ROMANCE
I
The very next day Mr. Prohack had a plutocratic mood of overbearingness,
which led to a sudden change in his location--the same being transferred
to Frinton-on-Sea. The mood was brought about by a visit to the City, at
the summons of Paul Spinner; and the visit included conversations not
only with Paul, but with Smathe and Smathe, the solicitors, and with a
firm of stockbrokers. Paul handed over to his crony saleable securities,
chiefly in the shape of scrip of the greatest oil-combine and its
subsidiaries, for a vast amount, and advised Mr. Prohack to hold on to
them, as, owing to the present depression due to the imminence of a
great strike, they were likely to be "marked higher" before Mr. Prohack
was much older. Mr. Prohack declined the advice, and he also declined
the advice of solicitors and stockbrokers, who were both full of wisdom
and of devices for increasing capital values. What these firms knew
about the future, and about the consequences of causes and about "the
psychology of the markets" astounded the simple Terror of the
departments; and it was probably unanswerable. But, being full of
riches, Mr. Prohack did not trouble to answer it; he merely swept it
away with a tyrannical and impatient gesture, which gesture somehow
mysteriously established him at once as a great authority on the art of
investment.
"Now listen to me," said he imperiously, and the manipulators of shares
listened, recalling to themselves that Mr. Prohack had been a Treasury
official for over twenty years and must therefore be worth
hearing--although the manipulators commonly spent many hours a week in
asserting, in the press and elsewhere, that Treasury officials
comprehended naught of finance. "Now listen to me. I don't care a hang
about my capital. It may decrease or increase, and I shan't care. All I
care for is my interest. I want to be absolutely sure that my interest
will tumble automatically into my bank on fixed dates. No other
consideration touches me. I'm not a gambler. I'm not a usurer.
Industrial development leaves me cold, and if I should ever feel any
desire to knit the Empire closer together I'll try to do it without
making a profit out of it. At the moment all I'm after is certain, sure,
fixed interest. Hence--Government securities, British Government or
Colonial! Britain is of course rotten to the core, always was, always
will be. Still, I'll take my chances. I'm infernally insular where
investment is concerned. There's one thing to be said about the British
Empire--you do know where you are in it. And I don't mind some municipal
stocks. I even want some. I can conceive the smash-up of the British
Empire, but I cannot conceive Manchester defaulting in its interest
payments. Can you?" And he looked round and paused for a reply, and no
reply came. Nobody dared to boast himself capable of conceiving
Manchester's default.
Towards the end of the arduous day Mr. Prohack departed from the City,
leaving behind him an immense reputation for financial sagacity, and a
scheme of investment under which he could utterly count upon a modest
regular income of £17,000 per annum. He was sacrificing over £5,000 per
annum in order to be free from an investor's anxieties, and he reckoned
that his peace of mind was cheap at a hundred pounds a week. This detail
alone shows to what an extent the man's taste for costly luxuries had
grown.
Naturally he arrived home swollen. Now it happened that Eve also, by
reason of her triumph in regard to the house in Manchester Square, had
swelled head. A conflict of individualities occurred. A trifle, even a
quite pleasant trifle! Nothing that the servants might not hear with
advantage. But before you could say 'knife' Mr. Prohack had said that he
would go away for a holiday and abandon Eve to manage the removal to
Manchester Square how she chose, and Eve had leapt on to the challenge
and it was settled that Mr. Prohack should go to Frinton-on-Sea.
Eve selected Frinton-on-Sea for him because Dr. Veiga had recommended it
for herself. She had a broad notion of marriage as a commonwealth. She
loved to take Mr. Prohack's medicines, and she was now insisting on his
taking her watering-places. Mr. Prohack said that the threatened great
strike might prevent his journey. Pooh! She laughed at such fears. She
drove him herself to Liverpool Street.
"You may see your friend Lady Massulam," said she, as the car entered
the precincts of the station. (Once again he was struck by the words
'your friend' prefixed to Lady Massulam; but he offered no comment on
them.)
"Why Lady Massulam?" he asked.
"Didn't you know she's got a house at Frinton?" replied Mrs. Prohack.
"Everybody has in these days. It's the thing."
