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 cowardice¹, that he had not retreated from danger until after he had fairly affronted² it. More curious still was the double, self-contradictory sensation of feeling both righteous and sinful. He would have spurned³ 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. Deference⁴ 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 kindliness⁵, its wifeliness, its touches of perverse⁶ self-sacrifice and of vague, delicate malice⁷. Lady Massulam 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 entirely⁹ without reference to the fact that it is improper¹⁰ 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 classified according to castes. Mr. Prohack, free, devil-may-care and original, said to his chauffeur¹¹:
 
"You'd better eat with me, Carthew."
 
"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 intimacy¹² when three glasses 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, pushing 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 sex, at your age?" cried Mr. Prohack.
 
"I don't say as I've done with the sex, 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 attitude of yours."
 
"I won't bet, sir," said Carthew. "Because nobody 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 impervious¹³ 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 Massulam.
 
"There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place," murmured Carthew with bland¹⁴ 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 scraped 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 tolerance¹⁵ at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle¹⁶, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury¹⁷ official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.
 
The shock of meeting Eve in The Sunday Picture was terrible, but equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in regard to the ownership of the noble mansion¹⁸. He had understood—or more correctly he had been given to understand—that the house and its contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as celebrated¹⁹ as that of his lordly forefathers²⁰ had been. Assuredly neither Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the exquisite²¹ decorations and furnishings of that house. On the other hand, it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave the house as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluable²² bibelots lying about all over the place. Almost certainly Eliza Fiddle must have had some sort of effective ownership of the place. He knew that dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding²³ and mysterious luck in the matter of luxurious²⁴ homes, and that some of them progressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable²⁵ than the last. He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind. He had of course no grudge²⁶ against the efficient and strenuous²⁷ Eliza, for he was perfectly²⁸ at liberty not to pay money in order to see her. She must be an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones. Yet, Pharisaical snob²⁹, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife in The Sunday Picture.... Eve! Eve! A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into The Daily Picture. And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam! A ticklish³⁰ thing, criticism of life!)
 
And there was another point, as sharp as any. Ozzie Morfey must have known, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself must have known, that the de facto owner of the noble mansion was Eliza Fiddle. And none had vouchsafed³¹ the truth to him.
 
"We'll struggle back to town I think," said Mr. Prohack to Carthew, with a pitiable affectation of brightness. And instead of sitting by Carthew's side, as previously³², he sat behind, and reflected upon the wisdom of Carthew. He had held that Carthew's views were warped³³ by a peculiar³⁴ experience. He now saw that they were not warped at all, but shapely, sane³⁵ and incontrovertible.
 
 
 
II
That evening, soon after dark, the Eagle, dusty and unkempt from a journey which had not been free from mishaps³⁶, rolled up to the front-door of Mr. Prohack's original modest residence behind Hyde Park; and Mr. Prohack jumped out; and Carthew came after him with two bags. The house was as dark as the owner's soul; not a gleam of light in any window. Mr. Prohack produced his familiar latch-key, scraped round the edge of the key-hole, savagely³⁷ pushed in the key, and opened the door. There was still no light nor sign of life. Mr. Prohack paused on the threshold, and then his hand instinctively³⁸ sought the electric switch and pulled it down. No responsive gleam!
 
"Machin!" called Mr. Prohack, as it were plaintively³⁹.
 
No sound.
 
"I am a fool," thought Mr. Prohack.
 
He struck a match and walked forward delicately, peering. He descried⁴⁰ an empty portmanteau lying on the stairs. He shoved against the dining-room door, which was ajar, and lit another match, and started back. The dining-room was full of ghosts, furniture sheeted in dust-sheets; and a newspaper had been made into a cap over his favourite Chippendale clock. He retreated.
 
"Put those bags into the car again," he said to Carthew, who stood hesitant on the vague whiteness of the front-step.
 
How much did Carthew know? Mr. Prohack was too proud to ask. Carthew was no longer an authority on women lunching with an equal; he was a servitor engaged and paid on the clear understanding that he should not speak until spoken to.
 
"Drive to Claridge's Hotel," said Mr. Prohack.
 
"Yes, sir."
 
At the entrance to the hotel the party was received by gigantic uniformed guards with all the respect due to an Eagle. Ignoring the guards, Mr. Prohack passed imperially within to the reception office.
 
