III
Having received no suggestion from his daughter as to how he shoulddispose of himself while awaiting her leisure, Mr. Prohack made his wayback to the guardian's cubicle. And there he discovered a chubby andintentionally-young man in the act of gazing through the small windowinto the studio exactly as he himself had been gazing a few minutesearlier.
"Hel_lo_, Prohack!" exclaimed the chubby and intentionally-young man,with the utmost geniality and calmness.
"How d'ye do?" responded Mr. Prohack with just as much calmness andperhaps ten per cent less geniality. Mr. Prohack was a peculiar fellow,and that on this occasion he gave rather less geniality than he receivedwas due to the fact that he had never before spoken to the cupid in hislife and that he was wondering whether membership of the same clubentirely justified so informal a mode of address--without anintroduction and outside the club premises. For, like all modest men,Mr. Prohack had some sort of a notion of his own dignity, a sort of anotion that occasionally took him quite by surprise. Mr. Prohack did noteven know the surname of his aggressor. He only knew that he neveroverheard other men call him anything but "Ozzie." Had not Mr. Prohackbeen buried away all his life in the catacombs of the Treasury and thuscut off from the great world-movement, he would have been fully awarethat Oswald Morfey was a person of importance in the West End of London,that he was an outstanding phenomenon of the age, that he followed veryclosely all the varying curves of the great world-movement, that he wasconstantly to be seen on the pavements of Piccadilly, Bond Street, St.James's Street, Pall Mall and Hammersmith, that he was never absent froma good first night or a private view of very new or very old pictures ora distinguished concert or a poetry-reading or a fashionable auction atChristie's, that he received invitations to dinner for every night inthe week and accepted all those that did not clash with the others, thatin return for these abundant meals he gave about once a month atea-party in his trifling Japanese flat in Bruton Street, where thesandwiches were as thin as the sound of the harpsichord which eighteenthcentury ladies played at his request; and that he was in truth what Mr.Asprey Chown called "social secretary" to Mr. Asprey Chown.
Mr. Prohack might be excused for his ignorance of this last fact, forthe relation between Asprey Chown and Ozzie was never very clearlydefined--at any rate by Ozzie. He had no doubt learned, from an enforcedacquaintance with the sides of motor-omnibuses, that Mr. Asprey Chownwas a theatre-manager of some activity, but he certainly had not trulycomprehended that Mr. Asprey Chown was head of one of the two greatrival theatrical combines and reputed to be the most accomplishedshowman in the Western hemisphere, with a jewelled finger in notableside-enterprises such as prize-fights, restaurants, and industrialcompanies. The knowing ones from whom naught is hidden held that AspreyChown had never given a clearer proof of genius than in engaging thisharmless and indefatigable parasite of the West End to be his socialsecretary. The knowing ones said further that whereas Ozzie was savingmoney, nobody could be sure that Asprey Chown was saving money. Theengagement had a double effect--it at once put Asprey Chown into touchwith everything that could be useful to him for the purposes of specialbooming, and it put Ozzie into touch with half the theatrical stars ofLondon--in an age when a first-rate heroine of revue was worth at leasttwo duchesses and a Dame in the scale of social values.
Mr. Oswald Morfey, doubtless in order to balance the modernity of histaste in the arts, wore a tight black stock and a wide eyeglass ribbonin the daytime, and in the evening permitted himself to associate a softsilk shirt with a swallow-tail coat. It was to Mr. Prohack's secondary(and more exclusive) club that he belonged. Inoffensive though he was,he had managed innocently to offend Mr. Prohack. "Who is the fellow?"Mr. Prohack had once asked a friend in the club, and having received noanswer but "Ozzie," Mr. Prohack had added: "He's a perfect ass," and hadgiven as a reason for this harsh judgment: "Well, I can't stick the wayhe walks across the hall."
In the precincts of the dance-studio Mr. Oswald Morfey said in thatsimple, half-lisping tone and with that wide-open child-like glance thatcharacterised most of his remarks:
"A very prosperous little affair here!" Having said this, he let hiseyeglass fall into the full silkiness of his shirt-front, and turned andsmiled very amicably and agreeably on Mr. Prohack, who could not helpthinking: "Perhaps after all you aren't such a bad sort of an idiot."
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "Do you often get as far as Putney?" For Mr.Oswald Morfey, enveloped as he unquestionably was in the invisible auraof the West End, seemed conspicuously out of place in a dance-studio ina side-street in Putney, having rather the air of an angelic visitant.
"Well, now I come to think of it, I don't!" Mr. Morfey answered nearlyall questions as though they were curious, disconcerting questions thattook him by surprise. This mannerism was universally attractive--untilyou got tired of it.
Mr. Prohack was now faintly attracted by it,--so that he said, in agenuine attempt at good-fellowship:
"You know I can't for the life of me remember your name. You must excuseme. My memory for names is not what it was. And I hate to dissemble,don't you?"
