I  
 
After a magnificent night's sleep, so magnificent indeed that he felt as if he had never until that moment really grasped the full significance of the word "sleep," Mr. Prohack rang the bell for his morning tea. Of late he had given orders that he must not under any circumstances be called, for it had been vouchsafed² to him that in spite of a multitude of trained servants there were still things that he could do for himself better than anybody else could do for him, and among them was the act of waking up Mr. Prohack. He knew that he was in a very good humour, capable of miracles, and he therefore determined³ that he would seize the opportunity to find the human side of Mr. Brool and make a friend of him. But the tea-tray was brought in by Mrs. Prohack, who was completely and severely⁴ dressed. She put down the tray and kissed her husband not as usual, but rather in the manner of a Roman matron, and Mr. Prohack divined that something had happened.
 
"I hope Brool hasn't dropped down dead," said he, realising the foolishness of his facetiousness⁵ as he spoke⁶.
 
Eve seemed to be pained.
 
"Have you slept better?" she asked, solicitous⁷.
 
"I have slept so well that there's probably something wrong with me," said he. "Heavy sleep is a symptom of several dangerous diseases."
 
"I'm glad you've had a good night," she began, again ignoring his maladroit⁸ flippancy⁹, "because I want to talk to you."
 
"Darling," he responded. "Pour out my tea for me, will you? Then I shall be equal to any strain. I trust that you also passed a fair night, madam. You look tremendously fit."
 
Visions of Lady Massulam flitted through his mind, but he decided¹⁰ that Eve, seriously pouring out tea for him under the lamp in the morning twilight¹¹ of the pale bedroom, could not be matched by either Lady Massulam or anybody else. No, he could not conceive a Lady Massulam pouring out early tea; the Lady Massulams could only pour out afternoon tea—a job easier to do with grace and satisfaction.
 
"I have not slept a wink¹² all night," said Eve primly¹³. "But I was determined that nothing should induce me to disturb you."
 
"Yes?" Mr. Prohack encouraged her, sipping¹⁵ the first glorious sip¹⁴.
 
"Well, will you believe me that Sissie slipped out last night after dinner without saying a word to me or any one, and that she didn't come back and hasn't come back? I sat up for her till three o'clock—I telephoned to Charlie, but no! he'd seen nothing of her."
 
"Did you telephone to Ozzie?"
 
"Telephone to Ozzie, my poor boy! Of course I didn't. I wouldn't have Ozzie know for anything. Besides, he isn't on the telephone at his flat."
 
"That's a good reason for not telephoning, anyway," said Mr. Prohack.
 
"But did you ever hear of such a thing? The truth is, you've spoilt that child."
 
"I may have spoilt the child," Mr. Prohack admitted. "But I have heard of such a thing. I seem to remember that in the dear dead days of dancing studios, something similar occurred to your daughter."
 
"Yes, but we did know where she was."
 
"You didn't. I did," Mr. Prohack corrected her.
 
"Do you want me to cry?" Eve demanded suddenly.
 
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack. "I love to see you cry."
 
Eve pursed her lips and wrinkled her brows and gazed at the window, performing great feats¹⁷ of self-control under extreme provocation¹⁸ to lose her temper.
 
"What do you propose to do?" she asked with formality.
 
"Wait till the girl comes back," said Mr. Prohack.
 
"Arthur! I really cannot understand how you can take a thing like this so casually¹⁹! No, I really can't!"
 
"Neither can I!" Mr. Prohack admitted, quite truthfully.
 
He saw that he ought to have been gravely upset by Sissie's prank²¹ and he was merely amused. "Effect of too much sleep, no doubt," he added.
 
Eve walked about the room.
 
"I pretended to Machin this morning that Sissie had told me that she was sleeping out, and that I had forgotten to tell Machin. It's a good thing we haven't engaged lady's maids yet. I can trust Machin. I know she didn't believe me this morning, but I can trust her. You see, after Sissie's strange behaviour these last few days.... One doesn't know what to think. And there's something else. Every morning for the last three or four weeks Sissie's gone out somewhere, for an hour or two, quite regularly. And where she went I've never been able to find out. Of course with a girl like her it doesn't do to ask too direct questions.... Ah! I should like to have seen my mother in my place. I know what she'd have done!"
 
"What would your mother have done? She always seemed to me to be a fairly harmless creature."
 
