END OF AN IDLE DAY
I
It is remarkable that even in the most fashionable shopping
thoroughfares certain shops remain brilliantly open, exposing
plush-cushioned wares under a glare of electricity in the otherwise
darkened street, for an hour or so after all neighbouring establishments
have drawn down their blinds and put up their shutters. An interesting
point of psychology is involved in this phenomenon.
On his way home from the paradise of the mosque, Mr. Prohack, afoot and
high-spirited, and energised by a long-forgotten sensation of physical
well-being, called in at such a shop, and, with the minimum of parley,
bought an article enclosed in a rich case. A swift and happy impulse on
his part! The object was destined for his wife, and his intention in
giving it was to help him to introduce more easily to her notice the
fact that he was now, or would shortly be, worth over quarter of a
million of money. For he was a strange, silly fellow, and just as he had
been conscious of a certain false shame at inheriting a hundred thousand
pounds, so now he was conscious of a certain false shame at having
increased his possessions to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
The Eagle was waiting in front of Mr. Prohack's door; he wondered what
might be the latest evening project of his women, for he had not ordered
the car so early; perhaps the first night had been postponed; however,
he was too discreet, or too dignified, to make any enquiry from the
chauffeur; too indifferent to the projects of his beloved women. He
would be quite content to sit at home by himself, reflecting upon the
marvels of existence and searching among them for his soul.
Within the house, servants were rushing about in an atmosphere of
excitement and bell-ringing. He divined that his wife and daughter were
dressing simultaneously for an important occasion--either the first
night or something else. In that feverish environment he forgot the
form of words which he had carefully prepared for the breaking to his
wife of the great financial news. Fortunately she gave him no chance to
blunder.
"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" she cried, sweetly reproachful, as with an assumed
jauntiness he entered the bedroom. "How late you are! I expected you
back an hour ago at least. Your things are laid out in the boudoir. You
haven't got a moment to spare. We're late as it is." She was by no means
dressed, and the bedroom looked as if it had been put to the sack;
nearly every drawer was ajar, and the two beds resembled a second-hand
shop.
Mr. Prohack's self-protective instinct at once converted him into a
porcupine. An attempt was being made to force him into a hurry, and he
loathed hurry.
"I'm not late," said he, "because I didn't say when I should return. It
won't take me more than a quarter of an hour to eat, and we've got heaps
of time for the theatre."
"I'm giving a little dinner in the Grand Babylon restaurant," said Eve,
"and of course we must be there first. Sissie's arranged it for me on
the 'phone. It'll be much more amusing than dining here, and it saves
the servants." Yet the woman had recently begun to assert that the
servants hadn't enough to do!
"Ah!" said Mr. Prohack, startled. "And who are the guests?"
"Oh! Nobody! Only us and Charlie, of course, and Oswald Morfey, and
perhaps Lady Massulam. I've told Charlie to do the ordering."
"I should have thought one meal per diem at the Grand Babylon would have
been sufficient."
"But this is in the _restaurant_, don't I tell you? Oh, dear! That's
three times I've tried to do my hair. It's always the same when I want
it nice. Now do get along, Arthur!"
"Strange!" said he with a sardonic blitheness. "Strange how it's always
my fault when your hair goes wrong!" And to himself he said: "All right!
All right! I just shan't inform you about that quarter of a million.
You've no leisure for details to-night, my girl."
And he went into the boudoir.
His blissful serenity was too well established to be overthrown by
anything short of a catastrophe. Nevertheless it did quiver slightly
under the shock of Eve's new tactics in life. This was the woman who, on
only the previous night, had been inveighing against the ostentation of
her son's career at the Grand Babylon. Now she seemed determined to
rival him in showiness, to be the partner of his alleged vulgarity. That
the immature Sissie should suddenly drop the ideals of the new poor for
the ideals of the new rich was excusable. But Eve! But that modest
embodiment of shy and quiet commonsense! She, who once had scorned the
world of _The Daily Picture_, was more and more disclosing a desire for
that world. And where now were her doubts about the righteousness of
Charlie's glittering deeds? And where was the ancient sagacity which
surely should have prevented her from being deceived by the
superficialities of an Oswald Morfey? Was she blindly helping to prepare
a disaster for her blind daughter? Was the explanation that she had
tasted of the fruit? The horrid thought crossed Mr. Prohack's mind: _All
women are alike._ He flung it out of his loyal mind, trying to
substitute: All women except Eve are alike. But it came back in its
original form.... Not that he cared, really. If Eve had transformed
herself into a Cleopatra his ridiculous passion for her would have
suffered no modification.
