Mr. Prohack

by Arnold Bennett

II

The woman in the cubicle near the door was putting a fresh disc on to a gramophone and winding up the instrument. She was a fat, youngish woman, in a parlourmaid's cap and apron, and Mr. Prohack had a few days earlier had a glimpse of her seated in his own hall waiting for a package of Sissie's clothes.

"Very sorry, sir," said she, turning her head negligently from the gramophone and eyeing him seriously. "I'm afraid you can't go in if you're not in evening dress." Evidently from her firm, polite voice, she knew just what she was about, did that young woman. She added: "The rule's very strict on Fridays."

At the same moment a bell rang once. The woman immediately released the catch of the gramophone and lowered the needle on to the disc, and Mr. Prohack heard music, but not from the cubicle. There was a round hole in the match-board partition, and the trumpet attachment of the gramophone disappeared beyond the hole.

"This affair is organised," thought Mr. Prohack, decidedly impressed by the ingenuity of the musical arrangement and by the promptness of the orchestral director in obeying the signal of the bell.

"My name is Prohack," said he. "I'm Miss Prohack's father."

This important announcement ought to have startled the sangfroid of the guardian, but it did not. She merely said, with a slight mechanical smile:

"As soon as this dance is over, sir, I'll let Miss Prohack know she's wanted." She did not say: "Sir, a person of your eminence is above rules. Go right in."

Two girls in all-enveloping dark cloaks entered behind him. "Good-evening, Lizzie," one of them greeted the guardian. And Lizzie's face relaxed into a bright genuine smile.

"Good-evening, miss. Good-evening, miss."

The two girls vanished rustlingly through a door over which was hung a piece of cardboard with the written words: "Ladies' cloakroom." In a few moments they emerged, white and fluffy apparitions, eager, self-conscious, and they vanished through another door. Mr. Prohack judged from their bridling and from their whispers to each other that they belonged to the class which ministers to the shopping-class. He admitted that they looked very nice and attractive; but he had the sensation of having blundered into a queer, hitherto unknown world, and of astonishment and qualms that his daughter should be a ruler in that world.

Lizzie stood up and peeped through a little square window in the match-boarding. As soon as she had finished peeping Mr. Prohack took liberty to peep also, and the dance-studio was revealed to him. Somehow he could scarcely believe that it was not a hallucination, and that he was really in Putney, and that his own sober house in which Sissie had been reared still existed not many miles off.

For Mr. Prohack, not continuously but at intervals, possessed a disturbing faculty that compelled him to see the phenomena of human life as they actually were, and to disregard entirely the mere names of things,—which mere names by the magic power of mere names usually suffice to satisfy the curiosity of most people and to allay their misgivings if any. Mr. Prohack now saw (when he looked downwards) a revolving disc which was grating against a stationary needle and thereby producing unpleasant rasping sounds. But it was also producing a quite different order of sounds. He did not in the least understand, and he did not suppose that anybody in the dance-studio understood, the delicate secret mechanism by which these other sounds were produced. All he knew was that by means of the trumpet attachment they were transmitted through the wooden partition and let loose into the larger air of the studio, where the waves of them had a singular effect on the brains of certain bright young women and sombre young and middle-aged men who were arranged in clasped couples: with the result that the brains of the women and men sent orders to their legs, arms, eyes, and they shifted to and fro in rhythmical movements. Each woman placed herself very close—breast against breast—to each man, yielding her volition absolutely to his, and (if the man was the taller) often gazing up into his face with an ecstatic expression of pleasure and acquiescence. The physical relations between the units of each couple would have caused censorious comment had the couple been alone or standing still; but the movement and the association of couples seemed mysteriously to lift the whole operation above criticism and to endow it with a perfect propriety. The motion of the couples, and their manner of moving, over the earth's surface were extremely monotonous; some couples indeed only walked stiffly to and fro; on the other hand a few exhibited variety, lightness and grace, in manoeuvres which involved a high degree of mutual trust and comprehension. While only some of the faces were ecstatic, all were rapt. The ordinary world was shut out of this room, whose inhabitants had apparently abandoned themselves with all their souls to the performance of a complicated and solemn rite.

Odd as the spectacle was, Mr. Prohack enjoyed it. He enjoyed the youth and the prettiness and the litheness of the brightly-dressed girls and the stern masculinity of the men, and he enjoyed the thought that both girls and men had had the wit to escape from the ordinary world into this fantastic environment created out of four walls, a few Chinese lanterns, some rouge, some stuffs, some spangles, friction between two pieces of metal, and the profoundest instinct of nature. Beyond everything he enjoyed the sight of the lithest and most elegant of the girls, whom he knew to be Eliza Brating and who was dancing with a partner whose skill obviously needed no lessons. He would have liked to see his daughter Sissie in Eliza's place, but Sissie was playing the man's rôle to a stout and nearly middle-aged lady, whose chief talent for the rite appeared to be an iron determination.

