Hugo by Arnold Bennett

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HUGO

A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES

BY
ARNOLD BENNETT

Transcriber's Notes:
Mismatched quotes have been normalized.
"L'eat, c'est moi." corrected to "L'etat, c'est moi."
Recalicitant corrected to recalcitrant.
Other oddities in spelling and punctuation have been
left as in the original.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS.

A MAN FROM THE NORTH.
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS.
LEONORA.
A GREAT MAN.
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE.

FANTASIAS.

THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL.
THE GATES OF WRATH.
TERESA OF WATLING STREET.
THE LOOT OF CITIES

SHORT STORIES.

TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS.

BELLES LETTRES.

JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN.
FAME AND FICTION.
HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR.
THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR.

DRAMA.

POLITE FARCES.

HUGO

A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES

BY
ARNOLD BENNETT

AUTHOR OF
'THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL,' 'ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS,' 'A GREAT MAN,'
ETC.

[ILLUSTRATION]

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1906

CONTENTS

PART I
THE SEALED ROOMS

CHAPTER
I. THE DOME
II. THE ESTABLISHMENT
III. HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF
IV. CAMILLA
V. A STORY AND A DISAPPEARANCE
VI. A LAPSE FROM AN IDEAL
VII. POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS
VIII. ORANGE-BLOSSOM
IX. 'WHICH?'
X. THE COFFIN

PART II
THE PHONOGRAPH

XI. SALE
XII. SAFE DEPOSIT
XIII. MR. GALPIN
XIV. TEA
XV. RAVENGAR IN CAPTIVITY
XVI. BURGLARS
XVII. POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN
XVIII. HUSBAND AND WIFE
XIX. WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID

PART III
THE TOMB

XX. 'ARE YOU THERE?'
XXI. SUICIDE
XXII. DARCY
XXIII. FIRST TRIUMPH OF SIMON
XXIV. THE LODGING-HOUSE
XXV. CHLOROFORM
XXVI. SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON
XXVII. THE CEMETERY
XXVIII. BEAUTY

PART I
THE SEALED ROOMS

HUGO

CHAPTER I

THE DOME

He wakened from a charming dream, in which the hat had played a
conspicuous part.

'I shouldn't mind having that hat,' he murmured.

A darkness which no eye could penetrate surrounded him as he lay in bed.
Absolute obscurity was essential to the repose of that singular brain,
and he had perfected arrangements for supplying the deficiencies of
Nature's night.

He touched a switch, and in front of him at a distance of thirty feet
the ivory dial of a clock became momentarily visible under the soft
yellow of a shaded electric globe. It was fifteen minutes past six. At
the same moment a bell sounded the quarter in delicate tones, which fell
on the ear as lightly as dew. In the upper gloom could be discerned the
contours of a vast dome, decorated in turquoise-blue and gold.

He pressed a button near the switch. A portiere rustled, and a young man
approached his bed--a short, thin, pale, fair young man, active and
deferential.

'My tea, Shawn. Draw the curtains and open the windows.'

'Yes, sir,' said Simon Shawn.

In an instant the room was brilliantly revealed as a great circular
apartment, magnificently furnished, with twelve windows running round
the circumference beneath the dome. The virginal zephyrs of a July
morning wandered in. The sun, although fierce, slanted his rays through
the six eastern windows, printing a new pattern on the Tripoli carpets.
Between the windows were bookcases, full of precious and extraordinary
volumes, and over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school.
These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies
which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music.
A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the
ebony instrument stood a mechanical pianoforte-player.

'I must have that hat.'

He paused reflectively, leaning on one elbow, as he made the tea which
Simon Shawn had brought and left on the night-table. And again, at the
third cup, he repeated to himself that he must possess the hat.

He had a passion for tea. His servants had received the strictest orders
to supply him at early morn with materials sufficient only for two cups.
Nevertheless, they were always a little generous, and, by cheating
himself slightly in the first and the second cup, the votary could
often, to his intense joy, conjure a third out of the pot.

After glancing through the newspaper which accompanied the tea, he
jumped vivaciously out of bed, veiled the splendour of his pyjamas
beneath a quilted toga, and disappeared into a dressing-room, whistling.

'Shawn!' he cried out from his bath, when he heard the rattle of the
tea-tray.

'Yes, sir?'

'Play me the Chopin Fantasie, will you. I feel like it.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Simon, and paused. 'Which particular one do you
desire me to render, sir?'

'There is only one, Shawn, for piano solo.'

'I beg pardon, sir.'

The gentle plashing of water mingled with the strains of one of the
greatest of all musical compositions, as interpreted by Simon Shawn with
the aid of an ingenious contrivance the patentees of which had spent
twenty thousand pounds in advertising it.

'Very good, Shawn,' said Shawn's master, coming forward in his
shirt-sleeves as the last echoes of a mighty chord expired under the
dome. He meditatively stroked his graying beard while the pianist
returned to the tea-tray.

'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 facade 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 employes.

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

THE ESTABLISHMENT

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 Marche, and
the Magasins du Louvre. The result disappointed him. He had expected to
pick up ideas, but he picked up nothing save the Bon Marche 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
world!'

The youth started to his feet.

'I've never had any luck,' said he, gazing at Hugo. 'But I believe you
really do understand what a shop ought to be.'

'I believe I do,' Hugo concurred. 'And I want one.'

'You shall have it!' said the youth.

And Hugo had it, though not for anything like the sum he had named.

The four frontages of his land exceeded in all a quarter of a mile. The
frontage to Sloane Street alone was five hundred feet. It was this
glorious stretch of expensive earth which inflamed the architect's
imagination.

'But we must set back the facade twenty feet at least,' he said; and
added, 'That will give you a good pavement.'

'Young man,' cried Hugo, 'do you know how much this land has stood me in
a foot?'

'I neither know nor care,' answered the youth. 'All I say is, what's the
use of putting up a decent building unless people can see it?'

Hugo yielded. He felt as though, having given the genius something to
play with, he must not spoil the game. The game included twelve
thousand pounds paid to budding sculptors for monumental groups of a
symbolic tendency; it included forests of onyx pillars and pillars of
Carrara marble; it included ceilings painted by artists who ought to
have been R.A.'s, but were not; and it included a central court of vast
dimensions and many fountains, whose sole purpose was to charm the eye
and lure the feet of customers who wanted a rest from spending money.
Whenever Hugo found the game over-exciting, he soothed himself by
dwelling upon the wonderful plan which the artist had produced, of his
extraordinary grasp of practical needs, and his masterly solution of the
various complicated problems which continually presented themselves.

After the last bit of scaffolding was removed and the machine in full
working order, Hugo beheld it, and said emphatically, 'This will do.'

All London stood amazed, but not at the austere beauty of the whole, for
only a few connoisseurs could appreciate that. What amazed London was
the fabulous richness, the absurd spaciousness, the extravagant
perfection of every part of the immense organism.

You could stroll across twenty feet of private tessellated pavement,
enter jewelled portals with the assistance of jewelled commissionaires,
traverse furlong after furlong of vistas where nought but man was vile,
sojourn by the way in the concert-hall, the reading-room, or the
picture-gallery, smoke a cigarette in the court of fountains, write a
letter in the lounge, and finally ask to be directed to the stationery
department, where seated on a specially designed chair and surrounded by
the most precious manifestations of applied art, you could select a
threepenny box of J pens, and have it sent home in a pair-horse van.

The unobservant visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant
visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred
cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being
overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive
action, had combined in order to demand from Hugo, not only higher pay,
but an increase in their numbers. Hugo had immediately consented,
expressing regret that their desperate plight had escaped his attention.

The registered telegraphic address of the establishment was 'Complete,
London.'

