CHAPTER III

WILKINS’S

I

The early adventures of Alderman Machin of Bursley at Wilkins’s Hotel, London, were so singular, and to him so refreshing, that they must be recounted in some detail.

He went to London by the morning express from Knype, on the Monday week after his visit to the music-hall.  In the meantime he had had some correspondence with Mr. Bryany, more poetic than precise, about the option, and had informed Mr. Bryany that he would arrive in London several days before the option expired.  But he had not given a definite date.  The whole affair, indeed, was amusingly vague; and, despite his assurances to his wife that the matter was momentous, he did not regard his trip to London as a business trip at all, but rather as a simple freakish change of air.  The one certain item in the whole situation was that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum of actual money, destined—­he hoped, but was not sure—­to take up the option at the proper hour.

Nellie, impeccable to the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype, the main-line station.  The drive, superficially pleasant, was in reality very disconcerting to him.  For nine days the household had talked in apparent cheerfulness of father’s visit to London, as though it were an occasion for joy on father’s behalf, tempered by affectionate sorrow for his absence.  The official theory was that all was for the best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was admirably maintained.  And yet everybody knew—­even to Maisie—­that it was not so; everybody knew that the master and the mistress of the home, calm and sweet as was their demeanour, were contending in a terrific silent and mysterious altercation, which in some way was connected with the visit to London.

So far as Edward Henry was concerned he had been hoping for some decisive event—­a tone, gesture, glance, pressure—­during the drive to Knype, which offered the last chance of a real concord.  No such event occurred.  They conversed with the same false cordiality as had marked their relations since the evening of the dog-bite.  On that evening Nellie had suddenly transformed herself into a distressingly perfect angel, and not once had she descended from her high estate.  At least daily she had kissed him—­what kisses!  Kisses that were not kisses!  Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale!  He could have killed her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous wifely behaviour; she would have died victorious.

So that his freakish excursion was not starting very auspiciously.  And, waiting with her for the train on the platform at Knype, he felt this more and more.  His old clerk, Penkethman, was there to receive certain final instructions on Thrift Club matters, and the sweetness of Nellie’s attitude towards the ancient man, and the ancient man’s naive pleasure therein, positively maddened Edward Henry.  To such an extent that he began to think:  “Is she going to spoil my trip for me?”