"I want a bedroom, a sitting-room⁴¹ and a bath-room, please."
 
"A private suite⁴², sir?"
 
"A private suite."
 
"What—er—kind, sir? We have—"
 
"The best," said Mr. Prohack, with finality. He signed his name and received a ticket.
 
"Please have my luggage taken out of the car, and tell my chauffeur I shall want him at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, and that he should take the car to the hotel-garage, wherever it is, and sleep here. I will have some tea at once in my sitting-room."
 
The hotel-staff, like all hotel-staffs, loved a customer who knew his mind with precision and could speak it. Mr. Prohack was admirably served.
 
After tea he took a bath because he could think of nothing else to do. The bath, as baths will, inspired him with an idea. He set out on foot to Manchester Square, and having reached the Square cautiously followed the side opposite to the noble mansion. The noble mansion blazed with lights through the wintry trees. It resembled the set-piece of a pyrotechnic display. Mr. Prohack shivered in the dank evening. Then he observed that blinds and curtains were being drawn⁴³ in the noble mansion, shutting out from its superb nobility the miserable⁴⁴, crude, poverty-stricken world. With the exception of the glow in the fan light over the majestic⁴⁵ portals, the noble mansion was now as dark as Mr. Prohack's other house.
 
He shut his lips, steeled himself, and walked round the Square to the noble mansion and audaciously rang the bell. He had to wait. He shook guiltily, as though he, and no member of his family, had sinned. A little more, and his tongue would have cleaved⁴⁶ to the gold of his upper denture. The double portals swung backwards⁴⁷. Mr. Prohack beheld⁴⁸ the portly form of an intensely traditional butler, and behind the butler a vista⁴⁹ of outer and inner halls and glimpses of the soaring staircase. He heard, somewhere in the distance of the interior, the ringing laugh of his daughter Sissie.
 
The butler looked carelessly down upon him, and, as Mr. Prohack uttered no word, challenged him.
 
"Yes, sir?"
 
"Is Mrs. Prohack at home?"
 
"No, sir." (Positively⁵⁰.)
 
"Is Miss Prohack at home?"
 
"No, sir." (More positively.)
 
"Oh!"
 
"Will you leave your name, sir?"
 
"No."
 
Abruptly⁵¹ Mr. Prohack turned away. He had had black moments in his life. This was the blackest.
 
Of course he might have walked right in, and said to the butler: "Here's a month's wages. Hook it." But he was a peculiar fellow, verging⁵² sometimes on silliness. He merely turned away. The vertiginous⁵³ rapidity of his wife's developments, manoeuvres and transformations⁵⁴ had dazed him into a sort of numbed⁵⁵ idiocy⁵⁶. In two days, in a day, with no warning to him of her extraordinary precipitancy, she had 'flitted'!
 
At Claridge's, through giving Monsieur Charles, the maitre d' hôtel, carte blanche in the ordering of his dinner and then only half-eating his dinner, Mr. Prohack failed somewhat to maintain his prestige, though he regained⁵⁷ ground towards the end by means of champagne⁵⁸ and liqueurs. The black-and-gold restaurant was full of expensive persons who were apparently⁵⁹ in ignorance of the fact that the foundations of the social fabric⁶⁰ had been riven. They were all gay; the music was gay; everything was gay except Mr. Prohack—the sole living being in the place who conformed in face and heart to the historical conception of the British Sunday.
 
But Mr. Prohack was not now a man,—he was a grievance⁶¹; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational⁶² kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little—not much—to solace⁶³ him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor⁶⁴ in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundred and fifty electric lamps were keeping him in countenance⁶⁵. Then his wandering, enfeebled attention heard music afar off, and he remembered some remark of Sissie's to the effect that Claridge's was the best place for dancing in London on Sunday nights. He would gaze Byronically upon the dance. He signed his bill and mooned towards the ball-room, which was full of radiant couples: a dazzling scene, fit to mark the end of an epoch⁶⁶ and of a society.
 
The next thing was that he had an absurd delusion⁶⁷ of seeing Sissie and Charlie locked together amid the couples. He might have conquered this delusion, but it was succeeded by another,—the illusion of seeing Ozzie Morfey and Eve locked together amid the couples.... Yes, they we............