Part 46 (2/2)
”You're very kind, sir,” said Carthew, and at once sat down and ceased to be a chauffeur.
”Well, I haven't been seeing much of you lately,” Mr. Prohack edged forward into the fringes of intimacy when three gla.s.ses of beer and three slices of Derby Round had been unequally divided between them, ”have I?”
”No, sir.”
Mr. Prohack had in truth been seeing Carthew almost daily; but on this occasion he used the word ”see” in a special sense.
”That boy of yours getting on all right?”
”Pretty fair, considering he's got no mother, if you understand what I mean, sir,” replied Carthew, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, stretching out his legs, and picking his teeth with a fork.
”Ah! yes!” said Mr. Prohack commiseratingly. ”Very awkward situation for you, that is.”
”It isn't awkward for me, sir. It's my boy it's awkward for. I'm as right as rain.”
”No chance of the lady coming back, I suppose?”
”Well, she'd better not try,” said Carthew grimly.
”But does this mean you've done with the s.e.x, at your age?” cried Mr.
Prohack.
”I don't say as I've _done_ with the s.e.x, sir. Male and female created He them, as the good old Book says; and I'm not going behind that. No, not me! All I say is, I'm as right as rain--_for_ the present--and she'd better not try.”
”I bet you anything you won't keep it up,” said Mr. Prohack, impetuously exceeding the limits of inter-caste decorum.
”Keep what up?”
”This att.i.tude of yours.”
”I won't bet, sir,” said Carthew. ”Because n.o.body can see round a corner. But I promise you I'll never take a woman _seriously_ again.
That's the mistake we make, taking 'em seriously. You see, sir, being a chauffeur in the early days of motor-cars, I've had a tidy bit of experience, if you understand what I mean. Because in them days a chauffeur was like what an air-pilot is to-day. He didn't have to ask, he didn't. And what I say is this--I say we're mugs to take 'em seriously.”
”You think we are!” bubbled Mr. Prohack emptily, perceiving that he had to do with an individual whom misfortune had rendered impervious to argument.
”I do, sir. And what's more, I say you never know where you are with any woman.”
”That I agree with,” said Mr. Prohack, with a polite show of eagerness.
”But you're cutting yourself off from a great deal you know, Carthew,”
he added, thinking magnificently upon his adventure with Lady Ma.s.sulam.
”There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place,” murmured Carthew with bland superiority. ”If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll just go and give her a look over before we start again.” He sc.r.a.ped his chair cruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority on women.
It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and paying the bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of the long, empty dining-room table, a copy of _The Sunday Picture_, which was the Sabbath edition of _The Daily Picture_. He got up and seized it, expecting it to be at least a week old. It proved, however, to be as new and fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.
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