"Yes, to you!... Do you think we ought to inform the police!"
 
"No!"
 
"I'm so glad. The necklace and Sissie coming on top of each other! No, it would be too much!"
 
"It never rains but it pours, does it?" observed Mr. Prohack.
 
"But what are we to do?"
 
"Just what your mother would have done. Your mother would have argued like this: Either Sissie is staying away against her will or she is staying away of her own accord. If the former, it means an accident, and we are bound to hear shortly from one of the hospitals. If the latter, we can only sit tight. Your mother had a vigorous mind and that is how she would have looked at things."
 
"I never know how to take you, Arthur," said Mrs. Prohack, and went on: "And what makes it all the more incomprehensible is that yesterday afternoon Sissie went with me to Jay's to see about the wedding-dress."
 
"But why should that make it all the more incomprehensible?"
 
"Don't you think it does, somehow? I do."
 
"Did she giggle²³ at Jay's?"
 
"Oh, no! Except once. Yes, I think she giggled²⁴ once. That was when the fitter said she hoped we should give them plenty of time, because most customers rushed them so. I remember thinking how queer it was that Sissie should laugh so much at a perfectly²⁵ simple remark like that. Oh! Arthur!"
 
"Now, my child," said Mr. Prohack firmly. "Don't get into your head that Sissie has gone off hers. Yesterday you thought for quite half an hour that I was suffering from incipient²⁶ lunacy. Let that suffice you for the present. Be philosophical²⁷. The source of tranquillity²⁸ is within. Remember that, and remind me of it too, because I'm apt to forget it.... We can do nothing at the moment. I will now get up, and I warn you that I shall want a large breakfast and you to pour out my coffee and read the interesting bits out of The Daily Picture to me."
 
II
At eleven o'clock of the morning the status quo was still maintaining itself within the noble mansion²⁹ at Manchester Square. Mr. Prohack, washed, dressed, and amply fed, was pretending to be very busy with correspondence in his study, but he was in fact much more busy with Eve than with the correspondence. She came in to him every few minutes, and each time needed more delicate handling. After one visit Mr. Prohack had an idea. He transferred the key from the inside to the outside of the door. At the next visit Eve presented an ultimatum³⁰. She said that Mr. Prohack must positively³¹ do something about his daughter. Mr. Prohack replied that he would telephone to his solicitors³²: a project which happily commended itself to Eve, though what his solicitors could do except charge a fee Mr. Prohack could not imagine.
 
"You wait here," said he persuasively³³.
 
He then left the room and silently locked the door on Eve. It was a monstrous³⁴ act, but Mr. Prohack had slept too well and was too fully²⁰ inspired by the instinct of initiative. He hurried downstairs, ignoring Brool, who was contemplating³⁵ the grandeur³⁶ of the entrance hall, snatched his overcoat, hat, and umbrella from the seventeenth-century panelled cupboard in which these articles were kept, and slipped away into the Square, before Brool could even open the door for him. As he fled he glanced up at the windows of his study, fearful lest Eve might have divined his purpose to abandon her and, catching³⁷ sight of him in flight, might begin making noises on the locked door. But Eve had not divined his purpose.
 
Mr. Prohack walked straight to Bruton Street, where Oswald Morfey's Japanese flat was situated³⁸. Mr. Prohack had never seen this flat, though his wife and daughter had been invited to it for tea—and had returned therefrom with excited accounts of its exquisite³⁹ uniqueness. He had decided that his duty was to inform Ozzie of the mysterious disappearance⁴⁰ of Sissie as quickly as possible; and, as Ozzie's theatrical⁴¹ day was not supposed to begin until noon, he hoped to catch him before his departure to the beck and call of the mighty⁴² Asprey Chown.
 
The number in Bruton Street indicated a tall, thin house with four bell-pushes and four narrow brass-plates on its door-jamb. The deceitful edifice⁴³ looked at a distance just like its neighbours, but, as the array on the door-jamb showed, it had ceased to be what it seemed, the home of a respectable Victorian family in easy circumstances, and had become a Georgian warren for people who could reconcile themselves to a common staircase provided only they might engrave⁴⁴ a sound West End address on their notepaper. The front-door was open, disclosing the reassuring⁴⁵ fact that the hall and staircase were at any rate carpeted. Mr. Prohack rang the bell attached to Ozzie's name, waited, rang again, waited, and then marched upstairs. Perhaps Ozzie was shaving. Not being accustomed to the organisation⁴⁶ of tenements⁴⁷ in fashionable quarters, Mr. Prohack was unaware⁴⁸ that during certain hours of the day he was entitled to ring the housekeeper⁴⁹'s bell, on the opposite door-jamb, and to summon help from the basement.
 