She didn't see him into the train, because she was in a hurry about
butlers. Mr. Prohack was cast loose in the booking-hall and had a fine
novel sensation of freedom.
II
Never since marriage had he taken a holiday alone--never desired to do
so. He felt himself to be on the edge of romance. Frinton, for example,
presented itself as a city of romance. He knew it not, knew scarcely any
English seaside, having always managed to spend his holidays abroad; but
Frinton must, he was convinced, be strangely romantic. The train thither
had an aspect which strengthened this conviction. It consisted largely
of first-class coaches, and in the window of nearly every first-class
compartment and saloon was exhibited a notice: "This compartment (or
saloon) is reserved for members of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders
Association." Mr. Prohack, being still somewhat swollen, decided that he
was a member of the North Essex Season-Ticket-Holders Association and
acted accordingly. Otherwise he might never have reached Frinton.
He found himself in a sort of club, about sixty feet by six, where
everybody knew everybody except Mr. Prohack, and where cards and other
games, tea and other drinks, tobacco and other weeds, were being played
and consumed in an atmosphere of the utmost conviviality. Mr. Prohack
was ignored, but he was not objected to. His fellow-travellers regarded
him cautiously, as a new chum. The head attendant and dispenser was very
affable, as to a promising neophyte. Only the ticket-inspector singled
him out from all the rest by stopping in front of him.
"My last hour has come," thought Mr. Prohack as he produced his
miserable white return-ticket.
All stared; the inspector stared; but nothing happened. Mr. Prohack had
a sense of reprieve, and also of having been baptised or inducted into a
secret society. He listened heartily to forty conversations about
physical diversions and luxuries and about the malignant and fatuous
wrong-headedness of men who went on strike, and about the approaching
catastrophic end of all things.
Meanwhile, at any rate in the coach, the fabric of society seemed to be
holding together fairly well. Before the train was half-way to Frinton
Mr. Prohack judged--and rightly--that he was already there. The fact was
that he had been there ever since entering the saloon. After two hours
the train, greatly diminished in length, came to rest in the midst of a
dark flatness, and the entire population of the coach vanished out of it
in the twinkling of an eye, and Mr. Prohack saw the name 'Frinton' on a
flickering oil-lamp, and realised that he was at the gates of the most
fashionable resort in England, a spot where even the ozone was
exclusive. The station staff marvelled at him because he didn't know
where the Majestic Hotel was and because he asked without notice for a
taxi, fly, omnibus or anything on wheels. All the other passengers had
disappeared. The exclusive ozone was heavy with exciting romance for Mr.
Prohack as the station staff considered his unique and incomprehensible
case. Then a tiny omnibus materialised out of the night.
"Is this the Majestic bus?" Mr. Prohack enquired of the driver.
"Well, it is if you like, sir," the driver answered.
Mr. Prohack did like....
The Majestic was large and prim, resembling a Swiss hotel in its
furniture, the language and composition of the menu, the dialect of the
waiters; but it was about fifteen degrees colder than the highest hotel
in Switzerland. The dining-room was shaded with rose-shaded lamps and it
susurrated with the polite whisperings of elegant couples and trios, and
the entremet was cabinet pudding: a fine display considering the depth
of winter and of the off-season.
Mr. Prohack went off after dinner for a sharp walk in the east wind.
Solitude! Blackness! Night! East wind in the bushes of gardens that
shielded the façades of large houses! Not a soul! Not a policeman! He
descended precariously to the vast, smooth beach. The sound of the sea!
Romance! Mr. Prohack seemed to walk for miles, like Ozymandias, on the
lone and level sands. Then he fancied he descried a moving object. He
was not mistaken. It approached him. It became a man and a woman. It
became a man and a young woman arm-in-arm and soul-in-soul. And there
was nothing but the locked couple, and the sound of the invisible,
immeasurable sea, and the east wind, and Mr. Prohack. Romance thrilled
through Mr. Prohack's spine.
"So I said to him," the man was saying to the young woman as the pair
passed Mr. Prohack, "I said to him 'I could do with a pint o' that,' I
said."
III
The next morning Mr. Prohack rose with alacrity from a hard bed, and was
greeted in the hall by the manager of the hotel, an enormous,
middle-aged, sun-burnt, jolly person in flannels and an incandescent
blazer, who asked him about his interests in golf and hard-court tennis.
