Mr. Prohack | Page 5

one?"
"Lady, it's unthinkable. You don't know what you're suggesting.
Abandon one of my clubs that my father put me up for when I was a
boy! I'd as soon join a Trade Union. No! My innocent but gluttonous
children shall starve first."
"I shall give up my club!"
"Ah! But that's different."
"How is it different?" "You scarcely ever speak to a soul in your club.
The food's bad in your club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your
club. I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night of the most formidable
spinsters each eating at a table alone. Give up your club by all means.
Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count the act as a renunciation.

You hate your club. Good morning, my dove."
IV
One advantage of the situation of Mr. Prohack's house was that his path
therefrom to the Treasury lay almost entirely through verdant
parks--Hyde Park, the Green Park, St. James's Park. Not infrequently
he referred to the advantage in terms of bland satisfaction. True, in wet
weather the advantage became a disadvantage.
During his walk through verdant parks that morning, the Terror of the
Departments who habitually thought in millions was very gloomy.
Something resembling death was in his heart. Humiliation also was
certainly in his heart, for he felt that, no matter whose the fault, he was
failing in the first duty of a man. He raged against the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. He sliced off the head of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
with his stick. (But it was only an innocent autumn wildflower,
perilously blooming.) And the tang in the air foretold the approach of
winter and the grip of winter--the hell of the poor.
Near Whitehall he saw the advertisement of a firm of shop-specialists:
"BRING YOUR BUSINESS TROUBLES TO US."
CHAPTER II
FROM THE DEAD
I

"WELL, Milton, had a good holiday?" said Mr. Prohack to the
hall-porter on entering his chief club for lunch that day.
"No, sir," said the hall-porter, who was a realist.
"Ah, well," said Mr. Prohack soothingly. "Perhaps not a bad thing.
There's nothing like an unsatisfactory holiday for reconciling us all to a

life of toil, is there?"
"No, sir," said Milton, impassively, and added: "Mr. Bishop has just
called to see you, sir. I told him you'd probably be in shortly. He said
he wouldn't wait but he might look in again."
"Thanks," said Mr. Prohack. "If he does, I shall be either in the
coffee-room or upstairs."
Mr. Prohack walked into the majestic interior of the Club, which had
been closed, rather later than usual, for its annual cleaning. He
savoured anew and more sharply the beauty and stateliness of its
architecture, the elaboration of its conveniences, the severe splendour
of its luxury. And he saw familiar and congenial faces, and on every
face was a mild joy similar to the joy which he himself experienced in
the reopening of the Club. And he was deliciously aware of the "club
feeling," unlike, and more agreeable than, any other atmosphere of an
organism in the world.
The Club took no time at all to get into its stride after the closure. It
opened its doors and was instantly its full self. For hundreds of grave
men in and near London had risen that very morning from their beds
uplifted by the radiant thought: "To-day I can go to the Club again." Mr.
Prohack had long held that the noblest, the most civilised achievement
of the British character was not the British Empire, nor the House of
Commons, nor the steam-engine, nor aniline dyes, nor the music-hall,
but a good West End club. And somehow at the doors of a good West
End club there was an invisible magic sieve, through which the human
body could pass but through which human worries could not pass.
This morning, however, Mr. Prohack perceived that one worry could
pass through the sieve, namely a worry concerning the Club itself....
Give up the Club? Was the sacrifice to be consummated? Impossible!
Could he picture himself strolling down St. James's Street without the
right to enter the sacred gates--save as a guest? And supposing he
entered as a guest, could he bear the hall-porter to say to him: "If you'll
take a seat, sir, I'll send and see if Mr. Blank is in the Club. What name,
sir?" Impossible! Yet Milton would be capable of saying just that.

Milton would never pardon a defection.... Well, then, he must give up
the other club. But the other--and smaller--Club had great qualities of
its own. Indeed it was indispensable. And could he permit the day to
dawn on which he would no longer be entitled to refer to "my other
club"? Impossible! Nevertheless he had decided to