Lying around the boudoir were various rectangular parcels, addressed in
flowing calligraphy to himself: the first harvest-loads of his busy
morning. The sight of them struck his conscience. Was not he, too,
following his wife on the path of the new rich? No! As ever he was
blameless. He was merely executing the prescription of his doctor, who
had expounded the necessity of scientific idleness and the curative
effect of fine clothes on health. True, he knew himself to be cured, but
if nature had chosen to cure him too quickly, that was not his fault....
He heard his wife talking to Machin in the bedroom, and Machin talking
to his wife; and the servant's voice was as joyous and as worried as if
she herself, and not Eve, were about to give a little dinner at the
Grand Babylon. Queer! Queer! The phrase 'a quarter of a million' glinted
and flashed in the circumambient air. But it was almost a meaningless
phrase. He was like a sort of super-savage and could not count beyond a
hundred thousand. And, quite unphilosophical, he forgot that the ecstasy
produced by a hundred thousand had passed in a few days, and took for
granted that the ecstasy produced by two hundred and fifty thousand
would endure for ever.
"Take that thing off, please," he commanded his wife when he returned to
the bedroom in full array. She was by no means complete, but she had
achieved some progress, and was trying the effect of her garnet
necklace.
"But it's the best I've got," said she.
"No, it isn't," he flatly contradicted her, and opened the case so newly
purchased.
"Arthur!" she gasped, spellbound, entranced, enchanted.
"That's my name."
"Pearls! But--but--this must have cost thousands!"
"And what if it did?" he enquired placidly, clasping the thing with much
delicacy round her neck. His own pleasure was intense, and yet he
severely blamed himself. Indeed he called himself a criminal. Scarcely
could he meet her gaze when she put her hands on his shoulders, after a
long gazing into the mirror. And when she kissed him and said with
frenzy that he was a dear and a madman, he privately agreed with her.
She ran to the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I must show Sissie."
"Wait a moment, child. Do you know why I've bought that necklace?
Because the affair with Spinner has come off." He then gave her the
figures.
She observed, not unduly moved:
"But I knew _that_ would be all right."
"How did you know?"
"Because you're so clever. You always get the best of everybody."
He realised afresh that she was a highly disturbing woman. She uttered
highly disturbing verdicts without thought and without warning. You
never knew what she would say.
"I think," he remarked, calmly pretending that she had said something
quite obvious, "that it would be as well for us not to breathe one word
to anybody at all about this new windfall."
She eagerly agreed.
"But we must really begin to spend--I mean spend regularly."
"Yes, of course," he admitted.
"Otherwise it would be absurd, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, of course."
"Arthur."
"Yes."
"How much will it be--in income?"
"Well, I'm not going in for any more flutters. No! I've done absolutely
with all speculating idiocies. Providence has watched over us. I take
the hint. Therefore my investments will all have to be entirely safe and
sound. No fancy rates of interest. I should say that by the time old
Paul's fixed up my investments we shall have a bit over four hundred
pounds a week coming in--if that's any guide to you."
"Arthur, isn't it _wicked_!"
She examined afresh the necklace.
By the time they were all three in the car, Mr. Prohack had become
aware of the fact that in Sissie's view he ought to have bought two
necklaces while he was about it.
Sissie's trunks were on the roof of the car. She had decided to take up
residence at the Grand Babylon that very night. The rapidity and the
uncontrollability of events made Mr. Prohack feel dizzy.
"I hope you've brought some money, darling," said his wife.
II
"Lend me some money, will you?" murmured Mr. Prohack lightly to his
splendid son, after he had glanced at the bill for Eve's theatre dinner
at the Grand Babylon. Mr. Prohack had indeed brought some money with
him, but not enough. "Haven't got any," said Charlie, with equal
lightness. "Better give me the bill. I'll see to it." Whereupon Charlie
signed the bill, and handed the bowing waiter five ten shilling notes.
"That's not enough," said Mr. Prohack.
"Not enough for the tip. Well, it'll have to be. I never give more than
ten per cent."
Mr. Prohack strove to conceal his own painful lack of worldliness. He
had imagined that he had in his pockets heaps of money to pay for a meal
for a handful of people. He was mistaken; that was all, and the incident
had no importance, for a few pounds more or less could not matter in the
least to a gentleman of his income. Yet he felt guilty of being a
waster. He could not accustom himself to the scale of expenditure.
Barely in the old days could he have earned in a week the price of the
repast consumed now in an hour. The vast apartment was packed with
people living at just that rate of expenditure and seeming to think
naught of it. "But do two wrongs make a right?" he privately demanded of
his soul. Then his soul came to the rescue with its robust commonsense
and replied:
"Perhaps two wrongs don't make a right, but five hundred wrongs
positively must make a right." And he felt better.
And suddenly he understood the true function of the magnificent
orchestra that dominated the scene. It was the function of a brass band
at a quack-dentist's booth in a fair,--to drown the cries of the victims
of the art of extraction.
