IV
The next morning Eve behaved to her husband exactly as if nothing untoward had happened. She kissed and was kissed. She exhibited sweetness without gaiety, and a general curiosity without interest. She said not a word concerning the visit of Sissie and Ozzie. She expressed the hope that Mr. Prohack had had a pleasant evening and slept well. Her anxiety to be agreeable to Mr. Prohack was touching,—it was angelic. To the physical eye all was as usual, but Mr. Prohack was aware that in a single night she had built a high and unscalable wall between him and her; a wall which he could see through and which he could kiss through, but which debarred him utterly from her. And yet what sin had he committed against her, save the peccadillo of locking her for an hour or two in a comfortable room? It was Sissie, not he, who had committed the sin. He wanted to point this out to Eve, but he appreciated the entire futility of doing so and therefore refrained. About eleven o'clock Eve knocked at and opened his study door.
"May I come in—or am I disturbing you?" she asked brightly.
"Don't be a silly goose," said Mr. Prohack, whose rising temper—he hated angels—was drowning his tact. Smiling as though he had thrown her a compliment, Eve came in, and shut the door.
"I've just received this," she said. "It came by messenger." And she handed him a letter signed with the name of Crewd, the private detective. The letter ran: "Madam, I beg to inform you that I have just ascertained that the driver of taxi No. 5437 has left at New Scotland Yard a pearl necklace which he found in his vehicle. He states that he drove a lady and gentleman from your house to Waterloo Station on the evening of your reception, but can give no description of them. I mention the matter pro forma, but do not anticipate that it can interest you as the police authorities at New Scotland Yard declare the pearls to be false. Yours obediently.... P.S. I called upon you in order to communicate the above facts yesterday, but you were not at home."
Mr. Prohack turned a little pale, and his voice trembled as he said, looking up from the letter:
"I wonder who the thief was. Anyhow, women are staggering. Here some woman—I'm sure it was the woman and not the man—picks up a necklace from the floor of one of your drawing-rooms, well knowing it not to be her own, hides it, makes off with it, and then is careless enough to leave it in a taxi! Did you ever hear of such a thing?"
"But that wasn't my necklace, Arthur!" said Eve.
"Of course it was your necklace," said Mr. Prohack.
"Do you mean to tell me—" Eve began, and it was a new Eve.
"Of course I do!" said Mr. Prohack, who had now thoroughly subdued his temper in the determination to bring to a head that trouble about the necklace and end it for ever. He was continuing his remarks when the wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash. Eve said nothing, but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack. Nevertheless the mere fact that Sissie's wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat to keep his spirits and his nerve.
"I will never forgive you, Arthur!" said Eve with the most solemn and terrible candour. She no longer played a part; she was her formidable self, utterly unmasked and savagely expressive without any regard to consequences. Mr. Prohack saw that he was engaged in a mortal duel, with the buttons off the deadly foils.
"Of course you won't," said he, gathering himself heroically together, and superbly assuming a calm which he did not in the least feel. "Of course you won't, because there is nothing to forgive. On the contrary, you owe me your thanks. I never deceived you. I never told you the pearls were genuine. Indeed I beg to remind you that I once told you positively that I would never buy you a pearl necklace,—don't you remember? You thought they were genuine, and you have had just as much pleasure out of them as if they had been genuine. You were always careless with your jewellery. Think how I should have suffered if I had watched you every day being careless with a rope of genuine pearls! I should have had no peace of mind. I should have been obliged to reproach you, and as you can't bear to be reproached you would have picked quarrels with me. Further, you have lost nothing in prestige, for the reason that all our friends and acquaintances have naturally assumed that the pearls were genuine because they were your pearls and you were the wife of a rich man. A woman whose husband's financial position is not high and secure is bound to wear real pearls because people will assume that her pearls are false. But a woman like yourself can wear any pinchbeak pearls with impunity because people assume that her pearls are genuine. In your case there could be no advantage whatever in genuine pearls. To buy them would be equivalent to throwing money in the street. Now, as it is, I have saved money over the pearls, and therefore interest on money, though I did buy you the very finest procurable imitations! And think, my child, how relieved you are now,—oh, yes! you are, so don't pretend the contrary: I can deceive you, but you can't deceive me. You have no grievance whatever. You have had many hours of innocent satisfaction in your false jewels, and nobody is any the worse. Indeed my surpassing wisdom in the choice of a necklace has saved you from all further worry about the loss of the necklace, because it simply doesn't matter either one way or the other, and I say I defy you to stand there and tell me to my face that you have any grievance at all."
Mr. Prohack paused for a reply, and he got it.
"I will never forgive you as long as I live," said Eve. "Let us say no more about it. What time is that awful lunch that you've arranged with that dreadful Bishop man? And what would you like me to wear, please?" In an instant she had rebuilt the wall, higher than ever.
Mr. Prohack, always through the wall, took her in his arms and kissed her. But he might as well have kissed a woman in a trance. All that could be said was that Eve submitted to his embrace, and her attitude was another brilliant illustration of the fact that the most powerful oriental tyrants can be defied by their weakest slaves, provided that the weakest slaves know how to do it.
"You are splendid!" said Mr. Prohack, admiringly, conscious anew of his passion for her and full of trust in the virtue of his passion to knock down the wall sooner or later. "But you are a very naughty and ungrateful creature, and you must be punished. I will now proceed to punish you. We have much to do before the lunch. Go and get ready, and simply put on all the clothes that have cost the most money. They are the clothes fittest for your punishment."
Three-quarters of an hour later, when Mr. Prohack had telephoned and sent a confirmatory note by hand to his bank, Carthew drove them away southwards, and the car stopped in front of the establishment of a very celebrated firm of jewellers near Piccadilly.
"Come along," said Mr. Prohack, descending to the pavement, and drew after him a moving marble statue, richly attired. They entered the glittering shop, and were immediately encountered by an expectant salesman who had the gifts of wearing a frock-coat as though he had been born in it, and of reading the hearts of men. That salesman saw in a flash that big business was afoot.
"First of all," said Mr. Prohack. "Here is my card, so that we may know where we stand."
The salesman read the card and was suitably impressed, but his conviction that big business was afoot seemed now to be a little shaken.
"May I venture to hope that the missing necklace has been found, sir?" said the salesman smoothly. "We've all been greatly interested in the newspaper story."
"That is beside the point," said Mr. Prohack. "I've come simply to buy a pearl necklace."
"I beg pardon, sir. Certainly. Will you have the goodness to step this way."
They were next in a private room off the shop; and the sole items of furniture were three elegant chairs, a table with a glass top, and a colossal safe. Another salesman entered the room with bows, and keys were produced, and the two salesmen between them swung back the majestic dark green doors of the safe. In another minute various pearl necklaces were lying on the table. The spectacle would have dazzled a connoisseur in pearls; but Mr. Prohack was not a connoisseur; he was not even interested in pearls, and saw on the table naught but a monotonous array of pleasing gewgaws, to his eye differing one from another only in size. He was, however, actuated by a high moral purpose, which uplifted him and enabled him to listen with dignity to the technical eulogies given by the experts. Eve of course behaved with impeccable correctness, hiding the existence of the wall from everybody except Mr. Prohack, but forcing Mr. Prohack to behold the wall all the time.
When he had reached a state of complete bewilderment regarding the respective merits of the necklaces, Mr. Prohack judged the moment ripe for proceeding to business. With his own hands he clasped a necklace round his wife's neck, and demanded:
"What is the price of this one?"
"Eight hundred and fifty pounds," answered the principal expert, who seemed to recognise every necklace at sight as a shepherd recognises every sheep in his flock.
"Do you think this would suit you, my dear?" asked Mr. Prohack.
"I think so," replied Eve politely.
"Well, I'm not so sure," said Mr. Prohack, reflectively. "What about this one?" And he picked up and tried upon Eve another and a larger necklace.
"That," said the original expert, "is two thousand four hundred guineas."
"It seems cheap," said Mr. Prohack carelessly. "But there's something about the gradation that I don't quite like. What about this one?"
Eve opened her mouth, as if about to speak, but she did not speak. The wall, which had trembled for a few seconds, regained its monumental solidity.
"Five thousand guineas," said the expert of the third necklace.
"Hm!" commented Mr. Prohack, removing the gewgaw. "Yes. Not so bad. And yet—"
"That necklace," the expert announced with a mien from which all deference had vanished, "is one of the most perfect we have. The pearls have, if I may so express it, a homogeneity not often arrived at in any necklace. They are not very large of course—"
"Quite so," Mr. Prohack stopped him, selecting a fourth necklace.
"Yes," the expert admitted, his deference returning. "That one is undoubtedly superior. Let me see, we have not yet exactly valued it, but I think we could put it in at ten thousand guineas—perhaps pounds. I should have to consult one of the partners."
