The Regent, Arnold Bennett [read after .txt] 📗

the whole of Piccadilly Circus, parts of Lower Regent Street, Coventry Street and even Shaftesbury Avenue. You see what a site it is--absolutely unique."

Edward Henry asked coldly:

"Have you bought it?"

"No," Mr. Bryany seemed to apologize. "I haven't exactly bought it. But I've got an option on it."

The magic word "option" wakened the drowsy speculator in Edward Henry. And the mere act of looking at the plan endowed the plot of land with reality! There it was! It existed!

"An option to buy it?"

"You can't buy land in the West End of London," said Mr. Bryany, sagely. "You can only lease it."

"Well, of course!" Edward Henry concurred.

"The freehold belongs to Lord Woldo, now aged six months."

"Really!" murmured Edward Henry.

"I've got an option to take up the remainder of the lease, with sixty-four years to run, on the condition I put up a theatre. And the option expires in exactly a fortnight's time."

Edward Henry frowned and then asked:

"What are the figures?"

"That is to say," Mr. Bryany corrected himself, smiling courteously, "I've got half the option."

"And who's got the other half?"

"Rose Euclid's got the other half."

At the mention of the name of one of the most renowned star-actresses in England, Edward Henry excusably started.

"Not _the_--?" he exclaimed.

Mr. Bryany nodded proudly, blowing out much smoke.

"Tell me," asked Edward Henry, confidentially, leaning forward, "where do those ladies get their names from?"

"It happens in this case to be her real name," said Mr. Bryany. "Her father kept a tobacconist's shop in Cheapside. The sign was kept up for many years, until Rose paid to have it changed."

"Well, well!" breathed Edward Henry, secretly thrilled by these extraordinary revelations. "And so you and she have got it between you?"

Mr. Bryany said:

"I bought half of it from her some time ago. She was badly hard up for a hundred pounds and I let her have the money." He threw away his cigarette half-smoked, with a free gesture that seemed to imply that he was capable of parting with a hundred pounds just as easily.

"How did she _get_ the option?" Edward Henry inquired, putting into the query all the innuendo of a man accustomed to look at great worldly affairs from the inside.

"How did she get it? She got it from the late Lord Woldo. She was always very friendly with the late Lord Woldo, you know." Edward Henry nodded. "Why, she and the Countess of Chell are as thick as thieves! You know something about the Countess down here, I reckon?"

The Countess of Chell was the wife of the supreme local magnate.

Edward Henry answered calmly, "We do."

He was tempted to relate a unique adventure of his youth, when he had driven the Countess to a public meeting in his mule-carriage, but sheer pride kept him silent.

"I asked you for the figures," he added, in a manner which requested Mr. Bryany to remember that he was the founder, chairman and proprietor of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, one of the most successful business organizations in the Midlands.

"Here they are!" said Mr. Bryany, passing across the table a sheet of paper.

And as Edward Henry studied them he could hear Mr. Bryany faintly cooing into his ear: "Of course Rose got the ground-rent reduced. And when I tell you that the demand for theatres in the West End far exceeds the supply, and that theatre rents are always going up ... When I tell you that a theatre costing L25,000 to build can be let for L11,000 a year, and often L300 a week on a short term ...!" And he could hear the gas singing over his head ... And also, unhappily, he could hear Dr. Stirling talking to his wife and saying to her that the bite was far more serious than it looked, and Nellie hoping very audibly that nothing had "happened" to him, her still absent husband ...! And then he could hear Mr. Bryany again:

"When I tell you ..."

"When you tell me all this, Mr. Bryany," he interrupted with that ferocity which in the Five Towns is regarded as mere directness, "I wonder why the devil you want to sell your half of the option--if you _do_ want to sell it. Do you want to sell it?"

"To tell you the truth," said Mr. Bryany, as if up to that moment he had told naught but lies, "I do."

"Why?"

"Oh, I'm always travelling about, you see. England one day--America the next." (Apparently he had quickly abandoned the strictness of veracity.) "All depends on the governor's movements! I couldn't keep a proper eye on an affair of that kind."

Edward Henry laughed:

"And could I?"

"Chance for you to go a bit oftener to London," said Mr. Bryany, laughing too. Then, with extreme and convincing seriousness, "You're the very man for a thing of that kind. And you know it!"

Edward Henry was not displeased by this flattery.

"How much?"

"How much? Well, I told you frankly what I paid. I made no concealment of that, did I now? Well, I want what I paid. It's worth it!"

"Got a copy of the option, I hope!"

Mr. Bryany produced a copy of the option.

"I am nothing but an infernal ass to mix myself up in a mad scheme like this," said Edward Henry to his soul, perusing the documents. "It's right off my line, right bang off it ...! But what a lark!" But even to his soul he did not utter the remainder of the truth about himself, namely: "I should like to cut a dash before this insufferable patronizer of England and the Five Towns."

