The Regent by E. Arnold Bennett
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E. Arnold Bennett >> The Regent
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The scene represented a restaurant of quiet aspect, into which entered
a waiter bearing a pile of plates some two feet high. The waiter
being intoxicated the tower of plates leaned this way and that as he
staggered about, and the whole house really did hold its breath in the
simultaneous hope and fear of an enormous and resounding smash. Then
entered a second intoxicated waiter, also bearing a pile of plates
some two feet high, and the risk of destruction was thus more than
doubled--it was quadrupled, for each waiter, in addition to the
risks of his own inebriety, was now subject to the dreadful peril of
colliding with the other. However, there was no catastrophe.
Then arrived two customers, one in a dress suit and an eyeglass, and
the other in a large violet hat, a diamond necklace and a yellow
satin skirt. The which customers, seemingly well used to the sight of
drunken waiters tottering to and fro with towers of plates, sat down
at a table and waited calmly for attention. The popular audience, with
that quick mental grasp for which popular audiences are so renowned,
soon perceived that the table was in close proximity to a lofty
sideboard, and that on either hand of the sideboard were two chairs,
upon which the two waiters were trying to climb in order to deposit
their plates on the topmost shelf of the sideboard. The waiters
successfully mounted the chairs and successfully lifted their towers
of plates to within half an inch of the desired shelf, and then the
chairs began to show signs of insecurity. By this time the audience
was stimulated to an ecstasy of expectation, whose painfulness was
only equalled by its extreme delectability. The sole unmoved
persons in the building were the customers awaiting attention at the
restaurant table.
One tower was safely lodged on the shelf. But was it? It was not! Yes?
No! It curved; it straightened; it curved again. The excitement was as
keen as that of watching a drowning man attempt to reach the shore. It
was simply excruciating. It could not be borne any longer, and when it
could not be borne any longer the tower sprawled irrevocably and
seven dozen plates fell in a cascade on the violet hat, and so with
an inconceivable clatter to the floor. Almost at the same moment the
being in the dress-suit and the eyeglass, becoming aware of phenomena
slightly unusual even in a restaurant, dropped his eyeglass, turned
round to the sideboard and received the other waiter's seven dozen
plates in the face and on the crown of his head.
No such effect had ever been seen in the Five Towns, and the felicity
of the audience exceeded all previous felicities. The audience yelled,
roared, shrieked, gasped, trembled, and punched itself in a furious
passion of pleasure. They make plates in the Five Towns. They live by
making plates. They understand plates. In the Five Towns a man will
carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for
eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of
doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore,
the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience in the
hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand
for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns. The
grateful crowd in the auditorium of the Empire would have covered the
stage with wreaths, if it had known that wreaths were used for other
occasions than funerals; which it did not know.
Fresh complications instantly ensued, which cruelly cut short the
agreeable exercise of uncontrolled laughter. It was obvious that one
of the waiters was about to fall. And in the enforced tranquillity
of a new dread every dyspeptic person in the house was deliciously
conscious of a sudden freedom from indigestion due to the agreeable
exercise of uncontrolled laughter, and wished fervently that he could
laugh like that after every meal. The waiter fell; he fell through
the large violet hat and disappeared beneath the surface of a sea of
crockery. The other waiter fell too, but the sea was not deep enough
to drown a couple of them. Then the customers, recovering themselves,
decided that they must not be outclassed in this competition of havoc,
and they overthrew the table and everything on it, and all the other
tables and everything on all the other tables. The audience was now
a field of artillery which nothing could silence. The waiters arose,
and, opening the sideboard, disclosed many hundreds of unsuspected
plates of all kinds, ripe for smashing. Niagaras of plates surged on
to the stage. All four performers revelled and wallowed in smashed
plates. New supplies of plates were constantly being produced from
strange concealments, and finally the tables and chairs were broken to
pieces, and each object on the walls was torn down and flung in bits
on to the gorgeous general debris, to the top of which clambered the
violet hat, necklace and yellow petticoat, brandishing one single
little plate, whose life had been miraculously spared. Shrieks of
joy in that little plate played over the din like lightning in a
thunderstorm. And the curtain fell.
It was rung up fifteen times, and fifteen times the quartette of
artists, breathless, bowed in acknowledgment of the frenzied and
boisterous testimony to their unique talents. No singer, no tragedian,
no comedian, no wit could have had such a triumph, could have given
such intense pleasure. And yet none of the four had spoken a word.
