Mr. Prohack Read online

  MR. PROHACK

  BY

  ARNOLD BENNETT

  Author of "Clayhanger," etc.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I THE NEW POOR II FROM THE DEAD III THE LAW IV EVE'S HEADACHE V CHARLIE VI SISSIE VII THE SYMPATHETIC QUACK VIII SISSIE'S BUSINESS IX COLLISION X THE THEORY OF IDLENESS XI NEURASTHENIA CURED XII THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS XIII FURTHER IDLENESS XIV END OF AN IDLE DAY XV THE HEAVY FATHER XVI TRANSFER OF MIMI XVII ROMANCE XVIII A HOMELESS NIGHT XIX THE RECEPTION XX THE SILENT TOWER XXI EVE'S MARTYRDOM XXII MR. PROHACK'S TRIUMPH XXIII THE YACHT

  CHAPTER I

  THE NEW POOR

  I

  Arthur Charles Prohack came downstairs at eight thirty, as usual, andfound breakfast ready in the empty dining-room. This pleased him,because there was nothing in life he hated more than to be hurried. Forhim, hell was a place of which the inhabitants always had an eye on theclock and the clock was always further advanced than they had hoped.

  The dining-room, simply furnished with reproductions of chasteChippendale, and chilled to the uncomfortable low temperature that hardyBritons pretend to enjoy, formed part of an unassailably correct houseof mid-Victorian style and antiquity; and the house formed part of anunassailably correct square just behind Hyde Park Gardens.(Taxi-drivers, when told the name of the square, had to reflect for afifth of a second before they could recall its exact situation.)

  Mr. Prohack was a fairly tall man, with a big head, big features, and abeard. His characteristic expression denoted benevolence based on anironic realisation of the humanity of human nature. He was forty-sixyears of age and looked it. He had been for more than twenty years atthe Treasury, in which organism he had now attained a certainimportance. He was a Companion of the Bath. He exulted in the fact thatthe Order of the Bath took precedence of those bumptious Orders, Star ofIndia, St. Michael and St. George, Indian Empire, Royal Victorian andBritish Empire; but he laughed at his wife for so exulting. If thematter happened to be mentioned he would point out that in the table ofprecedence Companions of the Bath ranked immediately below Masters inLunacy.

  He was proud of the Treasury's war record. Other departments of Statehad swollen to amazing dimensions during the war. The Treasury, whileits work had been multiplied a hundredfold, had increased its personnelby only a negligible percentage. It was the cheapest of all thedepartments, the most efficient, and the most powerful. The War Office,the Admiralty, and perhaps one other department presided over by apersonality whom the Prime Minister feared, did certainly defy and evenignore the Treasury. But the remaining departments (and especially the"mushroom ministries") might scheme as much as they liked,--they coulddo nothing until the Treasury had approved their enterprises. Modest Mr.Prohack was among the chief arbiters of destiny for them. He had dailysat in a chair by himself and approved or disapproved according to hisconscience and the rules of the Exchequer; and his fiats, in practice,had gone forth as the fiats of the Treasury. Moreover he could not bebullied, for he was full of the sense that the whole constitution andmoral force of the British Empire stood waiting to back him. Scarcelyknown beyond the Treasury, within the Treasury he had acquired areputation as "the terror of the departments." Several times irritatedMinisters or their high subordinates had protested that the Treasury's(Mr. Prohack's) passion for rules, its demands for scientific evidence,and its sceptical disposition were losing the war. Mr. Prohack had, ineffect retorted: "Departmentally considered, losing the war is adetail." He had retorted: "Wild cats will not win the war." And he hadretorted: "I know nothing but my duty."

  In the end the war was not lost, and Mr. Prohack reckoned that hepersonally, by the exercise of courage in the face of grave danger, hadsaved to the country five hundred and forty-six millions of thecountry's money. At any rate he had exercised a real influence over theconduct of the war. On one occasion, a chief being absent, he had had toanswer a summons to the Inner Cabinet. Of this occasion he had remarkedto his excited wife: "They were far more nervous than I was."

  Despite all this, the great public had never heard of him. His portraithad never appeared in the illustrated papers. His wife's portrait, as"War-worker and wife of a great official," had never appeared in theillustrated papers. No character sketch of him had ever been printed.His opinions on any subject had never been telephonically or otherwisedemanded by the editors of up-to-date dailies. His news-value indeed wasabsolutely nil. In _Who's Who_ he had only four lines of space.

  Mr. Prohack's breakfast consisted of bacon, dry toast, coffee,marmalade, _The Times_ and _The Daily Picture_. The latter was full ofbrides and bridegrooms, football, enigmatic murder trials, young womenin their fluffy underclothes, medicines, pugilists, cinema stars, thebiggest pumpkin of the season, uplift, and inspired prophecy concerninghorses and company shares; together with a few brief unillustrated notesabout civil war in Ireland, famine in Central Europe, and the collapseof realms.

