WILKINS'S
I.
The early adventures of Alderman Machin of Bursley at Wilkins' Hotel,
London, were so singular and to him so refreshing that they must be
recounted in some detail.
He went to London by the morning express from Knype, on the Monday week
after his visit to the music-hall. In the meantime he had had some
correspondence with Mr. Bryany, more poetic than precise, about the
option, and had informed Mr. Bryany that he would arrive in London
several days before the option expired. But he had not given a definite
date. The whole affair, indeed, was amusingly vague; and, despite his
assurances to his wife that the matter was momentous, he did not regard
his trip to London as a business trip at all, but rather as a simple
freakish change of air. The one certain item in the whole situation was
that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum of actual money,
destined--he hoped but was not sure--to take up the option at the proper
hour.
Nellie, impeccable to the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype,
the main-line station. The drive, superficially pleasant, was in
reality very disconcerting to him. For nine days the household had
talked in apparent cheerfulness of Father's visit to London, as though
it were an occasion for joy on Father's behalf, tempered by affectionate
sorrow for his absence. The official theory was that all was for the
best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was admirably
maintained. And yet everybody knew--even to Maisie--that it was not so;
everybody knew that the master and the mistress of the home, calm and
sweet as was their demeanour, were contending in a terrific silent and
mysterious altercation, which in some way was connected with the visit
to London. So far as Edward Henry was concerned, he had been hoping for
some decisive event--a tone, gesture, glance, pressure--during the drive
to Knype, which offered the last chance of a real concord. No such
event occurred. They conversed with the same false cordiality as had
marked their relations since the evening of the dog-bite. On that
evening Nellie had suddenly transformed herself into a distressingly
perfect angel, and not once had she descended from her high estate. At
least daily she had kissed him--what kisses! Kisses that were not
kisses! Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale! He could have
killed her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous
wifely behaviour; she would have died victorious.
So that his freakish excursion was not starting very auspiciously. And,
waiting with her for the train on the platform at Knype, he felt this
more and more. His old clerk Penkethman was there to receive certain
final instructions on Thrift Club matters, and the sweetness of Nellie's
attitude towards the ancient man, and the ancient's man's naive pleasure
therein, positively maddened Edward Henry. To such an extent that he
began to think: "Is she going to spoil my trip for me?"
Then Brindley came up. Brindley, too, was going to London. And
Nellie's saccharine assurances to Brindley that Edward Henry really
needed a change just about completed Edward Henry's desperation. Not
even the uproarious advent of two jolly wholesale grocers, Messieurs
Garvin and Quorrall, also going to London, could effectually lighten his
pessimism.
When the train steamed in, Edward Henry, in fear, postponed the ultimate
kiss as long as possible. He allowed Brindley to climb before him into
the second-class compartment, and purposely tarried in finding change
for the porter; and then he turned to Nellie, and stooped. She raised
her white veil and raised the angelic face. They kissed,--the same
false kiss,--and she was withdrawing her lips. But suddenly she put them
again to his for one second, with a hysterical clinging pressure. It
was nothing. Nobody could have noticed it. She herself pretended that
she had not done it. Edward Henry had to pretend not to notice it. But
to him it was everything. She had relented. She had surrendered. The
sign had come from her. She wished him to enjoy his visit to London.
He said to himself:
"Dashed if I don't write to her every day!"
He leaned out of the window as the train rolled away, and waved and
smiled to her, not concealing his sentiments now; nor did she conceal
hers as she replied with exquisite pantomime to his signals. But if the
train had not been rapidly and infallibly separating them, the
reconciliation could scarcely have been thus open. If for some reason
the train had backed into the station and ejected its passengers, those
two would have covered up their feelings again in an instant. Such is
human nature in the Five Towns.
When Edward Henry withdrew his head into the compartment, Brindley and
Mr. Garvin, the latter standing at the corridor door, observed that his
spirits had shot up in the most astonishing manner, and in their
blindness they attributed the phenomenon to Edward Henry's delight in a
temporary freedom from domesticity.
Mr. Garvin had come from the neighbouring compartment, which was
first-class, to suggest a game at bridge. Messieurs Garvin and Quorrall
journeyed to London once a week and sometimes oftener, and, being
traders, they had special season-tickets. They travelled first-class
because their special season-tickets were first-class. Brindley said
that he didn't mind a game, but that he had not the slightest intention
of paying excess fare for the privilege. Mr. Garvin told him to come
along and trust in Messieurs Garvin and Quorrall. Edward Henry, not
nowadays an enthusiastic card-player, enthusiastically agreed to join
the hand, and announced that he did not care if he paid forty excess
fares. Whereupon Robert Brindley grumbled enviously that it was "all
very well for millionaires..." They followed Mr. Garvin into the
first-class compartment; and it soon appeared that Messrs. Garvin and
Quorrall did in fact own the train, and that the London and North
Western Railway was no more than their wash-pot.
"Bring us a cushion from somewhere, will ye?" said Mr. Quorrall casually
to a ticket-collector who entered.
