III
Solemnity, and hush, and antique menials stiff with tradition,surrounded him. As soon as he had paid the entrance fee and depositedall his valuables in a drawer of which the key was formally delivered tohim, he was motioned through a turnstile and requested to permit hisboots to be removed. He consented. White linens were then handed to him.
"See here," he said with singular courage to the attendant. "I've neverbeen into one of these resorts before. Where do I go?"
The attendant, who was a bare-footed mild child dressed in the Moorishmode, reassuringly charged himself with Mr. Prohack's well-being, andled the aspirant into a vast mosque with a roof of domes and littleglowing windows of coloured glass. In the midst of the mosque was a palegreen pool. White figures reclined in alcoves, round the walls. Afountain played--the only orchestra. There was an eastern sound of handsclapped, and another attendant glided across the carpeted warm floor.Mr. Prohack understood that, in this immense seclusion, when you desiredno matter what you clapped your hands and were served. A beautiful peacedescended upon him and enveloped him; and he thought: "This is the mostwonderful place in the world. I have been waiting for this place fortwenty years."
He yielded without reserve to its unique invitation. But some timeelapsed before he could recover from the unquestionable fact that he wasstill within a quarter of a mile of Piccadilly Circus.
From the explanations of the attendant and from the precise orders whichhe had received from Dr. Veiga regarding the right method of conduct ina Turkish bath, Mr. Prohack, being a man of quick mind, soon devised theorder of the ceremonial suited to his case, and began to put it intoexecution. At first he found the ceremonial exacting. To part from allhis clothes and to parade through the mosque in attire of which theprincipal items were a towel and the key of his valuables (adorning hiswrist) was ever so slightly an ordeal to one of his temperament andupbringing. To sit unsheltered in blinding steam was not amusing, thoughit was exciting. But the steam-chapel (as it might be called) of themosque was a delight compared to the second next chapel further on,where the woodwork of the chairs was too hot to touch and where agigantic thermometer informed Mr. Prohack that with only another fiftydegrees of heat he would have achieved boiling point.
He remembered that it was in this chamber he must drink iced tonic waterin quantity. He clapped his streaming hands clammily, and a tall, thin,old man whose whole life must have been lived near boiling point,immediately brought the draught. Short of the melting of the key of hisvaluables everything possible happened in this extraordinary chamber.But Mr. Prohack was determined to shrink from naught in the pursuit ofidleness.
And at length, after he had sat in a less ardent chapel, and in stillanother chapel been laid out on a marble slab as for an autopsy and,defenceless, attacked for a quarter of an hour by a prize-fighter, andhad jumped desperately into the ice-cold lake and been dragged out andsmothered in thick folds of linen, and finally reposed horizontal in hisoriginal alcove,--then he was conscious of an inward and profoundconviction that true, perfect, complete and supreme idleness had beenattained. He had no care in the world; he was cut off from the world; hehad no family; he existed beatifically and individually in a sublime andsatisfied egotism.
But, such is the insecurity of human organisms and institutions, in lessthan two minutes he grew aware of a strange sensation within him, whichsensation he ultimately diagnosed as hunger. To clap his hands was thework of an instant. The oncoming attendant recited a catalogue of thefoods at his disposal; and the phrase "welsh rarebit" caught hisattention. He must have a welsh rarebit; he had not had a welsh rarebitsince he was at school. It magically arrived, on an oriental tray, seton a low Moorish table.
Eating the most wonderful food of his life and drinking tea, he lookedabout and saw that two of the unoccupied sofas in his alcove were strewnwith garments; the owners of the garments had doubtlessly arrived duringhis absence in the chapels and were now in the chapels themselves. Helay back; earthly phenomena lost their hard reality....
When he woke up the mosque was a pit of darkness glimmering with sharppoints of electric light. He heard voices, the voices of two men whooccupied the neighbouring sofas. They were discoursing to each otherupon the difficulties of getting good whiskey in Afghanistan and in Riode Janeiro respectively. From whiskey they passed to even moreinteresting matters, and Mr. Prohack, for the first time, began to learnhow the other half lives, to such an extent that he thought he hadbetter turn on the lamp over his head. Whereupon the conversation on theneighbouring sofas curved off to the English weather in late autumn.
Then Mr. Prohack noticed a deep snore. He perceived that the snoreoriginated in a considerable figure that, wrapped in white and showingto the mosque only a venerable head, was seated in one of the hugearmchairs which were placed near the entrance to every alcove. It seemedto him that he recognised the snore, and he was not mistaken, for he hadtwice before heard it on Sunday afternoons at his chief club. The headwas the head of Sir Paul Spinner. Mr. Prohack recalled that old Paul wasa devotee of the Turkish bath.
Now Mr. Prohack was exceedingly anxious to have speech with old Paul,for he had heard very interesting rumours of Paul's activities. Hearose softly and approached the easy-chair and surveyed Sir Paul, who inhis then state looked less like a high financier and more like somethingchipped off the roof of a cathedral than anything that Mr. Prohack hadever seen.
But Paul did not waken. A bather plunged into the pool with a tremendoussplash, but Paul did not waken. And Mr. Prohack felt that it would becontrary to the spirit of the ritual of the mosque to waken him. But hedecided that if he waited all night he would wait until old Paulregained consciousness.
At that moment an attendant asked Mr. Prohack if he desired theattentions of the barber, the chiropodist, or the manicurist. New vistasopened out before Mr. Prohack. He said yes. After the barber, he paddeddown the stairs from the barber's chapel (which was in the upper storyof the mosque), to observe if there was any change in old Paul'scondition. Paul still slept. Mr. Prohack did similarly after thechiropodist. Paul still slept. Then again after the manicurist. Paulstill slept. Then a boyish attendant hurried forward and in a verydaring manner shook the monumental Paul by the shoulder.
"You told me to wake you at six, Sir Paul." And Paul woke.
"How simple," reflected Mr. Prohack, "are the problems of existence whenthey are tackled with decision! Here have I been ineffectively trying towaken the fellow for the past hour. But I forgot that he who wishes theend must wish the means, and my regard for the ritual of the mosque wasabsurd."
He retired into the alcove to dress, keeping a watchful eye upon oldPaul. He felt himself to be in the highest state of physical efficiency.From head to foot he was beyond criticism. When Mr. Prohack had got asfar as his waistcoat Sir Paul uprose ponderously from the easy-chair.
"Hi, Paul!"
The encounter between the two friends was one of those affectionate andecstatic affairs that can only happen in a Turkish Bath.
"I've been trying to get you on the 'phone half the day," grunted PaulSpinner, subsiding on to Mr. Prohack's sofa.
"I've been out all day. Horribly busy," said Mr. Prohack. "What's wrong?Anything wrong?"
"Oh, no! Only I thought you'd like to know I've finished that deal."
"I did hear some tall stories, but not a word from you, old thing." Mr.Prohack tried to assume a tranquillity which he certainly did not feel.
"Well, I never sing until I'm out of the wood. But this time I'm outsooner than I expected."
"Any luck?"
"Yes. But I dictated a letter to you before I came here."
"I suppose you can't remember what there was in it."
"I shall get the securities next week."
"What securities?"
"Well, you'll receive"--here Paul dropped his voice--"three thousandshort of a quarter of a million in return for what you put in, my boy."
"Then I'm worth over two hundred and fifty thousand pounds!" murmur
edMr. Prohack feebly. And he added, still more feebly: "Something willhave to be done about this soon." His heart was beating against hiswaistcoat like an engine.