THE REGENT
A FIVE TOWNS STORY OF ADVENTURE IN LONDON
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
1913
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER
I. DOG-BITE.
II. THE BANK-NOTE
III. WILKINS'S
IV. ENTRY INTO THE THEATRICAL WORLD
V. MR SACHS TALKS
VI. LORD WOLDO AND LADY WOLDO
PART II
CHAPTER
VII. CORNER-STONE
VIII. DEALING WITH ELSIE
IX. THE FIRST NIGHT
X. ISABEL
THE REGENT
PART I
CHAPTER I
DOG-BITE
I
"And yet," Edward Henry Machin reflected as at six minutes to six
he approached his own dwelling at the top of Bleakridge, "and yet--I
don't feel so jolly after all!"
The first two words of this disturbing meditation had reference to the
fact that, by telephoning twice to his stockbrokers at Manchester,
he had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one pounds in a
purely speculative transaction concerning Rubber Shares. (It was in
the autumn of the great gambling year, 1910.) He had simply opened his
lucky and wise mouth at the proper moment, and the money, like ripe,
golden fruit, had fallen into it, a gift from benign heaven, surely
a cause for happiness! And yet--he did not feel so jolly! He was
surprised, he was even a little hurt, to discover by introspection
that monetary gain was not necessarily accompanied by felicity.
Nevertheless, this very successful man of the world of the Five Towns,
having been born on the 27th of May 1867, had reached the age of
forty-three and a half years!
"I must be getting older," he reflected.
He was right. He was still young, as every man of forty-three will
agree, but he was getting older. A few years ago a windfall of three
hundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbid
self-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning, instinctive
elation, which elation would have endured at least twelve hours.
As he disappeared within the reddish garden wall which sheltered
his abode from the publicity of Trafalgar Road, he half hoped to see
Nellie waiting for him on the famous marble step of the porch, for the
woman had long, long since invented a way of scouting for his advent
from the small window in the bathroom. But there was nobody on the
marble step. His melancholy increased. At the mid-day meal he had
complained of neuralgia, and hence this was an evening upon which he
might fairly have expected to see sympathy charmingly attired in the
porch. It is true that the neuralgia had completely gone. "Still," he
said to himself with justifiable sardonic gloom, "how does she know my
neuralgia's gone? She doesn't know."
Having opened the front-door (with the thinnest, neatest latch-key
in the Five Towns), he entered his home and stumbled slightly over a
brush that was lying against the sunk door-mat. He gazed at that brush
with resentment. It was a dilapidated hand-brush. The offensive object
would have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house.
But in the lobby of his house--the house which he had planned a dozen
years earlier, to the special end of minimizing domestic labour, and
which he had always kept up to date with the latest devices--in his
lobby the spectacle of a vile, outworn hand-brush at tea-time amounted
to a scandal. Less than a fortnight previously he had purchased and
presented to his wife a marvellous electric vacuum-cleaner, surpassing
all former vacuum-cleaners. You simply attached this machine by a cord
to the wall, like a dog, and waved it in mysterious passes over the
floor, like a fan, and the house was clean! He was as proud of this
machine as though he had invented it, instead of having merely bought
it; every day he inquired about its feats, expecting enthusiastic
replies as a sort of reward for his own keenness: and be it said that
he had had enthusiastic replies.
And now this obscene hand-brush!
As he carefully removed his hat and his beautiful new Melton overcoat
(which had the colour and the soft smoothness of a damson), he
animadverted upon the astounding negligence of women. There were
Nellie (his wife), his mother, the nurse, the cook, the maid--five of
them; and in his mind they had all plotted together--a conspiracy of
carelessness--to leave the inexcusable tool in his lobby for him to
stumble over. What was the use of accidentally procuring three hundred
and forty-one pounds?
Still no sign of Nellie, though he purposely made a noisy rattle with
his ebon walking-stick. Then the maid burst out of the kitchen with a
tray and the principal utensils for high tea thereon. She had a guilty
air. The household was evidently late. Two steps at a time he rushed
upstairs to the bathroom, so as to be waiting in the dining-room at
six precisely, in order, if possible, to shame the household and fill
it with remorse and unpleasantness. Yet ordinarily he was not a very
prompt man, nor did he delight in giving pain. On the contrary, he was
apt to be casual, blithe and agreeable.
The bathroom was his peculiar domain, which he was always modernizing,
and where his talent for the ingenious organization of comfort, and
his utter indifference to aesthetic beauty, had the fullest scope.
By universal consent admitted to be the finest bathroom in the Five
Towns, it typified the whole house. He was disappointed on this
occasion to see no untidy trace in it of the children's ablution;
some transgression of the supreme domestic law that the bathroom must
always be free and immaculate when father wanted it would have
suited his gathering humour. As he washed his hands and cleansed his
well-trimmed nails with a nail-brush that had cost five shillings and
sixpence, he glanced at himself in the mirror, which he was splashing.
A stoutish, broad-shouldered, fair, chubby man, with a short bright
beard and plenteous bright hair! His necktie pleased him; the elegance
of his turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich down
on his forearms.