And the resplendent official obeyed. The long cushion, rapt from
another compartment, was placed on the knees of the quartette, and the
game began. The ticket-collector examined the tickets of Brindley and
Edward Henry, and somehow failed to notice that they were of the wrong
colour. And at this proof of their influential greatness, Messieurs
Garvin and Quorrall were both secretly proud.
The last rubber finished in the neighbourhood of Willesden, and Edward
Henry, having won eighteen pence halfpenny, was exuberantly content, for
Messrs. Garvin, Quorrall, and Brindley were all renowned card-players.
The cushion was thrown away, and a fitful conversation occupied the few
remaining minutes of the journey.
"Where do you put up?" Brindley asked Edward Henry.
"Majestic," said Edward Henry. "Where do you?"
"Oh! Kingsway, I suppose."
The Majestic and the Kingsway were two of the half-dozen very large and
very mediocre hotels in London which, from causes which nobody, and
especially no American, has ever been able to discover, are particularly
affected by Midland provincials "on the jaunt." Both had an immense
reputation in the Five Towns.
There was nothing new to say about the Majestic and the Kingsway, and
the talk flagged until Mr. Quorrall mentioned Seven Sachs. The mighty
Seven Sachs, in his world-famous play, "Overheard," had taken precedence
of all other topics in the Five Towns during the previous week. He had
crammed the theatre and half emptied the Empire Music Hall for six
nights; a wonderful feat. Incidentally, his fifteen hundredth appearance
in "Overheard" had taken place in the Five Towns, and the Five Towns had
found in this fact a peculiar satisfaction, as though some deep merit
had thereby been acquired or rewarded. Seven Sachs's tour was now
closed, and on the Sunday he had gone to London, en route for America.
"I heard _he_ stops at Wilkins's," said Mr. Garvin.
"Wilkins's your grandmother!" Brindley essayed to crush Mr. Garvin.
"I don't say he _does_ stop at Wilkins's," said Mr. Garvin, an
individual not easy to crush, "I only say I heard as he did."
"They wouldn't have him!" Brindley insisted firmly.
Mr. Quorrall at any rate seemed tacitly to agree with Brindley. The
august name of Wilkins's was in its essence so exclusive that vast
numbers of fairly canny provincials had never heard of it. Ask ten
well-informed provincials which is the first hotel in London, and nine
of them would certainly reply, the Grand Babylon. Not that even wealthy
provincials from the industrial districts are in the habit of staying at
the Grand Babylon! No! Edward Henry, for example, had never stayed at
the Grand Babylon, no more than he had ever bought a first-class ticket
on a railroad. The idea of doing so had scarcely occurred to him.
There are certain ways of extravagant smartness which are not considered
to be good form among solid wealthy provincials. Why travel first-class
(they argue), when second is just as good and no one can tell the
difference once you get out of the train? Why ape the tricks of another
stratum of society? They like to read about the dinner-parties and
supper-parties at the Grand Babylon; but they are not emulous, and they
do not imitate. At their most adventurous they would lunch or dine in
the neutral region of the grill-room at the Grand Babylon. As for
Wilkins's, in Devonshire Square, which is infinitely better known among
princes than in the Five Towns, and whose name is affectionately
pronounced with a "V" by half the monarchs of Europe, few industrial
provincials had ever seen it. The class which is the back-bone of
England left it serenely alone to royalty and the aristocratic parasites
of royalty.
"I don't see why they shouldn't have him," said Edward Henry, as he
lifted a challenging nose in the air.
"Perhaps you don't, Alderman!" said Brindley.
"_I_ wouldn't mind going to Wilkins's," Edward Henry persisted.
"I'd like to see you," said Brindley, with curt scorn.
"Well," said Edward Henry, "I'll bet you a fiver I do." Had he not won
eighteen pence half-penny? And was he not securely at peace with his
wife?
"I don't bet fivers," said the cautious Brindley. "But I'll bet you half
a crown."
"Done!" said Edward Henry.
"When will you go?"
"Either to-day or to-morrow. I must go to the Majestic first, because
I've ordered a room and so on."
"Ha!" hurled Brindley, as if to insinuate that Edward Henry was seeking
to escape from the consequences of his boast.
And yet he ought to have known Edward Henry. He did know Edward Henry.
And he hoped to lose his half-crown. On his face and on the faces of
the other two was the cheerful admission that tales of the doings of
Alderman Machin, the great local card, at Wilkins's--if he succeeded in
getting in--would be cheap at half a crown.
Porters cried out "Euston!"
II.
It was rather late in the afternoon when Edward Henry arrived in front
of the facade of Wilkins's. He came in a taxicab, and though the
distance from the Majestic to Wilkins's is not more than a couple of
miles, and he had had nothing else to preoccupy him after lunch, he had
spent some three hours in the business of transferring himself from the
portals of the one hotel to the portals of the other. Two hours and
three-quarters of this period of time had been passed in finding courage
merely to start. Even so, he had left his luggage behind him. He said
to himself that, first of all, he would go and spy out Wilkins's; in the
perilous work of scouting he rightly wished to be unhampered by
impedimenta; moreover, in case of repulse or accident, he must have a
base of operations upon which he could retreat in good order.