  II

  "Ah! So I've caught you!" said his wife, coming brightly into the room.She was a buxom woman of forty-three. Her black hair was elaboratelydone for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir instead of a frock; itwas Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered withflora, fauna, and grotesques. She always thus visited her husband atbreakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to himthat her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and thesatisfaction of his capricious tastes.

  "Many years ago," said Mr. Prohack.

  "You make a fuss about buying _The Daily Picture_ for me. You say ithumiliates you to see it in the house, and I don't know what. But Icatch you reading it yourself, and before you've opened _The Times_!Dear, dear! That bacon's a cinder and I daren't say anything to her."

  "Lady," replied Mr. Prohack, "we all have something base in our natures.Sin springs from opportunity. I cannot resist the damned paper." And hestuck his fork into the fair frock-coat of a fatuous bridegroom comingout of church.

  "My fault again!" the wife remarked brightly.

  The husband changed the subject:

  "I suppose that your son and daughter are still asleep?"

  "Well, dearest, you know that they were both at that dance last night."

  "They ought not to have been. The popular idea that life is a shimmy isa dangerous illusion." Mr. Prohack felt the epigram to be third-rate,but he carried it off lightly.

  "Sissie only went because Charlie wanted to go, and all I can say isthat it's a nice thing if Charlie isn't to be allowed to enjoy himselfnow the war's over--after all he's been through."

  "You're mixing up two quite different things. I bet that if Charliecommitted murder you'd go into the witness-box and tell the judge he'dbeen wounded twice and won the Military Cross."

  "This is one of your pernickety mornings."

  "Seeing that your debauched children woke me up at three fifteen--!"

  "They woke me up too."

  "That's different. You can go to sleep again. I can't. You rather likebeing wakened up, because you take a positively sensual pleasure inturning over and going to sleep again."

  "You hate me for that."

  "I do."

  "I make you very unhappy sometimes, don't I?"

  "Eve, you are a confounded liar, and you know it. You have never causedme a moment's unhappiness. You may annoy me. You may exasperate me. Youare frequently unspeakable. But you have never made me unhappy. And why?Because I am one of the few exponents of romantic passion left in thiscity. My passion for you transcends my reason. I am a fool, but I am amagnificent fool. And the greatest miracle of modern times is that aftertwenty-four years of marriage you should be able to give me pleasure byperching your stout body on the arm of my chair as you are doing."

  "Arthur, I'm not stout."<
br />
  "Yes, you are. You're enormous. But hang it, I'm such a morbid fool Ilike you enormous."

  Mrs. Prohack, smiling mysteriously, remarked in a casual tone, as shelooked at _The Daily Picture_:

  "Why _do_ people let their photographs get into the papers? It's awfullyvulgar."

  "It is. But we're all vulgar to-day. Look at that!" He pointed to thepage. "The granddaughter of a duke who refused the hand of a princesssells her name and her face to a firm of ship-owners who keep newspaperslike their grandfathers kept pigeons.... But perhaps I'm only making anoise like a man of fifty."

  "You aren't fifty."

  "I'm five hundred. And this coffee is remarkably thin."

  "Let me taste it."

  "Yes, you'd rob me of my coffee now!" said Mr. Prohack, surrendering hiscup. "Is it thin, or isn't it? I pride myself on living the higher life;my stomach is not my inexorable deity; but even on the mountain topwhich I inhabit there must be a limit to the thinness of the coffee."

  Eve (as he called her, after the mother and prototype of all women--herearthly name was Marian) sipped the coffee. She wrinkled her foreheadand then glanced at him in trouble.

  "Yes, it's thin," she said. "But I've had to ration the cook. Oh,Arthur, I _am_ going to make you unhappy after all. It's impossible forme to manage any longer on the housekeeping allowance."

  "Why didn't you tell me before, child?"

  "I have told you 'before,'" said she. "If you hadn't happened to mentionthe coffee, I mightn't have said anything for another fortnight. Youstarted to give me more money in June, and you said that was the utmostlimit you could go to, and I believed it was. But it isn't enough. Ihate to bother you, and I feel ashamed--"

  "That's ridiculous. Why should you feel ashamed?"

  "Well, I'm like that."

  "You're revelling in your own virtuousness, my girl. Now in last week's_Economist_ it said that the Index Number of commodity prices hadslightly fallen these last few weeks."

  "I don't know anything about indexes and the _Economist_," Eve retorted."But I know what coffee is a pound, and I know what the tradesmen'sbooks are--"

  At this point she cried without warning.

  "No," murmured Mr. Prohack, soothingly, caressingly. "You mustn'tbaptise me. I couldn't bear it." And he kissed her eyes.