He could not believe that he looked forty-three and a half. And yet
he had recently had an idea of shaving off his beard, partly to defy
time, but partly also (I must admit) because a friend had suggested to
him, wildly, perhaps--that if he dispensed with a beard his hair might
grow more sturdily ... Yes, there was one weak spot in the middle
of the top of his head, where the crop had of late disconcertingly
thinned! The hairdresser had informed him that the symptom
would vanish under electric massage, and that, if he doubted the
_bona-fides_ of hairdressers, any doctor would testify to the value of
electric massage. But now Edward Henry Machin, strangely discouraged,
inexplicably robbed of the zest of existence, decided that it was not
worth while to shave off his beard. Nothing was worth while. If he was
forty-three and a half, he was forty-three and a half! To become bald
was the common lot. Moreover, beardless, he would need the service of
a barber every day. And he was absolutely persuaded that not a barber
worth the name could be found in the Five Towns. He actually went to
Manchester--thirty-six miles--to get his hair cut. The operation
never cost him less than a sovereign and half a day's time ... And he
honestly deemed himself to be a fellow of simple tastes! Such is the
effect of the canker of luxury. Happily he could afford these simple
tastes, for, although not rich in the modern significance of the term,
he paid income tax on some five thousand pounds a year, without quite
convincing the Surveyor of Taxes that he was an honest man.
He brushed the thick hair over the weak spot, he turned down his
wristbands, he brushed the collar of his jacket, and lastly, his
beard; and he put on his jacket--with a certain care, for he was
very neat. And then, reflectively twisting his moustache to military
points, he spied through the smaller window to see whether the new
high hoarding of the football-ground really did prevent a serious
observer from descrying wayfarers as they breasted the hill from
Hanbridge. It did not. Then he spied through the larger window upon
the yard, to see whether the wall of the new rooms which he had lately
added to his house showed any further trace of damp, and whether the
new chauffeur was washing the new motor car with all his heart. The
wall showed no further trace of damp, and the new chauffeur's bent
back seemed to symbolize an extreme conscientiousness.
Then the clock on the landing struck six and he hurried off to put the
household to open shame.
II
Nellie came into the dining-room two minutes after her husband. As
Edward Henry had laboriously counted these two minutes almost second
by second on the dining-room clock, he was very tired of waiting. His
secret annoyance was increased by the fact that Nellie took off her
white apron in the doorway and flung it hurriedly on to the table-tray
which, during the progress of meals, was established outside the
dining-room door. He did not actually witness this operation of
undressing, because Nellie was screened by the half-closed door;
but he was entirely aware of it. He disliked it, and he had always
disliked it. When Nellie was at work, either as a mother or as
the owner of certain fine silver ornaments, he rather enjoyed the
wonderful white apron, for it suited her temperament; but as the head
of a household with six thousand pounds a year at its disposal, he
objected to any hint of the thing at meals. And to-night he objected
to it altogether. Who could guess from the homeliness of their family
life that he was in a position to spend a hundred pounds a week and
still have enough income left over to pay the salary of a town clerk
or so? Nobody could guess; and he felt that people ought to be able
to guess. When he was young he would have esteemed an income of
six thousand pounds a year as necessarily implicating feudal state,
valets, castles, yachts, family solicitors, racing-stables, county
society, dinner-calls and a drawling London accent. Why should his
wife wear an apron at all? But the sad truth was that neither his wife
nor his mother ever _looked_ rich, or even endeavoured to look rich.
His mother would carry an eighty-pound sealskin as though she had
picked it up at a jumble sale, and his wife put such simplicity
into the wearing of a hundred-and-eighty pound diamond ring that its
expensiveness was generally quite wasted.
And yet, while the logical male in him scathingly condemned this
feminine defect of character, his private soul was glad of it, for
he well knew that he would have been considerably irked by the
complexities and grandeurs of high life. But never would he have
admitted this.
Nellie's face, as she sat down, was not limpid. He understood naught
of it. More than twenty years had passed since they had first met--he
and a wistful little creature--at a historic town-hall dance. He
could still see the wistful little creature in those placid and pure
features, in that buxom body; but now there was a formidable, capable
and experienced woman there too. Impossible to credit that the wistful
little creature was thirty-seven! But she was! Indeed, it was very
doubtful if she would ever see thirty-eight again. Once he had had the
most romantic feelings about her. He could recall the slim flexibility
of her waist, the timorous melting invitation of her eyes. And now ...
Such was human existence!
She sat up erect on her chair. She did not apologize for being late.
She made no inquiry as to his neuralgia. On the other hand, she was
not cross. She was just neutral, polite, cheerful, and apparently
conscious of perfection. He strongly desired to inform her of the
exact time of day, but his lips would not articulate the words.
"Maud," she said with divine calm to the maid who bore in the baked
York ham under its silver canopy, "you haven't taken away that brush
that's in the passage."
(Another illustration of Nellie's inability to live up to six thousand
pounds a year; she would always refer to the hall as the "passage!")