"Yes," he reflected, full of health and carelessness. "This is a truly
great life."
The party went off in two automobiles, his own and Lady Massulam's.
Cars were fighting for room in front of the blazing façade of the
Metropolitan Theatre, across which rose in fire the title of the
entertainment, _Smack Your Face_, together with the names of Asprey
Chown and Eliza Fiddle. Car after car poured out a contingent of
glorious girls and men and was hustled off with ferocity by a row of
gigantic and implacable commissionaires. Mr. Oswald Morfey walked
straight into the building at the head of his guests. Highly expensive
persons were humbling themselves at the little window of the box office,
but Ozzie held his course, and officials performed obeisances which
stopped short only at falling flat on their faces at the sight of him.
Tickets were not for him.
"This is a beautiful box," said Eve to him, amazed at the grandeur of
the receptacle into which they had been ushered.
"It's Mr. Chown's own box."
"Then isn't Mr. Chown to be here to-night?"
"No! He went to Paris this morning for a rest. The acting manager will
telephone to him after each act. That's how he always does, you know."
"When the cat's away the mice will play," thought Mr. Prohack
uncomfortably, with the naughty sensations of a mouse. The huge
auditorium was a marvellous scene of excited brilliance. As the stalls
filled up a burst of clapping came at intervals from the unseen pit.
"What are they clapping for?" said the simple Eve, who, like Mr.
Prohack, had never been to a first-night before, to say nothing of such
a super-first-night as this.
"Oh!" replied Ozzie negligently. "Some one they know by sight just come
into the stalls. The _chic_ thing in the pit is to recognise, and to
show by applause that you have recognised. The one that applauds the
oftenest wins the game in the pit."
At those words and their tone Mr. Prohack looked at Ozzie with a new
eye, as who should be thinking: "Is Sissie right about this fellow after
all?"
Sissie sat down modestly and calmly next to her mother. Nobody could
guess from her apparently ingenuous countenance that she knew that she,
and not the Terror of the departments and his wife, was the originating
cause of Mr. Morfey's grandiose hospitality.
"I suppose the stalls are full of celebrities?" said Eve.
"They're full of people who've paid twice the ordinary price for their
seats," answered Ozzie.
"Who's that extraordinary old red-haired woman in the box opposite?"
Eve demanded.
"That's Enid."
"Enid?"
"Yes. You know the Enid stove, don't you? All ladies know the Enid
stove. It's been a household word for forty years. That's the original
Enid. Her father invented the stove, and named it after her when she was
a girl. She never misses a first-night."
"How extraordinary! Is she what you call a celebrity?"
"Rather!"
"Now," said Mr. Prohack. "Now, at last I understand the real meaning of
fame."
"But that's Charlie down there!" exclaimed Eve, suddenly, pointing to
the stalls and then looking behind her to see if there was not another
Charlie in the box.
"Yes," Ozzie agreed. "Lady Massulam had an extra stall, and as five's a
bit of a crowd in this box.... I thought he'd told you."
"He had not," said Eve.
The curtain went up, and this simple gesture on the part of the curtain
evoked enormous applause. The audience could not control the expression
of its delight. A young lady under a sunshade appeared; the mere fact of
her existence threw the audience into a new ecstasy. An old man with a
red nose appeared: similar demonstrations from the audience. When these
two had talked to each other and sung to each other, the applause was
tripled, and when the scene changed from Piccadilly Circus at 4 a.m. to
the interior of a Spanish palace inhabited by illustrious French actors
and actresses who proceeded to play an act of a tragedy by Corneille,
the applause was quintupled. At the end of the tragedy the applause was
decupled. Then the Spanish palace dissolved into an Abyssinian harem,
and Eliza Fiddle in Abyssinian costume was discovered lying upon two
thousand cushions of two thousand colours, and the audience rose at
Eliza and Eliza rose at the audience, and the resulting frenzy was the
sublimest frenzy that ever shook a theatre. The piece was stopped dead
for three minutes while the audience and Eliza protested a mutual and
unique passion. From this point onwards Mr. Prohack lost his head. He
ran to and fro in the bewildering glittering maze of the piece, seeking
for an explanation, for a sign-post, for a clue, for the slightest hint,
and found nothing. He had no alternative but to cling to Eliza Fiddle,
and he clung to her desperately. She was willing to be clung to. She
gave herself, not only to Mr. Prohack, but to every member of the
audience separately; she gave herself in the completeness of all her
manifestations. The audience was rich in the possession of the whole of
her individuality, which was a great deal. She sang, danced, chattered,
froze, melted, laughed, cried, flirted, kissed, kicked, cursed, and
turned somersaults with the fury of a dervish, the languor of an
odalisque, and the inexhaustibility of a hot-spring geyser.... And at
length Mr. Prohack grew aware of a feeling within himself that was at
war with the fresh, fine feeling of physical well-being. "I have never
seen a revue before," he said in secret. "Is it possible that I am
bored?"
III
"Would you care to go behind and be introduced to Miss Fiddle?" Ozzie
suggested at the interval after the curtain had been raised seventeen
times in response to frantic shoutings, cheerings, thumpings and
clappings, and the mighty tumult of exhilaration had subsided into a
happy buzz that arose from all the seats in the entire orange-tinted
brilliant auditorium. The ladies would not go; the ladies feared, they
said, to impose their company upon Miss Fiddle in the tremendous strain
of her activities. They spoke primly and decisively. It was true that
they feared; but their fear was based on consideration for themselves
rather than on consideration for Miss Fiddle. Ozzie was plainly snubbed.
He had offered a wonderful privilege, and it had been disdained.
Mr. Prohack could not bear the spectacle of Ozzie's discomfiture. His
sad weakness for pleasing people overcame him, and, putting his hand
benevolently on the young man's shoulder, he said:
"My dear fellow, personally I'm dying to go."
They went by strangely narrow corridors and through iron doors across
the stage, whose shirt-sleeved, ragged population seemed to be behaving
as though the last trump had sounded, and so upstairs and along a broad
passage full of doors ajar from which issued whispers and exclamations
and transient visions of young women. From the star's dressing-room, at
the end, a crowd of all sorts and conditions of persons was being
pushed. Mr. Prohack trembled with an awful apprehension, and asked
himself vainly what in the name of commonsense he was doing there, and
prayed that Ozzie might be refused admission. The next moment he was
being introduced to a middle-aged woman in a middle-aged dressing-gown.
Her face was thickly caked with paint and powder, her eyes surrounded
with rings of deepest black, her finger-nails red. Mr. Prohack, not
without difficulty, recognised Eliza. A dresser stood on either side of
her. Blinding showers of electric light poured down upon her defenceless
but hardy form. She shook hands, but Mr. Prohack deemed that she ought
to bear a notice: "Danger. Visitors are requested not to touch."
"So good of you to come round," she said, in her rich and powerful
voice, smiling with all her superb teeth. Mr. Prohack, entranced, gazed,
not as at a woman, but as at a public monument. Nevertheless he thought
that she was not a bad kind, and well suited for the rough work of the
world.
"I hope you're all coming to my ball to-night," said she. Mr. Prohack
had never heard of any ball. In an instant she told him that she had
remarked two most charming ladies with him in the box--(inordinate
faculty of observation, mused Mr. Prohack)--and in another instant she
was selling him three two guinea tickets for a grand ball and rout in
aid of the West End Chorus Girls' Aid Association. Could he refuse,
perceiving so clearly as he did that within the public monument was
hiding a wistful creature, human like himself, human like his wife and
daughter? He could not.
"Now you'll _come_?" said she.
Mr. Prohack swore that he would come, his heart sinking as he realised
the consequence of his own foolish weakness. There was a knock at the
door.
"Did you want me, Liza?" said a voice, and a fat gentleman, clothed with
resplendent correctness, stepped into the room. It was the
stage-manager, a god in his way.
Eliza Fiddle became a cyclone.
"I should think I did want you," she said passionately. "That's why I
sent for you, and next time I'll ask you to come quicker. I'm not going
to have that squint-eyed girl on the stage any more to-night. You know,
the one at the end of the row. Twice she spoiled my exit by getting in
the way. And you've got to throw her out, and take it from me. She does
it on purpose."
"I can't throw her out without Mr. Chown's orders, and Mr. Chown's in
Paris."
"Then you refuse?"
A pause.
"Yes."
"Then I'm not going on again to-night, not if I know it. I'm not going
to be insulted in my own theatre."
"It's not the girl's fault. You know they haven't got room to move."
"I don't know anything about that and I don't care. All I know is that
I've finished with that squint-eyed woman, and you can choose right now
between her and me. And so that's that."
Miss Fiddle's fragile complexion had approached to within six inches of
the stage-manager's broad and shiny features, and it had little
resemblance to any of the various faces which audiences associated with
the figure of Eliza Fiddle; it was a face voluptuously distorted by the
violence of emotion. As Miss Fiddle appeared to be under the impression
that she was alone with the stage-manager, Mr. Prohack rendered justice
to that impression by softly departing. Ozzie followed. The
stage-manager also followed. "Where are you going?" they heard Eliza's
voice behind them addressing the stage-manager.
"I'm going to tell your under-study to get ready quick."
An enormous altercation uprose, and faces peeped from every door in the
corridor; but Mr. Prohack stayed not. Ozzie led him to Mr. Asprey
Chown's private room. The Terror of the departments was shaken. Ozzie
laughed gently as he shut the door.