This address indicated the ideal which Hugo had turned into a reality.
His imperial palace was far more than a universal bazaar. He boasted
that you could do everything there, except get into debt. (His
dictionary was an expurgated edition, and did not contain the word
'credit.') Throughout life's fitful fever Hugo undertook to meet all
your demands. Your mother could buy your layette from him, and your
cradle, soothing-syrup, perambulator, and toys; she could hire your
nurse at Hugo's. Your school-master could purchase canes there. Hugo
sold the material for every known game; also sweets, cigarettes,
penknives, walking-sticks, moustache-forcers, neckties, and
trouser-stretchers. He shaved you, and kept the latest in scents and
kit-bags. He was unsurpassed for fishing-rods, motor-cars, Swinburne's
poems, button-holes, elaborate bouquets, fans, and photographs. His
restaurant was full of discreet corners with tables for two under
rose-shaded lights. He booked seats for theatres, trains, steamers,
grand-stands, and the Empire. He dealt in all stocks and shares. He was
a banker. He acted as agent for all insurance companies. He would insert
advertisements in the agony column, or any other column, of any
newspaper. If you wanted a flat, a house, a shooting-box, a castle, a
yacht, or a salmon river, Hugo could sell, or Hugo could let, the very
thing. He provided strong-rooms for your savings, and summer quarters
for your wife's furs; conjurers to amuse your guests after dinner, and
all the requisites for your daughter's wedding, from the cake and the
silk petticoats to the Viennese band. His wine-cellars and his specific
for the gout were alike famous; so also was his hair-dye.... And,
lastly, when the riddle of existence had become too much for your
curiosity, Hugo would sell you a pistol by means of which you could
solve it. And he would bury you in a manner first-class, second-class,
or third-class, according to your deserts.

And all these feats Hugo managed to organize within the compass of four
floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. Above, were five floors of
furnished and unfurnished flats. 'Will people of wealth consent to live
over a shop?' he had asked himself in considering the possibilities of
his palace, and he had replied, 'Yes, if the shop is large enough and
the rents are high enough.' He was right. His flats were the most
sumptuous and the most preposterously expensive in London; and they
were never tenantless. One man paid two thousand a year for a furnished
suite. But what a furnished suite! The flats had a separate and
spectacular entrance on the eastern facade of the building, with a foyer
that was always brilliantly lighted, and elevators that rose and sank
without intermission day or night. And on the ninth floor was a special
restaurant, with prices to match the rents, and a roof garden, where one
of Hugo's orchestras played every fine summer evening, except Sundays.
(The County Council, mistrusting this aerial combination of music and
moonbeams, had granted its license only on the condition that customers
should have one night in which to recover from the doubtful influences
of the other six.) The restaurant and the roof-garden were a resort
excessively fashionable during the season. The garden gave an excellent
view of the dome, where Hugo lived. But few persons knew that he lived
there; in some matters he was very secretive.

That very sultry morning Hugo brooded over the face of his establishment
like a spirit doomed to perpetual motion. For more than two hours he
threaded ceaselessly the long galleries where the usual daily crowds of
customers, sales-people, shopwalkers, inspectors, sub-managers,
managers, and private detectives of both sexes, moved with a strange and
unaccustomed languor in a drowsy atmosphere which no system of
ventilation could keep below 75 deg. Fahrenheit. None but the chiefs of
departments had the right to address him as he passed; such was the
rule. He deviated into the counting-house, where two hundred typewriters
made their music, and into the annexe containing the stables and
coach-houses, where scores of vans and automobiles, and those elegant
coupes gratuitously provided by Hugo for the use of important clients,
were continually arriving and leaving. Then he returned to the
purchasing multitudes, and plunged therein as into a sea. At intervals a
customer, recognising him, would nudge a friend, and point eagerly.

'That's Hugo. See him, in the gray suit?'

'What? That chap?'

And they would both probably remark at lunch: 'I saw Hugo himself to-day
at Hugo's.'

He took an oath in his secret heart that he would not go near Department
42, the only department which had the slightest interest for him. He
knew that he could not be too discreet. And yet eventually, without
knowing how or why, he perceived of a sudden that his legs carried him
thither. He stopped, at a loss what to do, and then, by the direct
interposition of kindly Fate, a manager spoke to him.... He gazed out of
the corner of his eye. Yes, she was there. He could see her through a
half-drawn portiere in one of the trying-on rooms. She was sitting limp
on a chair, overcome by the tropic warmth of Sloane Street, with her
noble head thrown back, her fine eyes half shut, and her beautiful hands
lying slackly on her black apron.

