CHAPTER XXVII

THE HOHENZOLLERN HOTEL

The Hohenzollern Hotel was both physically and spiritually remote from all the other hotels in Beachbourne.

The respectable Grand, facing the Wish, the ponderous Talbot opposite the band-stand, the perky Hydropathic perched on the rise of the hill, the Dudley by the pier, the Cecil, the Bentinck, and all the other hotels with aristocratic names and a middle-class clientele, were at the West-end of the town, interspersed among boarding-houses the whole length of the sea-front from the pier to Beau-nez.

The Hohenzollern stood aloof at the East-end on the edge of the Crumbles, as the Levels here were called.

An immense, modern caravanserai of pretentious neogothic style, it had been dumped down on the shore beyond the long-deserted Redoubt of Napoleonic times.

In front of it was the sea. On its flank, beyond the Fishing Station, stretched the marshes. Behind it, at a respectful distance, crouching in the dust, the mass of mean houses and crowded streets that constituted the East-end.

On these the Hohenzollern, aloof and lordly in its railed-off pleasure grounds, turned an unheeding back. It was unaware of their presence; or rather recognized them only to patronize.

It was a drab area, unfrequented by the fashionable and redolent of the atmosphere of cheap lodging-houses.

The parade ceased at the Redoubt, and ended for promenaders at the pier.

Beyond Splash Point nobody who was anybody ever thought it decent to penetrate. The band-stand, the winter gardens, the brick walls were at the West-end, reaching out towards Beau-nez.

And the Hohenzollern was not only inaccessible, it was self-contained and meant to be.

It possessed its own fine band, its own smooth lawns, its own strip of fore-shore with bathing rafts moored off it and bathing tents on the beach, its own tiny jetty for pleasure boats.

The hotel was German-owned and German-inspired; but it was not the centre of an extensive spy-system as certain of the patriots of East Sussex maintained.

The men and women who launched it as a business proposition were not mad. They were just cosmopolitan financiers who knew a good deal about the human heart on its shady side, and proposed to make money out of their knowledge.

In Beachbourne it was always spoken of as the German Hotel, and its character was well known and probably exaggerated.

The town, called by spiteful rivals on the South Coast Churchy Beachbourne, by reason of the number and variety of its sacred edifices, was shocked and delighted.

Started in the late nineties, the original title of the Hotel was of course the Empire; and its first chairman, Baron Blumenthal, a prominent member of the Primrose League. Then came the slump in British Imperialism after the Boer War. With the advent of a Radical Government it became correct for desperate patriots to affirm with immense emphasis in private, and with less emphasis on public platforms that they would sooner see the country governed by the German Emperor, who was at least a gentleman, than by Lloyd George--that little Welsh attorney.

At the height of this patriotic rally the German Emperor came himself to England; and Beachbourne was thrilled to hear the great and good man was to stop at the Empire Hotel to be under Mr. Trupp.

The Hotel incontinently changed its name to commemorate an event which in fact never took place. Shortly afterwards, however, a Balkan Tsar--also a Hohenzollern--happily did come, and was subjected by Mr. Trupp to the operation prepared for the head of his family.

But if the Hotel changed its name, its reputation remained the same and even grew. In Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Buda-Pesth, men talked of it; and even in India native princes whispered _risqué_ stories about it to their Prime Ministers at the Council Table.

Wherever men spoke of it, they mentioned with smiles its two characteristic traits--the Third Floor and the Head Porter.

The Hohenzollern Hotel, indeed, had two sides, like many a better institution, and deliberately cultivated both.

The Third Floor represented one; and Salvation Joe the other.

There were respectable men and women who stayed regularly at the Hotel on the Crumbles, and denied quite honestly and not without heat all knowledge of the Third Floor and what it stood for. It was a convention at the Hohenzollern that nobody stopping there ever recognized anybody else. You went down to Beachbourne from town with the man who always occupied the chair next you at the club; you sat by his side in the station-bus that bore you to the portals of the Hotel; and then--you parted till Monday morning when you met once more on the platform at the station. Therefore the most staid and admirable of citizens often retired there to be undisturbed. Ministers and their secretaries during a busy Session, homely young couples on their honeymoons, even Bishops and clergymen in retreat. And for these the Hotel had its undoubted advantages. Eastwards the Levels stretched away for miles haunted by none but birds. The fore-shore was private, the sea itself secluded. There were no trippers, and, what mattered more, none of the usual Society week-enders. The former spread themselves between the Redoubt and the pier, the latter from the pier to Beau-nez.

It was for those who sought for quiet at the Hotel that the Head Porter existed. He was known far and wide as Salvation Joe, and always wore the red jersey of his kind by request of the Management; though unkind rumour affirmed that he had forfeited the right to his distinguishing habit.

On Sundays, after lunch, the second dining-room was cleared, and Salvation Joe, all glorious in scarlet apparel, held a meeting for the staff. Visitors would be welcomed, a notice in the hall announced, though as Joe often said with the splendid smile he was alleged to have copied from a recent Archbishop,

"It's only just among ourselves, sir. We call it our 'appy 'our. We just like to meet together the once a week--them and me and the Master."

That pleased the Bishops, who went back to the Athenæum and talked about it over their coffee; it delighted the occupants of the Third Floor, especially on wet Sundays; and, to judge from the attendance, it appeared to be very popular with the staff, who, warmed by the rays from Joe's benevolent eye, sang with enthusiasm _Tell me the old, old story_ and the like.

Moreover it was noticed by the curious that when the men were asked by sceptical visitors whether they _really_ enjoyed it, the invariable answer given in the same sort of voice with the same sort of smile was,

"We calls it our 'appy 'our, miss."

Salvation Joe was not perhaps more of a humbug than most of us: that is to say, he humbugged himself just as much as he humbugged others. At one time he had quite certainly found religion; and if with the advent of middle age he lost it, it is by no means sure that he was aware of his loss.

Certainly he was invaluable to the Management as a counterpoise; and they paid him accordingly. Salvation Joe never took tips. That impressed every one, especially the Third Floor. Through this idiosyncrasy Joe indeed acquired a European reputation. On Monday mornings he stood in the great marbled hall, under a tall palm, among bustling porters and stacks of luggage, a majestic presence, refusing with a martyr's smile the coin that corrupts. His real name was Joseph Collett; and in the boot-room in the basement he was known irreverently as J.C.

The staff attended the service because it paid; and they had to live.

There was only one man who never went; and that man was Ernie.

Joe met him in the passage one day, after he had been at the Hotel a month or more, and stopped him.

"I suppose you haven't got a soul to save then, Caspar?" he began, his great chest rising and falling beneath the flaming jersey.

Ernie grinned sheepishly.

"Well, Mr. Collett, as to that, I guess I've got the same as most."

"But you're too proud to save it," continued the other in a voice like battalions on the march. He laid a frank and friendly hand on Ernie's shoulder. "Come and confess your Redeemer, my lad!" he called. "Come to the foot of the Cross! Throw the burden of your sins on Him! He'll carry em--next Sunday--two o'clock--second dining-room--sharp."

Ernie never went.

It was not that he wished to stand or fall by a principle: Ernie had no hankerings for a martyr's crown. It may have been that he inherited from his father a fine reserve in matters spiritual and that somewhere in the deeps of him there was an invincible repugnance to the methods of the seducer, or merely that he was one of the simple of earth--far too honest to see the path of expediency and follow it.

The other men saw and winked. They did not admire Ernie for refusing to bow the knee, nor was there anything to admire.

"Bloody mug," was all their comment.