Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes. Arnold Bennett

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      'And, Shawn—'

      'Yes, sir?'

      'I want a hat.'

      'A hat, sir?'

      'A lady's hat.'

      'Yes, sir.'

      'Run down into Department 42, there's a good fellow, and see if you can find me a lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with a garland of pinkish rosebuds.'

      'A lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with pinkish rosebuds, sir?'

      'Precisely. Here, you're forgetting the token.'

      He detached a gold medallion from his watch-chain, and handed it to Shawn, who departed with it and with the tea-tray.

      Two minutes later, having climbed the staircase between the inner and outer domes, he stood, fully clad in a light-gray suit, on the highest platform of the immense building, whose occidental façade is the glory of Sloane Street and one of the marvels of the metropolis. Far above him a gigantic flag spread its dazzling folds to the sun and the breeze. On the white ground of the flag, in purple letters seven feet high, was traced the single word, 'HUGO.'

      From his eyrie he could see half the West End of London. Sloane Street stretched north and south like a ruled line, and along that line two hurrying processions of black dots approached each other, and met and vanished below him; they constituted the first division of his army of three thousand five hundred employés.

      He leaned over the balustrade, and sniffed the pure air with exultant, eager nostrils. He was forty-six. He did not feel forty-six, however. In common with every man of forty-six, and especially every bachelor of forty-six, he regarded forty-six as a mere meaningless number, as a futile and even misleading symbol of chronology. He felt that Time had made a mistake—that he was not really in the fifth decade, and that his true, practical working age was about thirty.

      Moreover, he was in love, for the first time in his life. Like all men and all women, he had throughout the whole of his adult existence been ever secretly preoccupied with thoughts, hopes, aspirations, desires, concerning the other sex, but the fundamental inexperience of his heart was such that he imagined he was going to be happy because he had fallen in love.

      'I'm glad I sent for that hat,' he said, smiling absently at the Great Wheel over a mile and a half of roofs.

      The key to his character and his career lay in the fact that he invariably found sufficient courage to respond to his instincts, and that his instincts were romantic. They had led him in various ways, sometimes to grandiose and legitimate triumphs, sometimes to hidden shames which it is merciful to ignore. In the main, they had served him well. It was in obedience to an instinct that he had capped the nine stories of the Hugo building with a dome and had made his bed under the dome. It was in obedience to another instinct that he had sent for the hat.

      'Very pretty, isn't it?' he observed to Shawn, when Simon handed him the insubstantial and gay object and restored the gold token. They were at a window in the circular room; the couch had magically melted away.

      'I admire it, sir,' said Shawn, and withdrew.

      'Dolt!' he cried out upon Shawn in his heart. 'You didn't see her at work on it. As if you could appreciate her exquisite taste and the amazing skill of her blanched fingers! I alone can appreciate these things!'

      He hung the hat on a Louis Quatorze screen, and blissfully gazed at it, her creation.

      'But I must be careful,' he muttered—'I must be careful.'

      A clerk entered with his personal letters. It was scarcely seven o'clock, but these fifteen or twenty envelopes had already been sorted from the three thousand missives that constituted his first post; he had his own arrangement with the Post-Office.

      'So it's coming at last,' he said to himself, as he opened an envelope marked 'Private and Confidential' in red ink. The autograph note within was from Senior Polycarp, principal partner in Polycarps, the famous firm of company-promoting solicitors, and it heralded a personal visit from the august lawyer at 11.30 that day.

      In the midst of dictating instructions to the clerk, Mr. Hugo stopped and rang for Shawn.

      'Take that back,' he commanded, indicating the hat. 'I've done with it.'

      'Yes, sir.'

      The hat went.

      'I may just as well be discreet,' his thought ran.

      But her image, the image of the artist in hats, illumined more brightly than ever his soul.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

THE ESTABLISHMENT

       Table of Contents

      Seven years before, when, having unostentatiously acquired the necessary land, and an acre or two over, Hugo determined to rebuild his premises and to burst into full blossom, he visited America and Paris, and amongst other establishments inspected Wanamaker's, the Bon Marché, and the Magasins du Louvre. The result disappointed him. He had expected to pick up ideas, but he picked up nothing save the Bon Marché system of vouchers, by which a customer buying in several departments is spared the trouble of paying separately in each department. He came to the conclusion that the art of flinging money away in order that it may return tenfold was yet quite in its infancy. He said to himself, 'I will build a shop.'

      Travelling home by an indirect route, he stopped at a busy English seaport, and saw a great town-hall majestically rising in the midst of a park. The beautiful building did not appeal to him in vain. At the gates of the park he encountered a youth, who was staring at the town-hall with a fixed and fascinated stare.

      'A fine structure,' Hugo commented to the youth.

      'I think so,' was the reply.

      'Can you tell me who is the architect?' asked Hugo.

      'I am,' said the youth. 'And let me beg of you not to make any remark on my juvenile appearance. I am sick of that.'

      They lunched together, and Hugo learnt that the genius, after several years spent in designing the varnished interiors of public-houses, had suddenly come out first in an open competition for the town-hall; thenceforward he had thought in town-halls.

      'I want a shop putting up,' said Hugo.

      The youth showed no interest.

      'And when I say a shop,' Hugo pursued, 'I mean a shop.'

      'Oh, a shop you mean!' ejaculated the youth, faintly stirred. They both spoke in italics.

      'A real shop. Sloane Street. A hundred and eighty thousand superficial feet. Cost a quarter of a million. The finest shop in the СКАЧАТЬ