Mr. Prohack | Page 9

dominion over himself at any rate to that extent. He
would not break the silence; he would hide his intense curiosity; he
would force Softly Bishop to divulge the supreme fact upon his own
initiative.
And at length Mr. Bishop remarked, musingly:
"Yes. Thanks to the exchange being so low, you stand to receive at the
very least a hundred thousand pounds clear--after all deductions have
been made."
"Do I really?" said Mr. Prohack, also musingly.
CHAPTER III
THE LAW
His tranquil tone disguised the immense anarchy within. Silas
Angmering had evidently been what is called a profiteer. He had made
his money "out of the war." And Silas was an Englishman. While
Englishmen, and--later--Americans, had given up lives, sanity, fortunes,
limbs, eyesight, health, Silas had gained riches. There was nothing
highly unusual in this. Mr. Prohack had himself seen, in the very club

in which he was now entertaining Softly Bishop, a man who had left an
arm in France chatting and laughing with a man who had picked up
over a million pounds by following the great principle that a
commodity is worth what it will fetch when people want it very badly
and there is a shortage of it. Mr. Prohack too had often chatted and
laughed with this same picker-up of a million, who happened to be a
quite jolly and generous fellow. Mr. Prohack would have chatted and
laughed with Barabbas, convinced as he was that iniquity is the result
of circumstances rather than of deliberate naughtiness. He seldom
condemned. He had greatly liked Silas Angmering, who was a really
educated and a well-intentioned man with a queer regrettable twist in
his composition. That Silas should have profiteered when he got the
chance was natural. Most men would do the same. Most heroes would
do the same. The man with one arm would conceivably do the same.
But between excusing and forgiving a brigand (who has not despoiled
_you_), and sharing his plunder, there was a gap, a chasm.
Few facts gave Mr. Prohack a more serene and proud satisfaction than
the fact that he had materially lost through the war. He was positively
glad that he had lost, and that the Government, his employer, had
treated him badly.... And now to become the heir of a profiteer! Nor
was that all! To become the co-heir with a woman of dubious renown,
and with Mr. Softly Bishop! He knew nothing about the woman, and
would think nothing. But he knew a little about Mr. Softly Bishop. Mr.
Bishop, it used to be known and said in the club, had never had a friend.
He had the usual number of acquaintances, but no relationship more
intimate. Mr. Prohack, in the old days, had not for a long time actively
disliked Mr. Bishop; but he had been surprised at the amount of active
dislike which contact with Mr. Bishop engendered in other members of
the club. Why such dislike? Was it due to his fat, red face, his
spectacles, his conspiratorial manner, tone and gait, the evenness of his
temper, his cautiousness, his mysteriousness? Nobody knew. In the end
Mr. Prohack also had succeeded in disliking him. But Mr. Prohack
produced a reason, and that reason was Mr. Bishop's first name. On it
being pointed out to Mr. Prohack by argufiers that Mr. Bishop was not
responsible for his first name, Mr. Prohack would reply that the

mentality of parents capable of bestowing on an innocent child the
Christian name of Softly was incomprehensible and in a high degree
suspicious, and that therefore by the well-known laws of heredity there
must be something devilish odd in the mentality of their
offspring--especially seeing that the offspring pretended to glory in the
Christian name as being a fine old English name. No! Mr. Prohack
might stomach co-heirship with a far-off dubious woman; but could he
stomach co-heirship with Softly Bishop? It would necessitate
friendship with Mr. Bishop. It would bracket him for ever with Mr.
Bishop.
These various considerations, however, had little to do with the
immense inward anarchy that Mr. Prohack's tone had concealed as he
musingly murmured: "Do I really?" The disturbance was due almost
exclusively to a fierce imperial joy in the prospect of immediate wealth.
The origin of the wealth scarcely affected him. The associations of the
wealth scarcely affected him. He understood in a flash the deep wisdom
of that old proverb (whose truth he had often hitherto denied) that
money has no smell. Perhaps there might be forty good reasons against
his accepting the inheritance, but they were all ridiculous. Was he to
abandon his share of the money to Softly Bishop and the
vampire-woman? Such a notion was idiotic. It was contrary to the
robust and matter-of-fact commonsense which always marked his
actions--if not