"Why am I a caution?" Edward Henry smoothly protested. "I didn"t tell you before because I didn"t want to spoil your fun."
Stirling"s mien was not happy.
"Did they tell you I was here?" he asked.
"You"d almost think so, wouldn"t you?" said Edward Henry in a playful, enigmatic tone. After all, he decided privately, his wife was right: it was better that Stirling should see the infant. And there was also this natural human thought in his mind: he objected to the doctor giving an entire evening to diversions away from home; he considered that a doctor, when not on a round of visits, ought to be forever in his consulting-room, ready for a sudden call of emergency. It was monstrous that Stirling should have proposed, after an escapade at the music-hall, to spend further hours with chance acquaintances in vague clubs! Half the town might fall sick and die while the doctor was vainly amusing himself. Thus the righteous layman in Edward Henry!
"What"s the matter?" asked Stirling.
"My eldest"s been rather badly bitten by a dog, and the missis wants it cauterized."
"Really?"
"Well, you bet she does!"
"Where"s the bite?"
"In the calf."
The other man at the door having departed, Robert Brindley abruptly joined the conversation at this point.
"I suppose you"ve heard of that case of hydrophobia at Bleakridge?" said Brindley.
Edward Henry"s heart jumped.
"No, I haven"t," he said anxiously. "What is it?"
He gazed at the white blur of Brindley"s face in the darkened box, and he could hear the rapid clicking of the cinematograph behind him.
"Didn"t you see it in the _Signal_?"
"No."
"Neither did I," said Brindley.
At the same moment the moving pictures came to an end, the theatre was filled with light, and the band began to play, "G.o.d Save the King."
Brindley and Stirling were laughing. And indeed, Brindley had scored, this time, over the unparalleled card of the Five Towns.
"I make you a present of that," said Edward Henry. "But my wife"s most precious infant has to be cauterized, Doctor," he added firmly.
"Got your car here?" Stirling questioned.
"No. Have you?"
"No."
"Well, there"s the tram. I"ll follow you later. I"ve some business round this way. Persuade my wife not to worry, will you?"
And when a discontented Dr. Stirling had made his excuses and adieux to Mr. Bryany, and Robert Brindley had decided that he could not leave his crony to travel by tram-car alone, and the two men had gone, then Edward Henry turned to Mr. Bryany:
"That"s how I get rid of the doctor, you see."
"But _has_ your child been bitten by a dog?" asked Mr. Bryany, acutely perplexed.
"You"d almost think so, wouldn"t you?" Edward Henry replied, carefully non-committal. "What price going to the Turk"s Head now?"
He remembered with satisfaction, and yet with misgiving, a remark made to him, a judgment pa.s.sed on him, by a very old woman very many years before. This discerning hag, the Widow Hullins by name, had said to him briefly, "Well, you"re a queer "un!"
III.
Within five minutes he was following Mr. Bryany into a small parlour on the first floor of the Turk"s Head, a room with which he had no previous acquaintance, though, like most industrious men of affairs in metropolitan Hanbridge, he reckoned to know something about the Turk"s Head. Mr. Bryany turned up the gas (the Turk"s Head took pride in being a "hostelry," and, while it had accustomed itself to incandescent mantles on the ground floor, it had not yet conquered a natural distaste for electricity) and Edward Henry saw a smart despatch-box, a dress suit, a trouser-stretcher, and other necessaries of theatrical business life at large in the apartment.
"I"ve never seen this room before," said Edward Henry.
"Take your overcoat off and sit down, will you?" said Mr. Bryany as he turned to replenish the fire from a bucket. "It"s my private sitting-room. Whenever I am on my travels, I always take a private sitting-room. It pays, you know. Of course I mean if I"m alone. When I"m looking after Mr. Sachs, of course we share a sitting-room."
Edward Henry agreed lightly:
"I suppose so."
But the fact was that he was much impressed. He himself had never taken a private sitting-room in any hotel. He had sometimes felt the desire, but he had not had the "face," as they say down there, to do it. To take a private sitting-room in a hotel was generally regarded in the Five Towns as the very summit of dashing expensiveness and futile luxury.
"I didn"t know they had private sitting-rooms in this shanty," said Edward Henry.
Mr. Bryany, having finished with the fire, fronted him, shovel in hand, with a remarkable air of consummate wisdom, and replied:
"You can generally get what you want if you insist on having it, even in this "shanty.""
Edward Henry regretted his use of the word "shanty." Inhabitants of the Five Towns may allow themselves to twit the historic and excellent Turk"s Head, but they do not extend the privilege to strangers. And in justice to the Turk"s Head, it is to be clearly stated that it did no more to cow and discourage travellers than any other provincial hotel in England. It was a sound and serious English provincial hotel; and it linked century to century.
Said Mr. Bryany:
""Merica"s the place for hotels."
"Yes, I expect it is."
"Been to Chicago?"
"No, I haven"t."
Mr. Bryany, as he removed his overcoat, could be seen politely forbearing to raise his eyebrows.
"Of course you"ve been to New York?"
Edward Henry would have given all he had in his pockets to be able to say that he had been to New York, but, by some inexplicable negligence, he had hitherto omitted to go to New York, and, being a truthful person, except in the gravest crises, he was obliged to answer miserably: