VI
But there are certain persons who, although their minds are logical enough, have illogical bodies. Mr. Prohack was one of these. His ridiculous physical organism (as he had once informed Dr. Veiga) was least capable of going to sleep when it was most fatigued. If Mr. Prohack's body had retired to bed four hours earlier than in fact it did, Mr. Prohack would have slept instantly and with ease. Now, despite delicious contact with the pillow, he could not 'get off.' And his mind, influenced by his body, grew restless, then excited, then distressingly realistic. His mind began to ask fundamental questions, questions not a bit original but none the less very awkward.
"You've had your first idle day, Mr. Prohack," said his mind challengingly instead of composing itself to slumber. "It was organised on scientific lines. It was carried out with conscientiousness. And look at you! And look at me! You've had a few good moments, as for example at the Turkish bath, but do you want a succession of such days? Could you survive a succession of such days? Would you even care to acquire a hundred and fifty thousand pounds every day? You have eaten too much and drunk too much, and run too hard after pleasure, and been too much bored, and met too many antipathetic people, and squandered too much money, and set a thoroughly bad example to your family. You have been happy only in spasms. Your health is good; you are cured of your malady. Does that render you any more contented? It does not. You have complicated your existence in the hope of improving it. But have you improved it? No. You ought to simplify your existence. But will you? You will not. All your strength of purpose will be needed to prevent still further complications being woven into your existence. To inherit a hundred thousand pounds was your misfortune. But deliberately to increase the sum to a quarter of a million was your fault. You were happier at the Treasury. You left the Treasury on account of illness. You are not ill any more. Will you go back to the Treasury? No. You will never go back, because your powerful commonsense tells you that to return to the Treasury with an income of twenty thousand a year would be grotesque. And rather than be grotesque you would suffer. Again, rightly. Nothing is worse than to be grotesque."
"Further," said his mind, "you have started your son on a sinister career of adventure that may end in calamity. You have ministered to your daughter's latent frivolity. You have put temptations in the way of your wife which she cannot withstand. You have developed yourself into a waster. What is the remedy? Obviously to dispose of your money. But your ladies would not permit you to do so and they are entitled to be heard on the point. Moreover, how could you dispose of it? Not in charity, because you are convinced of the grave social mischievousness of charity. And not in helping any great social movement, because you are not silly enough not to know that the lavishing of wealth never really aids, but most viciously hinders, the proper evolution of a society. And you cannot save your income and let it accumulate, because if you did you would once again be tumbling into the grotesque; and you would, further, be leaving to your successors a legacy of evil which no man is justified in leaving to his successors. No! Your case is in practice irremediable. Like the murderer on the scaffold, you are the victim of circumstances. And not one human being in a million will pity you. You are a living tragedy which only death can end."
During this disconcerting session Eve had been mysteriously engaged in the boudoir. She now came into the dark bedroom.
"What?" she softly murmured, hearing Mr. Prohack's restlessness. "Not asleep, darling?" She bent over him and kissed him and her kiss was even softer, more soporific, than her voice. "Now do go to sleep."
And Mr. Prohack went to sleep, and his last waking thought was, with the feel of the kiss on his nose (the poor woman had aimed badly in the dark): "Anyway this tragedy has one compensation, of which a hundred quarter of a millions can't deprive me."