What an impeachment of civilization that a creature so fair and so
divine should be forced to such a martyrdom! He desired ardently to run
to her and to set her free for the day, for the whole summer, and on
full wages. He wondered if he could trust the manager with instructions
to alleviate her lot.... The next instant she sprang up, giving the
indispensable smile of welcome to some customer who had evidently
entered the trying-on room from the other side. The phenomenon
distressed him. She disappeared from view behind the portiere, and
reappeared, but only for a moment, talking to a foppish old man with a
white moustache. It was Senior Polycarp, the lawyer.

Hugo flushed, and, abandoning the manager in the middle of a sentence,
fled to his central office. He had no confidence in his self-command....
Could this be jealousy? Was it possible that he, Hugo, should be so far
gone? Nay!

But what was Polycarp, that old and desiccated widower, doing in the
millinery department?

He said he must form some definite plan, and begin by giving her a
private room.

CHAPTER III

HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF

'And what,' asked Hugo, smiling faintly at Mr. Senior Polycarp--'what is
your client's idea of price?'

For half an hour they had been talking in the luxurious calm of Hugo's
central office, which was like an island refuge in the middle of that
tossing ocean of business. It overlooked the court of fountains from the
second story, and the highest jet of water threw a few jewelled drops to
the level of its windows.

Mr. Polycarp stroked his beautiful white moustache.

'We would give,' he said in his mincing, passionless voice, 'the cost
price of premises, stock, and fixtures, and for goodwill seven times
your net annual profits. In addition, we should be anxious to secure
your services as managing director for ten years at five thousand a
year, plus a percentage of profits.'

'Hum!'

'And, of course, if you wished part of the purchase-money in shares--'

'Have you formed any sort of estimate of my annual profits?' Hugo
demanded.

'Yes--a sort of estimate.'

'You have looked carefully round, eh?'

'My clients have. I myself, too, a little. This morning, for example.
Very healthy, Mr. Hugo.'

'What departments did you visit this morning? Each has its busy days.'

'Grocery, electrical, and--let me see--yes, furniture.'

'Not a good day for that--too hot! Anything else?'

'No,' said Mr. Polycarp.

'Ah!... Well, and what is your clients' estimate?'

'Naturally, I cannot pretend--'

'Listen, Mr. Polycarp,' said Hugo, interrupting: 'I will be open with
you.'

The lawyer nodded, appreciatively benign. As usual, he kept his thoughts
to himself, but he had the air of adding Hugo to the vast collection of
human curiosities which he had made during a prolonged professional
career.

'My net trading profits last year were L106,000. You are surprised?'

'Somewhat.'

'You expected a higher figure?'

'We did.'

'I knew it. And the figure might be higher if I chose. Only I do things
in rather a royal way, you see. I pay my staff five hundred a week more
than I need. And I allow myself to be cheated.' He laughed suddenly.
'Costume department, for instance. I send charming costumes out on
approval, and fetch them back in two days. And the pretty girls who have
taken off the tickets, and worn the garments, and carefully restored the
tickets, and lied to my carmen--the pretty girls imagine they have
deceived me. They have merely amused me. My detective reports are
excellent reading. And, moreover, I like to think that I have helped a
pretty girl to make the best of herself.'

'Immoral and unbusinesslike, Mr. Hugo.'

'Admitted. I have no doubt that if I put the screw on all round I could
quite justifiably increase my profits by fifty per cent.'

'That shows what a splendid prospect a limited company would have.'

'Yes, doesn't it?' said Hugo joyously.

'But why are your clients so anxious to turn me into a limited
company?'

'They see in your undertaking,' replied Polycarp, folding his thin
hands, 'a legitimate opening for that joint-stock enterprise which has
had such a beneficial effect on England's prosperity.'

'They would make a profit?'

'A reasonable profit. A small syndicate would be formed to buy from you,
and that syndicate would sell to a public company. The usual thing.'

'And where do I come in?'

'Where do you come in, my dear Mr. Hugo? Everywhere! You would receive
over a million in cash. You would have your salary and your percentage,
and you would be relieved of all your present risks.'

'All my present risks?'

'You have risks, Mr. Hugo, because your business has increased so
rapidly that your income is out of all proportion to your capital, which
consists almost solely of buildings which you could not sell at anything
like their cost price in open market, and of goodwill. Now, I ask you,
what is goodwill? What _is_ it? Under our scheme you would at once
become a millionaire in actual fact.'

'Decidedly an inviting prospect,' said Hugo.

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