"What will happen?" asked Mr. Prohack, affecting a gaiety he did not
feel.
"What do you think will happen?" simpered Ozzie blandly, "having due
regard to the fact that Miss Fiddle has to choose between three hundred
and fifty pounds a week and a law-suit with Chown involving heavy
damages? I must say there's nobody like Blaggs for keeping these three
hundred and fifty pound a week individuals in order. Chown would sooner
lose forty of them than lose Blaggs. And Eliza knows it. By the way,
what do you think of the show?"
"Will it succeed?"
"You should see the advance booking. There's a thousand pounds in the
house to-night. Chown will be clearing fifteen hundred a week when he's
paid off his production."
"Well, it's marvellous."
"You don't mean the show?"
"No. The profit."
"I agree," simpered Ozzie.
"I'm beginning to like this sizzling idiot," thought Mr. Prohack, as it
were regretfully. They left the imperial richness of Mr. Chown's private
room like brothers.
IV
When Mr. Prohack touched the handle of the door of the box, he felt as
though he were returning to civilisation; he felt less desolated by the
immediate past and by the prospect of the immediate future; he was
yearning for the society of mere women after his commerce with a star at
three hundred and fifty pounds a week. True, he badly wanted to examine
his soul and enquire into his philosophy of life, but he was prepared to
postpone that inquest until the society of mere women had had a
beneficial effect on him.
Charlie, who had been paying a state visit to his mother and sister was
just leaving the box and the curtain was just going up.
"Hullo, dad!" said the youth, "you're the very man I was looking for,"
and he drew his father out into the corridor. "You've got two of the
finest ballroom dancers I ever saw," he added to Ozzie.
"Haven't we!" Ozzie concurred, with faint enthusiasm.
"But the rest of the show ..." Charlie went on, ruthless. "Well, if
Chown's shows were only equal to his showmanship...! Only they aren't!"
Ozzie raised his eyebrows--a skilful gesture that at once defended his
employer and agreed with Charles.
"By the way, dad, I've got a house for you. I've told the mater about it
and she's going to see it to-morrow morning."
"A house!" Mr. Prohack exclaimed weakly, foreseeing new vistas of worry.
"I've got one. I can't live in two."
"But this one's a _house_. You know about it, don't you, Morfey?"
Ozzie gave a nod and a vague smile.
"See here, dad! Come out here a minute."
Ozzie discreetly entered the box and closed the door.
"What is it?" asked Mr. Prohack.
"It's this," Charlie replied, handing his parent a cheque. "I've
deducted what I paid for you to-night from what you lent me not long
since. I've calculated interest on the loan at ten per cent. You can get
ten practically anywhere in these days, worse luck."
"But I don't want this, my boy," Mr. Prohack protested, holding the
cheque as he might have held a lady's handkerchief retrieved from the
ground.
"Well, I'm quite sure I don't," said Charlie, a little stiffly.
There was a pause.
"As you please," said Mr. Prohack, putting the cheque--interest and
all--into his pocket.
"Thanks," said Charlie. "Much obliged. You're a noble father, and I
shouldn't be a bit surprised if you've laid the foundation of my
fortunes. But of course you never know--in my business."
"What _is_ your business?" Mr. Prohack asked timidly, almost
apologetically. He had made up his mind on the previous evening that he
would talk to Charlie as a father ought to talk to a son, that is to
say, like a cross-examining barrister and a moralist combined. He had
decided that it was more than his right--it was his duty to do so. But
now the right, if not the duty, seemed less plain, and he remembered
what he had said to Eve concerning the right attitude of parents to
children. And chiefly he remembered that Charlie was not in his debt.
"I'm a buyer and seller. I buy for less than I sell for. That's how I
live."
"It appears to be profitable."
"Yes. I made over ten thousand in Glasgow, buying an option on an
engineering business--with your money--from people who wanted to get rid
of it, and then selling what I hadn't paid for to people in London who
wanted to get hold of an engineering business up there. Seems simple
enough, and the only reason everybody isn't doing it is that it isn't as
simple as it seems. At least, it's simple, but there's a knack in it. I
found out I'd got the knack through my little deals in motor-bikes and
things. As a matter of fact I didn't find out,--some one told me, and I
began to think.... But don't be alarmed if I go bust. I'm on to a much
bigger option now, in the City. Oh! Very much bigger. If it comes off
... you'll see. Lady Massulam is keen on it, and she's something of a
judge.... Any remarks?"
Mr. Prohack looked cautiously at the young man, his own creation, to
whom, only the other day as it seemed, he had been in the habit of
giving one pound per school-term for pocket-money. And he was
affrighted--not by what he had created, but by the astounding
possibilities of fatherhood, which suddenly presented itself to him as a
most dangerous pursuit.