"Please'm, I did, m'm," replied Maud, now as conscious of perfection
as her mistress. "He must have took it back again."
"Who's 'he?'" demanded the master.
"Carlo, sir." Upon which triumph Maud retired.
Edward Henry was dashed. Nevertheless, he quickly recovered his
presence of mind and sought about for a justification of his previous
verdict upon the negligence of five women.
"It would have been easy enough to put the brush where the dog
couldn't get at it," he said. But he said this strictly to himself. He
could not say it aloud. Nor could he say aloud the words "neuralgia,"
"three hundred and forty-one pounds," any more than he could say
"late."
That he was in a peculiar mental condition is proved by the fact that
he did not remark the absence of his mother until he was putting her
share of baked ham on to a plate.
He thought: "This is a bit thick, this is!" meaning the extreme
lateness of his mother for the meal. But his only audible remark was
a somewhat impatient banging down of the hot plate in front of his
mother's empty chair.
In answer to this banging Nellie quietly began:
"Your mother--"
(He knew instantly, then, that Nellie was disturbed about something or
other. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lived together under one
roof in perfect amity. Nay, more, they often formed powerful and
unscrupulous leagues against him. But whenever Nellie was disturbed,
by no matter what, she would say "your mother" instead of merely
"mother!" It was an extraordinary subtle, silly and effective way of
putting him in the wrong.)
"Your mother is staying upstairs with Robert."
Robert was the eldest child, aged eight.
"Oh!" breathed Edward Henry. He might have inquired what the nurse was
for; he might have inquired how his mother meant to get her tea. But
he refrained, adding simply, "What's up now?"
And in retort to his wife's "your," he laid a faint emphasis on the
word "now," to imply that those women were always inventing some fresh
imaginary woe for the children.
"Carlo's bitten him--in the calf," said Nellie, tightening her lips.
This, at any rate, was not imaginary.
"The kid was teasing him as usual, I suppose?" he suggested.
"That I don't know," said Nellie. "But I know we must get rid of that
dog."
"Serious?"
"Of course we must," Nellie insisted, with an inadvertent heat, which
she immediately cooled.
"I mean the bite."
"Well--it's a bite right enough."
"And you're thinking of hydrophobia, death amid horrible agony, and so
on."
"No, I'm not," she said stoutly, trying to smile.
But he knew she was. And he knew also that the bite was a trifle. If
it had been a good bite she would have made it enormous; she would
have hinted that the dog had left a chasm in the boy's flesh.
"Yes, you are," he continued to twit her, encouraged by her attempt at
a smile.
However, the smile expired.
"I suppose you won't deny that Carlo's teeth may have been dirty? He's
always nosing in some filth or other," she said challengingly, in a
measured tone of sagacity. "And there may be blood-poisoning."
"Blood fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Edward Henry.
Such a nonsensical and infantile rejoinder deserved no answer, and
it received none. Shortly afterwards Maud entered and whispered that
Nellie was wanted upstairs. As soon as his wife had gone Edward Henry
rang the bell.
"Maud," he said, "bring me the _Signal_ out of my left-hand overcoat
pocket."
And he defiantly finished his meal at leisure, with the news of the
day propped up against the flower-pot, which he had set before him
instead of the dish of ham.
III
Later, catching through the open door fragments of a conversation on
the stairs which indicated that his mother was at last coming down for
tea, he sped like a threatened delinquent into the drawing-room. He
had no wish to encounter his mother, though that woman usually said
little.
The drawing-room, after the bathroom, was Edward Henry's favourite
district in the home. Since he could not spend the whole of his time
in the bathroom--and he could not!--he wisely gave a special care to
the drawing-room, and he loved it as one always loves that upon which
one has bestowed benefits. He was proud of the drawing-room, and he
had the right to be. The principal object in it, at night, was the
electric chandelier, which would have been adequate for a lighthouse.
Edward Henry's eyes were not what they used to be; and the minor
advertisements in the _Signal_--which constituted his sole evening
perusals--often lacked legibility. Edward Henry sincerely believed in
light and heat; he was almost the only person in the Five Towns who
did. In the Five Towns people have fires in their grates--not to warm
the room, but to make the room bright. Seemingly they use their pride
to keep themselves warm. At any rate, whenever Edward Henry talked to
them of radiators, they would sternly reply that a radiator did
not and could not brighten a room. Edward Henry had made the great
discovery that an efficient chandelier will brighten a room better
even than a fire, and he had gilded his radiator. The notion of
gilding the radiator was not his own; he had seen a gilded radiator
in the newest hotel at Birmingham, and had rejoiced as some peculiar
souls rejoice when they meet a fine line in a new poem. (In concession
to popular prejudice Edward Henry had fire-grates in his house, and
fires therein during exceptionally frosty weather; but this did not
save him from being regarded in the Five Towns as in some ways a
peculiar soul.) The effulgent source of dark heat was scientifically
situated in front of the window, and on ordinarily cold evenings
Edward Henry and his wife and mother, and an acquaintance if one
happened to come in, would gather round the radiator and play bridge
or dummy whist.
