CHAPTER XII
THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS
I
At ten minutes to eleven the next morning Mr. Prohack rushed across thepavement, and sprang head-first into the original Eagle (now dulyrepaired) with the velocity and agility of a man long accustomed to thefact that seconds are more precious than six-pences and minutes thanbanknotes. And Carthew slammed the door on him like a conjurorperforming the final act of a trick before an audience of three thousandpeople.
Mr. Prohack was late. He was late on this the first full day of hiscareer as a consciously and scientifically idle man. Carthew knew thathis employer was late; and certainly the people in his house knew thathe was late. Mr. Prohack's breakfast in bed had been late, which meantthat his digestive and reposeful hour of newspaper reading was thrownforward. And then he had actually been kept out of his own bathroom,through the joint fault of Sissie and her mother, who had apparentlydetermined to celebrate Sissie's definite release from the dance-studio,and Mrs. Prohack's astonishing recovery from traumatic neurasthenia, bya thorough visitation and reorganisation of the house and household.Those two, re-established in each other's affection, had been holding aninquisition in the bathroom, of all rooms, at the very moment when Mr.Prohack needed the same, with the consequence that he found the bathempty instead of full, and the geyser not even lighted. Yet they wellknew that he had a highly important appointment at the tailor's at tenforty-five, followed by other just as highly important appointments! Theworst of it was that he could not take their crime seriously because hewas on such intimate and conspiratorial terms with each of themseparately. On the previous evening he had exchanged wonderful andrather dangerous confidences with his daughter, and, further on in thenight he and her mother had decided that the latter's fantasticexcursion to the Grand Babylon Hotel should remain a secret. And Sissie,as much as her mother, had taken advantage of his helplessness in theusual unscrupulous feminine manner. They went so far as to smilequasi-maternally at his boyish busy-ness.
Now no sooner had Carthew slammed the door of the Eagle and got into thedriving-seat than a young woman, a perfect stranger to Mr. Prohack,appeared, and through the open window asked in a piteous childlike voiceif Mr. Prohack was indeed Mr. Prohack, and, having been informed thatthis was so, expressed the desire to speak with him. Mr. Prohack wasbeside himself with annoyance and thwarted energy. Was the entireuniverse uniting against the execution of his programme?
"I have a most important appointment," said he, raising his hat andachieving politeness by an enormous effort, "and if your business isurgent you'd better get into the car. I'm going to Conduit Street."
She slipped into the car like a snake, and Carthew, beautifully unawarethat 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, apprehensiveand timorous, she yet had, about her delicate mouth, the signs ofterrible determination, of ruthlessness, of an ambition that nothingcould thwart. Mr. Prohack might have been alarmed, but fortunately hewas getting used to driving in closed cars with young women, and socould keep his nerve. Moreover, he enjoyed these experiences, being aman of simple tastes and not too analytical of good fortune when it camehis way.
"It's very good of you to see me like this," said the girl, in the voiceof a rapid brook with a pebbly bed. "My name is Winstock, and I'vecalled 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 theowner 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 handsof the insurance company and the solicitors. You are employing asolicitor, 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 beafraid. Do you know you've done a most improper thing? Most improper. Ican'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 liftedthe rug which had fallen away from her short skirts.
"I think solicitors and companies and things are so silly," said MissWinstock, 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." Forthe first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance thatsomehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in herown breast to that of Mr. Prohack.
"Well," said he, in a departmental tone recalling Whitehall. "Will youkindly say what you have to say?"
"Can I speak confidentially?"
Mr. Prohack raised his hands and laughed in what he hoped was a sardonicmanner.
"I give you young women up," he murmured. "Yes, I give you up. You're myenemy. We're at law. And you want to talk confidentially! How can I tellwhether I can let you talk confidentially until I've heard what you'regoing to say?"