"No remarks," said he, briefly. What remarks indeed could he offer?
Wildly guessing at the truth about his son, in that conversation with
Eve on the previous evening, he had happened to guess right. And his
sermon to Eve prevented now the issue of remarks.
"Oh! Of course!" Charlie burst out. "You can't tell me anything I don't
know already. I'm a pirate. I'm not producing. All the money I make has
to be earned by somebody else before I get hold of it. I'm not doing
any good to my beautiful country. But I did try to find a useful job,
didn't I? My beautiful country wouldn't have me. It only wanted me in
the trenches. Well, it's got to have me. I'll jolly well make it pay
now. I'll squeeze every penny out of it. I'll teach it a lesson. And why
not? I shall only be shoving its own ideas down its throat. Supposing I
hadn't got this knack and I hadn't had _you_. I might have been wearing
all my ribbons and playing a barrel organ in Oxford Street to-day
instead of living at the Grand Babylon."
"You're becoming quite eloquent in your old age," said Mr. Prohack,
tremulously jocular while looking with alarm into his paternal heart.
Was not he himself a pirate? Had not the hundred and fifty thousand that
was coming to him had to be earned by somebody else? Money did not make
itself.
"Well," retorted Charlie, with a grim smile. "There's one thing to be
said for me. When I _do_ talk, I talk."
"And so at last you've begun to read?"
"I'm not going to be the ordinary millionaire. No fear! Make your mind
easy on that point. Besides, reading isn't so bad after all."
"And what about that house you were speaking of? You aren't going to
plant any of your options on me."
"We'll discuss that to-morrow. I must get back to my seat," said Charlie
firmly, moving away. "So long."
"I say," Mr. Prohack summoned him to return. "I'm rather curious about
the methods of you millionaires. Just when did you sign that cheque for
me? You only lent me the money as we were leaving the hotel."
"I made it out while I was talking to the mater and Sis in your box, of
course."
"How simple are the acts of genius--after they're accomplished!"
observed Mr. Prohack. "Naturally you signed it in the box."
As he rejoined his family he yawned, surprising himself. He began to
feel a mysterious fatigue. The effect of the Turkish bath, without
doubt! The remainder of the evening stretched out in front of him,
interminably tedious. The title of the play was misleading. He could not
smack his face. He wished to heaven he could.... And then, after the
play, the ball! Eliza might tell him to dance with her. She would be
quite capable of such a deed. And by universal convention her
suggestions were the equivalent of demands. Nobody ever could or would
refuse to dance with Eliza.... There she was, all her four limbs
superbly displayed, sweetly smiling with her enormous mouth, just as if
the relations between Blaggs and herself were those of Paul and
Virginia. The excited audience, in the professional phrase, was "eating"
her.
V
Mr. Prohack was really a most absurd person. _Smack Your Face_, when it
came to an end, towards midnight, had established itself as an authentic
enormous success; and because Mr. Prohack did not care for it, because
it bored him, because he found it vulgar and tedious and expensive,
because it tasted in his mouth like a dust-and-ashes sandwich, the
fellow actually felt sad; he felt even bitter. He hated to see the
fashionable and splendid audience unwilling to leave the theatre,
cheering one super-favourite, five arch-favourites and fifteen
favourites, and cheering them again and again, and sending the curtain
up and down and up and down time after time. He could not bear that what
he detested should be deliriously admired. He went so far as to form
views about the decadence of the theatre as an institution. Most of all
he was disgusted because his beloved Eve was not disgusted. Eve said
placidly that she did not think much of the affair, but that she had
thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn't mind coming on the next night to see
it afresh. He said gloomily:
"And I've been bringing you up for nearly twenty-five years."
As for Sissie, she was quietly and sternly enthusiastic about a lot of
the dancing. She announced her judgment as an expert, and Charlie agreed
with her, and there was no appeal, and Mr. Prohack had the air of an
ignorant outsider whose opinions were negligible. Further, he was absurd
in that, though he assuredly had no desire whatever to go to the dance,
he fretted at the delay in getting there. Even when they had all got out
to the porch of the theatre he exhibited a controlled but intense
impatience because Charlie did not produce the car instantly from amidst
the confused hordes of cars that waited in the surrounding streets.
Moreover, as regards the ball, he had foolishly put himself in a false
position; for he was compelled to pretend that he had purchased the
tickets because he personally wanted to go to the ball. Had he not been
learning to dance? Now the fact was that he looked forward to the ball
with terror. He had never performed publicly. He proceeded from one
pretence to another. When Charlie stated curtly that he, Charlie, was
going to no ball, he feigned disappointment, saying that Charlie ought
to go for his sister's sake. Yet he was greatly relieved at Charlie's
departure (even in Lady Massulam's car); he could not stomach the
notion of Charlie cynically watching his infant steps on the polished,
treacherous floor. In the matter of Charlie, Oswald Morfey also feigned
disappointment, but for a different reason. Ozzie wanted to have Sissie
as much as possible to himself.
