II.
It was rather late in the afternoon when Edward Henry arrived in frontof the facade of Wilkins's. He came in a taxicab, and though thedistance from the Majestic to Wilkins's is not more than a couple ofmiles, and he had had nothing else to preoccupy him after lunch, he hadspent some three hours in the business of transferring himself from theportals of the one hotel to the portals of the other. Two hours andthree-quarters of this period of time had been passed in finding couragemerely to start. Even so, he had left his luggage behind him. He saidto himself that, first of all, he would go and spy out Wilkins's; in theperilous work of scouting he rightly wished to be unhampered byimpedimenta; moreover, in case of repulse or accident, he must have abase 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 waseven more afraid of it than he had been while thinking about it in thevestibule of the Majestic. It was not larger than the Majestic; it wasperhaps smaller; it could not show more terra cotta, plate glass, andsculptured cornice than the Majestic. But it had a demeanour ... and itwas in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill--not onlyof the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in the square--there wereboxes of bright-blooming flowers. These he could plainly distinguish inthe October dusk, and they were a wonderful phenomenon--say what youwill about the mildness of that particular October! A sublimetranquillity reigned over the scene. A liveried keeper was locking thegate of the garden in the middle of the square as if potentates had justquitted it and rendered it forever sacred. And between the sacredshadowed grove and the inscrutable fronts of the stately houses, thereflitted automobiles of the silent and expensive kind, driven bychauffeurs in pale grey or dark purple, who reclined as they steered,and who were supported on their left sides by footmen who reclined asthey contemplated the grandeur of existence.
Edward Henry's taxicab in that square seemed like a homeless cat thathad strayed into a dog-show.
At the exact instant when the taxicab came to rest under the massiveportico of Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled thegloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to EdwardHenry, and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver ofthe taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, butEdward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted thebroad carpeted steps.
"What about poor little me?" cried the driver, who was evidently aribald socialist, or at best a republican.
The chamberlain, pained, glanced at Edward Henry for support anddirection in this crisis.
"Didn't I tell you I'd keep you?" said Edward Henry, raised now by thesteps above the driver.
"Between you and me, you didn't," said the driver.
The chamberlain, with an ineffable gesture, wafted the taxicab away intosome limbo appointed for waiting vehicles.
A page opened a pair of doors, and another page opened another pair ofdoors, each with eighteen-century ceremonies of deference, and EdwardHenry stood at length in the hall of Wilkins's. The sanctuary, then, wassuccessfully defiled, and up to the present nobody had demanded hiscredentials! He took breath.
In its physical aspects Wilkins's appeared to him to resemble otherhotels--such as the Majestic. And so far he was not mistaken. OnceWilkins's had not resembled other hotels. For many years it haddeliberately refused to recognise that even the Nineteenth Century haddawned, and its magnificent antique discomfort had been one of its mainattractions to the elect. For the elect desired nothing but their ownprivileged society in order to be happy in a hotel. A hip bath on ablanket in the middle of the bedroom floor richly sufficed them,provided they could be guaranteed against the calamity of meeting theunelect in the corridors or at _table d'hote_. But the rising waters ofdemocracy--the intermixture of classes--had reacted adversely onWilkins's. The fall of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico had givenWilkins's sad food for thought long, long ago, and the obvious generalweakening of the monarchical principle had most considerably shaken it.Came the day when Wilkins's reluctantly decided that even it could notfight against the tendency of the whole world, and then, at one superbstroke, it had rebuilt and brought itself utterly up-to-date.
Thus it resembled other hotels. (Save possibly in the reticence of itsadvertisements! The Majestic would advertise bathrooms as a miracle ofmodernity, just as though common dwelling-houses had not possessedbathrooms for the past thirty years. Wilkins's had superlativebathrooms, but it said nothing about them. Wilkins's would as soon haveadvertised two hundred bathrooms as two hundred bolsters; and for thenew Wilkins's a bathroom was not more modern than a bolster.) Also,other hotels resembled Wilkins's. The Majestic, too, had a chamberlainat its portico, and an assortment of pages to prove to its clients thatthey were incapable of performing the simplest act for themselves.Nevertheless, the difference between Wilkins's and the Majestic wasenormous; and yet so subtle was it that Edward Henry could notimmediately detect where it resided. Then he understood. Thedifference between Wilkins's and the Majestic resided in the theorywhich underlay its manner. And the theory was that every personentering its walls was of royal blood until he had admitted thecontrary.
Within the hotel it was already night.
Edward Henry self-consciously crossed the illuminated hall, which wasdotted with fashionable figures. He knew not whither he was going,until by chance he saw a golden grille with the word "Reception" shiningover it in letters of gold. Behind this grille, and still furtherprotected by an impregnable mahogany counter, stood three young dandiesin attitudes of graceful ease. He approached them. The fearful momentwas 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 hardlyhave recognised its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomb andinventive audacity, in this figure of provincial and plebeiandiffidence.
The dandy bowed.
"Do you want a suite, sir?"
"Certainly!" said Edward Henry. Rather too quickly, rather toodefiantly; in fact, rather rudely! A habitue would not have so savagelyhurled back in the dandy's teeth the insinuation that he wanted only onepaltry room.
However, the dandy smiled, accepting with meekness Edward Henry's suddenarrogance, and consulted a sort of pentateuch that was open in front ofhim.
No person in the hall saw Edward Henry's hat fly up into the air andfall back on his head. But in the imagination of Edward Henry, that waswhat his hat did.
He was saved. He would have a proud tale for Brindley. The thing wasas simple as the alphabet. You just walked in and they either fell onyour 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 emergedfrom the lift another dandy--in a frock-coat of Paradise--was awaitinghim with obeisances. Apparently it had not yet occurred to anybody thathe was not the younger son of some aged king.
He was prayed to walk into a gorgeous suite consisting of a corridor, anoble drawing-room (with portrait of His Majesty of Spain on the walls),a large bedroom with two satinwood beds, a small bedroom, and abathroom, all gleaming with patent devices in porcelain and silver thatfully equalled those at home.
Asked if this suite would do, he said it would, trying as well as hecould to imply that he had seen better. Then the dandy produced anote-book and a pencil, and impassively waited. The horrid fact that hewas un-elect could no longer be concealed. "E. H. Machin, Bursley," hesaid shortly, and added: "Alderman Machin." After all, why should he beashamed of being an alderman?
To his astonishment the dandy smiled very cordially, though always withprofound respect.
"Ah, yes!" said the dandy. It wa
s as though he had said: "We have longwished for the high patronage of this great reputation." Edward Henrycould make naught of it.
His opinion of Wilkins's went down.
He followed the departing dandy up the corridor to the door of the suitein an entirely vain attempt to enquire the price of the suite per day.Not a syllable would pass his lips. The dandy bowed and vanished.Edward Henry stood lost at his own door, and his wandering eye caughtsight 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 thehotel and retired into his private corridor to reflect. He perceivedonly too plainly that his luggage, now at the Majestic, never could comeinto Wilkins's. It was not fashionable enough. It lacked elegance.The lounge suit that he was wearing might serve, but his luggage wastotally impossible. Never before had he imagined that the aspect ofone's luggage could have the least importance in one's scheme ofexistence. He was learning, and he frankly admitted that he was in anincomparable mess.