Such is genius.
At the end of the fifteenth call the stage-manager came before the
curtain and guaranteed that two thousand four hundred plates had been
broken.
The lights went up. Strong men were seen to be wiping tears from their
eyes. Complete strangers were seen addressing each other in the manner
of old friends. Such is art.
"Well, that was worth a bob, that was!" muttered Edward Henry to
himself. And it was. Edward Henry had not escaped the general fate.
Nobody, being present, could have escaped it. He was enchanted. He had
utterly forgotten every care.
"Good evening, Mr. Machin," said a voice at his side. Not only he
turned but nearly everyone in the vicinity turned. The voice was the
voice of the stout and splendid managing director of the Empire, and
it sounded with the ring of authority above the rising tinkle of the
bar behind the Grand Circle.
"Oh! How d'ye do, Mr. Dakins?" Edward Henry held out a cordial hand,
for even the greatest men are pleased to be greeted in a place of
entertainment by the managing director thereof. Further, his identity
was now recognized.
"Haven't you seen those gentlemen in that box beckoning to you?" said
Mr. Dakins, proudly deprecating complimentary remarks on the show.
"Which box?"
Mr. Dakins' hand indicated a stage-box. And Henry, looking, saw three
men, one unknown to him, the second, Robert Brindley, the architect,
of Bursley, and the third, Dr. Stirling.
Instantly his conscience leapt up within him. He thought of rabies.
Yes, sobered in the fraction of a second, he thought of rabies.
Supposing that, after all, in spite of Mr. Long's Muzzling Order, as
cited by his infant son, an odd case of rabies should have lingered in
the British Isles, and supposing that Carlo had been infected ...!
Not impossible ...! Was it providential that Dr. Stirling was in the
auditorium?
"You know two of them?" said Mr. Dakins.
"Yes."
"Well, the third's a Mr. Bryany. He's manager to Mr. Seven Sachs." Mr.
Dakins' tone was respectful.
"And who's Mr. Seven Sachs?" asked Edward Henry, absently. It was a
stupid question.
He was impressively informed that Mr. Seven Sachs was the arch-famous
American actor-playwright, now nearing the end of a provincial tour,
which had surpassed all records of provincial tours, and that he
would be at the Theatre Royal, Hanbridge, next week. Edward Henry then
remembered that the hoardings had been full of Mr. Seven Sachs for
some time past.
"They keep on making signs to you," said Mr. Dakins, referring to the
occupants of the stage-box.
Edward Henry waved a reply to the box.
"Here! I'll take you there the shortest way," said Mr. Dakins.
II
"Welcome to Stirling's box, Machin!" Robert Brindley greeted
the alderman with an almost imperceptible wink. Edward Henry had
encountered this wink once or twice before; he could not decide
precisely what it meant; it was apt to make him reflective. He did
not dislike Robert Brindley, his habit was not to dislike people; he
admitted Brindley to be a clever architect, though he objected to the
"modern" style of the fronts of his houses and schools. But he did
take exception to the man's attitude towards the Five Towns, of which,
by the way, Brindley was just as much a native as himself. Brindley
seemed to live in the Five Towns like a highly-cultured stranger in a
savage land, and to derive rather too much sardonic amusement from the
spectacle of existence therein. Brindley was a very special crony of
Stirling's, and had influenced Stirling. But Stirling was too clever
to submit unduly to the influence. Besides, Stirling was not a
native; he was only a Scotchman, and Edward Henry considered that what
Stirling thought of the district did not matter. Other details about
Brindley which Edward Henry deprecated were his necktie, which, for
Edward Henry's taste, was too flowing, his scorn of the Pianisto
(despite the man's tremendous interest in music) and his incipient
madness on the subject of books--a madness shared by Stirling.
Brindley and the doctor were for ever chattering about books--and
buying them.
So that, on the whole, Dr. Stirling's box was not a place where
Edward Henry felt entirely at home. Nevertheless, the two men, having
presented Mr. Bryany, did their best, each in his own way, to make him
feel at home.
"Take this chair, Machin," said Stirling, indicating a chair at the
front.
"Oh! I can't take the front chair!" Edward Henry protested.
"Of course you can, my dear Machin!" said Brindley, sharply. "The
front chair in a stage-box is the one proper seat in the house for
you. Do as your doctor prescribes."