Mr. Prohack yawned in the car.
"You're over-tired, Arthur. It's the Turkish bath," said Eve with
commiseration. This was a bad enough mistake on her part, but she
worsened it by adding: "Perhaps the wisest thing would be for us all to
go home."
Mr. Prohack was extremely exhausted, and would have given his head to go
home; but so odd, so contrary, so deceitful and so silly was his nature
that he replied:
"Darling! Where on earth do you get these ideas from? There's nothing
like a Turkish bath for stimulating you, and I'm not at all tired. I
never felt better in my life. But the atmosphere of that theatre would
make anybody yawn."
The ball was held in a picture-gallery where an exhibition of the
International Portrait Society was in progress. The crush of cars at the
portals was as keen as that at the portals of the Metropolitan. And all
the persons who got out of the cars seemed as fresh as if they had just
got out of bed. Mr. Prohack was astonished at the vast number of people
who didn't care what time they went to bed because they didn't care what
time they arose; he was in danger of being morbidly obsessed by the
extraordinary prevalence of idleness. The rooms were full of brilliant
idlers in all colours. Everybody except chorus girls had thought fit to
appear at this ball in aid of the admirably charitable Chorus Girls' Aid
Association. And as everybody was also on the walls, the dancers had to
compete with their portraits--a competition in which many of them were
well beaten.
After they had visited the supper-room, where both Sissie and her mother
did wonderful feats of degustation and Mr. Prohack drank all that was
good for him, Sissie ordered her father to dance with her. He refused.
She went off with Ozzie, while her parents sat side by side on gold
chairs like ancestors. Sissie repeated her command, and Mr. Prohack was
about to disobey when Eliza Fiddle dawned upon the assemblage.
The supernatural creature had been rehearsing until 3 a.m., she had been
trying on clothes from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. She had borne the chief
weight of _Smack Your Face_, on her unique shoulders for nearly three
hours and a half. She had changed into an unforgettable black
ball-dress, cut to demonstrate in the clearest fashion that her
shoulders had suffered no harm; and here she was as fresh as Aphrodite
from the foam. She immediately set herself to bear the chief weight of
the ball on those same defenceless shoulders; for she was, in theory at
any rate, the leading organiser of the affair, and according to the
entire press it was "her" ball. As soon as he saw her Mr. Prohack had a
most ridiculous fear lest she should pick him out for a dance, and to
protect himself he said "All right" to his daughter.
A fox-trot announced itself. In his own drawing-room, with the door
locked, Mr. Prohack could and did treat a fox-trot as child's play. But
now he realised that he had utterly forgotten every movement of the
infernal thing. Agony as he stood up and took his daughter's hand! An
awful conviction that everybody (who was anybody) was staring to witness
the Terror of the departments trying to jazz in public for the first
time. A sick, sinking fear lest some of his old colleagues from the
Treasury might be lurking in corners to guy him! Agony as he collected
himself and swayed his body slightly to catch the rhythm of the tune!
Where in heaven's name was the first beat in the bar?
"Walk first," said Sissie professionally.... He was in motion.
"Now!" said Sissie. "_One_, two. _One_, two." Miraculously he was
dancing! It was as though the whole room was shouting: "They're off!"
Sissie steered him.
"Don't look at your feet!" said she sharply, and like a schoolboy he
chucked his chin obediently up.... Then he was steering her. Although
her feet were the reverse of enormous he somehow could not keep off
them; but that girl was made of hardy stuff and never winced. He was
doing better. Pride was puffing him. Yet he desired the music to stop.
The music did stop.
"Thanks," he breathed.
"Oh, no!" said she. "That's not all." The dancers clapped and the
orchestra resumed. He started again. Couples surged around him, and
sometimes he avoided them and sometimes he did not. Then he saw a head
bobbing not far away, as if it were one cork and he another on a choppy
sea. It resembled Eve's head. It was Eve's head. She was dancing with
Oswald Morfey. He had never supposed that Eve could dance these new
dances.
"Let's stop," said he.
"Certainly not," Sissie forbade. "We must finish it." He finished it,
rather breathless and dizzy. He had lived through it.
"You're perfectly wonderful, Arthur," said Eve when they met.
"Oh no! I'm no good."
"I was frightfully nervous about you at first," said Sissie.
He said briefly:
"You needn't have been. I wasn't."
A little later Eve said to him:
"Aren't you going to ask _me_ to dance, Arthur?"