He now looked on Wilkins's for the first time in his life; and he was
even more afraid of it than he had been while thinking about it in the
vestibule of the Majestic. It was not larger than the Majestic; it was
perhaps smaller; it could not show more terra cotta, plate glass, and
sculptured cornice than the Majestic. But it had a demeanour ... and it
was in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill--not only
of the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in the square--there were
boxes of bright-blooming flowers. These he could plainly distinguish in
the October dusk, and they were a wonderful phenomenon--say what you
will about the mildness of that particular October! A sublime
tranquillity reigned over the scene. A liveried keeper was locking the
gate of the garden in the middle of the square as if potentates had just
quitted it and rendered it forever sacred. And between the sacred
shadowed grove and the inscrutable fronts of the stately houses, there
flitted automobiles of the silent and expensive kind, driven by
chauffeurs in pale grey or dark purple, who reclined as they steered,
and who were supported on their left sides by footmen who reclined as
they contemplated the grandeur of existence.
Edward Henry's taxicab in that square seemed like a homeless cat that
had strayed into a dog-show.
At the exact instant when the taxicab came to rest under the massive
portico of Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the
gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to Edward
Henry, and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver of
the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but
Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted the
broad carpeted steps.
"What about poor little me?" cried the driver, who was evidently a
ribald socialist, or at best a republican.
The chamberlain, pained, glanced at Edward Henry for support and
direction in this crisis.
"Didn't I tell you I'd keep you?" said Edward Henry, raised now by the
steps above the driver.
"Between you and me, you didn't," said the driver.
The chamberlain, with an ineffable gesture, wafted the taxicab away into
some limbo appointed for waiting vehicles.
A page opened a pair of doors, and another page opened another pair of
doors, each with eighteen-century ceremonies of deference, and Edward
Henry stood at length in the hall of Wilkins's. The sanctuary, then, was
successfully defiled, and up to the present nobody had demanded his
credentials! He took breath.
In its physical aspects Wilkins's appeared to him to resemble other
hotels--such as the Majestic. And so far he was not mistaken. Once
Wilkins's had not resembled other hotels. For many years it had
deliberately refused to recognise that even the Nineteenth Century had
dawned, and its magnificent antique discomfort had been one of its main
attractions to the elect. For the elect desired nothing but their own
privileged society in order to be happy in a hotel. A hip bath on a
blanket in the middle of the bedroom floor richly sufficed them,
provided they could be guaranteed against the calamity of meeting the
unelect in the corridors or at _table d'hote_. But the rising waters of
democracy--the intermixture of classes--had reacted adversely on
Wilkins's. The fall of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico had given
Wilkins's sad food for thought long, long ago, and the obvious general
weakening of the monarchical principle had most considerably shaken it.
Came the day when Wilkins's reluctantly decided that even it could not
fight against the tendency of the whole world, and then, at one superb
stroke, it had rebuilt and brought itself utterly up-to-date.
Thus it resembled other hotels. (Save possibly in the reticence of its
advertisements! The Majestic would advertise bathrooms as a miracle of
modernity, just as though common dwelling-houses had not possessed
bathrooms for the past thirty years. Wilkins's had superlative
bathrooms, but it said nothing about them. Wilkins's would as soon have
advertised two hundred bathrooms as two hundred bolsters; and for the
new Wilkins's a bathroom was not more modern than a bolster.) Also,
other hotels resembled Wilkins's. The Majestic, too, had a chamberlain
at its portico, and an assortment of pages to prove to its clients that
they were incapable of performing the simplest act for themselves.
Nevertheless, the difference between Wilkins's and the Majestic was
enormous; and yet so subtle was it that Edward Henry could not
immediately detect where it resided. Then he understood. The
difference between Wilkins's and the Majestic resided in the theory
which underlay its manner. And the theory was that every person
entering its walls was of royal blood until he had admitted the
contrary.
Within the hotel it was already night.
Edward Henry self-consciously crossed the illuminated hall, which was
dotted with fashionable figures. He knew not whither he was going,
until by chance he saw a golden grille with the word "Reception" shining
over it in letters of gold. Behind this grille, and still further
protected by an impregnable mahogany counter, stood three young dandies
in attitudes of graceful ease. He approached them. The fearful moment
was upon him. He had never in his life been so genuinely frightened.
Abject disgrace might be his portion within the next ten seconds.
Addressing himself to the dandy in the middle, he managed to articulate:
"What have you got in the way of rooms?"
Could the Five Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardly
have recognised its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomb and
inventive audacity, in this figure of provincial and plebeian
diffidence.
The dandy bowed.
"Do you want a suite, sir?"
"Certainly!" said Edward Henry. Rather too quickly, rather too
defiantly; in fact, rather rudely! A habitue would not have so savagely
hurled back in the dandy's teeth the insinuation that he wanted only one
paltry room.
However, the dandy smiled, accepting with meekness Edward Henry's sudden
arrogance, and consulted a sort of pentateuch that was open in front of
him.
