The Old Adam Part 13

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?"

"Yes, sir," said Joseph.

"Have your bath in the bathroom here. And be sure to leave everything in order for me."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as Joseph had gone, Edward Henry jumped out of bed and listened.

He heard the discreet Joseph respectfully push the bolt of the bathroom door. Then he crept with noiseless rapidity to the small bedroom, and was aware therein of a lack of order and of ventilation. The rich and distinguished overcoat was hanging on the bra.s.s k.n.o.b at the foot of the bed. He seized it, and, scrutinizing the loop, read in yellow letters: _Quayther and Cuthering, 47 Vigo Street, W_. He knew that Quayther and Cuthering must be the tailors of Sir Nicholas Winkworth, and hence first-cla.s.s.

Hoping for the best, and putting his trust in the general decency of human nature, he did not trouble himself with the problem: was the overcoat a gift or an appropriation? But he preferred to a.s.sume the generosity of Sir Nicholas rather than the dishonesty of Joseph.

Repa.s.sing the bathroom door, he knocked loudly on its gla.s.s.

"Don't be all day!" he cried. He was in a hurry now.

An hour later he said to Joseph:

"I'm going down to Quayther and Cuthering's."

"Yes, sir," said Joseph, obviously much rea.s.sured.

"Nincomp.o.o.p!" Edward Henry exclaimed secretly. "The fool thinks better of me because my tailors are first-cla.s.s."

But Edward Henry had failed to notice that he himself was thinking better of himself because he had adopted first-cla.s.s tailors.

Beneath the main door of his suite, as he went forth, he found a business card of the West End Electric Brougham Supply Agency. And downstairs, solely to impress his individuality on the hall-porter, he showed the card to that vizier with the casual question:

"These people any good?"

"An excellent firm, sir."

"What do they charge?"

"By the week, sir?"

He hesitated. "Yes, by the week?"

"Twenty guineas, sir."

"Well, you might telephone for one. Can you get it at once?"

"Certainly, sir."

The vizier turned towards the telephone in his lair.

"I say--" said Edward Henry.

"Sir?"

"I suppose one will be enough?"

"Well, sir, as a rule, yes," said the vizier calmly. "Sometimes I get a couple for one family, sir."

Though he had started jocularly, Edward Henry finished by blenching. "I think one will do.... I may possibly send for my own car."

He drove to Quayther and Cuthering's in his electric brougham, and there dropped casually the name of Winkworth. He explained humourously his singular misadventure of the _Minnetonka_, and was very successful therewith, so successful indeed, that he actually began to believe in the reality of the adventure himself, and had an irrational impulse to despatch a wireless message to his bewildered valet on board the _Minnetonka_.

Subsequently he paid other fruitful visits in the neighbourhood, and at about half-past eleven the fruit was arriving at Wilkins's in the shape of many parcels and boxes, comprising diverse items in the equipment of a man about town, such as tie-clips and Innovation trunks.

Returning late to Wilkins's for lunch, he marched jauntily into the large brilliant restaurant, and commenced an adequate repast. Of course he was still wearing his mediocre lounge suit (his sole suit for another two days), but somehow the consciousness that Quayther and Cutherings were cutting out wondrous garments for him in Vigo Street stiffened his shoulders and gave a mysterious style to that lounge suit.

At lunch he made one mistake, and enjoyed one very remarkable piece of luck.

The mistake was to order an artichoke. He did not know how to eat an artichoke. He had never tried to eat an artichoke, and his first essay in this difficult and complex craft was a sad fiasco. It would not have mattered if, at the table next to his own, there had not been two obviously experienced women, one ill dressed, with a red hat, the other well dressed, with a blue hat; one middle-aged, the other much younger; but both very observant. And even so, it would scarcely have mattered, had not the younger woman been so slim, pretty, and alluring. While tolerably careless of the opinion of the red-hatted plain woman of middle age, he desired the unqualified approval of the delightful young thing in the blue hat. They certainly interested themselves in his manoeuvres with the artichoke, and their amus.e.m.e.nt was imperfectly concealed. He forgave the blue hat, but considered that the red hat ought to have known better. They could not be princesses, nor even t.i.tled aristocrats. He supposed them to belong to some baccarat-playing county family.

The piece of luck consisted in the pa.s.sage down the restaurant of the Countess of Ch.e.l.l, who had been lunching there with a party, and whom he had known locally in more gusty days. The countess bowed stiffly to the red hat, and the red hat responded with eager fulsomeness. It seemed to be here as it no longer was in the Five Towns: everybody knew everybody!

The red hat and the blue might be t.i.tled, after all, he thought. Then, by sheer accident, the countess caught sight of him, and stopped dead, bringing her escort to a standstill behind her. Edward Henry blushed and rose.

"Is it _you_, Mr. Machin?" murmured the still lovely creature warmly.

They shook hands. Never had social pleasure so thrilled him. The conversation was short. He did not presume on the past. He knew that here he was not on his own ash-pit, as they say in the Five Towns. The countess and her escort went forward. Edward Henry sat down again.

He gave the red and the blue hats one calm glance, which they failed to withstand. The affair of the artichoke was forever wiped out.

After lunch he went forth again in his electric brougham. The weather had cleared. The opulent streets were full of pride and sunshine. And as he penetrated into one shop after another, receiving kowtows, obeisances, curtsies, homage, surrender, resignation, submission, he gradually comprehended that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that those who are called to greatness must accept with dignity the ceremonials inseparable from greatness. And the world had never seemed to him so fine, nor any adventure so diverting and uplifting as this adventure.

When he returned to his suite, his private corridor was piled up with a numerous and excessively attractive a.s.sortment of parcels. Joseph took his overcoat and hat and a new umbrella, and placed an easy chair conveniently for him in the drawing-room.

"Get my bill," he said shortly to Joseph as he sank into the gilded fauteuil.

"Yes, sir."

One advantage of a valet, he discovered, is that you can order him to do things which to do yourself would more than exhaust your moral courage.

The black-calved gentleman in waiting brought the bill. It lay on a salver, and was folded, conceivably so as to break the shock of it to the recipient.

Edward Henry took it.

"Wait a minute," he said.

He read on the bill: "Apartment 8. Dinner 1-2-0. Breakfast 6s. 6d.

Lunch 18s. Half Chablis 6s. 6d. Valet's board 10s. Tooth-brush 2s.

6d.

"That's a bit thick, half a crown for that toothbrush!" he said to himself. "However--"

The next instant he blenched once more.