And Edward Henry accordingly sat down at the front, with Mr. Bryany by
his side, and the other two sat behind. But Edward Henry was not quite
comfortable. He faintly resented that speech of Brindley's. And yet he
did feel that what Brindley had said was true, and he was indeed glad
to be in the front chair of a brilliant stage-box on the grand tier,
instead of being packed away in the nethermost twilight of the
Grand Circle. He wondered how Brindley and Stirling had managed to
distinguish his face among the confusion of faces in that distant
obscurity; he, Edward Henry, had failed to notice them, even in the
prominence of their box. But that they had distinguished him showed
how familiar and striking a figure he was. He wondered, too, why they
should have invited him to hob-nob with them. He was not of their
set. Indeed, like many very eminent men, he was not to any degree in
anybody's set. Of one thing he was sure--because he had read it on the
self-conscious faces of all three of them--namely, that they had
been discussing him. Possibly he had been brought up for Mr. Bryany's
inspection as a major lion and character of the district. Well, he did
not mind that; nay, he enjoyed that. He could feel Mr. Bryany covertly
looking him over. And he thought: "Look, my boy! I make no charge." He
smiled and nodded to one or two people who with pride saluted him from
the stalls.... It was meet that he should be visible there on that
Friday night!
"A full house!" he observed, to break the rather awkward silence of
the box, as he glanced round at the magnificent smoke-veiled pageant
of the aristocracy and the democracy of the Five Towns, crowded
together, tier above gilded tier, up to the dim roof where ragged lads
and maids giggled and flirted while waiting for the broken plates to
be cleared away and the moving pictures to begin.
"You may say it!" agreed Mr. Bryany, who spoke with a very slight
American accent. "Dakins positively hadn't a seat to offer me. I
happened to have the evening free. It isn't often I do have a free
evening. And so I thought I'd pop in here. But if Dakins hadn't
introduced me to these gentlemen my seat would have had to be a
standing one."
"So that's how they got to know him, is it?" thought Edward Henry.
And then there was another short silence.
"Hear you've been doing something striking in rubber shares, Machin?"
said Brindley at length.
Astonishing how these things got abroad!
"Oh! very little, very little!" Edward Henry laughed modestly. "Too
late to do much! In another fortnight the bottom will be all out of
the rubber market."
"Of course I'm an Englishman"--Mr. Bryany began.
"Why 'of course'?" Edward Henry interrupted him.
"Hear! Hear! Alderman. Why 'of course'?" said Brindley, approvingly,
and Stirling's rich laugh was heard. "Only it does just happen,"
Brindley added, "that Mr. Bryany did us the honour to be born in the
district."
"Yes! Longshaw," Mr. Bryany admitted, half proud and half apologetic.
"Which I left at the age of two."
"Oh, Longshaw!" murmured Edward Henry with a peculiar inflection.
Longshaw is at the opposite end of the Five Towns from Bursley, and
the majority of the inhabitants of Bursley have never been to Longshaw
in their lives, have only heard of it, as they hear of Chicago or
Bangkok. Edward Henry had often been to Longshaw, but, like every
visitor from Bursley, he instinctively regarded it as a foolish and
unnecessary place.
"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Bryany, quite unintimidated, "I'm an
Englishman. But I've lived eighteen years in America, and it seems
to me the bottom will soon be knocked out of pretty nearly all the
markets in England. Look at the Five Towns!"
"No, don't, Mr. Bryany!" said Brindley. "Don't go to extremes!"
"Personally, I don't mind looking at the Five Towns," said Edward
Henry. "What of it?"
"Well, did you ever see such people for looking twice at a five-pound
note?"
Edward Henry most certainly did not like this aspersion on his native
district. He gazed in silence at Mr. Bryany's brassy and yet simple
face, and did not like the face either.
And Mr. Bryany, beautifully unaware that he had failed in tact,
continued: "The Five Towns is the most English place I've ever seen,
believe me! Of course it has its good points, and England has her
good points; but there's no money stirring. There's no field for
speculation on the spot, and as for outside investment, no Englishman
will touch anything that really--is--good." He emphasized the last
three words.
"What d'ye do yeself, Mr. Bryany?" inquired Dr Stirling.
"What do I do with my little bit?" cried Mr. Bryany. "Oh! I know what
to do with my little bit. I can get ten per cent in Seattle and twelve
to fifteen in Calgary on my little bit; and security just as good as
English railway stock--_and_ better!"
The theatre was darkened and the cinematograph began its restless
twinkling.
Mr. Bryany went on offering to Edward Henry, in a suitably lowered
voice, his views on the great questions of investment and speculation,
and Edward Henry made cautious replies.
