Part 61 (1/2)
He was considerably dashed on his return home, to find the door of his study still locked on the outside. The gesture which on his leaving the room seemed so natural, brilliant and excusable, now presented itself to him as the act of a coa.r.s.e-minded idiot. He hesitated to unlock the door, but of course he had to unlock it. Eve eat as if at the stake, sublime.
”Arthur, why do you play these tricks on me--and especially when we are in such trouble?”
Why did he, indeed?
”I merely didn't want you to run after me,” said he. ”I made sure of course that you'd ring the bell at once and have the door opened.”
”Did you imagine for a moment that I would let any of the servants know that you'd locked me in a room? No! You couldn't have imagined that.
I've too much respect for your reputation in this house to do such a thing, and you ought to know it.”
”My child,” said Mr. Prohack, once again amazed at Eve's extraordinary gift for putting him in the wrong, and for making him still more wrong when he was wrong. ”This is the second time this morning that I've had to surrender to overwhelming force. Name your own terms of peace. But let me tell you in extenuation that I've discovered your offspring. The fact is, I got her in one.”
”Where is she?” Eve asked, not eagerly, rather negligently, for she was now more distressed about her husband's behaviour than about Sissie.
”At Ozzie's.” As soon as he had uttered the words Mr. Prohack saw his wife's interest fly back from himself to their daughter.
”What's she doing at Ozzie's?”
”Well, she's living with him. They were married yesterday. They thought they'd save you and me and themselves a lot of trouble.... But, look here, my child, it's not a tragedy. What's the matter with you?”
Eve's face was a mask of catastrophe. She did not cry. The affair went too deep for tears.
”I suppose I shall have to forgive Sissie--some day; but I've never been so insulted in my life. Never! And never shall I forget it! And I've no doubt that you and Sissie treated it all as a great piece of fun. You would!”
The poor lady had gone as pale as ivory. Mr. Prohack was astonished--he even felt hurt--that he had not seen the thing from Eve's point of view earlier. Emphatically it did amount to an insult for Eve, to say naught of the immense desolating disappointment to her. And yet Sissie, princess among daughters, had not shown by a single inflection of her voice that she had any sympathy with her mother, or any genuine appreciation of what the secret marriage would mean to her. Youth was incredibly cruel; and age too, in the shape of Mr. Prohack himself, had not been much less cruel.
”Something's happened about that necklace since you left,” said Eve, in a dull, even voice.
”Oh! What?”
”I don't know. But I saw Mr. Crewd the detective drive up to the house at a great pace. Then Brool came and knocked here, and as I didn't care to have to tell him that the door was locked, I kept quiet and he went away again. Mr. Crewd went away too. I saw him drive away.”
Mr. Prohack said nothing audible, but to himself he said: ”She actually choked off her curiosity about the necklace so as not to give me away!
There could never have been another woman like her in the whole history of human self-control! She's prodigious!”
And then he wondered what could have happened in regard to the necklace.
He foresaw more trouble there. And the splendour of the morning had faded. An appalling silence descended upon the whole house. To escape from its sinister spell Mr. Prohack departed and sought the seclusion of his secondary club, which he had not entered for a very long time. (He dared not face the lively amenities of his princ.i.p.al club.) He pretended, at the secondary club, that he had never ceased to frequent the place regularly, and to that end he put on a nonchalant air; but he was somewhat disconcerted to find, from the demeanour of his acquaintances there, that he positively had not been missed to any appreciable extent. He decided that the club was a dreary haunt, and could not understand why he had never before perceived its dreariness.
The members seemed to be scarcely alive; and in particular they seemed to have conspired together to behave and talk as though humanity consisted of only one s.e.x,--their own. Mr. Prohack, worried though he was by a too acute realisation of the fact that humanity did indeed consist of two s.e.xes, despised the lot of them. And yet simultaneously the weaker part of him envied them, and he fully admitted, in the abstract, that something might convincingly be said in favour of monasteries. It was a most strange experience.
After a desolating lunch of excellent dishes, perfect coffee which left a taste in his mouth, and a fine cigar which he threw away before it was half finished, he abandoned the club and strolled in the direction of Manchester Square. But he lacked the courage to go into the n.o.ble mansion, and feebly and aimlessly proceeded northward until he arrived at Marylebone Road and saw the great historic crimson building of Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. His mood was such that he actually, in a wild and melancholy caprice, paid money to enter this building and enquired at once for the room known as the Chamber of Horrors.... When he emerged his gloom had reached the fantastic, hysteric, or giggling stage, and his conception of the all-embracingness of London was immensely enlarged.
”Miss Sissie and Mr. Morfey are with Mrs. Prohack, sir,” said Brool, in a quite ordinary tone, taking the hat and coat of his returned master in the hall of the n.o.ble mansion.
Mr. Prohack started.
”Give me back my hat and coat,” said he. ”Tell your mistress that I may not be in for dinner.” And he fled.