No person in the hall saw Edward Henry's hat fly up into the air and
fall back on his head. But in the imagination of Edward Henry, that was
what his hat did.
He was saved. He would have a proud tale for Brindley. The thing was
as simple as the alphabet. You just walked in and they either fell on
your neck or kissed your feet.
Wilkins's indeed!
A very handsome footman, not only in white gloves but in white calves,
was soon supplicating him to deign to enter a lift. And when he emerged
from the lift another dandy--in a frock-coat of Paradise--was awaiting
him with obeisances. Apparently it had not yet occurred to anybody that
he was not the younger son of some aged king.
He was prayed to walk into a gorgeous suite consisting of a corridor, a
noble drawing-room (with portrait of His Majesty of Spain on the walls),
a large bedroom with two satinwood beds, a small bedroom, and a
bathroom, all gleaming with patent devices in porcelain and silver that
fully equalled those at home.
Asked if this suite would do, he said it would, trying as well as he
could to imply that he had seen better. Then the dandy produced a
note-book and a pencil, and impassively waited. The horrid fact that he
was un-elect could no longer be concealed. "E. H. Machin, Bursley," he
said shortly, and added: "Alderman Machin." After all, why should he be
ashamed of being an alderman?
To his astonishment the dandy smiled very cordially, though always with
profound respect.
"Ah, yes!" said the dandy. It was as though he had said: "We have long
wished for the high patronage of this great reputation." Edward Henry
could make naught of it.
His opinion of Wilkins's went down.
He followed the departing dandy up the corridor to the door of the suite
in an entirely vain attempt to enquire the price of the suite per day.
Not a syllable would pass his lips. The dandy bowed and vanished.
Edward Henry stood lost at his own door, and his wandering eye caught
sight of a pile of trunks near to another door in the main corridor.
These trunks gave him a terrible shock. He shut out the rest of the
hotel and retired into his private corridor to reflect. He perceived
only too plainly that his luggage, now at the Majestic, never could come
into Wilkins's. It was not fashionable enough. It lacked elegance.
The lounge suit that he was wearing might serve, but his luggage was
totally impossible. Never before had he imagined that the aspect of
one's luggage could have the least importance in one's scheme of
existence. He was learning, and he frankly admitted that he was in an
incomparable mess.
III.
At the end of an extensive stroll through and round his new vast domain,
he had come to no decision upon a course of action. Certain details of
the strange adventure pleased him--as for instance the dandy's welcoming
recognition of his name; that, though puzzling, was a source of comfort
to him in his difficulties. He also liked the suite; nay more, he was
much impressed by its gorgeousness, and such novel complications as the
forked electric switches, all of which he turned on, and the double
windows, one within the other, appealed to the domestic expert in him;
indeed, he at once had the idea of doubling the window of the best
bedroom at home; to do so would be a fierce blow to the Five Towns
Electric Traction Company, which, as everybody knew, delighted to keep
everybody awake at night and at dawn by means of its late and its early
tram-cars. However, he could not wander up and down the glittering
solitude of his extensive suite for ever. Something must be done. Then
he had the notion of writing to Nellie; he had promised himself to write
to her daily; moreover, it would pass the time and perhaps help him to
some resolution.
He sat down to a delicate Louis XVI desk on which lay a Bible, a
Peerage, a telephone-book, a telephone, a lamp, and much distinguished
stationery. Between the tasselled folds of plushy curtains that pleated
themselves with the grandeur of painted curtains in a theatre, he
glanced out at the lights of Devonshire Square, from which not a sound
came. Then he lit the lamp and unscrewed his fountain pen.
"My dear wife--"
That was how he always began, whether in storm or sunshine. Nellie
always began, "My darling husband"; but he was not a man to fling
darlings about. Few husbands in the Five Towns are. He thought
"darling," but he never wrote it, and he never said it, save quizzingly.
After these three words the composition of the letter came to a pause.
What was he going to tell Nellie? He assuredly was not going to tell
her that he had engaged an unpriced suite at Wilkins's. He was not
going to mention Wilkins's. Then he intelligently perceived that the
note-paper and also the envelope mentioned Wilkins's in no ambiguous
manner. He tore up the sheet and searched for plain paper. Now, on the
desk there was the ordinary hotel stationery, mourning stationery,
cards, letter-cards, and envelopes for every mood; but not a piece that
was not embossed with the historic name in royal blue. The which
appeared to Edward Henry to point to a defect of foresight on the part
of Wilkins's. At the gigantic political club to which he belonged, and
which he had occasionally visited in order to demonstrate to himself and
others that he was a club-man, plain stationery was everywhere provided
for the use of husbands with a taste for reticence. Why not at
Wilkins's also?
On the other hand, why should he not write to his wife on Wilkins's
paper? Was he afraid of his wife? He was not. Would not the news
ultimately reach Bursley that he had stayed at Wilkins's? It would.
Nevertheless, he could not find the courage to write to Nellie on
Wilkins's paper.
