Mr. Prohack Part 2

"What about my clubs?"

"Don't they cost you a lot of money?"

"No. Besides I lunch at my clubs--better and cheaper than at any restaurant. And I shouldn't have time to come home for lunch."

"But do you need two clubs?"

"I've always belonged to two clubs. Every one does."

"But why _two_?"

"A fellow must have a club up his sleeve."

"_Couldn't_ you give up one?"

"Lady, it's unthinkable. You don't know what you're suggesting. Abandon one of my clubs that my father put me up for when I was a boy! I'd as soon join a Trade Union. No! My innocent but gluttonous children shall starve first."

"I shall give up _my_ club!"

"Ah! But that's different."

"How is it different?" "You scarcely ever speak to a soul in your club.

The food's bad in your club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your club. I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night of the most formidable spinsters each eating at a table alone. Give up your club by all means.

Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count the act as a renunciation. You hate your club. Good morning, my dove."

IV

One advantage of the situation of Mr. Prohack's house was that his path therefrom to the Treasury lay almost entirely through verdant parks--Hyde Park, the Green Park, St. James's Park. Not infrequently he referred to the advantage in terms of bland satisfaction. True, in wet weather the advantage became a disadvantage.

During his walk through verdant parks that morning, the Terror of the Departments who habitually thought in millions was very gloomy.

Something resembling death was in his heart. Humiliation also was certainly in his heart, for he felt that, no matter whose the fault, he was failing in the first duty of a man. He raged against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He sliced off the head of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his stick. (But it was only an innocent autumn wildflower, perilously blooming.) And the tang in the air foretold the approach of winter and the grip of winter--the h.e.l.l of the poor.

Near Whitehall he saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a firm of shop-specialists:

"BRING YOUR BUSINESS TROUBLES TO US."

CHAPTER II

FROM THE DEAD

I

"WELL, Milton, had a good holiday?" said Mr. Prohack to the hall-porter on entering his chief club for lunch that day.

"No, sir," said the hall-porter, who was a realist.

"Ah, well," said Mr. Prohack soothingly. "Perhaps not a bad thing.

There's nothing like an unsatisfactory holiday for reconciling us all to a life of toil, is there?"

"No, sir," said Milton, impa.s.sively, and added: "Mr. Bishop has just called to see you, sir. I told him you'd probably be in shortly. He said he wouldn't wait but he might look in again."

"Thanks," said Mr. Prohack. "If he does, I shall be either in the coffee-room or upstairs."

Mr. Prohack walked into the majestic interior of the Club, which had been closed, rather later than usual, for its annual cleaning. He savoured anew and more sharply the beauty and stateliness of its architecture, the elaboration of its conveniences, the severe splendour of its luxury. And he saw familiar and congenial faces, and on every face was a mild joy similar to the joy which he himself experienced in the reopening of the Club. And he was deliciously aware of the "club feeling," unlike, and more agreeable than, any other atmosphere of an organism in the world.

The Club took no time at all to get into its stride after the closure.

It opened its doors and was instantly its full self. For hundreds of grave men in and near London had risen that very morning from their beds uplifted by the radiant thought: "To-day I can go to the Club again."

Mr. Prohack had long held that the n.o.blest, the most civilised achievement of the British character was not the British Empire, nor the House of Commons, nor the steam-engine, nor aniline dyes, nor the music-hall, but a good West End club. And somehow at the doors of a good West End club there was an invisible magic sieve, through which the human body could pa.s.s but through which human worries could not pa.s.s.

This morning, however, Mr. Prohack perceived that one worry could pa.s.s through the sieve, namely a worry concerning the Club itself.... Give up the Club? Was the sacrifice to be consummated? Impossible! Could he picture himself strolling down St. James's Street without the right to enter the sacred gates--save as a guest? And supposing he entered as a guest, could he bear the hall-porter to say to him: "If you'll take a seat, sir, I'll send and see if Mr. Blank is in the Club. What name, sir?" Impossible! Yet Milton would be capable of saying just that.

Milton would never pardon a defection.... Well, then, he must give up the other club. But the other--and smaller--Club had great qualities of its own. Indeed it was indispensable. And could he permit the day to dawn on which he would no longer be ent.i.tled to refer to "my other club"? Impossible! Nevertheless he had decided to give up his other club. He must give it up, if only to keep even with his wife. The monetary saving would be unimportant, but the act would be spectacular.

And Mr. Prohack perfectly comprehended the value of the spectacular in existence.

II

He sat down to lunch among half a dozen cronies at one of the larger tables in a window-embrasure of the vaulted coffee-room with its precious portrait of that historic clubman, Charles James Fox, and he ordered himself the cheapest meal that the menu could offer, and poured himself out a gla.s.s of water.

"Same old menu!" remarked savagely Mr. Prohack's great crony, Sir Paul Spinner, the banker, who suffered from carbuncles and who always drove over from the city in the middle of the day.

"Here's old Paul grumbling again!" said Sims of Downing Street. "After all, this is the best club in London."

"It certainly is," said Mr. Prohack, "when it's closed. During the past four weeks this club has been the most perfect inst.i.tution on the face of the earth."

They all laughed. And they began recounting to each other the unparalleled miseries and indignities which such of them as had remained in London had had to endure in the clubs that had "extended their hospitality" to members of the closed club. The catalogue of ills was terrible. Yes, there was only one club deserving of the name.

"Still," said Sir Paul. "They might give us a rest from prunes and rice."

"This club," said Mr. Prohack, "like all other clubs, is managed by a committee of Methuselahs who can only digest prunes and rice." And after a lot more talk about the idiosyncrasies of clubs he said, with a casual air: "For myself, I belong to too many clubs."

Said Hunter, a fellow official of the Treasury:

"But I thought you only had two clubs, Arthur."

"Only two. But it's one too many. In fact I'm not sure if it isn't two too many."

"Are you getting disgusted with human nature?" Sims suggested.

"No," said Mr. Prohack. "I'm getting hard up. I've committed the greatest crime in the world. I've committed poverty. And I feel guilty."

And the truth was that he did feel guilty. He was entirely innocent; he was a victim; he had left undone nothing that he ought to have done; but he felt guilty, thus proving that poverty is indeed seriously a crime and that those who in sardonic jest describe it as a crime are deeper philosophers than they suppose.

"Never say die," smiled the monocled Mixon, a publisher of scientific works, and began to inveigh against the Government as an ungrateful and unscrupulous employer and exploiter of dutiful men in an inferno of rising prices. But the rest thought Mixon unhappy in his choice of topic. Hunter of the Treasury said nothing. What was there to say that would not tend to destroy the true club atmosphere? Even the beloved Prohack had perhaps failed somewhat in tact. They all understood, they all mildly sympathised, but they could do no more--particularly in a miscellaneous a.s.semblage of eight members. No, they felt a certain constraint; and in a club constraint should be absolutely unknown. Some of them glanced uneasily about the crowded, chattering room.