Mr. Prohack, steeped as he felt himself to be in strange romance, was
prepared to be interested in these games, but the self-protective
instinct warned him that since these games could not be played alone
they would, if he indulged in them, bring him into contact with people
who might prove tedious. He therefore changed the conversation and asked
whether he could have strawberry jam to his breakfast. The manager's
face instantly changed, hardening to severity. Was Mr. Prohack
eccentric? Did he desire to disturb the serene habits of the hotel? The
manager promised to see. He did see, and announced that he was 'afraid'
that Mr. Prohack could not have strawberry jam to his breakfast. And Mr.
Prohack said to himself: "What would my son Charles have done?" During a
solitary breakfast (with blackberry jam) in the huge dining-room, Mr.
Prohack decided that Charles would have approached the manager
differently.
After breakfast he saw the manager again, and he did not enquire from
the manager whether there was any chance of hiring a motor-car. He said
briefly:
"I want to hire a car, please. It must be round here in half an hour,
sharp."
"I will attend to the matter myself," said the manager humbly.
The car kept the rendezvous, and Mr. Prohack inspected Frinton from the
car. He admired the magnificent reserve of Frinton, which was the most
English place he had ever seen. The houses gave nothing away; the
shivering shopping ladies in the streets gave nothing away; and
certainly the shops gave nothing away. The newspaper placards announced
what seemed to be equivalent to the end of the existing social order;
but Frinton apparently did not blench nor tremble; it went calmly and
powerfully forward into the day (which was Saturday), relying upon the
great British axiom: "To ignore is to destroy." It ignored the end of
the existing social order, and lo! there was no end. Up and down various
long and infinitely correct avenues of sheltered homes drove Mr.
Prohack, and was everywhere baffled in his human desire to meet Frinton
half-way. He stopped the car at the Post Office and telegraphed to his
wife: "No strawberry jam in this city. Love. Arthur." The girl behind
the counter said: "One and a penny, please," and looked hard at him.
Five minutes later he returned to the Post Office and telegraphed to his
wife: "Omitted to say in previous telegram that Frinton is the greatest
expression of Anglo-Saxon character I have ever encountered. Love.
Arthur." The girl behind the counter said: "Two and three, please,"
stared harder at him, and blushed. Perceiving the blush, Mr. Prohack at
once despatched a third telegram to his wife: "But it has charming
weaknesses. Love. Arthur." Extraordinarily happy and gay, he drove out
of Frinton to see the remainder of North East Essex in the enheartening
east wind.
In the evening he fell asleep in the lounge while waiting for dinner,
having dressed a great deal too soon and being a great deal too full of
east wind. When he woke up he noticed a different atmosphere in the
hotel. Youth and brightness had entered it. The lounge had vivacity and
expectation; and Mr. Prohack learned that Saturday night was gala, with
a dance and special bridge. Not even the news that the star-guest of the
hotel, Lord Partick, was suddenly indisposed and confined to his room
could dash the new optimism of the place.
At dinner the manager walked around the little tables and gorgeously
babbled with diners about the sportive feats of the day. And Mr.
Prohack, seeing that his own turn was coming, began to feel as if he was
on board a ship. He feared the worst and the worst came.
"Perhaps you'd like to make a fourth at bridge. If so--" said the
manager jollily. "Or perhaps you dance. If so--"
Mr. Prohack shut his eyes and gave forth vague affirmatives.
And as soon as the manager had left him he gazed around the room at the
too-blonde women young and old and wondered fearfully which would be his
portion for bridge or dance. In the lounge after dinner he ignited a
cigar and watched the lighting up of the ball-room (ordinarily the
drawing-room) and the entry of the musicians therein. Then he observed
the manager chatting with two haughty beldames and an aged gentleman,
and they all three cast assaying glances upon Mr. Prohack, and Mr.
Prohack knew that he had been destined for bridge, not dancing, and the
manager moved towards him, and Mr. Prohack breathed his last sigh but
one....
