"Nothing, nothing," said he. "My mind is wandering. Let it."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE YACHT
I
Mr. Prohack was lounging over his breakfast in the original old house in the Square behind Hyde Park. He came to be there because that same house had been his wedding present to Sissie, who now occupied it with her spouse, and because the noble mansion in Manchester Square was being re-decorated (under compulsion of some clause in the antique lease) and Eve had invited him to leave the affair entirely to her. In the few months since Charlie's great crisis, all things conspired together to prove once more to Mr. Prohack that calamities expected never arrive. Even the British Empire had continued to cohere, and revolution seemed to be further off than ever before. The greatest menace to his peace of mind, the League of all the Arts, had of course quietly ceased to exist; but it had established Eve as a hostess. And Eve as a hostess had gradually given up boring herself and her husband by large and stiff parties, and they had gone back to entertaining none but well-established and intimate friends with the maximum of informality as of old,—to such an extent that occasionally in the vast and gorgeous dining-room of the noble mansion Eve would have the roast planted on the table and would carve it herself, also as of old; Brool did not seem to mind.
Mr. Prohack had bought the lease of the noble mansion, with all the contents thereof, merely because this appeared to be the easiest thing to do. He had not been forced to change his manner of life; far from it. Owing to a happy vicissitude in the story of the R.R. Corporation Charlie had called upon his father for only a very small portion of the offered one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and had even repaid that within a few weeks. Matters had thereafter come to such a pass with Charlie that he had reached the pages of The Daily Picture, and was reputed to be arousing the jealousy of youthful millionaires in the United States; also the figure which he paid weekly for rent of his offices in the Grand Babylon Hotel was an item of common knowledge in the best clubs and not to know it was to be behind the times in current information. No member of his family now ventured to offer advice to Charlie, who still, however, looked astonishingly like the old Charlie of motor-bicycle transactions.
The fact is, people do not easily change. Mr. Prohack had seemed to change for a space, but if indeed any change had occurred in him, he had changed back. Scientific idleness? Turkish baths? Dandyism? All vanished, contemned, forgotten. To think of them merely annoyed him. He did not care what necktie he wore. Even dancing had gone the same way. The dancing season was over until October, and he knew he would never begin again. He cared not to dance with the middle-aged, and if he danced with the young he felt that he was making a fool of himself.
It had been rather a lark to come and stay for a few days in his old home,—to pass the sacred door of the conjugal bedroom (closed for ever to him) and mount to Charlie's room, into which Sissie had put the bulk of the furniture from the Japanese flat—without overcrowding it. Decidedly amusing to sleep in Charlie's old little room! But the romantic sensation had given way to the sensation of the hardness of the bed.