The other phenomena of the drawing-room which particularly interested
Edward Henry were the Turkey carpet, the four vast easy-chairs, the
sofa, the imposing cigar-cabinet and the mechanical piano-player.
At one brief period he had hovered a good deal about the revolving
bookcase containing the _Encyclopaedia_ (to which his collection
of books was limited), but the frail passion for literature had
not survived a struggle with the seductions of the mechanical
piano-player.
The walls of the room never drew his notice. He had chosen, some years
before, a patent washable kind of wall-paper (which could be wiped
over with a damp cloth), and he had also chosen the pattern of the
paper, but it is a fact that he could spend hours in any room without
even seeing the pattern of its paper. (In the same way his wife's
cushions and little draperies and bows were invisible to him, though
he had searched for and duly obtained the perfect quality of swansdown
which filled the cushions.)
The one ornament of the walls which attracted him was a large and
splendidly-framed oil-painting of a ruined castle, in the midst of a
sombre forest, through which cows were strolling. In the tower of the
castle was a clock, and this clock was a realistic timepiece, whose
fingers moved and told the hour. Two of the oriel windows of the
castle were realistic holes in its masonry; through one of them you
could put a key to wind up the clock, and through the other you could
put a key to wind up the secret musical box, which played sixteen
different tunes. He had bought this handsome relic of the Victorian
era (not less artistic, despite your scorn, than many devices for
satisfying the higher instincts of the present day) at an auction sale
in the Strand, London. But it, too, had been supplanted in his esteem
by the mechanical piano-player.
He now selected an example of the most expensive cigar in the
cigar-cabinet and lighted it as only a connoisseur can light a cigar,
lovingly; he blew out the match lingeringly, with regret, and dropped
it and the cigar's red collar with care into a large copper bowl on
the centre table, instead of flinging it against the Japanese umbrella
in the fireplace. (A grave disadvantage of radiators is that you
cannot throw odds and ends into them.) He chose the most expensive
cigar because he wanted comfort and peace. The ham was not digesting
very well.
Then he sat down and applied himself to the property advertisements
in the _Signal_, a form of sensational serial which usually enthralled
him--but not to-night. He allowed the paper to lapse on to the floor,
and then rose impatiently, rearranged the thick dark blue curtains
behind the radiator, and finally yielded to the silent call of
the mechanical piano-player. He quite knew that to dally with the
piano-player while smoking a high-class cigar was to insult the cigar.
But he did not care. He tilted the cigar upwards from an extreme
corner of his mouth, and through the celestial smoke gazed at the
titles of the new music rolls which had been delivered that day, and
which were ranged on the top of the piano itself.
And while he did so he was thinking:
"Why in thunder didn't the little thing come and tell me at once about
that kid and his dog-bite? I wonder why she didn't! She seemed only
to mention it by accident. I wonder why she didn't bounce into the
bathroom and tell me at once?"
But it was untrue that he sought vainly for an answer to this riddle.
He was aware of the answer. He even kept saying over the answer to
himself:
"She's made up her mind I've been teasing her a bit too much lately
about those kids and their precious illnesses. And she's doing the
dignified. That's what she's doing! She's doing the dignified!"
Of course, instantly after his tea he ought to have gone upstairs to
inspect the wounded victim of dogs. The victim was his own child, and
its mother was his wife. He knew that he ought to have gone upstairs
long since. He knew that he ought now to go, and the sooner the
better! But somehow he could not go; he could not bring himself to
go. In the minor and major crises of married life there are not two
partners, but four; each partner has a dual personality; each partner
is indeed two different persons, and one of these fights against the
other, with the common result of a fatal inaction.
The wickeder of the opposing persons in Edward Henry, getting the
upper hand of the more virtuous, sniggered. "Dirty teeth, indeed!
Blood-poisoning, indeed! Why not rabies, while she's about it? I
guarantee she's dreaming of coffins and mourning coaches already!"
Scanning nonchalantly the titles of the music rolls, he suddenly saw:
"Funeral March. Chopin."
"She shall have it," he said, affixing the roll to the mechanism. And
added: "Whatever it is!"
For he was not acquainted with the Funeral March from Chopin's
Pianoforte Sonata. His musical education had, in truth, begun only
a year earlier--with the advertisements of the "Pianisto" mechanical
player. He was a judge of advertisements, and the "Pianisto"
literature pleased him in a high degree. He justifiably reckoned that
he could distinguish between honest and dishonest advertising. He made
a deep study of the question of mechanical players, and deliberately
came to the conclusion that the Pianisto was the best. It was also the
most costly. But one of the conveniences of having six thousand pounds
a year is that you need not deny yourself the best mechanical player
because it happens to be the most costly. He bought a Pianisto, and
incidentally he bought a superb grand piano and exiled the old cottage
piano to the nursery.