"Oh! I was only going to say that I'm not really the owner-driver of thecar. I'm personal secretary to Mr. Carrel Quire, and it's really hiscar. You see he has three cars, but as there's been such a fuss aboutwaste 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 theSecretary for Foreign Affairs!"
"Yes, of course. Who else? You know he's on the continent at present. Hewouldn't take me with him because he wanted to create an effect ofausterity in Paris--that's what he said; and I must get this accidentaffair settled up before he comes back, or he _may_ dismiss me. I don'tthink he will, because I'm a cousin of the late Lady QueeniePaulle--that's how I got the place--but he may. And then where should Ibe? 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 acidtone, but laughing to himself because the celebrated young statesman,Mr. Carrel Quire (bald at thirty-five) was precisely one of theministers who, during the war, had defied and trampled upon theTreasury. He now almost demoniacally contemplated the ruin of Mr. CarrelQuire.
"You have made a serious mistake in coming to me. Unfortunately youcannot undo it. Be good enough to understand that you have not beentalking confidentially."
Miss Winstock ought to have been intimidated and paralysed by themenacing manner of the former Terror of the Departments. But she wasnot.
"Please, please, Mr. Prohack," she said calmly, "don't talk in thatstrain. I distinctly told you I was talking confidentially, and I'm sureI can rely on you--unless all that I've heard about you is untrue; whichit 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 toomuch."
"My chauffeur asserts that you have told a most naughty untruth aboutthe accident. You say that he ran into you, whereas the fact is that hewas nearly standing still while you were going too fast and you skiddedbadly into him off the tramlines. And he's found witnesses to prove whathe says."
"I may have been a little mistaken," Miss Winstock admitted with lightsadness. "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 ConduitStreet. Mr. Prohack looked at his watch.
"I'm sorry to seem inhospitable," he said, "but my appointment isextremely important. I cannot wait."
"Can _I_ wait?" Miss Winstock sugge
sted. "I'm quite used to waiting forMr. Carrel Quire. If I might wait in the car till you came out.... Yousee 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 todo, as Mr. Carrel Quire is away."
Mr. Prohack left Miss Winstock in the car.
The establishment into which Mr. Prohack disappeared was that of hisson's tailors. He slipped into it with awe, not wholly because thetailors were his son's tailors, but in part because they were tailors tovarious august or once-august personages throughout Europe. Till thatday Mr. Prohack had bought his clothes from an insignificant thoughtraditional tailor in Maddox Street, to whom he had been taken as a boyby his own father. And he had ordered his clothes hastily, negligently,anyhow, in intervals snatched from meal-hours or on the way from onemore important appointment to another more important appointment. Indeedhe had thought no more of ordering a suit than of ordering a whiskey andsoda. Nay, he had on one occasion fallen incredibly low, and his memoryheld the horrid secret for ever,--on one occasion he had actually boughta ready-made suit. It had fitted him, for he was slimmish and of a goodstock size, but he had told nobody, not even his wife, of this shockingdefection from the code of true British gentlemanliness,--and he hadnever repeated the crime; the secret would die with him. And now he wasdevoting the top of the morning to the commandment of a suit. The affairwas his chief business, and he had come to it in a great car whose sixcylinders were working harmoniously for nothing else, and with the aidof an intelligent and experienced and expert human being whose soleobject in life that morning was to preside over Mr. Prohack's locomotionto and from the tailors'!
Mr. Prohack perceived that he was only beginning to comprehend thewonder of existence. The adepts at the tailors', however, seemed to seenothing wonderful in the matter. They showed no surprise that he hadwritten to make an appointment with a particular adept namedMelchizidek, who had been casually mentioned weeks earlier by Charles asthe one man in London who really comprehended waistcoats. They took itas a matter of course that Mr. Prohack had naught else to do with thetop of the morning but order clothes, and that while he did so he shouldkeep a mature man and a vast and elaborate machine waiting for him inthe street outside. And Mr. Melchizidek's manner alone convinced Mr.Prohack that what he had told his family, and that what he had told MissWinstock in the car, was strictly true and not the invention of hisfancy--namely that the appointment was genuinely of high importance.