Suddenly something snapped within him and he said to Mr. Bryany:

"I'm on!"

Those words and no more!

"You are?" Mr. Bryany exclaimed, mistrusting his ears.

Edward Henry nodded.

"Well, that's business anyway!" said Mr. Bryany, taking a fresh cigarette and lighting it.

"It's how we do business down here," said Edward Henry, quite inaccurately; for it was not in the least how they did business down there.

Mr. Bryany asked, with a rather obvious anxiety:

"But when can you pay?"

"Oh, I'll send you a cheque in a day or two." And Edward Henry in his turn took a fresh cigarette.

"That won't do! That won't do!" cried Mr. Bryany. "I absolutely must have the money to-morrow morning in London. I can sell the option in London for eighty pounds--I know that."

"You must have it?"

"Must!"

They exchanged glances. And Edward Henry, rapidly acquiring new knowledge of human nature on the threshold of a world strange to him, understood that Mr. Bryany, with his private sitting-room and his investments in Seattle and Calgary, was at his wits' end for a bag of English sovereigns, and had trusted to some chance encounter to save him from a calamity. And his contempt for Mr. Bryany was that of a man to whom his bankers are positively servile.

"Here!" Mr. Bryany almost shouted. "Don't light your cigarette with my option!"

"I beg pardon!" Edward Henry apologized, dropping the document which he had creased into a spill. There were no matches left on the table.

"I'll find you a match!"

"It's of no consequence," said Edward Henry, feeling in his pockets. Having discovered therein a piece of paper he twisted it and rose to put it to the gas.

"Could you slip round to your bank and meet me at the station in the morning with the cash?" suggested Mr. Bryany.

"No, I couldn't," said Edward Henry.

"Well, then, what--?"

"Here, you'd better take this," the "Card," reborn, soothed his host and, blowing out the spill which he had just ignited at the gas, he offered it to Mr. Bryany.

"What?"

"This, man!"

Mr. Bryany, observing the peculiarity of the spill, seized it and unrolled it--not without a certain agitation.

He stammered:

"Do you mean to say it's genuine?"

"You'd almost think so, wouldn't you?" said Edward Henry. He was growing fond of this reply, and of the enigmatic, playful tone that he had invented for it.

"But--"

"We may, as you say, look twice at a fiver," continued Edward Henry. "But we're apt to be careless about hundred-pound notes in this district. I daresay that's why I always carry one."

"But it's burnt!"

"Only just the edge. Not enough to harm it. If any bank in England refuses it, return it to me and I'll give you a couple more in exchange. Is that talking?"

"Well, I'm dashed!" Mr. Bryany attempted to rise, and then subsided back into his chair. "I am simply and totally dashed!" He smiled weakly, hysterically.

And in that instant Edward Henry felt all the sweetness of a complete and luscious revenge.

He said commandingly:

"You must sign me a transfer. I'll dictate it!"

Then he jumped up.

"You're in a hurry?"

"I am. My wife is expecting me. You promised to find me a match." Edward Henry waved the unlit cigarette as a reproach to Mr. Bryany's imperfect hospitality.


IV


The clock of Bleakridge Church, still imperturbably shining in the night, showed a quarter to one when he saw it again on his hurried and guilty way home. The pavements were drying in the fresh night wind and he had his overcoat buttoned up to the neck. He was absolutely solitary in the long, muddy perspective of Trafalgar Road. He walked because the last tram-car was already housed in its shed at the other end of the world, and he walked quickly because his conscience drove him onwards. And yet he dreaded to arrive, lest a wound in the child's leg should have maliciously decided to fester in order to put him in the wrong. He was now as apprehensive concerning that wound as Nellie herself had been at tea-time.

But, in his mind, above the dark gulf of anxiety, there floated brighter thoughts. Despite his fears and his remorse as a father, he laughed aloud in the deserted street when he remembered Mr. Bryany's visage of astonishment upon uncreasing the note. Indubitably he had made a terrific and everlasting impression upon Mr. Bryany. He was sending Mr. Bryany out of the Five Towns a different man. He had taught Mr. Bryany a thing or two. To what brilliant use had he turned the purely accidental possession of a hundred-pound note! One of his finest inspirations--an inspiration worthy of the great days of his youth! Yes, he had had his hour that evening, and it had been a glorious one. Also, it had cost him a hundred pounds, and he did not care; he would retire to bed with a net gain of two hundred and forty-one pounds instead of three hundred and forty-one pounds--that was all!

For he did not mean to take up the option. The ecstasy was cooled now and he saw clearly that London and theatrical enterprises therein would not be suited to his genius. In the Five Towns he was on his own ground; he was a figure; he was sure of himself. In London he would be a provincial, with the diffidence and the uncertainty of a provincial. Nevertheless, London seemed to be summoning him from afar off, and he dreamt agreeably of London as one dreams of the impossible East.

As soon as he