He looked around. He was fearfully alone. He wanted the companionship,
were it only momentary, of something human. He decided to have a look
at a flunkey, and he rang a bell.
Immediately, just as though wafted thither on a magic carpet, from the
court of Austria, a gentleman in waiting arrived in the doorway of the
drawing-room, planted himself gracefully on his black silk calves, and
bowed.
"I want some plain note-paper, please."
"Very good, sir." Oh! Perfection of tone and of mien!
Three minutes later the plain note-paper and envelopes were being
presented to Edward Henry on a salver. As he took them, he looked
enquiringly at the gentleman in waiting, who supported his gaze with an
impenetrable, invulnerable servility. Edward Henry, beaten off with
great loss, thought: "There's nothing doing here just now in the human
companionship line," and assumed the mask of a hereditary prince.
The black calves carried away their immaculate living burden, set above
all earthly ties.
He wrote nicely to Nellie about the weather and the journey, and
informed her also that London seemed as full as ever, and that he might
go to the theatre, but he wasn't sure. He dated the letter from the
Majestic.
As he was finishing it, he heard mysterious, disturbing footfalls in his
private corridor, and after trying for some time to ignore them, he was
forced by a vague alarm to investigate their origin. A short
middle-aged, pallid man, with a long nose and long moustaches, wearing a
red and black-striped sleeved waistcoat and a white apron, was in the
corridor. At the Turk's Head such a person would have been the boots.
But Edward Henry remembered a notice under the bell, advising visitors
to ring once for the waiter, twice for the chambermaid, and three times
for the valet. This, then, was the valet. In certain picturesque
details of costume Wilkins's was coquettishly French.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"I came to see if your luggage had arrived, sir. No doubt your servant
is bringing it. Can I be of any assistance to you?"
The man thoughtfully twirled one end of his moustache. It was an
appalling fault in demeanour; but the man was proud of his moustache.
"The first human being I've met here!" thought Edward Henry, attracted
too by a gleam in the eye of this eternal haunter of corridors.
"His servant!" He saw that something must be done, and quickly.
Wilkins's provided valets for emergencies, but obviously it expected
visitors to bring their own valets in addition. Obviously existence
without a private valet was inconceivable to Wilkins's.
"The fact is," said Edward Henry, "I'm in a very awkward situation." He
hesitated, seeking to and fro in his mind for particulars of the
situation.
"Sorry to hear that, sir."
"Yes, a very awkward position." He hesitated again. "I'd booked
passages for myself and my valet on the _Minnetonka_, sailing from
Tilbury at noon to-day, and sent him on in front with my stuff, and at
the very last moment I've been absolutely prevented from sailing! You
see how awkward it is! I haven't a thing here."
"It is indeed, sir! And I suppose _he's_ gone on, sir?"
"Of course he has! He wouldn't find out till after she sailed that I
wasn't on board. You know the crush and confusion there is on those big
liners just before they start." Edward Henry had once assisted, under
very dramatic circumstances, at the departure of a transatlantic liner
from Liverpool.
"Just so, sir!"
"I've neither servant nor clothes!" He considered that so far he was
doing admirably. Indeed, the tale could not have been bettered, he
thought. His hope was that the fellow would not have the idea of
consulting the shipping intelligence in order to confirm the departure
of the _Minnetonka_ from Tilbury that day. Possibly the _Minnetonka_
never had sailed and never would sail from Tilbury. Possibly she had
been sold years ago. He had selected the first ship's name that came
into his head. What did it matter?
"My man," he added to clinch--the proper word "man" had only just
occurred to him--"my man can't be back again under three weeks at the
soonest."
The valet made one half-eager step towards him.
"If you're wanting a temporary valet, sir, my son's out of a place for
the moment--through no fault of his own. He's a very good valet, sir,
and soon learns a gentleman's ways."
"Yes," said Edward Henry judiciously. "But could he come at once?
That's the point." And he looked at his watch, as if to imply that
another hour without a valet would be more than human nature could
stand.
"I could have him round here in less than an hour, sir," said the hotel
valet, comprehending the gesture. "He's at Norwich Mews--Berkeley
Square way, sir."
Edward Henry hesitated.
"Very well, then!" he said commandingly. "Send for him. Let me see
him."
He thought:
"Dash it! I'm at Wilkins's--I'll be _at_ Wilkins's!"
"Certainly, sir! Thank you very much, sir."
The hotel valet was retiring when Edward Henry called him back.
"Stop a moment. I'm just going out. Help me on with my overcoat, will
you?"
The man jumped.
"And you might get me a tooth-brush," Edward Henry airily suggested.
"And I've a letter for the post."
As he walked down Devonshire Square in the dark, he hummed a tune:
certain sign that he was self-conscious, uneasy, and yet not unhappy.
At a small but expensive hosier's in a side street he bought a shirt and
a suit of pajamas, and also permitted himself to be tempted by a special
job line of hair-brushes that the hosier had in his fancy department. On
hearing the powerful word "Wilkins's," the hosier promised with
passionate obsequiousness that the goods should be delivered instantly.