But the revolving doors at the entrance revolved, and out of the
Frintonian night appeared Lady Massulam, magnificently enveloped. Seldom
had Mr. Prohack's breast received a deeper draught of mingled
astonishment and solace. Hitherto he had not greatly cared for Lady
Massulam, and could not see what Charlie saw in her. Now he saw what
Charlie saw and perhaps more also. She had more than dignity,--she had
style. And she femininely challenged. She was like a breeze on the
French shore to a British barque cruising dully in the Channel. She
welcomed the sight of Mr. Prohack, and her greeting of him made a
considerable change in the managerial attitude towards the unassuming
Terror of the departments. The manager respectfully informed Lady
Massulam that Lord Partick was indisposed, and respectfully took himself
off. Lady Massulam and Mr. Prohack then proceeded to treat each other
like new toys. Mr. Prohack had to explain why he was at Frinton, and
Lady Massulam explained that whenever she was in Frinton at the week-end
she always came to the Majestic to play bridge with old Lord Partick. It
flattered him; she liked him, though he had bought his peerage; he was a
fine player--so was she; and lastly they had had business relations, and
financially Lord Partick watched over her as over a young girl.
Mr. Prohack was relieved thus to learn that Lady Massulam had not
strolled into the Majestic Hotel, Frinton, to play bridge with nobody in
particular. Still, she was evidently well known to the habitués, several
of whom approached to greet her. She temporised with them in her calm
Latin manner, neither encouraging nor discouraging their advances, and
turning back to Mr. Prohack by her side at every surcease.
"We shall be compelled to play bridge if we do not take care," she
murmured in his ear, as a dowager larger than herself loomed up.
"Yes," murmured Mr. Prohack, "I've been feeling the danger ever since
dinner. Will you dance with me,--not of course as a pleasure--I won't
flatter myself--but as a means of salvation?"
The dowager bore down with a most definite suggestion for bridge in the
card-room. Lady Massulam definitely stated that she was engaged to
dance....
Well, of course Lady Massulam was something of a galleon herself; but
she was a beautiful dancer; that is to say, she responded perfectly to
the male volition; she needed no pushing and no pulling; she moved under
his will as lightly as a young girl. Her elaborately dressed hair had an
agreeable scent; her complexion was a highly successful achievement;
everything about her had a quiet and yet a dazzling elegance which had
been obtained regard-less of expense. As for her figure, it was on a
considerable scale, but its important contours had a soft and delicate
charm. And all that was nothing in the estimation of Mr. Prohack
compared with her glance. At intervals in the fox-trot he caught the
glance. It was arch, flirtatious, eternally youthful, challenging; and
it expressed pleasure in the fox-trot. Mr. Prohack was dancing better
than ever before in his career as a dancer. She made him dance better.
She was not the same woman whom he had first met at lunch at the Grand
Babylon Hotel. She was a new revelation, packed with possibilities. Mr.
Prohack recalled his wife's phrase: "You know she adores you." He hadn't
known. Honestly such an idea had not occurred to him. But did she adore
him? Not "adore"--naturally--but had she a bit of a fancy for him?
Mr. Prohack became the youngest man in the room,--an extraordinary case
of rejuvenescence. He surveyed the room with triumph. He sniffed up the
brassy and clicking music into his vibrating nostrils. He felt no envy
of any man in the room. When the band paused he clapped like a child for
another dose of fox-trot. At the end of the third dose they were both a
little breathless and they had ices. After a waltz they both realised
that excess would be imprudent, and returned to the lounge.
"I wish you'd tell me something about my son," said Mr. Prohack. "I
think you must be the greatest living authority on him."
"Here?" exclaimed Lady Massulam.
"Anywhere. Any time."
"It would be safer at my house," said Lady Massulam. "But before I go I
must just write a little note to Lord Partick. He will expect it."
That was how she invited him to The Lone Cedar, the same being her
famous bungalow on the Front.
IV
"Your son," said Lady Massulam, in a familiar tone, but most
reassuringly like an aunt of Charlie's, after she had explained how they
had met in Glasgow through being distantly connected by the same
business deal, and how she had been impressed by Charlie's youthful
capacity, "your son has very great talent for big affairs, but he is now
playing a dangerous game--far more dangerous than he imagines, and he
will not be warned. He is selling something he hasn't got before he
knows what price he will have to pay for it."