As he mounted it the staircase grew stuffier⁵⁰ and stuffier, but the condition of the staircarpet improved. Mr. Prohack hated the place, and at once determined to fight powerfully against Sissie's declared intention of starting married life in her husband's bachelor-flat, for the sake of economy. He would force the pair, if necessary, to accept from him a flat rent-free, or he would even purchase for them one of those bijou residences of which he had heard tell. He little dreamed that this very house had once been described as a bijou residence. The third floor landing was terribly small and dark, and Mr. Prohack could scarcely decipher the name of his future son-in-law on the shabby name-plate.
 
"This den¹⁶ would be dear at elevenpence three farthings a year," said he to himself, and was annoyed because for months he had been picturing the elegant Oswald as the inhabitant of something orientally and impeccably luxurious⁵¹, and he wondered that his women, as a rule so critical, had breathed no word of the flat's deplorable approaches.
 
He rang the bell, and the bell made a violent and horrid⁵² sound, which could scarcely fail to be heard throughout the remainder of the house. No answer! Ozzie had gone. He descended⁵³ the stairs, and on the second-floor landing saw an old lady putting down a mat in front of an open door. The old lady's hair was in curl-papers.
 
"I suppose," he ventured, raising his hat. "I suppose you don't happen to know whether Mr. Morfey has gone out?"
 
The old lady scanned him before replying.
 
"He can't be gone out," she answered. "He's just been sweeping⁵⁴ his floor enough to wake the dead."
 
"Sweeping his floor!" exclaimed Mr. Prohack, shocked, thunderstruck. "I understood these were service flats."
 
"So they are—in a way, but the housekeeper never gets up to this floor before half past twelve; so it can't be the housekeeper. Besides, she's gone out for me."
 
"Thank you," said Mr. Prohack, and remounted the staircase. His blood was up. He would know the worst about the elegant Oswald, even if he had to beat the door down. He was, however, saved from this extreme measure, for when he aimlessly pushed against Oswald's door it opened.
 
He beheld⁵⁵ a narrow passage, which in the matter of its decoration certainly did present a Japanese aspect to Mr. Prohack, who, however, had never been to Japan. Two doors gave off the obscure corridor. One of these doors was open, and in the doorway⁵⁶ could be seen the latter half of a woman and the forward half of a carpet-brush. She was evidently brushing the carpet of a room and gradually coming out of the room and into the passage. She wore a large blue pinafore apron⁵⁷, and she was so absorbed in her business that the advent⁵⁸ of Mr. Prohack passed quite unnoticed by her. Mr. Prohack waited. More of the woman appeared, and at last the whole of her. She felt, rather than saw, the presence of a man at the entrance, and she looked up, transfixed. A deep blush travelled over all her features.
 
"How clever of you!" she said, with a fairly successful effort to be calm.
 
"Good morning, my child," said Mr. Prohack, with a similar and equally successful effort. "So you're cleaning Mr. Morfey's flat for him."
 
"Yes. And not before it needed it. Do come in and shut the door." Mr. Prohack obeyed, and Sissie shed her pinafore apron. "Now we're quite private. I think you'd better kiss me. I may as well tell you that I'm fearfully happy—much more so than I expected to be at first."
 
Mr. Prohack again obeyed, and when he kissed his daughter he had an almost entirely⁵⁹ new sensation. The girl was far more interesting to him than she had ever been. Her blush thrilled him.
 
"You might care to glance at that," said Sissie, with an affectation of carelessness, indicating a longish, narrowish piece of paper covered with characters in red and black, which had been affixed⁶⁰ to the wall of the passage with two pins. "We put it there—at least I did—to save trouble."
 
Mr. Prohack scanned the document. It began: "This is to certify—" and it was signed by a "Registrar⁶¹ of births, deaths, and marriages."
 
"Yesterday, eh?" he ejaculated.
 
"Yes. Yesterday, at two o'clock. Not at St George's and not at St Nicodemus's.... Well, you can say what you like, dad—"
 
"I'm not aware of having said anything yet," Mr. Prohack put in.
 