The Pianisto was the best, partly because, like the vacuum-cleaner,
it could be operated by electricity, and partly because, by means of
certain curved lines on the unrolling paper, and of certain gun-metal
levers and clutches, it enabled the operator to put his secret ardent
soul into the music. Assuredly it had given Edward Henry a taste for
music. The whole world of musical compositions was his to conquer, and
he conquered it at the rate of about two great masters a month.
From Handel to Richard Strauss, even from Palestrina to Debussy, the
achievements of genius lay at his mercy. He criticized them with a
freedom that was entirely unprejudiced by tradition. Beethoven was no
more to him than Arthur Sullivan--indeed, was rather less. The works
of his choice were the "Tannhäuser" overture, a potpourri of Verdi's
"Aida," Chopin's Study in Thirds (which ravished him), and a selection
from "The Merry Widow" (which also ravished him). So that on the whole
it may be said that he had a very good natural taste.
He at once liked Chopin's Funeral March. He entered profoundly
into the spirit of it. With the gun-metal levers he produced in a
marvellous fashion the long tragic roll of the drums, and by the
manipulation of a clutch he distilled into the chant at the graveside
a melancholy sweetness that rent the heart. The later crescendoes were
overwhelming. And as he played there, with the bright blaze of the
chandelier on his fair hair and beard, and the blue cigar smoke in his
nostrils, and the effluence of the gilded radiator behind him, and
the intimacy of the drawn window-curtains and the closed and curtained
door folding him in from the world, and the agony of the music
grieving his artistic soul to the core--as he played there he grew
gradually happier and happier, and the zest of existence seemed to
return. It was not only that he felt the elemental, unfathomable
satisfaction of a male who is sheltered in solitude from a pack of
women that have got on his nerves. There was also the more piquant
assurance that he was behaving in a very sprightly manner. How long
was it since he had accomplished anything worthy of his ancient
reputation as a "card," as "the" card of the Five Towns? He could not
say. But now he knew that he was being a card again. The whole town
would smile and forgive and admire if it learnt that--
Nellie invaded the room. She had resumed the affray.
"Denry!" she reproached him, in an uncontrolled voice. "I'm ashamed of
you! I really am!" She was no longer doing the dignified. The mask was
off and the unmistakable lineaments of the outraged mother appeared.
That she should address him as "Denry" proved the intensity of her
agitation. Years ago, when he had been made an alderman, his wife and
his mother had decided that "Denry" was no longer a suitable name for
him, and had abandoned it in favour of "Edward Henry."
He ceased playing.
"Why?" he protested, with a ridiculous air of innocence. "I'm only
playing Chopin. Can't I play Chopin?"
He was rather surprised and impressed that she had recognized
the piece for what it was. But of course she did, as a fact, know
something about music, he remembered, though she never touched the
Pianisto.
"I think it's a pity you can't choose some other evening for your
funeral marches!" she exclaimed.
"If that's it," said Edward Henry like lightning, "why did you stick
me out you weren't afraid of hydrophobia?"
"I'll thank you to come upstairs," she replied with warmth.
"Oh, all right, my dear! All right!" he cooed.
And they went upstairs in a rather solemn procession.
IV
Nellie led the way to the chamber known as "Maisie's room," where the
youngest of the Machins was wont to sleep in charge of the nurse who,
under the supervision of the mother of all three, had dominion over
Robert, Ralph and their little sister.
The first thing that Edward Henry noticed was the screen which shut
off one of the beds. The unfurling of the four-fold screen was always
a sure sign that Nellie was taking an infantile illness seriously. It
was an indication to Edward Henry of the importance of the dog-bite in
Nellie's esteem.
When all the chicks of the brood happened to be simultaneously sound
the screen reposed, inconspicuous, at an angle against a wall behind
the door; but when pestilence was abroad, the screen travelled from
one room to another in the wake of it, and, spreading wide, took part
in the battle of life and death.
In an angle of the screen, on the side of it away from the bed and
near the fire (in times of stress Nellie would not rely on radiators)
sat old Mrs.. Machin, knitting. She was a thin, bony woman of
sixty-nine years, and as hard and imperishable as teak. So far as her
son knew she had only had two illnesses in her life. The first was an
attack of influenza, and the second was an attack of acute rheumatism,
which had incapacitated her for several weeks.
Edward Henry and Nellie had taken advantage of her helplessness, then,
to force her to give up her barbaric cottage in Brougham Street and
share permanently the splendid comfort of their home. She existed
in their home like a philosophic prisoner-of-war at the court of
conquerors, behaving faultlessly, behaving magnanimously in the
melancholy grandeur of her fall, but never renouncing her soul's
secret independence, nor permitting herself to forget that she was on
foreign ground.
When Edward Henry looked at those yellow and seasoned fingers, which
by hard manual labour had kept herself and him in the young days of
his humble obscurity, and which during sixty years had not been idle
for more than six weeks in all, he grew almost apologetic for his
wealth.
They reminded him of the day when his total resources were five
pounds--won in a wager, and of the day when he drove proudly about
behind a mule collecting other people's rents, and of the glittering
days when he burst in on her from Llandudno with over a thousand
gold sovereigns in a hat-box--product of his first great picturesque
coup--imagining himself to be an English Jay Gould.