Dancing with Eve was not quite like dancing with Sissie, but they safely
survived deadly perils. And Mr. Prohack perspired in a very healthy
fashion.
"You dance really beautifully, dear," said Eve, benevolently smiling.
After that he cut himself free and roamed about. He wanted to ask Eliza
Fiddle to dance, and also he didn't want to ask her to dance. However,
he had apparently ceased to exist for her. Ozzie had introduced him to
several radiant young creatures. He wanted to ask them to dance; but he
dared not. And he was furious with himself. To dance with one's daughter
and wife was well enough in its way, but it was not the real thing. It
was without salt. One or two of the radiances glanced at him with
inviting eyes, but no, he dared not face it. He grew gloomy, gloomier.
He thought angrily: "All this is not for me. I'm a middle-aged fool, and
I've known it all along." Life lost its savour and became repugnant.
Fatigue punished him, and simultaneously reduced two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds to the value of about fourpence. It was Eve who got him
away.
"Home," he called to Carthew, after Eve and Sissie had said good-bye to
Ozzie and stowed themselves into the car.
"Excuse me," said Sissie. "You have to deliver me at the Grand Babylon
first."
He had forgotten! This détour was the acutest torture of the night. He
could no longer bear not to be in bed. And when, after endless nocturnal
miles, he did finally get home and into bed, he sighed as one taken off
the rack. Ah! The delicious contact with the pillow!
VI
But there are certain persons who, although their minds are logical
enough, have illogical bodies. Mr. Prohack was one of these. His
ridiculous physical organism (as he had once informed Dr. Veiga) was
least capable of going to sleep when it was most fatigued. If Mr.
Prohack's body had retired to bed four hours earlier than in fact it
did, Mr. Prohack would have slept instantly and with ease. Now, despite
delicious contact with the pillow, he could not 'get off.' And his mind,
influenced by his body, grew restless, then excited, then distressingly
realistic. His mind began to ask fundamental questions, questions not a
bit original but none the less very awkward.
"You've had your first idle day, Mr. Prohack," said his mind
challengingly instead of composing itself to slumber. "It was organised
on scientific lines. It was carried out with conscientiousness. And look
at you! And look at me! You've had a few good moments, as for example at
the Turkish bath, but do you want a succession of such days? Could you
survive a succession of such days? Would you even care to acquire a
hundred and fifty thousand pounds every day? You have eaten too much and
drunk too much, and run too hard after pleasure, and been too much
bored, and met too many antipathetic people, and squandered too much
money, and set a thoroughly bad example to your family. You have been
happy only in spasms. Your health is good; you are cured of your malady.
Does that render you any more contented? It does not. You have
complicated your existence in the hope of improving it. But have you
improved it? No. You ought to simplify your existence. But will you? You
will not. All your strength of purpose will be needed to prevent still
further complications being woven into your existence. To inherit a
hundred thousand pounds was your misfortune. But deliberately to
increase the sum to a quarter of a million was your fault. You were
happier at the Treasury. You left the Treasury on account of illness.
You are not ill any more. Will you go back to the Treasury? No. You will
never go back, because your powerful commonsense tells you that to
return to the Treasury with an income of twenty thousand a year would be
grotesque. And rather than be grotesque you would suffer. Again,
rightly. Nothing is worse than to be grotesque."
"Further," said his mind, "you have started your son on a sinister
career of adventure that may end in calamity. You have ministered to
your daughter's latent frivolity. You have put temptations in the way of
your wife which she cannot withstand. You have developed yourself into a
waster. What is the remedy? Obviously to dispose of your money. But your
ladies would not permit you to do so and they are entitled to be heard
on the point. Moreover, how could you dispose of it? Not in charity,
because you are convinced of the grave social mischievousness of
charity. And not in helping any great social movement, because you are
not silly enough not to know that the lavishing of wealth never really
aids, but most viciously hinders, the proper evolution of a society. And
you cannot save your income and let it accumulate, because if you did
you would once again be tumbling into the grotesque; and you would,
further, be leaving to your successors a legacy of evil which no man is
justified in leaving to his successors. No! Your case is in practice
irremediable. Like the murderer on the scaffold, you are the victim of
circumstances. And not one human being in a million will pity you. You
are a living tragedy which only death can end."
During this disconcerting session Eve had been mysteriously engaged in
the boudoir. She now came into the dark bedroom.
"What?" she softly murmured, hearing Mr. Prohack's restlessness. "Not
asleep, darling?" She bent over him and kissed him and her kiss was even
softer, more soporific, than her voice. "Now do go to sleep."
And Mr. Prohack went to sleep, and his last waking thought was, with the
feel of the kiss on his nose (the poor woman had aimed badly in the
dark): "Anyway this tragedy has one compensation, of which a hundred
quarter of a millions can't deprive me."