Mr. Melchizidek possessed the strange gift of condescending majesticallyto Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as toan autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knewnot the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazedabstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on thewalls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, andit was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practicereferred to Mr. Melchizidek, and that this same Melchizidek, fawningand masterful, had seen monarchs in their shirt sleeves and spoken toprinces with pins in his mouth, and made marks in white chalk betweenthe shoulder-blades of grand-dukes; and that revolutions and cataclysmswere nothing to Mr. Melchizidek.
When Mr. Melchizidek had decided by hypnotic suggestion and magic powerwhat Mr. Prohack desired in the way of stuffs and patterns, he led Mr.Prohack mysteriously to a small chamber, and a scribe followed themcarrying pencil and paper, and Mr. Prohack removed, with assistance, hisshabby coat and his waistcoat, and Mr. Melchizidek measured him inunexampled detail and precision, and the scribe, writing, intoned aloudall Mr. Prohack's dimensions. And all the time Mr. Prohack was asking inhis heart: "How much will these clothes cost?" And he, once the Terrorof the departments, who would have held up the war to satisfy hisofficial inquisitiveness on a question of price,--he dared not ask howmuch the clothes would cost. He felt that in that unique establishmentmoney was simply not mentioned,--it could never be more than the subjectof formal and stately correspondence.
During the latter part of the operation Mr. Prohack heard, outside inthe shop, the sharp sounds of an imperial and decisive voice, and he wasthereby well-nigh thunderstruck. And even Mr. Melchizidek seemed to besimilarly affected by the voice,--so much so that the intimate ofsovereigns unaffectedly hastened the business of enduing Mr. Prohackinto the shameful waistcoat and coat, and then, with a gesture ofapology, passed out of the cubicle, leaving Mr. Prohack with theattendant 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 alreadystanding in shocked silence round about a young man who stretched forthone 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, andhere I have to waste my time coming here again and again to get a thingright that ought to have been right the first time. And you callyourselves the first tailors in Europe.... Correct me if I'm inaccuratein any of my statements."
Mr. Melchizidek, who unlike an Englishman knew when he was beaten, saidin a solemn bass:
"When can I send for them, sir?"
"You can send for them this afternoon at the Grand Babylon, and be surethat I have them back to-morrow night."
"Certainly, sir. It's only fair to ourselves, sir, to state that we havea great deal of trouble with our workmen in these days."
"No doubt. And I have a great deal of trouble to find cash in thesedays, but I don't pay your bills with bad money, I think."
A discreet sycophantic smile from the group at this devastatingwitticism!
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 whichhe had left home for Glasgow, shook hands boyishly.
Looking into his firm, confident eyes, Mr. Prohack realised, perhaps forthe first time, that the fruit of his loins was no common boy. The merefact that as an out-of-work ex-officer, precariously making a bit inmotor-bicycle deals, he had dared to go to Melchizidek's firm forclothes, and that he was now daring to affront Melchizidek,--this solefact separated him from the ruck of sons.
"I warn you, dad, that if you're ordering clothes here you're orderingtrouble."
Mr. Melchizidek's interjected remarks fitted to the occasion. The groupdissipated. The males of the Prohack family could say nothinginteresting to each other in such a situation. They could only pretendthat 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'vetelephoned the mater and she's coming to the Grand Babylon forlunch--one thirty. Sis too, I think. Do come. You haven't got anythingelse 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 anopen semi-racing car driven by a mature, handsome and elegant woman,with a chauffeur sitting behind. Mr. Prohack's mind was one immenseinterrogation 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 inorder to hide the mature handsome lady from his father?... Mr. Prohackmight have moralised, but he suddenly remembered that he had a lady inhis own car, and that the disparity between their ages was no less thanthe disparity between the ages of the occupants of the car in whichCharles had fled.