Edward Henry cooled his excitement by an extended stroll, and finally
re-entered the outer hall of the hotel at half-past seven, and sat down
therein to see the world. He knew by instinct that the boldest lounge
suit must not at that hour penetrate further into the public rooms of
Wilkins's.
The world at its haughtiest was driving up to Wilkins's to eat its
dinner in the unrivalled restaurant, and often guests staying at the
hotel came into the outer hall to greet invited friends. And Edward
Henry was so overfaced by visions of woman's brilliance and man's utter
correctness that he scarcely knew where to look--so apologetic was he
for his grey lounge suit and the creases in his boots. In less than a
quarter of an hour he appreciated with painful clearness that his entire
conception of existence had been wrong, and that he must begin again at
the beginning. Nothing in his luggage at the Majestic would do. His
socks would not do, nor his shoes, nor the braid on his trousers, nor
his cuff-links, nor his ready-made white bow, nor the number of studs in
the shirt-front, nor the collar of his coat. Nothing! Nothing!
To-morrow would be a full day.
He ventured apologetically into the lift. In his private corridor a
young man respectfully waited, hat in hand, the paternal red-and-black
waistcoat by his side for purposes of introduction. The young man was
wearing a rather shabby blue suit, but a rich and distinguished overcoat
that fitted him ill. In another five minutes Edward Henry had engaged a
skilled valet, aged twenty-four, name Joseph, with a testimonial of
efficiency from Sir Nicholas Winkworth, Bart., at a salary of a pound a
week and all found.
Joseph seemed to await instructions. And Edward Henry was placed in a
new quandary. He knew not whether the small bedroom in the suite was
for a child, or for his wife's maid, or for his valet. Quite probably
it would be a sacrilegious defiance of precedent to put a valet in the
small bedroom. Quite probably Wilkins's had a floor for private valets
in the roof. Again, quite probably, the small bedroom might be after
all specially destined for valets! He could not decide, and the most
precious thing in the universe to him in that crisis was his reputation
as a man about town in the eyes of Joseph.
But something had to be done.
"You'll sleep in this room," said Edward Henry, indicating the door. "I
may want you in the night."
"Yes, sir," said Joseph.
"I presume you'll dine up here, sir," said Joseph, glancing at the
lounge suit. His father had informed him of his new master's
predicament.
"I shall," said Edward Henry. "You might get the menu."
IV.
He had a very bad night indeed, owing no doubt partly to a general
uneasiness in his unusual surroundings, and partly also to a special
uneasiness caused by the propinquity of a sleeping valet; but the main
origin of it was certainly his dreadful anxiety about the question of a
first-class tailor. In the organisation of his new life a first-class
tailor was essential, and he was not acquainted with a first-class
London tailor. He did not know a great deal concerning clothes, though
quite passably well dressed for a provincial, but he knew enough to be
sure that it was impossible to judge the merits of a tailor by his
sign-board, and therefore that if, wandering in the precincts of Bond
Street, he entered the first establishment that "looked likely," he
would have a good chance of being "done in the eye." So he phrased it
to himself as he lay in bed. He wanted a definite and utterly reliable
address.
He rang the bell. Only, as it happened to be the wrong bell, he
obtained the presence of Joseph in a round-about way, through the agency
of a gentleman in waiting. Such, however, is the human faculty of
adaptation to environment that he was merely amused in the morning by an
error which, on the previous night, would have put him into a sweat.
"Good morning, sir," said Joseph.
Edward Henry nodded, his hands under his head as he lay on his back. He
decided to leave all initiative to Joseph. The man drew up the blinds,
and, closing the double windows at the top, opened them very wide at the
bottom.
"It is a rainy morning, sir," said Joseph, letting in vast quantities of
air from Devonshire Square. Clearly, Sir Nicholas Winkworth had been a
breezy master.
"Oh!" murmured Edward Henry.
He felt a careless contempt for Joseph's flunkeyism. Hitherto he had had
a theory that footmen, valets, and all male personal attendants were an
inexcusable excrescence on the social fabric. The mere sight of them
often angered him, though for some reason he had no objection whatever
to servility in a nice-looking maid--indeed, rather enjoyed it. But
now, in the person of Joseph, he saw that there were human or half-human
beings born to self-abasement, and that, if their destiny was to be
fulfilled, valetry was a necessary institution. He had no pity for
Joseph, no shame in employing him. He scorned Joseph; and yet his
desire, as a man about town, to keep Joseph's esteem was in no way
diminished.
"Shall I prepare your bath, sir?" asked Joseph, stationed in a supple
attitude by the side of the bed.
Edward Henry was visited by an idea.
"Have you had yours?" he demanded like a pistol-shot.
Edward Henry saw that Sir Nicholas had never asked that particular
question.
"No, sir."
"Not had your bath, man! What on earth do you mean by it? Go and have
your bath at once!"
A faint sycophantic smile lightened the amazed features of Joseph. And
Edward Henry thought: "It's astonishing, all the same, the way they can
read their masters. This chap has seen already that I'm a card. And
yet how?"
