Sissie shook her head.
"Don"t make so sure that they can have this house," said Mr. Prohack.
"But, Arthur! You"ve agreed to go and look at Manchester Square! And it"s all ready excepting the servants. I"m told that if you don"t want less than seven servants, including one or two menservants, there"s no difficulty about servants at all. I shall be very disappointed if we don"t have the wedding from Manchester Square."
Mr. Prohack writhed, though he knew himself safe. Seven servants; two menservants? No! And again no! No complications!
"I shall only agree to Manchester Square," said he with firmness and solemnity, "subject to the drains being all right. Somebody in the place must show a little elementary sagacity and restraint."
"But the drains are bound to be all right!"
"I hope so," said the deceitful father. "And I believe they will be. But until we"re sure--nothing can be done." And he laughed satanically to himself.
"Haven"t you had the report yet?" Sissie complained. "Miss Warburton was to try to get hold of it to-night."
A moment later Machin, in a condition of high excitement due to the betrothal, brought in a large envelope, saying that Miss Warburton had just left it. The envelope contained the report of Messrs. Doy and Doy on the drains of the n.o.ble mansion. Mr. Prohack read it, frowned, and pursed his judicial lips.
"Read it, my dear," he said to Eve.
Eve read that Messrs. Doy and Doy found themselves unable, after a preliminary inspection, which owing to their instructions to be speedy had not been absolutely exhaustive, to certify the drains of the n.o.ble mansion. They feared the worst, but there was of course always a slight hope of the best, or rather the second best. (They phrased it differently but they meant that.) In the meantime they would await further instructions. Mr. Prohack reflected calmly: "My new secretary is an adept of the first conspiratorial order." Eve was shocked into silence. (Doy and Doy used very thick and convincing note-paper.) The entrance of Charlie loosed her tongue.
"Charlie!" she cried. "The drains are all wrong. Look at this. And didn"t you say the option expired to-morrow?"
Charlie read the report.
"Infernal rascals!" he muttered. "Whose doing is this? Who"s been worrying about drains?" He looked round accusingly.
"I have," said Mr. Prohack bravely, but he could not squarely meet the boy"s stern glance.
"Well, dad, what did you take me for? Did you suppose I should buy an option on a house without being sure of the drains? My first act was to have the drains surveyed by Flockers, the first firm in London, and I"ve got their certificate. As for Doy and Doy, they"re notorious. They want to stop everybody else but themselves getting a commission on that house, and this--" he slapped the report--"this is how they"re setting about it."
Eve adored her son.
"You see," she said victoriously to Mr. Prohack, who secretly trembled.
"I shall bring an action against Doy and Doy," Charlie continued. "I"ll show the whole rascally thing up."
"I hope you"ll do no such thing, my boy," said Mr. Prohack, foolishly attempting the grandiose.
"I most positively shall, dad."
Mr. Prohack realised desperately that all was lost except honour, and he was by no means sure about even honour.
CHAPTER XVI
TRANSFER OF MIMI
I
Mr. Prohack pa.s.sed a very bad night--the worst for months, one of the outstanding bad nights of his whole existence.
"Why didn"t I have it out with Charlie before he left?" he asked himself some scores of times while listening to the tranquil regular breathing of Eve, who of course was now sure of her house and probably had quite forgotten the meaning of care. "I"m bound to have it out with him sooner or later, and if I"d done it at once I should at any rate have slept.
They"re all sleeping but me."
He simply could not comprehend life; the confounded thing called life baffled him by its mysterious illogicalness. He was adored by his spouse, beloved by his children, respected by the world. He had heaps of money, together with the full control of it. His word, if he chose, was law. He had only to say: "I will not take the house in Manchester Square," and n.o.body could thwart him. He powerfully desired not to take it. There was no sensible reason why he should take it. And yet he would take it, under the inexplicable compulsion of circ.u.mstances. In those sombre hours he had a fellow-feeling for Oriental tyrants, who were absolute autocrats but also slaves of exactly the same sinister force that had gripped himself. He perceived that in practice there is no such thing as an autocrat....
Not that his defeat in regard to the house really disturbed him. He could reconcile himself to the house, despite the hateful complications which it would engender. What disturbed him horribly was the drains business, the Doy and Doy business, the Mimi business; he could see no way out of that except through the valley of humiliation. He remembered, with terrible forebodings, the remark of his daughter after she heard of the heritage: "You"ll never be as happy again."
When the household day began and the familiar comfortable distant noises of domestic activity announced that the solar system was behaving much as usual in infinite and inconceivable s.p.a.ce, he decided that he was too tired to be scientifically idle that day--even though he had a trying-on appointment with Mr. Melchizidek. He decided, too, that he would not get up, would in fact take everything lying down, would refuse to descend a single step of the stairs to meet trouble. And he had a great wish to be irritated and angry. But, the place seemed to be full of angels who turned the other cheek--and the other cheek was marvellously soft and bewitching.
Eve, Sissie (who had called), and Machin--they were all in a state of felicity, for the double reason that Sissie was engaged to be married, and that the household was to move into a n.o.ble mansion. Machin saw herself at the head of a troup of sub-parlourmaids and housemaids and tweenies, and foretold that she would stand no nonsense from butlers.
They all treated Mr. Prohack as a formidable and worshipped tyrant, whose smile was the sun and whose frown death, and who was the fount of wisdom and authority. They knew that he wanted to be irritated, and they gave him no chance to be irritated. Their insight into his psychology was uncanny. They knew that he was beaten on the main point, and with their detestable feminine realism they exquisitely yielded on all the minor points. Eve, fresh as a rose, bent over him and bedewed him, and said that she was going out and that Sissie had gone again.
When he was alone he rang the bell for Machin as though the bell had done him an injury.
"What time is it?"
"Eleven o"clock, sir."
"Eleven o"clock! Good G.o.d! Why hasn"t Miss Warburton come?"
As if Machin was responsible for Miss Warburton!... No! Mr. Prohack was not behaving nicely, and it cannot be hidden that he lacked the grandeur of mind which distinguishes most of us.
"Miss Warburton was here before ten o"clock, sir."
"Then why hasn"t she come up?"
"She was waiting for orders, sir."
"Send her up immediately."
"Certainly, sir."
Miss Warburton was the fourth angel--an angel with another spick-and-span blouse, and the light of devotion in her eyes and the sound of it in her purling voice.
"Good morning," the gruff brute started. "Did I hear the telephone-bell just now?"
"Yes, sir. Doy and Doy have telephoned to say that Mr. Charles Prohack has just been in to see them, and they"ve referred him to you, and--and--"
"And what? And what? And what?" (A machine-gun.)
"They said he was extremely unpleasant."
Instinctively Mr. Prohack threw away shame. Mimi was his minion. He treated her as an Oriental tyrant might treat the mute guardian of the seraglio, and told her everything,--that Charlie had forestalled them in the matter of the drains of the n.o.ble mansion, that Charlie had determined to destroy Doy and Doy, that he, Mr. Prohack, was caught in a trap, that there was the devil to pay, and that the finest lies that ingenuity could invent would have to be uttered. He abandoned all pretence of honesty and uprightness. Mimi showed no surprise whatever, nor was she apparently in the least shocked. She seemed to regard the affair as a quite ordinary part of the day"s routine. Her insensitive calm frightened Mr. Prohack.