get the chance; and I've got the chance. I don't see
how he could survive the exposure of the simple fact that while
preaching anti-waste he is keeping motor-cars in the names of young
women."
The car had stopped in front of a shop over whose door a pair of gilded
animals like nothing in zoology were leaping amiably at each other. Miss
Winstock began to search neurotically in a bag for a handkerchief.
"This is the scene of my next appointment," Mr. Prohack continued.
"Would you prefer to leave me at once or will you wait again?"
Miss Winstock hesitated.
"You had better wait," Mr. Prohack decided. "You'll be crying in fifteen
seconds and your handkerchief is sadly inadequate to the crisis. Try a
little self-control, and don't let Carthew hypnotise you. I shan't be
surprised if you're gone when I come back."
A commissionaire was now holding open the door of the car.
"Carthew," said Mr. Prohack privily, after he had got out. "Oblige me
by imagining that during my absence the car is empty."
Carthew quivered for a fraction of eternity, but was exceedingly quick
to recover.
"Yes, sir."
The shop was all waxed parquetry, silks, satins, pure linen and pure
wool, diversified by a few walking-sticks and a cuff link or so. Faced
by a judge-like middle-aged authority in a frock-coat, Mr. Prohack
suddenly lost the magisterial demeanour which he had exhibited to a
defenceless girl in the car. He comprehended in a flash that suits of
clothes were a detail in the existence of an idle man and that neckties
and similar supremacies alone mattered.
"I want a necktie," he began gently.
"Certainly, sir," said the judge. But the judge's eyes, fixed on Mr.
Prohack's neck, said: "I should just think you did."
Life was enlarged to a bewildering, a maddening maze of neckties. Mr.
Prohack considered in his heart that one of the needs of the day was an
encyclopaedia of neckties. As he bought neckties he felt as foolish as a
woman buying cigars. Any idiot could buy a suit, but neckties baffled
the intelligence of the Terror of the departments, though he had worn
something in the nature of a necktie for forty years. The neckties which
he bought inspired him with fear--the fear lest he might lack the
courage to wear them. In a nightmare he saw himself putting them on in
his bedroom and proceeding downstairs to breakfast, and then,
panic-stricken, rushing back to the bedroom to change into one of his
old neckties.
And when he had bought neckties he apprehended that neckties without
shirts were like butter without bread, and he bought shirts. And then he
surmised that shirts without collars would be indecent. And when he had
bought collars a still small voice told him that the logical foundation
of all things was socks, and that really he had been trying to build a
house from the fourth story downwards. Fortunately he had less
hesitation about the socks, for he could comfort himself with the
thought that socks did not jump to the eye as neckties did, and that by
constant care their violence might even be forever concealed from the
gaze of his household. He sighed with relief at the end of the sock
episode. But he had forgotten braces, as to which he surrendered
unconditionally to the frock-coated judge. He brooked the most
astounding braces, for none but Eve would see them, and he could
intimidate Eve.
"Shall we make you a quarter of a dozen pairs to measure, sir?"
This extraordinary question miraculously restored all Mr. Prohack's
vanished aplomb. That at the end of the greatest war in the history of
the earth, amid decapitated empires and cities of starvation, braces
should be made to measure,--this was too much for Mr. Prohack, who had
not dreamed that braces ever had been made to measure. It shocked him
back into sense.
"_No!_" he said coldly, and soon afterwards left the shop.
Miss Winstock, in the car, sat for the statue of wistful melancholy.
"Heavens!" breathed Mr. Prohack to himself. "The little thing is taking
me seriously. With all her experience of the queer world, and all her
initiative and courage, she is taking me seriously!" He was touched; his
irony became sympathetic, and he thought: "How young the young are!"
Her smile as he rejoined her had pathos in it. The totality of her was
delicious.
"You cannot be all bad, Miss Winstock," said he to her, after
instructing the chauffeur, "because nobody is. You are undisciplined.
You do wild and rash things--you have already accomplished several this
morning. But you have righteous instincts, though not often enough. Of
course, with one word to the insurance company I could save you. The
difficulty is that I could not save you without saving Mr. Carrel Quire
also. And it would be very wrong of me to save Mr. Carrel Quire, for to
save him would be to jeopardise the future of the British Empire,
because unless he is scotched, that man's frantic egotism and ruthless
ambition will achieve political disaster for four hundred million human
beings. I should like to save you. But can I weigh you in the balance
against an Empire? Can I, I say?"
"No," answered Miss Winstock weakly but sincerely.
"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack. "I can. And you are
shamefully ignorant of history. Never yet when empire, any empire, has
been weighed in the balance against a young and attractive woman has the
young woman failed to win! That is a dreadful fact, but men are thus
constituted. Had you been a hag, I should not have hesitated to do my
duty to my country. But as you are what you are, and sitting so
agreeably in my car, I will save you and let my country go."
"Oh! Mr. Prohack, you are very kind--but every one told me you were."
"No! I am a knave. Also there is a condition."
"I will agree to anything."
"You must leave Mr. Carrel Quire's service. That man is dangerous not
only to empires. The entire environment is the very worst decently
possible for a girl like you. Get away from it. If you don't undertake
to give him notice at once, and withdraw entirely from his set, then I
will ruin both you and him."
"But I shall starve," cried Miss Winstock. "I shall never find another
place without influence, and I have no more influence."
"Have the Winstocks no money?"
"Not a penny."
"And have the Paulles no money?"
"None for me."
"You are the ideal programme-girl in a theatre," said Mr. Prohack. "You
will never starve. Excuse me for a few minutes. I have another very
important appointment," he added, as the car stopped in Piccadilly.
After a quarter of an hour spent in learning that suits were naught,
neckties were naught, shirts, collars, socks and even braces were
naught, but that hats alone made a man of fashion and idleness, Mr.
Prohack returned to Miss Winstock and announced:
"I will engage you as my private secretary. I need one very badly
indeed. In fact I cannot understand how, with all my engagements, I have
been able to manage without one so long. Your chief duties will be to
keep on good terms with my wife and daughter, and not to fall in love
with my son. If you were not too deeply preoccupied with my chauffeur,
you may have noticed a young man who came out of the tailors' just
before I did. That was my son."
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Winstock, "the boy who drove off in Lady Massulam's
car?"
"Was that Lady Massulam?" asked Mr. Prohack before he had had time to
recover from the immense effect of hearing the startling, almost
legendary name of Lady Massulam in connection with his son.
"Of course," said Miss Winstock. "Didn't you know?"
Mr. Prohack ignored her pertness.
"Well," he proceeded, having now successfully concealed his emotion,
"after having dealt as I suggest with my wife and children, you will
deal with my affairs. You shall have the same salary as Mr. Carrel Quire
paid--or forgot to pay. Do you agree or not?"
"I should love it," replied Miss Winstock with enthusiasm.
"What is your Christian name?"
"Mimi."
"So it is. I remember now. Well, it won't do at all. Never mention it
again, please."
When he had accompanied Mimi to a neighbouring post office and sent off
a suitable telegram of farewell to Mr. Carrel Quire in her name, Mr.
Prohack abandoned her till the morrow, and drove off quickly to pick up
his wife for the Grand Babylon lunch.
"I am a perfect lunatic," said he to himself. "It must be the effect of
riches. However, I don't care."
He meant that he didn't care about the conceivable consequences of
engaging Mimi Winstock as secretary. But what he did care about was the
conjuncture of Lady Massulam and Charlie.