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قراءة كتاب Mr. Prohack
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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mr. Prohack, by E. Arnold Bennett
Title: Mr. Prohack
Author: E. Arnold Bennett
Release Date: June 29, 2004 [eBook #12773]
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. PROHACK***
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Wilelmina Mallière,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
MR. PROHACK
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
AUTHOR OF "CLAYHANGER," ETC.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
| I |
THE NEW POOR |
| II |
FROM THE DEAD |
| III |
THE LAW |
| IV |
EVE'S HEADACHE |
| V |
CHARLIE |
| VI |
SISSIE |
| VII |
THE SYMPATHETIC QUACK |
| VIII |
SISSIE'S BUSINESS |
| IX |
COLLISION |
| X |
THE THEORY OF IDLENESS |
| XI |
NEURASTHENIA CURED |
| XII |
THE PRACTICE OF IDLENESS |
| XIII |
FURTHER IDLENESS |
| XIV |
END OF AN IDLE DAY |
| XV |
THE HEAVY FATHER |
| XVI |
TRANSFER OF MIMI |
| XVII |
ROMANCE |
| XVIII |
A HOMELESS NIGHT |
| XIX |
THE RECEPTION |
| XX |
THE SILENT TOWER |
| XXI |
EVE'S MARTYRDOM |
| XXII |
MR. PROHACK'S TRIUMPH |
| XXIII |
THE YACHT |
CHAPTER I
THE NEW POOR
I
Arthur Charles Prohack came downstairs at eight thirty, as usual, and found breakfast ready in the empty dining-room. This pleased him, because there was nothing in life he hated more than to be hurried. For him, hell was a place of which the inhabitants always had an eye on the clock and the clock was always further advanced than they had hoped.
The dining-room, simply furnished with reproductions of chaste Chippendale, and chilled to the uncomfortable low temperature that hardy Britons pretend to enjoy, formed part of an unassailably correct house of mid-Victorian style and antiquity; and the house formed part of an unassailably correct square just behind Hyde Park Gardens. (Taxi-drivers, when told the name of the square, had to reflect for a fifth of a second before they could recall its exact situation.)
Mr. Prohack was a fairly tall man, with a big head, big features, and a beard. His characteristic expression denoted benevolence based on an ironic realisation of the humanity of human nature. He was forty-six years of age and looked it. He had been for more than twenty years at the Treasury, in which organism he had now attained a certain importance. He was a Companion of the Bath. He exulted in the fact that the Order of the Bath took precedence of those bumptious Orders, Star of India, St. Michael and St. George, Indian Empire, Royal Victorian and British Empire; but he laughed at his wife for so exulting. If the matter happened to be mentioned he would point out that in the table of precedence Companions of the Bath ranked immediately below Masters in Lunacy.
He was proud of