The Regent by E. Arnold Bennett

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"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 eighteenpence halfpenny, 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!" hurtled 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 taxi-cab, 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 for ever 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 taxi-cab in that Square seemed like a homeless cat that
had strayed into a dog-show.

At the exact instant, when the taxi-cab 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 taxi-cab 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 recognize 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 recognized 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 this 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 satin-wood 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 unelect 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 inquire 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 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 clubman, 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 the 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
inquiringly 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 situation." 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 pyjamas, 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 his 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 organization 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 signboard, 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 roundabout 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 the 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?"

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