"What am I to do?"
"I haven"t the slightest idea. All I know is that my existence must not on any account be complicated, and that the possession of that house would seriously complicate it."
"Will you leave the matter to me, Mr. Prohack?"
"What shall you do?"
"Wouldn"t it be better for you not to know what I should do?" Miss Warburton glanced at him oddly. Her glance was agreeable, and yet disconcerting. The attractiveness of the young woman seemed to be accentuated. The inst.i.tution of the confidential secretary was magnified, in the eyes of Mr. Prohack, into one of the greatest achievements of human society.
"Not at all," said he, in reply. "You are under-rating my capabilities, for I can know and not know simultaneously."
"Well," said Miss Warburton. "You can"t take an old house without having the drains examined, obviously. Supposing the report on the drains was unfavourable?"
"Do you propose to tamper with the drains?"
"Certainly not. I shouldn"t dream of doing anything so disgraceful. But I might tamper with the surveyor who made the report on the drains."
"Say no more," Mr. Prohack adjured her. "I"m going out."
And he went out, though he had by no means finished instructing Miss Warburton in the art of being his secretary. She did not even know where to find the essential tools of her calling, nor yet the names of tradesmen to whom she had to telephone. He ought to have stayed in if only to present his secretary to his wife. But he went out--to reflect in private upon her initiative, her ready resourcefulness, her great gift for conspiracy. He had to get away from her. The thought of her induced in him qualms of trepidation. Could he after all manage her?
What a loss would she be to Mr. Carrel Quire! Nevertheless she was capable of being foolish. It was her foolishness that had transferred her from Mr. Carrel Quire to himself.
III
Mr. Prohack went out because he was drawn out, by the force of an attraction which he would scarcely avow even to himself,--a mysterious and horrible attraction which, if he had been a logical human being like the rest of us, ought to have been a repulsion for him.
And as he was walking abroad in the pleasant foggy sunshine of the West End streets, a plutocratic idler with nothing to do but yield to strange impulses, he saw on a motor-bus the placard of a financial daily paper bearing the line: "The Latest Oil Coup." He immediately wanted to buy that paper. As a London citizen he held the opinion that whenever he wanted a thing he ought to be able to buy it at the next corner. Yet now he looked in every direction but could see no symptom of a newspaper shop anywhere. The time was morning--for the West End it was early morning--and there were newsboys on the pavements, but by a curious anomaly they were selling evening and not morning newspapers. Daringly he asked one of these infants for the financial daily; the infant sn.i.g.g.e.red and did no more. Another directed him to a shop up an alley off the Edgware Road. The shopman doubted the existence of any such financial daily as Mr. Prohack indicated, apparently attaching no importance to the fact that it was advertised on every motor-bus travelling along the Edgware Road, but he suggested that if it did exist, it might just conceivably be purchased at the main bookstall at Paddington Station. Determined to obtain the paper at all costs, Mr.
Prohack stopped a taxi-cab and drove to Paddington, squandering eighteenpence on the journey, and reflecting as he rolled forward upon the primitiveness of a so-called civilisation in which you could not buy a morning paper in the morning without spending the whole morning over the transaction--and reflecting also upon the disturbing fact that after one full day of its practice, his scheme of scientific idleness had gone all to bits. He got the paper, and read therein a very exciting account of Sir Paul Spinner"s deal in oil-lands. The amount of Paul"s profit was not specified, but readers were given to understand that it was enormous and that Paul had successfully bled the greatest Oil Combine in the world. The article, though discreet and vague in phraseology, was well worth a line on any placard. It had cost Mr. Prohack the price of a complete Shakespere, but he did not call it dear. He threw the paper away with a free optimistic gesture of delight. Yes, he had wisely put his trust in old Paul and he was veritably a rich man--one who could look down on mediocre fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds or so.
Civilisation was not so bad after all.
Then the original attraction which had drawn him out of the house resumed its pull.... Why did his subconscious feet take him in the direction of Manchester Square? True, the Wallace Collection of pictures is to be found at Hertford House, Manchester Square, and Mr. Prohack had always been interested in pictures! Well, if he did happen to find himself in Manchester Square he might perhaps glance at the exterior of the dwelling which his son desired to plant upon him and his wife desired him to be planted with.... It was there right enough. It had not been spirited away in the night hours. He recognised the number. An enormous house; the largest in the Square after Hertford House. Over its monumental portico was an enormous sign, truthfully describing it as "this n.o.ble mansion." As no automobile stood at the front-door Mr.
Prohack concluded that his wife"s visit of inspection was over.
Doubtless she was seeking him at home at that moment to the end of persuading him by her soft, unscrupulous arts to take the n.o.ble mansion.
The front-door was ajar. Astounding carelessness on the part of the caretaker! Mr. Prohack"s subconscious legs carried him into the house.
The interior was amazing. Mr. Prohack had always been interested, not only in pictures, but in furniture. Pictures and furniture might have been called the weakness to which his circ.u.mstances had hitherto compelled him to be too strong to yield. He knew a good picture, and he knew a good piece of furniture, when he saw them. The n.o.ble mansion was full of good pictures and good furniture. Evidently it had been the home of somebody who had both fine tastes and the means to gratify them. And the place was complete. Nothing had been removed, and nothing had been protected against the grimy dust of London. The occupiers might have walked out of it a few hours earlier. The effect of dark richness in the half-shuttered rooms almost overwhelmed Mr. Prohack. n.o.body preventing, he climbed the beautiful Georgian staircase, which was carpeted with a series of wondrous Persian carpets laid end to end. A woman in a black ap.r.o.n appeared in the hall from the bas.e.m.e.nt, gazed at Mr. Prohack"s mounting legs, and said naught. On the first-floor was the drawing-room, a magnificent apartment exquisitely furnished in Louis Quinze. Mr.