"You can say what you like, but what did you expect me to do? It was necessary to bring home to some people that this is the twentieth century, not the nineteenth, and I think I've done it. And anyway what are you going to do about it? Did you seriously suppose that I—I—was going through all the orange-blossom rigmarole, voice that breathed o'er Eden, fully choral, red carpet on the pavement, flowers, photographers, vicar, vestry, Daily Picture, reception, congratulations, rice, old shoes, going-away dress, 'Be kind to her, Ozzie.' Not much! And I don't think. They say that girls love it and insist on it. Well, I don't, and I know some others who don't, too. I think it's simply barbaric, worse than a public funeral. Why, to my mind it's Central African; and that's all there is to it. So there!" She laughed.
 
"Well," said Mr. Prohaek, holding his hat in his hand. "I'm a tolerably two-faced person myself, but for sheer heartless duplicity I give you the palm. You can beat me. Has it occurred to you that this dodge⁶² of yours will cost you about fifty per cent of the wedding presents you might otherwise have had?"
 
"It has," said Sissie. "That was one reason why we tried the dodge. Nothing is more horrible than about fifty per cent of the wedding presents that brides get in these days. And we've had the two finest presents anybody could wish for."
 
"Oh?"
 
"Yes, Ozzie gave me Ozzie, and I gave him me."
 
"I suppose the idea was yours?"
 
"Of course. Didn't I tell you yesterday that Ozzie's only function at my wedding was to be indispensable. He was very much afraid at first when I started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it. I'll give him credit for seeing that secrecy⁶³ was the only thing. If we'd announced it beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten. You see that yourself, don't you, dearest? And after all, it's our affair and nobody else's."
 
"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack grandly. "A marriage, even yours, is an affair of the State's. It concerns society. It is full of reactions on society. And society has been very wise to invest it with solemnity—and a certain grotesque⁶⁴ quality. All solemnities are a bit grotesque, and so they ought to be. All solemnities ought to produce self-consciousness in the performers. As things are, you'll be ten years in convincing yourself that you're really a married woman, and till the day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive⁶⁵ feeling that there's something fishy⁶⁶ about you, or about Ozzie. And it's your own fault."
 
"Oh, dad! What a fraud you are!" And the girl smiled. "You know perfectly well that if you'd been in my place, and had had the pluck—which you wouldn't have had—you'd have done the same."
 
"I should," Mr. Prohack immediately admitted. "Because I always want to be smarter than other people. It's a cheap ambition. But I should have been wrong. And I'm exceedingly angry with you and I'm suffering from a sense of outrage⁶⁷, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over between us. The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world. If your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I'll talk to him as he's never been talked to before. He's the elder, he's a man, and he's the most to blame."
 
"Take your overcoat off," said Sissie laughing and kissing him again. "And don't you dare to say a word to Ozzie. Besides, he isn't in. He's gone off to business. He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually."
 
There was a pause.
 
"Well," said Mr. Prohack. "All I wish to state is that if you had a feather handy, you could knock me down with it."
 
"I can see all over your face," Sissie retorted, "that you're so pleased and relieved you don't know what to do with yourself."
 
Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true. His relief that the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up. He loathed⁶⁸ all ceremonies, and the prospect⁶⁹ of having to escort an orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile⁷⁰ to a fashionable church, and up the aisle⁷¹ thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a thousand gapers at a starchy reception,—this prospect had increasingly become a nightmare to him. Often had he dwelt on it in a condition resembling panic. And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable daughter for her shameless effrontery⁷². He desired greatly to do something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.
 
"Step in and see my home," she said.
 
The home consisted of two rooms, one of them a bedroom and the other a sitting-room⁷³, together with a small bathroom that was as dark and dank as a cell of the Spanish Inquisition, and another apartment which he took for a cupboard, but which Sissie authoritatively⁷⁴ informed him was a kitchen. The two principal rooms were beyond question beautifully Japanese in the matter of pictures, prints and cabinets—not otherwise. They showed much taste; they were unusual and stimulating⁷⁵ and jolly and refined; but Mr. Prohack did not fancy that he personally could have lived in them with any striking success. The lack of space, of light, and of air outweighed⁷⁶ all considerations of charm and originality⁷⁷; the upper staircase alone would have ruined any flat for Mr. Prohack.
 
