Mr. Prohack | Page 4

the same schools and
universities and we talk the same idiom and we have the same manners
and like the same things as people who spend more in a month or a
week than we spend in a year. And we pretend, and they pretend, that

they and we are exactly the same. We aren't, you know. We're one vast
pretence. Has it occurred to you, lady, that we've never possessed a
motor-car and most certainly never shall possess one? Yet look at the
hundreds of thousands of cars in London alone! And not a single one of
them ours! This detail may have escaped you."
"I wish you wouldn't be silly, Arthur."
"I am not silly. On the contrary, my real opinion is that I'm the wisest
man you ever met in your life--not excepting your son It remains that
we're a pretence. A pretence resembles a bladder. It may burst. We
probably shall burst. Still, we have one great advantage over the honest
poor, who sometimes have no income at all; and also over the rich, who
never can tell how big their incomes are going to be. We know exactly
where we are. We know to the nearest sixpence."
"I don't see that that helps us. I consider the Government has treated
you shamefully. I wonder you important men in the Treasury haven't
formed a Trade Union before now."
"Oh, Eve! After all you've said about Trade Unions this last year! You
shock me! We shall never he properly treated until we do form a Trade
Union. But we shall never form a Trade Union, because we're too
proud. And we'd sooner see our children starve than yield in our pride.
That's a fact."
"There's one thing--we can't move into a cheaper house."
"No," Mr. Prohack concurred. "Because there isn't one."
Years earlier Mr. Prohack had bought the long lease of his house from
the old man who, according to the logical London system, had built the
house upon somebody else's land on the condition that he paid rent for
the land and in addition gave the house to the somebody else at the end
of a certain period as a free gift. By a payment of twelve pounds per
annum Mr. Prohack was safe for forty years yet and he calculated that
in forty years the ownership of the house would be a matter of some
indifference both to him and to his wife.

"Well, as you're so desperately wise, perhaps you'll kindly tell me what
we are to do."
"I might borrow money on my insurance policy--and speculate," said
Mr. Prohack gravely.
"Oh! Arthur! Do you really think you--" Marian showed a wild gleam
of hope.
"Or I might throw the money into the Serpentine," Mr. Prohack added.
"Oh! Arthur! I could kill you. I never know how to take you."
"No, you never do. That's the worst of a woman like you marrying a
man like me."
They discussed devices. One servant fewer. No holiday. Cinemas
instead of theatres. No books. No cigarettes. No taxis. No clothes. No
meat. No telephone. No friends. They reached no conclusion. Eve
referred to Adam's great Treasury mind. Adam said that his great
Treasury mind should function on the problem during the day, and
further that the problem must be solved that very night.
"I'll tell you one thing I shall do," said Mrs. Prohack in a decided tone
as Mr. Prohack left the table. "I shall countermand Sissie'a new frock."
"If you do I shall divorce you," was the reply.
"But why?"
Mr. Prohack answered:
"In 1917 I saw that girl in dirty overalls driving a thundering great van
down Whitehall. Yesterday I met her in her foolish high heels and her
shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress and her exposed
throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so absurd and so
futile and so sure of her power that--that--well, you aren't going to
countermand any new frock. That chit has the right to ruin me--not
because of anything she's done, but because she is. I am ready to

commit peccadilloes, but not crimes. Good morning, my dove."
And at the door, discreetly hiding her Chinese raiment behind the door,
Eve said, as if she had only just thought of it, though she had been
thinking of it for quite a quarter of an hour:
"Darling, there's your clubs."
"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