Eve adored her son.

“You see,” she said victoriously to Mr. Prohack, who secretly trembled.

“I shall bring an action against Doy and Doy,” Charlie continued.  “I’ll show the whole rascally thing up.”

“I hope you’ll do no such thing, my boy,” said Mr. Prohack, foolishly attempting the grandiose.

“I most positively shall, dad.”

Mr. Prohack realised desperately that all was lost except honour, and he was by no means sure about even honour.

CHAPTER XVI

TRANSFER OF MIMI

I

Mr. Prohack passed a very bad night—­the worst for months, one of the outstanding bad nights of his whole existence.

“Why didn’t I have it out with Charlie before he left?” he asked himself some scores of times while listening to the tranquil regular breathing of Eve, who of course was now sure of her house and probably had quite forgotten the meaning of care.  “I’m bound to have it out with him sooner or later, and if I’d done it at once I should at any rate have slept.  They’re all sleeping but me.”

He simply could not comprehend life; the confounded thing called life baffled him by its mysterious illogicalness.  He was adored by his spouse, beloved by his children, respected by the world.  He had heaps of money, together with the full control of it.  His word, if he chose, was law.  He had only to say:  “I will not take the house in Manchester Square,” and nobody could thwart him.  He powerfully desired not to take it.  There was no sensible reason why he should take it.  And yet he would take it, under the inexplicable compulsion of circumstances.  In those sombre hours he had a fellow-feeling for Oriental tyrants, who were absolute autocrats but also slaves of exactly the same sinister force that had gripped himself.  He perceived that in practice there is no such thing as an autocrat....

Not that his defeat in regard to the house really disturbed him.  He could reconcile himself to the house, despite the hateful complications which it would engender.  What disturbed him horribly was the drains business, the Doy and Doy business, the Mimi business; he could see no way out of that except through the valley of humiliation.  He remembered, with terrible forebodings, the remark of his daughter after she heard of the heritage:  “You’ll never be as happy again.”

When the household day began and the familiar comfortable distant noises of domestic activity announced that the solar system was behaving much as usual in infinite and inconceivable space, he decided that he was too tired to be scientifically idle that day—­even though he had a trying-on appointment with Mr. Melchizidek.  He decided, too, that he would not get up, would in fact take everything lying down, would refuse to descend a single step of the stairs to meet trouble.  And he had a great wish to be irritated and angry.  But, the place seemed to be full of angels who turned the other cheek—­and the other cheek was marvellously soft and bewitching.