"Ah!" breathed Mr. Prohack.
They were sitting together in the richly ornamented bungalow
drawing-room, by the fire. Lady Massulam sat up straight in her sober
and yet daring evening frock. Mr. Prohack lounged with formless grace in
a vast easy-chair neighbouring a whiskey-and-soda. She had not asked him
to smoke; he did not smoke, and he had no wish to smoke. She was a
gorgeously mature specimen of a woman. He imagined her young, and he
decided that he preferred the autumn to the spring. She went on talking
of finance.
"She is moving in regions that Eve can never know," he thought. "But how
did Eve perceive that she had taken a fancy to me?"
The alleged danger to Charlie scarcely disturbed him. Her appreciation
or depreciation of Charlie interested him only in so far as it was a
vehicle for the expression of her personality. He had never met such a
woman. He responded to her with a vivacity that surprised himself. He
looked surreptitiously round the room, brilliantly lighted here, and
there obscure, and he comprehended how every detail of its varied
sumptuosity aptly illustrated her mind and heart. His own heart was full
of quite new sensations.
"Of course," she was saying, "if Charles is to become the really great
figure that he might be, he will have to cure his greatest fault, and
perhaps it is incurable."
"I know what that is," said Mr. Prohack, softly but positively.
"What is it?" Her glance met his.
"His confounded reserve, lack of elasticity, lack of adaptability. The
old British illusion that everything will come to him who won't budge.
Why, it's a ten-horse-power effort for him even to smile!"
Lady Massulam seemed to leap from her chair, and she broke swiftly into
French:
"Oh! You comprehend then, you? If you knew what I have suffered in your
terrible England! But you do not suspect what I have suffered! I advance
myself. They retire before me. I advance myself again. They retire
again. I open. They close. Do they begin? Never! It is always I who must
begin! Do I make a natural gesture--they say to themselves, 'What a
strange woman! How indiscreet! But she is foreign.' They lift their
shoulders. Am I frank--they pity me. They give themselves never! They
are shut like their lips over their long teeth. Ah, but they have taught
me. In twenty years have I not learnt the lesson? There is nobody among
you who can be more shut-tight than me. I flatter myself that I can be
more terrible than any English woman or man. You do not catch me now!
But what a martyrdom!... I might return to France? No! I am become too
English. In Paris I should resemble an _émigrée_. And people would say:
'What is that? It is like nothing at all. It has no name.' Besides, I
like you English. You are terrible, but one can count on you.... _Vous y
êtes?_"
"_J'y suis_," replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.
Lady Massulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped.
"Pardon!" she cried, aghast. "It is yours," and planked the tumbler down
again on the lacquered table.
Mr. Prohack had the wit to drink also. They went on talking.... A silver
tongue vibrated from the hall with solemn British deliberation--One!
Two! The air throbbed to the sound for many seconds.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, rising in alarm. "And this is
Frinton!" She let him out herself, with all soft precautions against
shocking the Frintonian world. His manner of regaining the Majestic
Hotel can only be described by saying that he 'effected an entrance'
into it. He went to bed but not to sleep.
"What the deuce has happened to me?" he asked himself amazed. "Is it
anything serious? Or am I merely English after all?"
V
Late the next morning, when he was dreaming, a servant awoke him with
the information that a chauffeur was demanding him. But he was sleepy
and slept again. Between noon and one o'clock he encountered the
chauffeur. It was Carthew, who stated that his mistress had sent him
with the car. She felt that he would need the car to go about in. As for
her, she would manage without it.
Mr. Prohack remained silent for a few moments and then said:
"Be ready to start in a quarter of an hour."
"Before lunch, sir?"
"Before lunch."
Mr. Prohack paid his bill and packed.
"Which way, sir?" Carthew asked, as the Eagle moved from under the
portico of the hotel.
"There is only one road out of Frinton," said Mr. Prohack. "It's the
road you came in by. Take it. I want to get off as quickly as possible.
The climate of this place is the most dangerous and deceptive I was ever
in."
"Really, sir!" responded Carthew, polite but indifferent. "The east wind
I suppose, sir?"
"Not at all. The south wind."