She had not blenched, even then. She had not blenched since. And she
never would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his unique
reputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in
him, he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye
always told him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior in
moral force. The curve of her thin lips seemed ever to be warning him
that with her pretensions were quite useless, and that she saw through
him and through him to the innermost grottoes of his poor human
depravity.
He caught her eye guiltily.
"Behold the Alderman!" she murmured with grimness.
That was all. But the three words took thirty years off his back,
snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand and reduced him again to
the raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street. And he knew that he had sinned
gravely in not coming upstairs very much earlier.
"Is that you, father?" called the high voice of Robert from the back
of the screen.
He had to admit to his son that it was he.
The infant lay on his back in Maisie's bed, while his mother sat
lightly on the edge of nurse's bed near by.
"Well, you're a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie's
glance, but trying to face his son as one innocent man may face
another--and not perfectly succeeding. He never could feel like a real
father, somehow.
"My temperature's above normal," announced Robert, proudly, and then
added with regret, "but not much!"
There was the clinical thermometer--instrument which Edward Henry
despised and detested as being an inciter of illnesses--in a glass of
water on the table between the two beds.
"Father!" Robert began again.
"Well, Robert?" said Edward Henry, cheerfully. He was glad that the
child was in one of his rare loquacious moods, because the chatter not
only proved that the dog had done no serious damage--it also eased the
silent strain between himself and Nellie.
"Why did you play the Funeral March, father?" asked Robert, and the
question fell into the tranquillity of the room rather like a bomb
that had not quite decided whether or not to burst.
For the second time that evening Edward Henry was dashed.
"Have you been meddling with my music rolls?"
"No, father. I only read the labels."
This child simply read everything.
"How did you know I was playing a funeral march?" Edward Henry
demanded.
"Oh, _I_ didn't tell him!" Nellie put in, excusing herself before
she was accused. She smiled benignly, as an angel-woman, capable of
forgiving all. But there were moments when Edward Henry hated moral
superiority and Christian meekness in a wife. Moreover, Nellie
somewhat spoiled her own effect by adding, with an artificial
continuation of the smile, "You needn't look at _me_!"
Edward Henry considered the remark otiose. Though he had indeed
ventured to look at her, he had not looked at her in the manner which
she implied.
"It made a noise like funerals and things," Robert explained.
"Well, it seems to me _you've_ been playing a funeral march," said
Edward Henry to the child.
He thought this rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the child
answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was a
disdainful child, without bowels):
"I don't know what you mean, father." The curve of his lips (he had
his grandmother's lips) appeared to say: "I wish you wouldn't try to
be silly, father." However, youth forgets very quickly, and the next
instant Robert was beginning once more, "Father!"
"Well, Robert?"
By mutual agreement of the parents the child was never addressed
as "Bob" or "Bobby," or by any other diminutive. In their practical
opinion a child's name was his name, and ought not to be mauled or
dismembered on the pretext of fondness. Similarly, the child had not
been baptized after his father, or after any male member of either the
Machin or the Cotterill family. Why should family names be perpetuated
merely because they were family names? A natural human reaction, this,
against the excessive sentimentalism of the Victorian era!
"What does 'stamped out' mean?" Robert inquired.
Now Robert, among other activities, busied himself in the collection
of postage stamps, and in consequence his father's mind, under the
impulse of the question, ran immediately to postage stamps.
"Stamped out?" said Edward Henry, with the air of omniscience that
a father is bound to assume. "Postage stamps are stamped out--by a
machine--you see."
Robert's scorn of this explanation was manifest.
"Well," Edward Henry, piqued, made another attempt, "you stamp a fire
out with your feet." And he stamped illustratively on the floor. After
all, the child was only eight.
"I knew all that before," said Robert, coldly. "You don't understand."
"What makes you ask, dear? Let us show father your leg." Nellie's
voice was soothing.
"Yes," Robert murmured, staring reflectively at the ceiling. "That's
it. It says in the _Encyclopaedia_ that hydrophobia is stamped out in
this country--by Mr.. Long's muzzling order. Who is Mr.. Long?"
A second bomb had fallen on exactly the same spot as the first, and
the two exploded simultaneously. And the explosion was none the
less terrible because it was silent and invisible. The tidy domestic
chamber was strewn in a moment with an awful mass of wounded
susceptibilities. Beyond the screen the _nick-nick_ of grandmother's
steel needles stopped and started again. It was characteristic of her
temperament that she should recover before the younger generations
could recover. Edward Henry, as befitted his sex, regained his nerve a
little earlier than Nellie.
"I told you never to touch my _Encyclopaedia_," said he, sternly.
Robert had twice been caught on his stomach on the floor with a vast
volume open under his chin, and his studies had been traced by vile
thumb-marks.
"I know," said Robert.
Whenever anybody gave that child a piece of unsolicited information he
almost invariably replied, "I know."
"But hydrophobia!" cried Nellie. "How did you know about hydrophobia?"