"Yes, sir," said Joseph.
"Have your bath in the bathroom here. And be sure to leave everything
in order for me."
"Yes, sir."
As soon as Joseph had gone, Edward Henry jumped out of bed and listened.
He heard the discreet Joseph respectfully push the bolt of the bathroom
door. Then he crept with noiseless rapidity to the small bedroom, and
was aware therein of a lack of order and of ventilation. The rich and
distinguished overcoat was hanging on the brass knob at the foot of the
bed. He seized it, and, scrutinizing the loop, read in yellow letters:
_Quayther and Cuthering, 47 Vigo Street, W_. He knew that Quayther and
Cuthering must be the tailors of Sir Nicholas Winkworth, and hence
first-class.
Hoping for the best, and putting his trust in the general decency of
human nature, he did not trouble himself with the problem: was the
overcoat a gift or an appropriation? But he preferred to assume the
generosity of Sir Nicholas rather than the dishonesty of Joseph.
Repassing the bathroom door, he knocked loudly on its glass.
"Don't be all day!" he cried. He was in a hurry now.
An hour later he said to Joseph:
"I'm going down to Quayther and Cuthering's."
"Yes, sir," said Joseph, obviously much reassured.
"Nincompoop!" Edward Henry exclaimed secretly. "The fool thinks better
of me because my tailors are first-class."
But Edward Henry had failed to notice that he himself was thinking
better of himself because he had adopted first-class tailors.
Beneath the main door of his suite, as he went forth, he found a
business card of the West End Electric Brougham Supply Agency. And
downstairs, solely to impress his individuality on the hall-porter, he
showed the card to that vizier with the casual question:
"These people any good?"
"An excellent firm, sir."
"What do they charge?"
"By the week, sir?"
He hesitated. "Yes, by the week?"
"Twenty guineas, sir."
"Well, you might telephone for one. Can you get it at once?"
"Certainly, sir."
The vizier turned towards the telephone in his lair.
"I say--" said Edward Henry.
"Sir?"
"I suppose one will be enough?"
"Well, sir, as a rule, yes," said the vizier calmly. "Sometimes I get a
couple for one family, sir."
Though he had started jocularly, Edward Henry finished by blenching. "I
think one will do.... I may possibly send for my own car."
He drove to Quayther and Cuthering's in his electric brougham, and there
dropped casually the name of Winkworth. He explained humourously his
singular misadventure of the _Minnetonka_, and was very successful
therewith, so successful indeed, that he actually began to believe in
the reality of the adventure himself, and had an irrational impulse to
despatch a wireless message to his bewildered valet on board the
_Minnetonka_.
Subsequently he paid other fruitful visits in the neighbourhood, and at
about half-past eleven the fruit was arriving at Wilkins's in the shape
of many parcels and boxes, comprising diverse items in the equipment of
a man about town, such as tie-clips and Innovation trunks.
Returning late to Wilkins's for lunch, he marched jauntily into the
large brilliant restaurant, and commenced an adequate repast. Of course
he was still wearing his mediocre lounge suit (his sole suit for another
two days), but somehow the consciousness that Quayther and Cutherings
were cutting out wondrous garments for him in Vigo Street stiffened his
shoulders and gave a mysterious style to that lounge suit.
At lunch he made one mistake, and enjoyed one very remarkable piece of
luck.
The mistake was to order an artichoke. He did not know how to eat an
artichoke. He had never tried to eat an artichoke, and his first essay
in this difficult and complex craft was a sad fiasco. It would not have
mattered if, at the table next to his own, there had not been two
obviously experienced women, one ill dressed, with a red hat, the other
well dressed, with a blue hat; one middle-aged, the other much younger;
but both very observant. And even so, it would scarcely have mattered,
had not the younger woman been so slim, pretty, and alluring. While
tolerably careless of the opinion of the red-hatted plain woman of
middle age, he desired the unqualified approval of the delightful young
thing in the blue hat. They certainly interested themselves in his
manoeuvres with the artichoke, and their amusement was imperfectly
concealed. He forgave the blue hat, but considered that the red hat
ought to have known better. They could not be princesses, nor even
titled aristocrats. He supposed them to belong to some baccarat-playing
county family.
The piece of luck consisted in the passage down the restaurant of the
Countess of Chell, who had been lunching there with a party, and whom he
had known locally in more gusty days. The countess bowed stiffly to the
red hat, and the red hat responded with eager fulsomeness. It seemed to
be here as it no longer was in the Five Towns: everybody knew everybody!
The red hat and the blue might be titled, after all, he thought. Then,
by sheer accident, the countess caught sight of him, and stopped dead,
bringing her escort to a standstill behind her. Edward Henry blushed
and rose.
"Is it _you_, Mr. Machin?" murmured the still lovely creature warmly.
They shook hands. Never had social pleasure so thrilled him. The
conversation was short. He did not presume on the past. He knew that
here he was not on his own ash-pit, as they say in the Five Towns. The
countess and her escort went forward. Edward Henry sat down again.
