Part 1 (1/2)

The Regent

by E Arnold Bennett

PART I

CHAPTER I

DOG-BITE

I

”And yet,” Edward Henry Machin reflected as at sixat the top of Bleakridge, ”and yet--I don't feel so jolly after all!”

The first tords of this disturbingtwice to his stockbrokers at Manchester, he had just made the sum of three hundred and forty-one pounds in a purely speculative transaction concerning Rubber Shares (It was in the autu year, 1910) He had simply opened his lucky and wise olden fruit, had fallen into it, a gift fron heaven, surely a cause for happiness! And yet--he did not feel so jolly! He was surprised, he was even a little hurt, to discover by introspection that ain was not necessarily accompanied by felicity

Nevertheless, this very successfulbeen born on the 27th of May 1867, had reached the age of forty-three and a half years!

”I ht He was still young, as everyolder A few years ago a windfall of three hundred and forty-one pounds would not have been followed by morbid self-analysis; it would have been followed by unreasoning, instinctive elation, which elation would have endured at least twelve hours

As he disappeared within the reddish garden hich sheltered his abode froar Road, he half hoped to see Nellie waiting for him on the fa since invented a way of scouting for his advent from the smallin the bathroom But there was nobody on the marble step His melancholy increased At the ia, and hence this was an evening upon which he ly attired in the porch It is true that the neuralgia had coone ”Still,” he said to hilooone? She doesn't know”

Having opened the front-door (with the thinnest, neatest latch-key in the Five Towns), he entered his hoainst the sunk door-azed at that brush with resentment It was a dilapidated hand-brush The offensive object would have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house

But in the lobby of his house--the house which he had planned a dozen years earlier, to the special end ofdomestic labour, and which he had always kept up to date with the latest devices--in his lobby the spectacle of a vile, outworn hand-brush at tea-tiht previously he had purchased and presented to his wife aall former vacuum-cleaners You si, and waved it in mysterious passes over the floor, like a fan, and the house was clean! He was as proud of thisht it; every day he inquired about its feats, expecting enthusiastic replies as a sort of reward for his own keenness: and be it said that he had had enthusiastic replies

And now this obscene hand-brush!+

As he carefully removed his hat and his beautiful new Melton overcoat (which had the colour and the soft s negligence of women There were Nellie (his wife), his mother, the nurse, the cook, the ether--a conspiracy of carelessness--to leave the inexcusable tool in his lobby for hi three hundred and forty-one pounds?

Still no sign of Nellie, though he purposely -stick Then the maid burst out of the kitchen with a tray and the principal utensils for high tea thereon She had a guilty air The household was evidently late Two steps at a ti in the dining-room at six precisely, in order, if possible, to shame the household and fill it with remorse and unpleasantness Yet ordinarily he was not a very pro pain On the contrary, he was apt to be casual, blithe and agreeable

The bathroo, and where his talent for the ingenious organization of comfort, and his utter indifference to aesthetic beauty, had the fullest scope

By universal consent admitted to be the finest bathroom in the Five Towns, it typified the whole house He was disappointed on this occasion to see no untidy trace in it of the children's ablution; soression of the supreme domestic law that the bathroom must always be free and iathering humour As he washed his hands and cleansed his well-tris and sixpence, he glanced at hi

A stoutish, broad-shouldered, fair, chubby ht hair! His necktie pleased hiance of his turned-back wristbands pleased him; and he liked the rich down on his forearms

He could not believe that he looked forty-three and a half And yet he had recently had an idea of shaving off his beard, partly to defy tiested to him, wildly, perhaps--that if he dispensed with a beard his hair row more sturdilyYes, there was one weak spot in the middle of the top of his head, where the crop had of late disconcertingly thinned! The hairdresser had infore, and that, if he doubted the _bona-fides_ of hairdressers, any doctor would testify to the value of electric ed, inexplicably robbed of the zest of existence, decided that it was not worth while to shave off his beard Nothing orth while If he was forty-three and a half, he was forty-three and a half! To become bald was the common lot Moreover, beardless, he would need the service of a barber every day And he was absolutely persuaded that not a barber worth the name could be found in the Five Towns He actually went to Manchester--thirty-six et his hair cut The operation never cost hin and half a day's timeAnd he honestly deemed himself to be a fellow of simple tastes! Such is the effect of the canker of luxury Happily he could afford these sinificance of the term, he paid income tax on so the Surveyor of Taxes that he was an honest man

He brushed the thick hair over the weak spot, he turned down his wristbands, he brushed the collar of his jacket, and lastly, his beard; and he put on his jacket--with a certain care, for he was very neat And then, reflectively twisting his h the s of the football-ground really did prevent a serious observer froe It did not Then he spied through the largerupon the yard, to see whether the wall of the new rooms which he had lately added to his house showed any further trace of da the new motor car with all his heart The wall showed no further trace of damp, and the new chauffeur's bent back seemed to symbolize an extre struck six and he hurried off to put the household to open sha-room two minutes after her husband As Edward Henry had laboriously counted these two -roo His secret annoyance was increased by the fact that Nellie took off her white apron in the doorway and flung it hurriedly on to the table-tray which, during the progress of -room door He did not actually witness this operation of undressing, because Nellie was screened by the half-closed door; but he was entirely aware of it He disliked it, and he had always disliked it When Nellie was at work, either as a mother or as the owner of certain fine silver ornaments, he rather enjoyed the wonderful white apron, for it suited her temperament; but as the head of a household with six thousand pounds a year at its disposal, he objected to any hint of the thing at uess from the homeliness of their family life that he was in a position to spend a hundred pounds a week and still have enough income left over to pay the salary of a town clerk or so? nobody could guess; and he felt that people ought to be able to guess When he was young he would have esteemed an inco feudal state, valets, castles, yachts, fa-stables, county society, dinner-calls and a drawling London accent Why should his ear an apron at all? But the sad truth was that neither his wife nor his mother ever _looked_ rich, or even endeavoured to look rich

His h she had picked it up at a ju of a hundred-and-eighty pound diaenerally quite wasted