"It is scarcely," said Mr. Prohack, surveying the trinket judicially on his wife's neck, "scarcely the necklace of my dreams,—not that I would say a word against it.... Ah!" And he pounced suddenly, with an air of delighted surprise, upon a fifth necklace, the queen of necklaces.
"My dear, try this one. Try this one. I didn't notice it before. Somehow it takes my fancy, and as I shall obviously see much more of your necklace than you will, I should like my taste to be consulted."
As he fastened the catch of the thing upon Eve's delicious nape, he could feel that she was trembling. He surveyed the dazzling string. She also surveyed it, fascinated, spellbound. Even Mr. Prohack began to perceive that the reputation and value of fine pearls might perhaps be not entirely unmerited in the world.
"Sixteen thousand five hundred," said the expert.
"Pounds or guineas?" Mr. Prohack blandly enquired.
"Well, sir, shall we say pounds?"
"I think I will take it," said Mr. Prohack with undiminished blandness. "No, my dear, don't take it off. Don't take it off."
"Arthur!" Eve breathed, seeming to expire in a kind of agonised protest.
"May I have a few minutes' private conversation with my wife?" Mr. Prohack suggested. "Could you leave us?" One expert glanced at the other awkwardly.
"Pardon my lack of savoir vivre," said Mr. Prohack. "Of course you cannot possibly leave us alone with all these valuables. Never mind! We will call again."
The principal expert rose sublimely to the great height of the occasion. He had a courageous mind and was moreover well acquainted with the fantastic folly of allowing customers to call again. Within his experience of some thirty years he had not met half a dozen exceptions to the rule that customers who called again, if ever they did call, called in a mood of hard and miserly sanity which for the purposes of the jewellery business was sickeningly inferior to their original mood.
"Please, please, Mr. Prohack!" said he, with grand deprecation, and departed out of the room with his fellow.
No sooner had they gone than the wall sank. It did not tumble with a crash; it most gently subsided.
"Arthur!" Eve exclaimed, with a curious uncertainty of voice. "Are you mad?"
"Yes," said Mr. Prohack.
"Well," said she. "If you think I shall walk about London with sixteen thousand five hundred pounds round my neck you're mistaken."
"But I insist! You were a martyr and our marriage was ruined because I didn't give you real pearls. I intend you shall have real pearls."
"But not these," said Eve. "It's too much. It's a fortune."
"I am aware of that," Mr. Prohack agreed. "But what is sixteen thousand five hundred pounds to me?"
"Truly I couldn't, darling," Eve wheedled.
"I am not your darling," said Mr. Prohack. "How can I be your darling when you're never going to forgive me? Look here. I'll let you choose another necklace, but only on the condition that you forgive all my alleged transgressions, past, present and to come."
She kissed him.
"You can have the one at five thousand guineas," said Mr. Prohack. "Nothing less. That is my ultimatum. Put it on. Put it on, quick! Or I may change my mind."
He recalled the experts who, when they heard the grave news, smiled bravely, and looked upon Eve as upon a woman whose like they might never see again.
"My wife will wear the necklace at once," said Mr. Prohack. "Pen and ink, please." He wrote a cheque. "My car is outside. Perhaps you will send some one up to my bank immediately and cash this. We will wait. I have warned the bank. There will be no delay. The case can be delivered at my house. You can make out the receipt and usual guarantee while we're waiting." And so it occurred as he had ordained.
"Would you care for us to arrange for the insurance? We undertake to do it as cheaply as anybody," the expert suggested, later.
Mr. Prohack was startled, for in his inexperience he had not thought of such complications.
"I was just going to suggest it," he answered placidly.
"I feel quite queer," said Eve, as she fingered the necklace, in the car, when all formalities were accomplished and they had left the cave of Aladdin.
"And well you may, my child," said Mr. Prohack. "The interest on the price of that necklace would about pay the salary of a member of Parliament or even of a professional cricketer. And remember that whenever you wear the thing you are in danger of being waylaid, brutally attacked, and robbed."
"I wish you wouldn't be silly," Eve murmured. "I do hope I shan't seem self-conscious at the lunch."
"We haven't reached the lunch yet," Mr. Prohack replied. "We must go and buy a safe first. There's no safe worth twopence in the house, and a really safe safe is essential. And I want it to be clearly understood that I shall keep the key of that safe. We aren't playing at necklaces now. Life is earnest."
And when they had bought a safe and were once more in the car, he said, examining her impartially: "After all, at a distance of four feet it doesn't look nearly so grand as the one that's lying at Scotland Yard—I gave thirty pounds for that one."