FICTION.
MR. ARNOLD BENNETT'S NEW NOVEL*
Ma. PBORACK, the middle-aged hero of Mr. Arnold Bennett's new book, is a Treasury official, obscure to the outside world, but known within the sacred precincts as The Terror of Depart- ments. When the book opens he is one of the new poor. Tho pincers are about to close—fixed salary, rising prices. He has a demobilized son who cannot get work, a daughter in much the same position. His wife will have to go without a new gown, he will have to leave one of his two clubs, there will be an unending series of small, irritating economies to practise. His wife and he are creatures of habit, therefore-the new deprivations will be considerable to them. On the very day when these economies are to come into effect 'Mr. Prohack learns, from a previously much-disliked member of his club, that he has come into a fortune of £100,000. It is at this point in the story that the strength of 'Mr. Bennett's fantasy, or morality, or 'whatever you like to call it, shows itself. The fortune does not cause Mr. Prohack and his family to live in a roseate and beatific haze of luxury and good deeds for the rest of the book, after the manner of the bookstall novelette, but neither does it have the sort of consequences which we should expect had the story flowed under the pen of the author of Rosamund and the Purple Jar. The effect of the money on all four persons concerned is tremend- ous and immediate, but so complicated that Mr. Prohack himself, who is fond of analyses of all sorts, including self analysis, finds it impossible to sum them up in two words and has to wait for Dr. Veiga, his sardonic medical attendant, to generalize it up-for him. The scene in which Dr. Veiga obliges occurs when events in Mr. Prohack's world have begun to move so quickly that they bewilder him. For his wife (on the analysis of whose peccadilloes and general characteristics a great deal of attention is spent) is an elementary and impulsive creature. Money to her is a medium for launching out—she launches out
with none of the self-conscious wariness of her philosophic husband. It is an excellent theme for the display of Mr. Bennett's mildly sardonic humour.
" I am suffering from 'horrible complications,' cried Mr. Prohack.
What kind of complications i ' inquired the Doctor.
` Every kind. My aim has always been to keep my life simple, and I succeeded very well—perhaps too well—until I inherited money. I don't mind money, but I do mind compli- cations. I don't want a large house, because it means compli- esti, ms. I desire Sissie's happiness, but I hate weddings. I desire to be looked after, but I hate strange servants. I can find pleasure in a motor-car, but I hats even the risk of accidents. I have no objection to an income, but I hate investments. And so on. All I ask is to live simply and sensibly, but instead of that my existence is transformed into a quadratic equation. And I can't stop it. My" happiness is not increasing—it's decreasing. I spend more and more time in wondering whither I am going, what I am after, and where, precisely is the point of being alive at all. That's a fact, and now you know it . . My friend,' said Dr. Veiga at length, you are suffering from one of the commonest and one of the gravest mental derangements. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit the consequences. You knew when you accepted the fortune that you were creating endless consequences, and now you want to limit them too. . . . V!, hen your family causes consequences by bringing the money to life you complain that you're a martyr to the consequences and that you hadn't bargained for complications. My poor friend, you have made one crucial mistake in your career—the mistake of being born. Happily the mistake is curable. I can give you several prescriptions. The first is prussic acid . . . if you don't like that you can acquaint yourself with the axiom that neither you nor anybody else are the centre of the universe and that what you call complications are simply another name for life itself. Worry is life, and life is worry. And the absence of worry is death. I won'tsay to you that you're rich and beloved and therefore you've nothing to worry about. I'll say to you, you've got a lot to -worry about because you're rich and beloved. . . ." Platitudes ! ejaculated Mr. Prohack. Cer- tainly,' agreed the quack. ' But I've told you before that it's by telling everybody what everybody knows that I earn my living.' " No reader can finish this book without acquiring an affection for Mr. Prohack, he is entirely delightful and perfectly alive and human. But when we come to the character on which Mr. Arnold Bennett has most obviously prided himself, the -wife
• Mr. Prohaek. By Arnold Bennett. London : Methuen and Co. 17s. Od. net.1
Marian (he has the exasperating habit of calling her "Eve"— be is obsessed by this phantom /a femme), our sympathies are alienated. Mr. Bennett used to be able to draw-women rather well, but of- late he seems like some shopkeeper who has acquired an expensive wax lady for his window and feels that he must use her upon all occasions, whether her long, curling eyelashes, her tapering fingers and her blushes are appropriate to the rest of his window design or not. In The Love Match and his monograph on Women, this female, whom Mr. Bennett believes to be so fundamental, appears again. As The Love Match is- a brief and slight comedy she does pretty well there, but in a longish novel she becomes a bore. Perpetual repetition of such phrases as " the Female of the species is more deadly than the, Male " and " je suis la Femme !—Mystere," palls after a time, and this is really all Mr. Bennett's pages of explanation boil down to. However, let us hope that some day a good, scorching review may melt the poor lady and send her pink cheeks splashing on to her varnished shoes. She will be mourned by few.
But the dtunmy apart, Mr. Bennett's book is extraordinarily dexterous, moat amusing and well-observed. We thoroughly recommend. it as a holiday book. It is satisfying, long, thoroughly amusing, full of mild, agreeable cynicism, and puts no strain on the intellect.
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