"And even when there _is_ a good thing going at home," Mr. Bryany
said, in a wounded tone, "what Englishman'd look at it?"
"I would," said Edward Henry with a blandness that was only skin-deep.
For all the time he was cogitating the question whether the presence
of Dr Stirling in the audience ought or ought not to be regarded as
providential.
"Now, I've got the option on a little affair in London," said Mr.
Bryany, while Edward Henry glanced quickly at him in the darkness.
"And can I get anybody to go into it? I can't."
"What sort of a little affair?"
"Building a theatre in the West End."
Even a less impassive man than Edward Henry would have started at the
coincidence of this remark. And Edward Henry started. Twenty minutes
ago he had been idly dreaming of theatrical speculation, and now he
could almost see theatrical speculation shimmering before him in the
pale shifting rays of the cinematograph that cut through the gloom of
the mysterious auditorium.
"Oh!" And in this new interest he forgot the enigma of the ways of
Providence.
"Of course, you know, I'm in the business," said Mr. Bryany. "I'm
Seven Sachs's manager." It was as if he owned and operated Mr. Seven
Sachs.
"So I heard," said Edward Henry, and then remarked with mischievous
cordiality, "and I suppose these chaps told you I was the sort of man
you were after. And you got them to ask me in, eh, Mr. Bryany?"
Mr. Bryany gave an uneasy laugh, but seemed to find naught to say.
"Well, what _is_ your little affair?" Edward Henry encouraged him.
"Oh, I can't tell you now," said Mr. Bryany. "It would take too long.
The thing has to be explained."
"Well, what about to-morrow?"
"I have to leave for London by the first train in the morning."
"Well, some other time?"
"After to-morrow will be too late."
"Well, what about to-night?"
"The fact is, I've half promised to go with Dr Stirling to some
club or other after the show. Otherwise we might have had a quiet,
confidential chat in my rooms over at the Turk's Head. I never
dreamt--" Mr. Bryany was now as melancholy as a greedy lad who regards
rich fruit at arm's length through a plate-glass window, and he had
ceased to be patronizing.
"I'll soon get rid of Stirling for you," said Edward Henry, turning
instantly towards the doctor. The ways of Providence had been made
plain to Edward Henry. "I say, doc!" But the doctor and Brindley were
in conversation with another man at the open door of the box.
"What is it?" said Stirling.
"I've come to fetch you. You're wanted at my place."
"Well, you're a caution!" said Stirling.
"Why am I a caution?" Edward Henry smoothly protested. "I didn't tell
you before because I didn't want to spoil your fun."
Stirling's mien was not happy.
"Did they tell you I was here?" he asked.
"You'd almost think so, wouldn't you?" said Edward Henry in a playful,
enigmatic tone. After all, he decided privately, his wife was right;
it was better that Stirling should see the infant. And there was also
this natural human thought in his mind; he objected to the doctor
giving an entire evening to diversions away from home--he considered
that a doctor, when not on a round of visits, ought to be for ever
in his consulting-room, ready for a sudden call of emergency. It was
monstrous that Stirling should have proposed, after an escapade at the
music-hall, to spend further hours with chance acquaintances in vague
clubs! Half the town might fall sick and die while the doctor was
vainly amusing himself. Thus the righteous lay-man in Edward Henry!
"What's the matter?" asked Stirling.
"My eldest's been rather badly bitten by a dog, and the missis wants
it cauterized."
"Really?"
"Well, you bet she does!"
"Where's the bite?"
"In the calf."
The other man at the door having departed Robert Brindley abruptly
joined the conversation at this point.
"I suppose you've heard of that case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge?"
said Brindley.
Edward Henry's heart jumped.
"No, I haven't!" he said anxiously. "What is it?"
He gazed at the white blur of Brindley's face in the darkened box, and
he could hear the rapid clicking of the cinematograph behind him.
"Didn't you see it in the _Signal_?"
"No."
"Neither did I," said Brindley.
At the same moment the moving pictures came to an end, the theatre
was filled with light, and the band began to play "God Save the King."
Brindley and Stirling were laughing. And, indeed, Brindley had scored,
this time, over the unparalleled card of the Five Towns.
"I make you a present of that," said Edward Henry. "But my wife's most
precious infant has to be cauterized, doctor," he added firmly.
"Got your car here?" Stirling questioned.
"No. Have you?"
"No."