He gave the red and the blue hats one calm glance, which they failed to
withstand. The affair of the artichoke was forever wiped out.
After lunch he went forth again in his electric brougham. The weather
had cleared. The opulent streets were full of pride and sunshine. And
as he penetrated into one shop after another, receiving kowtows,
obeisances, curtsies, homage, surrender, resignation, submission, he
gradually comprehended that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that
those who are called to greatness must accept with dignity the
ceremonials inseparable from greatness. And the world had never seemed
to him so fine, nor any adventure so diverting and uplifting as this
adventure.
When he returned to his suite, his private corridor was piled up with a
numerous and excessively attractive assortment of parcels. Joseph took
his overcoat and hat and a new umbrella, and placed an easy chair
conveniently for him in the drawing-room.
"Get my bill," he said shortly to Joseph as he sank into the gilded
fauteuil.
"Yes, sir."
One advantage of a valet, he discovered, is that you can order him to do
things which to do yourself would more than exhaust your moral courage.
The black-calved gentleman in waiting brought the bill. It lay on a
salver, and was folded, conceivably so as to break the shock of it to
the recipient.
Edward Henry took it.
"Wait a minute," he said.
He read on the bill: "Apartment L8. Dinner L1-2-0. Breakfast 6s. 6d.
Lunch 18s. Half Chablis 6s. 6d. Valet's board 10s. Tooth-brush 2s.
6d.
"That's a bit thick, half a crown for that toothbrush!" he said to
himself. "However--"
The next instant he blenched once more.
"Gosh!" he privately exclaimed as he read: "Paid driver of taxicab
L2-3-6."
He had forgotten the taxi. But he admired the _sang-froid_ of
Wilkins's, which paid such trifles as a matter of course, without
deigning to disturb a guest by an enquiry. Wilkins's rose again in his
esteem.
The total of the bill exceeded thirteen pounds.
"All right," he said to the gentleman in waiting.
"Are you leaving to-day, sir?" the being permitted himself to ask.
"Of course I'm not leaving to-day! Haven't I hired an electric brougham
for a week?" Edward Henry burst out. "But I suppose I'm entitled to
know how much I'm spending!"
The gentleman in waiting humbly bowed, and departed.
Alone in the splendid chamber, Edward Henry drew out a swollen
pocketbook and examined its crisp, crinkly contents, which made a
beauteous and a reassuring sight.
"Pooh!" he muttered.
He reckoned he would be living at the rate of about fifteen pounds a
day, or five thousand five hundred a year. (He did not count the cost
of his purchases, because they were in the nature of a capital
expenditure.)
"Cheap!" he muttered. "For once I'm about living up to my income!"
The sensation was exquisite in its novelty.
He ordered tea, and afterwards, feeling sleepy, he went fast asleep.
He awoke to the ringing of the telephone-bell. It was quite dark. The
telephone-bell continued to ring.
"Joseph!" he called.
The valet entered.
"What time is it?"
"After ten o'clock, sir."
"The deuce it is!"
He had slept over four hours!
"Well, answer that confounded telephone."
Joseph obeyed.
"It's a Mr. Bryany, sir, if I catch the name right," said Joseph.
Bryany! For twenty-four hours he had scarcely thought of Bryany, or the
option either.
"Bring the telephone here," said Edward Henry.
The cord would just reach to his chair.
"Hello! Bryany! Is that you?" cried Edward Henry gaily.
And then he heard the weakened voice of Mr. Bryany in his ear:
"How d'ye do, Mr. Machin. I've been after you for the better part of
two days, and now I find you're staying in the same hotel as Mr. Sachs
and me!"
"Oh!" said Edward Henry.
He understood now why on the previous day the dandy introducing him to
his suite had smiled a welcome at the name of Alderman Machin, and why
Joseph had accepted so naturally the command to take a bath. Bryany had
been talking. Bryany had been recounting his exploits as a card.
The voice of Bryany in his ear continued:
"Look here! I've got Miss Euclid here and some friends of hers. Of
course she wants to see you at once. Can you come down?"
"Er--" He hesitated.
He could not come down. He would have no evening wear till the next day
but one.
Said the voice of Bryany:
"What?"
"I can't," said Edward Henry. "I'm not very well. But listen. All of
you come up to my rooms here and have supper, will you? Suite 48."
"I'll ask the lady," said the voice of Bryany, altered now, and a few
seconds later: "We're coming."
"Joseph," Edward Henry gave orders rapidly as he took off his coat and
removed the pocketbook from it. "I'm ill, you understand. Anyhow, not
well. Take this," handing him the coat, "and bring me the new
dressing-gown out of that green cardboard box from Rollet's--I think it
is. And then get the supper menu. I'm very hungry. I've had no
dinner."
Within sixty seconds he sat in state, wearing a grandiose yellow
dressing-gown. The change was accomplished just in time. Mr. Bryany
entered, and not only Mr. Bryany, but Mr. Seven Sachs, and not only
these, but the lady who had worn a red hat at lunch.
"Miss Rose Euclid," said Mr. Bryany, puffing and bending.