Mr. Prohack was in danger of being hypnotised by the spectacle, but suddenly the conflict between the disc and the needle grew more acute, and Lizzie, the guardian, dragged the needle sharply from the bosom of its antagonist. The sounds ceased, and the brains of the couples in the studio, no longer inspired by the sounds, ceased to inspire the muscles of the couples, and the rite suddenly finished. Mr. Prohack drew breath.

"To think," he reflected, "that this sort of thing is seriously going on all over London at this very instant, and that many earnest persons are making a livelihood from it, and that nobody but me perceives how marvellous, charming, incomprehensible and disconcerting it is!"

He said to the guardian:

"There doesn't seem to be much 'lesson' about this business. Everybody here seems to be able to dance all right."

To which Lizzie replied with a sagacious, even ironic, smile:

"You see, sir, on these gala nights they all do their very best."

"Father!"

Sissie had arrived upon him. Clearly she was preoccupied, if not worried, and the unexpected sight of her parent forced her, as it were, unwillingly from one absorbing train of ideas into another. She was startled, self-conscious, nervous. Still, she jumped at him and kissed him,—as if in a dream.

"Nothing the matter, is there?"

"Nothing."

"I'm frightfully busy to-night. Just come in here, will you?"

And she took him into the ladies' cloakroom—an apartment the like of which he had never before seen. It had only one chair, in front of a sort of dressing-table covered with mysterious apparatus and instruments.

Mr. Prohack inspected his daughter as though she had been somebody else's daughter.

"Well," said he. "You look just like a real business woman, except the dress."

She was very attractive, very elegant, comically young (to him), and very business-like in her smart, short frock, stockings, and shoes.

"Can't you understand," she objected firmly, "that this is my business dress, just as much as a black frock and high collar would be in an office?"

He gave a short, gentle laugh.

"I don't know what you're laughing at, dad," she reproached him, not unkindly. "Anyhow, I'm glad some one's come at last. I was beginning to think that my home had forgotten all about me. Even when I sent up for some clothes no message came back."

The life-long experience of Mr. Prohack had been that important and unusual interviews rarely corresponded with the anticipation of them, and the present instance most sharply confirmed his experience. He had expected to be forgiving an apologetic daughter, but the reality was that he found himself in the dock. He hesitated for words, and Sissie went on:

"Here have I been working myself to death reorganising this place after Viola went—and I can tell you it needed reorganising! Haven't had a minute in the mornings, and of course there are the lessons afternoon and evening. And no one's been down to see how I was getting on, or even written. I do think it's a bit steep. Mother might have known that if I had had any spare time I should have run up."

"I've been rather queer," he excused himself and the family. "And your mother's been looking after me, and of course you know Charlie's still in Glasgow."

"I don't know anything," she corrected him. "But you needn't tell me that if you've been unwell mother's been looking after you. Does she ever do anything else? Are you better? What was it? You look all right."

"Oh! General derangement. I haven't been to the office since you decamped." He did not feel equal to telling her that he would not be returning to the office for months. She had said that he looked all right, and her quite honest if hasty verdict on his appearance gave him a sense of guilt, and also renewed suspicions of Dr. Veiga.

"Not been to the office!" The statement justly amazed the girl, almost shocked her. But she went on in a fresh, satirical accent recalling Mr. Prohack's own: "You must have been upset! But of course you're highly nervous, dad, and I expect the excitement of the news of your fortune was too much for you. I know exactly how you get when anything unusual happens."

She had heard of the inheritance!

"I was going to tell you about that little affair," he said awkwardly. "So you knew! Who told you?"

"Nobody in my family at any rate," she answered. "I heard of it from an outsider, and of course from sheer pride I had to pretend that I knew all about it. And what's more, father, you knew when you gave me that fifty pounds, only you wouldn't let on. Don't deny it.... Naturally I'm glad about it, very glad. And yet I'm not. I really rather regret it for you and mother. You'll never be as happy again. Riches will spoil my poor darling mother."

"That remains to be seen, Miss Worldly Wisemiss," he retorted with unconvincing lightness. He was disturbed, and he was impressed, by her indifference to the fortune. It appeared not to concern or to interest her. She spoke not merely as one who objected to unearned wealth but as one to whom the annals of the Prohack family were henceforth a matter of minor importance. It was very strange, and Mr. Prohack had to fight against a feeling of intimidation. The girl whom he had cherished for over twenty years and whom he thought he knew to the core, was absolutely astounding him by the revelation of her individuality. He didn't know her. He was not her father. He was helpless before her.

"How are things here?" he demanded, amiably inquisitive, as an acquaintance.

"Excellent," said she. "Jolly hard work, though."

"Yes, I should imagine so. Teaching men dancing! By Jove!"

"There's not so much difficulty about teaching men. The difficulty's with the women. Father, they're awful. You can't imagine their stupidity."

Lizzie glanced into the room. She simply glanced, and Sissie returned the glance.

"You'll have to excuse me a bit, father," said Sissie. "I'll come back as quick as I can. Don't go." She departed hurriedly.

"I'd better get out of this anyhow," thought Mr. Prohack, surveying the ladies' cloakroom. "If one of 'em came in I should have to explain my unexplainable presence in this sacred grot."