Mr. Prohack | Page 2

his excited wife: "They were far more nervous than I was."
Despite all this, the great public had never heard of him. His portrait had never appeared in the illustrated papers. His wife's portrait, as "War-worker and wife of a great official," had never appeared in the illustrated papers. No character sketch of him had ever been printed. His opinions on any subject had never been telephonically or otherwise demanded by the editors of up-to-date dailies. His news-value indeed was absolutely nil. In _Who's Who_ he had only four lines of space.
Mr. Prohack's breakfast consisted of bacon, dry toast, coffee, marmalade, The Times and The Daily Picture. The latter was full of brides and bridegrooms, football, enigmatic murder trials, young women in their fluffy underclothes, medicines, pugilists, cinema stars, the biggest pumpkin of the season, uplift, and inspired prophecy concerning horses and company shares; together with a few brief unillustrated notes about civil war in Ireland, famine in Central Europe, and the collapse of realms.
II
"Ah! So I've caught you!" said his wife, coming brightly into the room. She was a buxom woman of forty-three. Her black hair was elaborately done for the day, but she wore a roomy peignoir instead of a frock; it was Chinese, in the Imperial yellow, inconceivably embroidered with flora, fauna, and grotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction of his capricious tastes.
"Many years ago," said Mr. Prohack.
"You make a fuss about buying The Daily Picture for me. You say it humiliates you to see it in the house, and I don't know what. But I catch you reading it yourself, and before you've opened The Times! Dear, dear! That bacon's a cinder and I daren't say anything to her."
"Lady," replied Mr. Prohack, "we all have something base in our natures. Sin springs from opportunity. I cannot resist the damned paper." And he stuck his fork into the fair frock-coat of a fatuous bridegroom coming out of church.
"My fault again!" the wife remarked brightly.
The husband changed the subject:
"I suppose that your son and daughter are still asleep?"
"Well, dearest, you know that they were both at that dance last night."
"They ought not to have been. The popular idea that life is a shimmy is a dangerous illusion." Mr. Prohack felt the epigram to be third-rate, but he carried it off lightly.
"Sissie only went because Charlie wanted to go, and all I can say is that it's a nice thing if Charlie isn't to be allowed to enjoy himself now the war's over--after all he's been through."
"You're mixing up two quite different things. I bet that if Charlie committed murder you'd go into the witness-box and tell the judge he'd been wounded twice and won the Military Cross."
"This is one of your pernickety mornings."
"Seeing that your debauched children woke me up at three fifteen--!"
"They woke me up too."
"That's different. You can go to sleep again. I can't. You rather like being wakened up, because you take a positively sensual pleasure in turning over and going to sleep again."
"You hate me for that."
"I do."
"I make you very unhappy sometimes, don't I?"
"Eve, you are a confounded liar, and you know it. You have never caused me a moment's unhappiness. You may annoy me. You may exasperate me. You are frequently unspeakable. But you have never made me unhappy. And why? Because I am one of the few exponents of romantic passion left in this city. My passion for you transcends my reason. I am a fool, but I am a magnificent fool. And the greatest miracle of modern times is that after twenty-four years of marriage you should be able to give me pleasure by perching your stout body on the arm of my chair as you are doing."
"Arthur, I'm not stout."
"Yes, you are. You're enormous. But hang it, I'm such a morbid fool I like you enormous."
Mrs. Prohack, smiling mysteriously, remarked in a casual tone, as she looked at _The Daily Picture_:
"Why do people let their photographs get into the papers? It's awfully vulgar."
"It is. But we're all vulgar to-day. Look at that!" He pointed to the page. "The granddaughter of a duke who refused the hand of a princess sells her name and her face to a firm of ship-owners who keep newspapers like their grandfathers kept pigeons.... But perhaps I'm only making a noise like a man of fifty."
"You aren't fifty."
"I'm five hundred. And this coffee is remarkably thin."
"Let me taste it."
"Yes, you'd rob me of my coffee now!" said Mr. Prohack, surrendering his cup. "Is it thin, or isn't it? I pride myself on living the higher life; my stomach is not my inexorable deity; but even on the mountain top which