III
Turning to his own car, he observed with a momentary astonishment thatCarthew, the chauffeur, leaning a little nonchalantly through the openoff-window of the vehicle, was engaged in con
versation with MissWinstock. The astonishment passed when he reflected that as these twohad been in the enforced intimacy of an accident together they werenecessarily on some kind of speaking terms. Before Carthew had noticedMr. Prohack, Mr. Prohack noticed that Carthew's attitude to MissWinstock showed a certain tolerant condescension, while Miss Winstock'sgirlish gestures were of a subtly appealing nature. Then in an instantCarthew, the easy male tolerator of inaccurate but charming young women,disappeared from the window--disappeared indeed, entirely from the faceof the earth--and a perfectly non-human, impassive automaton emergedfrom behind the back of the car and stood attentive at the door, holdingthe handle thereof. Mr. Prohack, with a gift of dissimulation equal toCarthew's own, gave him an address in Bond Street.
"I have another very urgent appointment," said Mr. Prohack to MissWinstock as he sat down beside her. And he took his diary from hispocket and gazed at it intently, frowning, though there was nothingwhatever on its page except the printed information that the previousSunday was the twenty-fourth after Trinity, and a warning: "If you haveomitted to order your new diary it would be well to do so NOW to preventdisappointment."
"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 donenothing to deserve it. You were very wrong to get chatting with mychauffeur, 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 hispassengers into a semi-hypnotic state. Do you know why I am taking youabout 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 afright? 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 attractiveand smart. Though forty-six, I am still a man. The chief differencebetween me and most other men is that I know and openly admit mymotives. 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 damageto my car?"
"Oh! Mr. Carrel Quire will pay."
"Are you sure? Are you quite sure that Mr. Carrel Quire is not spendingtwice as much as his ministerial salary, that salary being the whole ofhis financial resources except loans from millionaires who will acceptinfluence instead of interest? I won't enquire whether Mr. Carrel Quirepays your salary regularly. If he does, it furnishes the only instanceof regularity in the whole of his gorgeous career. If our little affairbecomes public it might ruin Mr. Carrel Quire as a politician--at theleast it would set him back for ten years. And I am particularly anxiousto ruin Mr. Carrel Quire. In doing so I shall accomplish a patrioticact."
"Oh, Mr. Prohack!"
"Yes. Mr. Carrel Quire may be--probably is--a delightful fellow, but heis too full of brains, and he constitutes the gravest danger that hasthreatened the British Empire for a hundred years. Hence it is my dutyto ruin him if I get the chance; and I've got the chance. I don't seehow he could survive the exposure of the simple fact that whilepreaching anti-waste he is keeping motor-cars in the names of youngwomen."
The car had stopped in front of a shop over whose door a pair of gildedanimals like nothing in zoology were leaping amiably at each other. MissWinstock 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 fifteenseconds and your handkerchief is sadly inadequate to the crisis. Try alittle self-control, and don't let Carthew hypnotise you. I shan't besurprised 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 meby imagining that during my absence the car is empty."
Carthew quivered for a fraction of eternity, but was exceedingly quickto recover.
"Yes, sir."
The shop was all waxed parquetry, silks, satins, pure linen and purewool, diversified by a few walking-sticks and a cuff link or so. Facedby a judge-like middle-aged authority in a frock-coat, Mr. Prohacksuddenly lost the magisterial demeanour which he had exhibited to adefenceless girl in the car. He comprehended in a flash that suits ofclothes were a detail in the existence of an idle man and that necktiesand 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 anencyclopaedia of neckties. As he bought neckties he felt as foolish as awoman buying cigars. Any idiot could buy a suit, but neckties baffledthe intelligence of the Terror of the departments, though he had wornsomething in the nature of a necktie for forty years. The neckties whichhe bought inspired him with fear--the fear lest he might lack thecourage to wear them. In a nightmare he saw himself putting them on inhis bedroom and proceeding downstairs to breakfast, and then,panic-stricken, rushing back to the bedroom to change into one of hisold neckties.
