Part 19 (1/2)
”I did and I didn't, sir. The fact is, I've been driving an ambulance for the City of London, but as soon as I heard of something private I chucked that. I can't say as I like these Corporations. There's a bit too much stone wall about them Corporations, for my taste.”
”Family man?” asked Mr. Prohack lightly. ”I've two children myself and both of them can drive.”
”Really, sir, I am a family man, as ye might say, but my wife and me, we're best apart.”
”Sorry to hear that. I didn't want to--”
”Oh, not at all, sir! That's all right. But you see--the war--me being away and all that--I've got the little boy. He's nine.”
”Well,” said Mr. Prohack, jumping up nervously, ”suppose we go and have a look at the car, shall we?”
”Certainly, sir,” said Carthew, throwing the end of his cigarette into the fender, and hastening.
”My dove,” said Mr. Prohack to his wife in the hall. ”I congratulate you on your taste in chauffeurs. Carthew and I have laid the foundations of a lasting friends.h.i.+p.”
”I really wonder you asked him to smoke in the drawing-room,” Mrs.
Prohack critically observed.
”Why? He saved England for me; and now I'm trusting my life to him.”
”I do believe you'd _like_ there to be a revolution in this country.”
”Not at all, angel! And I don't think there'll be one. But I'm taking my precautions in case there should be one.”
”He's only a chauffeur.”
”That's very true. He was doing some useful work, driving an ambulance to hospitals. But we've stopped that. He's now only a chauffeur to the idle rich.”
”Oh, Arthur! I wish you wouldn't try to be funny on such subjects. You know you don't mean it.”
Mrs. Prohack was now genuinely reproachful, and the first conjugal joy-ride might have suffered from a certain constraint had it taken place. It did not, however, take place. Just as Carthew was holding out the rug (which Eve's prodigious thoroughness had remembered to buy) preparatory to placing it on the knees of his employers, a truly gigantic automobile drove up to the door, its long bonnet stopping within six inches of the Eagle's tail-lantern. The Eagle looked like nothing at all beside it. Mr. Prohack knew that leviathan. He had many times seen it in front of the portals of his princ.i.p.al club. It was the car of his great club crony, Sir Paul Spinner, the ”city magnate.”
Sir Paul, embossed with carbuncles, got out, and was presently being presented to Eve,--for the friends.h.i.+p between Mr. Prohack and Sir Paul had been a purely club friends.h.i.+p. Like many such friends.h.i.+ps it had had no existence beyond the club, and neither of the cronies knew anything of real interest about the domestic circ.u.mstances of the other. Sir Paul was very apologetic to Eve, but he imperiously desired an interview with Mr. Prohack at once. Eve most agreeably and charmingly said that she would take a little preliminary airing in the car by herself, and return for her husband. Mr. Prohack would have preferred her to wait for him; but, though Eve was sagacious enough at all normal times, when she got an idea into her head that idea ruthlessly took precedence of everything else in the external world. Moreover the car was her private creation, and she was incapable of resisting its attractions one minute longer.
II
”I hear you've come into half a million, Arthur,” said Paul Spinner, after he had shown himself very friendly and optimistic about Mr.
Prohack's health and given the usual bulletin about his own carbuncles and the shortcomings of the club.
”But you don't believe it, Paul.”
”I don't,” agreed Paul. ”Things get about pretty fast in the City and we can size them up fairly well; and I should say, putting two and two together, that a hundred and fifty thousand would be nearer the mark.”
”It certainly is,” said Mr. Prohack.
If Paul Spinner had suggested fifty thousand, Mr. Prohack would have corrected him, but being full of base instincts he had no impulse to correct the larger estimate, which was just as inaccurate.
”Well, well! It's a most romantic story and I congratulate you on it.
No such luck ever happened to me.” Sir Paul made this remark in a tone to indicate that he had had practically no luck himself. And he really believed that he had had no luck, though the fact was that he touched no enterprise that failed. Every year he signed a huger cheque for super-tax, and every year he signed it with a gesture signifying that he was signing his own ruin.