"Isn't it lovely!" Sissie encouraged him.
 
"Yes, it is," he said feebly. "Got any servants yet?"
 
"Oh! We can't have servants. No room for them to sleep, and I couldn't stand charwomen. You see, it's a service flat, so there's really nothing to do."
 
"So I noticed when I came in," said Mr. Prohack. "And I suppose you intend to eat at restaurants. Or do they send up meals from the cellar?"
 
"We shan't go to restaurants," Sissie replied. "You may be sure of that. Too expensive for us. And I don't count much on the cookery downstairs. No! I shall do the cooking in a chaffing-dish—here it is, you see. I've been taking lessons in chafing-dish cookery every day for weeks, and it's awfully⁷⁸ amusing, it is really. And it's much better than ordinary cooking, and cheaper too. Ozzie loves it."
 
Mr. Prohack was touched, and more than ever determined to "be generous in the grand manner and start the simple-minded couple in married life on a scale befitting the general situation.
 
"You'll soon be clearing out of this place, I expect," he began cautiously.
 
"Clearing out!" Sissie repeated. "Why should we? We've got all we need. We haven't the slightest intention of trying to live as you live. Ozzie's very prudent⁷⁹, I'm glad to say, and so am I. We're going to save hard for a few years, and then we shall see how things are."
 
"But you can't possibly stay on living in a place like this!" Mr. Prohack protested, smiling diplomatically to soften⁸⁰ the effect of his words.
 
"Who can't?"
 
"You can't."
 
"But when you say me, do you mean your daughter or Ozzie's wife? Ozzie's lived here for years, and he's given lots of parties here—tea-parties, of course."
 
Mr. Prohack paused, perceiving that he had put himself in the wrong.
 
"This place is perfectly respectable," Sissie continued, "and supposing you hadn't got all that money from America or somewhere," she persisted, "would you have said that I couldn't 'possibly go on living in a place like this?'" She actually imitated his superior fatherly tone. "You'd have been only too pleased to see me living in a place like this."
 
Mr. Prohack raised both arms on high.
 
"All right," said the young spouse⁸¹, absurdly proud of her position. "I'll let you off with your life this time, and you can drop your arms again. But if anybody had told me that you would come here and make a noise like a plutocrat I wouldn't have believed it. Still, I'm frightfully fond of you and I know you'd do anything for me, and you're nearly as much of a darling as Ozzie, but you mustn't be a rich man when you call on me here. I couldn't bear it twice."
 
"I retire in disorder⁸², closely pursued by the victorious⁸³ enemy," said Mr. Prohack. And in so saying he accurately⁸⁴ described the situation. He had been more than defeated—he had been exquisitely⁸⁵ snubbed. And yet the singular creature was quite pleased. He looked at the young girl, no longer his and no longer a girl either, set in the midst of a japanned and lacquered room that so resembled Ozzie in its daintiness; he saw the decision on her brow, the charm in her eyes, and the elegance⁸⁶ in her figure and dress, and he came near to bursting with pride. "She's got character enough to beat even me," he reflected contentedly⁸⁷, thus exhibiting an ingenuousness⁸⁸ happily rare among fathers of brilliant daughters. And even the glimpse of the cupboard kitchen, where the washing-up after a chafing-dish breakfast for two had obviously not yet been accomplished⁸⁹—even this touch seemed only to intensify⁹⁰ the moral and physical splendour of his child in her bridal setting.
 
"At the same time," he added to the admission of defeat, "I seem to have a sort of idea that lately you've been carrying on rather like a plutocrat's daughter."
 
"That was only my last fling," she replied, quite unperturbed.
 
"I see," said Mr. Prohack musingly⁹¹. "Now as regards my wedding present to you. Am I permitted to offer any gift, or is it forbidden? Of course with all my millions I couldn't hope to rival the gift which Ozzie gave you, but I might come in a pretty fair second, mightn't I?"
 
"Dad," said she. "I must leave all that to your good taste. I'm sure that it won't let you make any attack on our independence."
 
"Supposing that I were to find some capital for Ozzie to start in business for himself as a theatrical manager? He must know a good deal about the job by this time."
 
Sissie shook her delicious head.
 
"No, that would be plutocratic⁹². And you see I've only just married Ozzie. I don't know anything about him yet. When I do, I shall come and talk to you. While ............