The announcement was a grave shock to Mr. Oswald Morfey, who imaginedthat half the taxi-drivers in London knew him by sight. Nevertheless hewithstood the shock like a little man of the world, and replied withmiraculous and sincere politeness: "I'm sure there's no reason why youshould remember my name." And he vouchsafed his name.
"Of course! Of course!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, with a politeness equallymiraculous, for the word "Morfey" had no significance for the benightedofficial. "How stupid of me!"
"By the way," said Mr. Morfey in a lower, confidential tone. "Your Eaglewill be ready to-morrow instead of next week."
"My Eagle?"
"Your new car."
It was Mr. Prohack's turn to be staggered, and to keep his nerve. Notone word had he heard about the purchase of a car since Charlie'stelegram from Glasgow. He had begun to think that his wife had eitherforgotten the necessity of a car or was waiting till his more completerecovery before troubling him to buy it. And he had taken care to saynothing about it himself, for he had discovered, upon searching his ownmind, that his interest in motor-cars was not an authentic interest andthat he had no desire at all to go motoring in pursuit of health. Andlo! Eve had been secretly engaged in the purchase of a car for him! Oh!A remarkable woman, Eve: she would stop at nothing when his health wasin question. Not even at a two thousand pound car.
"Ah, yes!" said Mr. Prohack, with as much tranquillity as though hishabit was to buy a car once a week or so. "To-morrow, you say? Good!"Was the fellow then a motor-car tout working on commission?
"You see," said Ozzie, "my old man owns a controlling interest in theEagle Company. That's how I happen to know."
"I see," murmured Mr. Prohack, speculating wildly in private as to theidentity of Ozzie's old man.
When Ozzie with a nod and a smile and a re-fixing of his monocle leftthe cubicle to enter the studio, he left Mr. Prohack freshly amazed atthe singularities of the world and of women, even the finest women. Howdisturbing to come down to Putney in a taxi-cab in order to learn from astranger that you have bought a two thousand pound car which is to comeinto your possession on the morrow! The dangerousness, the excitingness,of being rich struck Mr. Prohack very forcibly.
A few minutes later he beheld a sight which affected him more deeply,and less pleasantly, than anything else in an evening of thunderclaps.Through the little window he saw Sissie dancing with Ozzie Morfey. Andalthough Sissie was not gazing upward ecstatically into Ozzie'sface--she could not because they were of a size--and although herfeatures had a rather stern, fixed expression, Mr. Prohack knew, fromhis knowledge of her, that Sissie was in a secret ecstasy of enjoymentwhile dancing with this man. He did not like her ecstasy. Was itpossible that she, so sensible and acute, had failed to perceive thatthe fellow was a perfect ass? For in spite of his amiability, a perfectass the fellow was. The sight of his Sissie held in the arms of OzzieMorfey revolted Mr. Proha
ck. But he was once again helpless. And themost sinister suspicions crawled into his mind. Why was the resplendent,the utterly correct Ozzie dancing in a dancing studio in Putney?Certainly he was not there to learn dancing. He danced to perfection.The feet of the partners seemed to be married into a mystic unity ofdirection. The performance was entrancing to watch. Could it be possiblethat Ozzie was there because Sissie was there? Darker still, could it bepossible that Sissie had taken a share in the studio for any reasonother than a purely commercial reason?
"He thinks you're a darling," said Sissie to her father afterwards whenhe and she and Eliza Brating, alone together in the studio, wereinformally consuming buns and milk in the corner where the stove was.
The talk ran upon dancers, and whether Ozzie Morfey was not one of thefinest dancers in London. Was Sissie's tone quite natural? Mr. Prohackcould not be sure. Eliza Brating said she must go at once in order notto miss the last tram home. Mr. Prohack, without thinking, said that hewould see her home in his taxi, which had been ruthlessly ticking hisfortune away for much more than an hour.
"Kiss mother for me," said Sissie, "and tell her that she's a horridold thing and I shall come along and give her a piece of my mind one ofthese days." And she gave him the kiss for her mother.
And as she kissed him, Mr. Prohack was very proud of his daughter--soefficient, so sound, so straight, so graceful.
"She's all right, anyway," he reflected. And yet she could be ecstaticin the arms of that perfect ass! And in the taxi: "Fancy me seeing homethis dancing-mistress!" Eliza lived at Brook Green. She was veryelegant, and quite unexceptionable until she opened her mouth. Sherelated to him how her mother, who had once been a _premier sujet_ inthe Covent Garden ballet, was helpless from sciatica. But she relatedthis picturesque and pride-causing detail in a manner very insipid,naive, and even vulgar, (After all there was a difference between FirstDivision and Second Division in the Civil Service!) She was boring himterribly before they reached Brook Green. She took leave with adeportment correct but acquired at an age too late. Still, he had likedto see her home in the taxi. She was young, and she was an objectpleasing to the eye. He realised that he was not accustomed to thepropinquity of young women. What would his cronies at the Club say tothe escapade?... Odd, excessively odd, that the girl should be Sissie'spartner, in a business enterprise of so odd a character!... The nextthing was to meet Eve after the escapade. Should he keep to thedefensive, or should he lead off with an attack apropos of the Eaglecar?