"We had it in spellings last week," Robert explained.
"The deuce you did!" muttered Edward Henry.
The one bright facet of the many-sided and gloomy crisis was the very
obvious truth that Robert was the most extraordinary child that ever
lived.
"But when on earth did you get at the _Encyclopaedia_, Robert?" his
mother exclaimed, completely at a loss.
"It was before you came in from Hillport," the wondrous infant
answered. "After my leg had stopped hurting me a bit."
"But when I came in nurse said it had only just happened!"
"Shows how much _she_ knew!" said Robert, with contempt.
"Does your leg hurt you now?" Edward Henry inquired.
"A bit. That's why I can't go to sleep, of course."
"Well, let's have a look at it." Edward Henry attempted jollity.
"Mother's wrapped it all up in boracic wool."
The bed-clothes were drawn down and the leg gradually revealed. And
the sight of the little soft leg, so fragile and defenceless, really
did touch Edward Henry. It made him feel more like an authentic father
than he had felt for a long time. And the sight of the red wound hurt
him. Still, it was a beautifully clean wound, and it was not a large
wound.
"It's a clean wound," he observed judiciously. In spite of himself he
could not keep a certain flippant harsh quality out of his tone.
"Well, I've naturally washed it with carbolic," Nellie returned
sharply.
He illogically resented this sharpness.
"Of course he was bitten through his stocking?"
"Of course," said Nellie, re-enveloping the wound hastily, as though
Edward Henry was not worthy to regard it.
"Well, then, by the time they got through the stocking the animal's
teeth couldn't be dirty. Everyone knows that."
Nellie shut her lips.
"Were you teasing Carlo?" Edward Henry demanded curtly of his son.
"I don't know."
Whenever anybody asked that child for a piece of information he almost
invariably replied, "I don't know."
"How--you don't know? You must know whether you were teasing the dog
or not!" Edward Henry was nettled.
The renewed spectacle of his own wound had predisposed Robert to feel
a great and tearful sympathy for himself. His mouth now began to take
strange shapes and to increase magically in area, and beads appeared
in the corners of his large eyes.
"I--I was only measuring his tail by his hind leg," he blubbered and
then sobbed.
Edward Henry did his best to save his dignity.
"Come, come!" he reasoned, less menacingly. "Boys who can read
_Encyclopaedias_ mustn't be cry-babies. You'd no business measuring
Carlo's tail by his hind leg. You ought to remember that that dog's
older than you." And this remark, too, he thought rather funny, but
apparently he was alone in his opinion.
Then he felt something against his calf. And it was Carlo's nose.
Carlo was a large, very shaggy and unkempt Northern terrier, but owing
to vagueness of his principal points, due doubtless to a vagueness
in his immediate ancestry, it was impossible to decide whether he had
come from the north or the south side of the Tweed. This ageing friend
of Edward Henry's, surmising that something unusual was afoot in his
house, and having entirely forgotten the trifling episode of the bite,
had unobtrusively come to make inquiries.
"Poor old boy!" said Edward Henry, stooping to pat the dog. "Did they
try to measure his tail with his hind leg?"
The gesture was partly instinctive, for he loved Carlo; but it also
had its origin in sheer nervousness, in sheer ignorance of what was
the best thing to do. However, he was at once aware that he had done
the worst thing. Had not Nellie announced that the dog must be got
rid of? And here he was fondly caressing the bloodthirsty dog! With
a hysterical movement of the lower part of her leg Nellie pushed
violently against the dog--she did not kick, but she nearly
kicked--and Carlo, faintly howling a protest, fled.
Edward Henry was hurt. He escaped from between the beds and from that
close, enervating domestic atmosphere where he was misunderstood by
women and disdained by infants. He wanted fresh air; he wanted bars,
whiskies, billiard-rooms and the society of masculine men-about-town.
The whole of his own world was against him.
As he passed by his knitting mother she ignored him and moved not. She
had a great gift of holding aloof from conjugal complications.
On the landing he decided that he would go out at once into the major
world. Half-way down the stairs he saw his overcoat on the hall-stand
beckoning to him and offering release.
Then he heard the bedroom door and his wife's footsteps.
"Edward Henry!"
"Well?"
He stopped and looked up inimically at her face, which overhung the
banisters. It was the face of a woman outraged in her most profound
feelings, but amazingly determined to be sweet.
"What do you think of it?"
"What do I think of what? The wound?"
"Yes."
"Why, it's simply nothing. Nothing at all. You know how that kid
always heals up quick. You won't be able to find the wound in a day or
two."
"Don't you think it ought to be cauterized at once?"
He moved on downwards.
"No, I don't. I've been bitten three times in my life by dogs. And I
was never cauterized."
"Well, I _do_ think it ought to be cauterized." She raised her voice
slightly as he retreated from her. "And I shall be glad if you'll call
in at Dr. Stirling's and ask him to come round."