"Well, there's the tram. I'll follow you later. I've some business
round this way. Persuade my wife not to worry, will you?"
And when a discontented Dr. Stirling had made his excuses and adieux
to Mr. Bryany, and Robert Brindley had decided that he could not leave
his crony to travel by tram-car alone, and the two men had gone, then
Edward Henry turned to Mr. Bryany.
"That's how I get rid of the doctor, you see!"
"But _has_ your child been bitten by a dog?" asked Mr. Bryany, acutely
perplexed.
"You'd almost think so, wouldn't you?" Edward Henry replied, carefully
non-committal. "What price going to the Turk's Head now?"
He remembered with satisfaction, and yet with misgiving, a remark made
to him, a judgment passed on him, by a very old woman very many years
before. This discerning hag, the Widow Hullins by name, had said to
him briefly, "Well, you're a queer 'un!"
III
Within five minutes he was following Mr. Bryany into a small parlour
on the first floor of the Turk's Head--a room with which he had no
previous acquaintance, though, like most industrious men of affairs in
metropolitan Hanbridge, he reckoned to know something about the Turk's
Head. Mr. Bryany turned up the gas--the Turk's Head took pride
in being a "hostelry," and, while it had accustomed itself to
incandescent mantles (on the ground floor), it had not yet conquered
a natural distaste for electricity--and Edward Henry saw a smart
dispatch-box, a dress-suit, a trouser-stretcher and other necessaries
of theatrical business life at large in the apartment.
"I've never seen this room before," said Edward Henry.
"Take your overcoat off and sit down, will you?" said Mr. Bryany,
as he turned to replenish the fire from a bucket. "It's my private
sitting-room. Whenever I am on my travels I always take a private
sitting-room. It pays, you know.... Of course I mean if I'm alone.
When I'm looking after Mr. Sachs, of course we share a sitting-room."
Edward Henry agreed lightly:
"I suppose so."
But the fact was that he was much impressed. He himself had never
taken a private sitting-room in any hotel. He had sometimes felt the
desire, but he had not had the "face"--as they say down there--to do
it. To take a private sitting-room in a hotel was generally regarded
in the Five Towns as the very summit of dashing expensiveness and
futile luxury.
"I didn't know they had any private sitting-rooms in this shanty,"
said Edward Henry.
Mr. Bryany, having finished with the fire, fronted him, shovel in
hand, with a remarkable air of consummate wisdom, and replied:
"You can generally get what you want, if you insist on having it, even
in this 'shanty.'"
Edward Henry regretted his use of the word "shanty." Inhabitants of
the Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent
Turk's Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers. And in
justice to the Turk's Head it is to be clearly stated that it did no
more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel
in England. It was a sound and serious English provincial hotel, and
it linked century to century.
Said Mr. Bryany:
"'Merica's the place for hotels."
"Yes, I expect it is."
"Been to Chicago?"
"No, I haven't."
Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely
forbearing to raise his eyebrows.
"Of course you've been to New York?"
Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to
say that he had been to New York. But by some inexplicable negligence
he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and being a truthful person
(except in the gravest crises) he was obliged to answer miserably:
"No, I haven't."
Mr. Bryany gazed at him with amazement and compassion, apparently
staggered by the discovery that there existed in England a man of
the world who had contrived to struggle on for forty years without
perfecting his education by a visit to New York.
Edward Henry could not tolerate Mr. Bryany's look. It was a look
which he had never been able to tolerate on the features of anybody
whatsoever. He reminded himself that his secret object in accompanying
Mr. Bryany to the Turk's Head was to repay Mr. Bryany--in what coin he
knew not yet--for the aspersions which at the music-hall he had cast
upon England in general and upon the Five Towns in particular, and
also to get revenge for having been tricked into believing, even for a
moment, that there was really a case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge. It
is true that Mr. Bryany was innocent of this deception, which had been
accomplished by Robert Brindley, but that was a detail which did
not trouble Edward Henry, who lumped his grievances together--for
convenience.
He had been reflecting that some sentimental people, unused to the
ways of paternal affection in the Five Towns, might consider him a
rather callous father; he had been reflecting, again, that Nellie's
suggestion of blood-poisoning might not be as entirely foolish as
feminine suggestions in such circumstances too often are. But now
he put these thoughts away, reassuring himself against hydrophobia
anyhow, by the recollection of the definite statement of the
_Encyclopedia_. Moreover, had he not inspected the wound--as healthy a
wound as you could wish for?
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