II
It was rather late in the afternoon when Edward Henry arrived in frontof the facade of Wilkins's. He came in a taxi-cab, 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, hehad spent some three hours in the business of transferring himselffrom the portals of the one hotel to the portals of the other. Twohours and three-quarters of this period of time had been passed infinding courage merely to start. Even so, he had left his luggagebehind him. He said to himself that, first of all, he would go and spyout Wilkins's; in the perilous work of scouting he rightly wishedto be unhampered by impedimenta; moreover, in case of repulse oraccident, he must have a base of operations upon which he couldretreat 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 ... andit was in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill--notonly of the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in theSquare--there were boxes of bright blooming flowers. These he couldplainly distinguish in the October dusk, and they were a wonderfulphenomenon--say what you will about the mildness of that particularOctober! A sublime tranquillity reigned over the scene. A liveriedkeeper was locking the gate of the garden in the middle of the Squareas if potentates had just quitted it and rendered it for ever sacred.And between the sacred shadowed grove and the inscrutable frontsof the stately houses there flitted automobiles of the silent andexpensive kind, driven by chauffeurs in pale grey or dark purple, whoreclined as they steered, and who were supported on their leftsides by footmen who reclined as they contemplated the grandeur ofexistence.
Edward Henry's taxi-cab in that Square seemed like a homeless cat thathad strayed into a dog-show.
At the exact instant, when the taxi-cab came to rest under the massiveportico of Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiledthe gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed toEdward Henry and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet.The driver of the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at thechamberlain, but Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then inabstraction mounted the broad 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 taxi-cab awayinto some 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,was successfully defiled, and up to the present nobody had demandedhis credentials! 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 recognize that even the nineteenth centuryhad dawned, and its magnificent antique discomfort had been one of itsmain attractions to the elect. For the elect desired nothing but theirown privileged society in order to be happy in a hotel. A hip-bathon a blanket 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 watersof democracy--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 shakenit. Came the day when Wilkins's reluctantly decided that even it couldnot fight against the tendency of the whole world, and then, at onesuperb stroke, it had rebuilt and brought itself utterly up-to-date.
Thus it resembled other hotels. (Save, possibly, in the reticenceof its advertisements! The Majestic would advertise bathrooms as amiracle of modernity, just as though common dwelling-houses hadnot possessed bathrooms for the past thirty years. Wilkins's hadsuperlative bathrooms, but it said nothing about them. Wilkins's wouldas soon have advertised two hundred bathrooms as two hundred bolsters;and for the new Wilkins's a bathroom was not more modern than abolster.) Also, other hotels resembled Wilkins's. The Majestic, too,had a chamberlain at its portico and an assortment of pages to proveto its clients that they were incapable of performing the simplest actfor themselves. Nevertheless, the difference between Wilkins's andthe Majestic was enormous; and yet so subtle was it that Edward Henrycould not immediately 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"shining over it in letters of gold. Behind this grille, and stillfurther protected by an impregnable mahogany counter, stood threeyoung dandies in attitudes of graceful ease. He approached them.The fearful moment was upon him. He had never in his life been sogenuinely frightened. Abject disgrace might be his portion within thenext ten seconds.
Addressing himself to the dandy in the middle he managed toarticulate:
"What have you got in the way of rooms?"
Could the Five Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardlyhave recognized its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomband inventive 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 sosavagely hurled back in the dandy's teeth the insinuation that hewanted only one paltry room.
However, the dandy smiled, accepting with meekness Edward Henry'ssudden arrogance, and consulted a sort of pentateuch that was open infront of him.
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 this 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 heemerged from the lift another dandy--in a frock-coat of Paradise--wasawaiting him with obeisances. Apparently it had not yet occurred toanybody 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 thewalls), a large bedroom with two satin-wood beds, a small bedroom anda bathroom, all gleaming with patent devices in porcelain and silverthat fully equalled those at home.
Asked if this suite would do, he said it would, trying as well ashe could to imply that he had seen better. Then the dandy produced anote-book and a pencil and impassively waited. The horrid fact that hewas 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 alwayswith profound respect.
"Ah! yes!" said the dandy. It was 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 thesuite in an entirely vain attempt to inquire the price of the suiteper day. Not a syllable would pass his lips. The dandy bowed andvanished. Edward Henry stood lost at his own door, and his wanderingeye caught sight of a pile of trunks near to another door in the maincorridor. These trunks gave him a terrible shock. He shut out therest 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. Itlacked elegance. The lounge-suit that he was wearing might serve, buthis luggage was totally impossible. Never before had he imagined thatthe aspect of one's luggage could have the least importance in one'sscheme of existence. He was learning, and he frankly admitted that hewas in an incomparable mess.