He made no reply, but put on his overcoat and his hat and took his
stick. Glancing up the stairs he saw Nellie was now standing at the
head of them, under the electric light there, and watching him. He
knew that she thought he was cravenly obeying her command. She could
have no idea that before she spoke to him he had already decided to
put on his overcoat and hat and take his stick and go forth into the
major world. However, that was no affair of his.
He hesitated a second. Then the nurse appeared out of the kitchen,
with a squalling Maisie in her arms, and ran upstairs. Why Maisie was
squalling, and why she should have been in the kitchen at such an hour
instead of in bed, he could not guess. But he could guess that if he
remained one second longer in that exasperating minor world he would
begin to smash furniture. And so he quitted it.
V
It was raining slightly, but he dared not return to the house for his
umbrella. In the haze and wet of the shivering October night the clock
of Bleakridge Church glowed like a fiery disc suspended in the sky,
and, mysteriously hanging there, without visible means of support,
it seemed to him somehow to symbolize the enigma of the universe and
intensify his inward gloom. Never before had he had such feelings to
such a degree. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that never before
had the enigma of the universe occurred to him. The side gates clicked
as he stood hesitant under the shelter of the wall, and a figure
emerged from his domain. It was Bellfield, the new chauffeur, going
across to his home in the little square in front of the church.
Bellfield touched his cap with an eager and willing hand, as new
chauffeurs will.
"Want the car, sir?... Setting in for a wet night!"
"No, thanks."
It was a lie. He did want the car. He wanted the car so that he might
ride right away into a new and more interesting world, or at any
rate into Hanbridge, centre of the pleasures, the wickedness and the
commerce of the Five Towns. But he dared not have the car. He dared
not have his own car. He must slip off noiseless and unassuming. Even
to go to Dr Stirling's he dared not have the car. Besides, he could
have walked down the hill to Dr. Stirling's in three minutes. Not that
he had the least intention of going to Dr. Stirling's. No! His wife
imagined that he was going. But she was mistaken. Within an hour, when
Dr. Stirling had failed to arrive, she would doubtless telephone and
get her Dr. Stirling. Not, however, with Edward Henry's assistance!
He reviewed his conduct throughout the evening. In what particular had
it been sinful? In no particular. True, the accident to the boy was a
misfortune, but had he not borne that misfortune lightly, minimized it
and endeavoured to teach others to bear it lightly? His blithe humour
ought surely to have been an example to Nellie! And as for the episode
of the funeral march on the Pianisto, really, really, the tiresome
little thing ought to have better appreciated his whimsical drollery!
But Nellie was altered; he was altered; everything was altered.
He remembered the ecstasy of their excursion to Switzerland. He
remembered the rapture with which, on their honeymoon, he had clasped
a new opal bracelet on her exciting arm. He could not possibly have
such sensations now. What was the meaning of life? Was life worth
living? The fact was--he was growing old. Useless to pretend to
himself that it was not so. Both he and she were growing old. Only,
she seemed to be placidly content, and he was not content. And more
and more the domestic atmosphere and the atmosphere of the district
fretted and even annoyed him. To-night's affair was not unique. But it
was a culmination. He gazed pessimistically north and south along
the slimy expanse of Trafalgar Road, which sank northwards in the
direction of Dr. Stirling's, and southwards in the direction of joyous
Hanbridge. He loathed and despised Trafalgar Road. What was the use
of making three hundred and forty-one pounds by a shrewd speculation?
None. He could not employ three hundred and forty-one pounds to
increase his happiness. Money had become futile for him. Astounding
thought! He desired no more of it! He had a considerable income from
investments, and also at least four thousand a year from the Five
Towns Universal Thrift Club, that wonderful but unpretentious
organization which now embraced every corner of the Five Towns--that
gorgeous invention for profitably taking care of the pennies of the
working-classes--that excellent device, his own, for selling to the
working-classes every kind of goods at credit prices after having
received part of the money in advance!
"I want a change!" he said to himself, and threw away his cigar.
After all, the bitterest thought in his heart was, perhaps, that, on
that evening he had tried to be a "card," and, for the first time in
his brilliant career as a "card," had failed. He, Henry Machin, who
had been the youngest Mayor of Bursley years and years ago, he,
the recognized amuser of the Five Towns, he, one of the greatest
"characters" that the Five Towns had ever produced! He had failed of
an effect!
He slipped out on to the pavement and saw, under the gas-lamp, on the
new hoarding of the football ground, a poster intimating that during
that particular week there was a gigantic attraction at the Empire
Music Hall at Hanbridge. According to the posters there was a gigantic
attraction every week at the Empire, but Edward Henry happened to know
that this week the attraction was indeed somewhat out of the common.
And to-night was Friday, the fashionable night for the bloods and the
modishness of the Five Towns. He looked at the church clock and
then at his watch. He would be in time for the "second house," which
started at nine o'clock. At the same moment an electric tram-car came
thundering up out of Bursley. He boarded it and was saluted by the
conductor. Remaining on the platform he lit a cigarette and tried to
feel cheerful. But he could not conquer his depression.
"Yes," he thought, "what I want is change--and a lot of it, too!"