And when he had bought neckties he apprehended that neckties withoutshirts were like butter without bread, and he bought shirts. And then hesurmised that shirts without collars would be indecent. And when he hadbought collars a still small voice told him that the logical foundationof all things was socks, and that really he had been trying to build ahouse from the fourth story downwards. Fortunately he had lesshesitation about the socks, for he could comfort himself with thethought that socks did not jump to the eye as neckties did, and that byconstant care their violence might even be forever concealed from thegaze of his household. He sighed with relief at the end of the sockepisode. But he had forgotten braces, as to which he surrenderedunconditionally to the frock-coated judge. He brooked the mostastounding braces, for none but Eve would see them, and he couldintimidate Eve.
"Shall we make you a quarter of a dozen pairs to measure, sir?"
This extraordinary question miraculously restored all Mr. Prohack'svanished aplomb. That at the end of the greatest war in the history ofthe earth, amid decapitated empires and cities of starvation, bracesshould be made to measure,--this was too much for Mr. Prohack, who hadnot dreamed that braces ever had been made to measure. It shocked himback 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 takingme seriously. With all her experience of the queer world, and all herinitiative and courage, she is taking me seriously!" He was touched; hisirony became sympathetic, and he thought: "How young the young are!"
Her smile as he rejoined her had pathos in it. The totality of her wasdelicious.
"You cannot be all bad, Miss Winstock," said he to her, afterinstructing the chauffeur, "because nobody is. You are undisciplined.You do wild and rash things--you have already accomplished several thismorning. But you have righteous instincts, though not often enough. Ofcourse, with one word to the insurance company I could save you. Thedifficulty is that I could not save you without saving Mr. Carrel Quirealso. And it would be very wrong of me to save Mr. Carrel Quire, for tosave him would be to jeopardise the future of the British Empire,because unless he is scotched, that man's frantic egotism and ruthlessambition will achieve political disaster for four hundred million humanbeings. I should like to save you. But can I weigh you in the balanceagainst 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 areshamefully ignorant of history. Never yet when empire, any empire, hasbeen weighed in the balance against a young and attractive woman has theyoung woman failed to win! That is a dreadful fact, but men are thusconstituted. Had you been a hag, I should not have hesitated to do myduty to my country. But as you are what you are, and sitting soagreeably 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 notonly to empires. The entire environment is the very worst decentlypossible for a girl like you. Get away from it. If you don't undertaketo give him notice at once, and withdraw entirely from his set, then Iwill ruin both you and him."
"But I shall starve," cried Miss Winstock. "I shall never find anotherplace 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. "Youwill never starve. Excuse me for a few minutes. I have another veryimportant 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 werenaught, 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 badlyindeed. In fact I cannot understand how, with all my engagements, I havebeen able to manage without one so long. Your chief duties will be tokeep on good terms with my wife and daughter, and not to fall in lovewith 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' justbefore I did. That was my son."
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Winstock, "the boy who drove off in Lady Massulam'scar?"
"Was that Lady Massulam?" asked Mr. Prohack before he had had time torecover from the immense effect of hearing the startling, almostlegendary 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 willdeal with my affairs. You shall have the same salary as Mr. Carrel Quirepaid--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 itagain, please."
When he had accompanied Mimi to a neighbouring post office and sent offa suitable telegram of farewell to Mr. Carrel Quire in her name, Mr.Prohack abandoned her till the morrow, and drove off quickly to pick uphis wife for the Grand Babylon lunch.
"I am a perfect lunatic," said he to himself. "It must be the effect ofriches. However, I don't care."
He meant that he didn't care about the conceivable consequences ofengaging Mimi Winstock as secretary. But what he did care about was theconjuncture of Lady Massulam and Charlie.