Part 46 (1/2)

”Pardon!” she cried, aghast. ”It is yours,” and planked the tumbler down again on the lacquered table.

Mr. Prohack had the wit to drink also. They went on talking.... A silver tongue vibrated from the hall with solemn British deliberation--One!

Two! The air throbbed to the sound for many seconds.

”Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Prohack, rising in alarm. ”And this is Frinton!” She let him out herself, with all soft precautions against shocking the Frintonian world. His manner of regaining the Majestic Hotel can only be described by saying that he 'effected an entrance'

into it. He went to bed but not to sleep.

”What the deuce has happened to me?” he asked himself amazed. ”Is it anything serious? Or am I merely English after all?”

V

Late the next morning, when he was dreaming, a servant awoke him with the information that a chauffeur was demanding him. But he was sleepy and slept again. Between noon and one o'clock he encountered the chauffeur. It was Carthew, who stated that his mistress had sent him with the car. She felt that he would need the car to go about in. As for her, she would manage without it.

Mr. Prohack remained silent for a few moments and then said:

”Be ready to start in a quarter of an hour.”

”Before lunch, sir?”

”Before lunch.”

Mr. Prohack paid his bill and packed.

”Which way, sir?” Carthew asked, as the Eagle moved from under the portico of the hotel.

”There is only one road out of Frinton,” said Mr. Prohack. ”It's the road you came in by. Take it. I want to get off as quickly as possible.

The climate of this place is the most dangerous and deceptive I was ever in.”

”Really, sir!” responded Carthew, polite but indifferent. ”The east wind I suppose, sir?”

”Not at all. The south wind.”

CHAPTER XVIII

A HOMELESS NIGHT

I

How exhilarating (Mr. Prohack found it) to be on the road without a destination! It was Sunday morning, and the morning was marvellous for the time of year. Mr. Prohack had had a very fine night, and he now felt a curious desire to defy something or somebody, to defend himself, and to point out, if any one accused him of cowardice, that he had not retreated from danger until after he had fairly affronted it. More curious still was the double, self-contradictory sensation of feeling both righteous and sinful. He would have spurned a charge of wickedness, and yet the feeling of being wicked was really very jolly. He seemed to have begun a new page of life, and then to have ripped the page away--and possibly spoilt the whole book. Deference to Eve, of course!

Respect for Eve! Or was it merely that he must always be able to look Eve in the face? In sending the car for his idle use, Eve had performed a master-stroke which laid him low by its kindliness, its wifeliness, its touches of perverse self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice.

Lady Ma.s.sulam hung in the vast hollow of his mind, a brilliant and intensely seductive figure; but Eve hung there too, and Mr. Prohack was obliged to admit that the simple Eve was holding her own.

”My sagacity is famous,” said Mr. Prohack to himself. ”And I never showed more of it than in leaving Frinton instantly. Few men would have had the sense and the resolution to do it.” And he went on praising himself to himself. Such was the mood of this singular man.

Hunger--Mr. Prohack's hunger--drew them up at Frating, a village a few miles short of Colchester. The inn at Frating had been constructed ages earlier entirely without reference to the fact that it is improper for certain different types of humanity to eat or drink in each other's presence. In brief, there was obviously only one dining-room, and not a series of dining-rooms cla.s.sified according to castes. Mr. Prohack, free, devil-may-care and original, said to his chauffeur:

”You'd better eat with me, Carthew.”