Prohack blenched. He had expected nothing half so marvellous. Was it possible that he could afford to take this n.o.ble mansion and live in it?
It was more than possible; it was sure.
Mr. Prohack had a foreboding of a wild, transient impulse to take it.
The impulse died ere it was born. No further complications of his existence were to be permitted; he would fight against them to the last drop of his blood. And the complications incident to residence in such an abode would be enormous. Still, he thought that he might as well see the whole house, and he proceeded upstairs, wondering how many people there were in London who possessed the taste to make, and the money to maintain, such a home. Even the stairs from the first to the second floor, were beautiful, having a lovely carpet, lovely engravings on the walls, and a delightful bal.u.s.trade. On the second-floor landing were two tables covered with objects of art, any of which Mr. Prohack might have pocketed and n.o.body the wiser; the carelessness that left the place unguarded was merely prodigious.
Mr. Prohack heard a sound; it might have been the creak of a floor-board or the displacement of a piece of furniture. Startled, he looked through a half-open door into a small room. He could see an old gilt mirror over a fire-place; and in the mirror the images of the upper portions of a young man and a young woman. The young woman was beyond question Sissie Prohack. The young man, he decided after a moment of hesitation--for he could distinguish only a male overcoated back in the gla.s.s--was Oswald Morfey. The images were very close together. They did not move. Then Mr.
Prohack overheard a whisper, but did not catch its purport. Then the image of the girl"s face began to blush; it went redder and redder, and the crimson seemed to flow downwards until the exposed neck blushed also. A marvellous and a disconcerting spectacle. Mr. Prohack felt that he himself was blushing. Then the two images blended, and the girl"s head and hat seemed to be agitated as by a high wind. And then both images moved out of the field of the mirror.
The final expression on the girl"s face as it vanished was one of the most exquisite things that Mr. Prohack had ever witnessed. It brought the tears to his eyes. Nevertheless he was shocked.
His mind ran:
"That fellow has kissed my daughter, and he has kissed her for the first time. It is monstrous that any girl, and especially my daughter, should be kissed for the first time. I have not been consulted, and I had not the slightest idea that matters had gone so far. Her mother has probably been here, with Charlie, and gone off leaving these doves together.
Culpable carelessness on her part. Talk about mothers! No father would have been guilty of such negligence. The affair must be stopped. It amounts to an outrage."
A peculiar person, Mr. Prohack! No normal father could have had such thoughts. Mr. Prohack could of course have burst in upon the pair and smashed an idyll to fragments. But instead of doing so he turned away from the idyll and descended the stairs as stealthily as he could.
n.o.body challenged his exit. In the street he breathed with relief as if he had escaped from a house of great peril; but he did not feel safe until he had lost himself in the populousness of Oxford Street.
"For social and family purposes," he reflected, "I have not seen that kiss. I cannot possibly tell them, or tell anybody, that I spied upon their embrace. To put myself right I ought to have called out a greeting the very instant I spotted them. But I did not call out a greeting. By failing to do so I put myself in a false position.... How shall I get official news of that kiss? Shall I ever get news of it?"
He had important business to transact with tradesmen. He could not do it. On leaving home he had not decided whether he would lunch domestically or at the Grand Babylon. He now perceived that he could do neither. He would lunch at one of his clubs. No! He could not bring himself to lunch at either club. He could face n.o.body. He resembled a man who was secretly carrying a considerable parcel of high explosive.
He wandered until he could wander no more, and then he entered a tea-shop that was nearly full of young girls. It was a new world to him.
He saw "Mutton pie 8d" on the menu and ordered it haphazard. He discovered to his astonishment that he was hungry. Having eaten the mutton pie, he ordered a second one, and ate it. The second mutton pie seemed to endow the eater with the faculty of vision--a result which perhaps no other mutton pie had ever before in the whole annals of eating achieved. He felt much better. He was illuminated by a large, refreshing wisdom, which thus expressed itself in his excited brain:
"After all, I suppose it"s not the first or the only instance of a girl being kissed by a man. Similar incidents must occur quite often in the history of the human race."
IV
When he returned home his house seemed to be pitiably small, cramped, and lacking in rich ornament; it seemed to be no sort of a house for a man with twenty thousand a year. But he was determined to love his house at all costs, and never to leave it. The philosopher within himself told him that happiness does not spring from large houses built with hands.
And his own house was bright that afternoon; he felt as soon as he entered it that it was more bright than usual. The reason was immediately disclosed. Sissie was inside it. She had come for some belongings and to pay a visit to her mother.
"My word!" she greeted her father in the drawing-room, where she was strumming while Eve leaned lovingly on the piano. "My word! We are fine with our new private secretary!"
Not a sign on that girl"s face, nor in her demeanour, that she had an amorous secret, that something absolutely unprecedented had happened to her only a few hours earlier! The duplicity of women astonished even the philosopher in Mr. Prohack.
"Will she mention it or won"t she?" Mr. Prohack asked himself; and then began to equal Sissie in duplicity by demanding of his women in a tone of raillery what they thought of the new private secretary. He reflected that he might as well know the worst at once.
"She"ll do," said Sissie gaily, and Eve said: "She seems very willing to oblige."
"Ah!" Mr. Prohack grew alert. "She"s been obliging you already, has she?"
"Well," said Eve. "It was about the new house--"
"What new house?"
"But you know, darling. Charlie mentioned it to you last night, and I told you that I was going to look at it this morning."
"Oh! _That_!" Mr. Prohack e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed disdainfully.
"I"ve seen it. I"ve been all over it, and it"s simply lovely. I never saw anything equal to it."
"Of course!"
"And so cheap!"
"Of course!"
"But it"s ripping, dad, seriously."