by
·
Chapter 1
-
·
Chapter 2
- Arrivals
·
Chapter 3
- The meat-buyer
·
Chapter 4
- The drive
·
Chapter 5
- Gracie at
·
Chapter 6
- Birth of day
·
Chapter 7
- The hotel waking up
·
Chapter 8
- The new life
·
Chapter 9
- Conference
·
Chapter 10
- Laundry
·
Chapter 11
- Shades
·
Chapter 12
- Daughter and father
·
Chapter 13
- Green Parrot
·
Chapter 14
- Volivia
·
Chapter 15
- Cuisine
·
Chapter 16
- Escape
·
Chapter 17
-
·
Chapter 18
- The vacant situation
·
Chapter 19
- Powder and rouge
·
Chapter 20
- The board
·
Chapter 21
- Shareholders
·
Chapter 22
- The resolution
·
Chapter 23
- Susan
·
Chapter 24
- Dogs
·
Chapter 25
- Early morn
·
Chapter 26
- Nerve-storm
·
Chapter 27
- Crime
·
Chapter 28
- Cousin
·
Chapter 29
- Violet's arrival
·
Chapter 30
- Official interview
·
Chapter 31
- Bowels of the hotel
·
Chapter 32
- Initiation
·
Chapter 33
- A friend
·
Chapter 34
- Violet and Mac
·
Chapter 35
- Return to eighth
·
Chapter 36
- Mess lunch
·
Chapter 37
- The new millionaire
·
Chapter 38
- False reprieve
·
Chapter 39
- Housekeepers
·
Chapter 40
- Negotiation
·
Chapter 41
- An attack
·
Chapter 42
- Ceria and Sir Henry
·
Chapter 43
- Sabbath
·
Chapter 44
- The vamp
·
Chapter 45
- The panjandrum's return
·
Chapter 46
- Another conference
·
Chapter 47
- New Year's Eve
·
Chapter 48
- Tessa
·
Chapter 49
- New Year's morning
·
Chapter 50
- In the rain
·
Chapter 51
- After the storm
·
Chapter 52
- Telephone
·
Chapter 53
- Electrons
·
Chapter 54
- Caligula
·
Chapter 55
- On the boulevard
·
Chapter 56
- Declaration
·
Chapter 57
- The glove
·
Chapter 58
- The lovely milkmaid
·
Chapter 59
- Temper
·
Chapter 60
- The cash-girl
·
Chapter 61
- The helpmeet
·
Chapter 62
- Melodrama
·
Chapter 63
- Violet and Ceria
·
Chapter 64
- His letter
·
Chapter 65
- Ceria's office
·
Chapter 66
- Her letter
·
Chapter 67
- Works
·
Chapter 68
- The scene
·
Chapter 69
- Easy-chair
·
Chapter 70
- The Duncannon affair
·
Chapter 71
- Night-work
·
Chapter 72
- Queen Anne
·
Chapter 73
- The supper
Evelyn came down by the lift into the great
front-hall. One of the clocks there showed seven minutes to four; the other
showed six minutes to four. He thought: "I should have had time to shave. This
punctuality business is getting to be a mania with me." He smiled
sympathetically, forgivingly, at his own weakness, which the smile transformed
into a strength. He had bathed; he had drunk tea; he was correctly dressed, in
the informal style which was his--lounge-suit, soft collar, soft hat, light
walking-stick, no gloves; but he had not shaved. No matter. There are dark men
who must shave every twelve hours; their chins are blue. Evelyn was neither
dark nor fair; he might let thirty hours pass without a shave, and nobody but
an inquisitive observer would notice the negligence.
The great front-hall was well lighted; but the
lamps were islands in the vast dusky spaces; at
Reyer, the young night-manager, in stiff shirt and
dinner-jacket, was sitting at the Reception counter, his fair, pale, bored,
wistful face bent over a little pile of documents. An Englishman of French
extraction, he was turning night into day and day into night in order to learn
a job and something about human nature. He would lament, mildly, that he never
knew what to call his meals; for with him dinner was breakfast and breakfast
dinner; as for lunch, he knew it no more. He had been night-manager for nearly
a year; and Evelyn had an eye on him, had hopes of him--and he had hopes of
Evelyn.
As Evelyn approached the counter Reyer
respectfully rose.
"Morning, Reyer."
"Good morning, Mr. Orcham. You're up
early."
"Anything on the night-report?" Evelyn
asked, ignoring Reyer's remark.
"Nothing much, sir. A lady left
"Taxi or car?"
"Walked," said Reyer the laconic.
"Let me see the book."
Reyer opened a manuscript volume and pushed it
across the counter. Evelyn read, without any comment except "Um!" At
"Well, Sam," Evelyn greeted the giant
cheerfully.
"Morning, sir," Sam saluted.
The janissaries, not having been accosted, took
care not to see Evelyn.
"I gather you haven't had to throw anyone out
to-night?" Evelyn waved his cane.
"No, sir." Sam laughed, proud of the
directorial attention. Evelyn pulled out a cigarette. Instantly both the
janissaries leapt to different small tables on which were matches. The winner
struck a match and held it to Evelyn's cigarette.
"Thanks," Evelyn murmured, and, puffing,
strolled towards the back of the hall, where he glanced at himself in a mighty
square column faced with mirror.
No! The nascent beard was completely invisible.
Suit correct, stylish. Handkerchief peeping correctly out of the pocket.
Necktie--he adjusted the necktie ever so little. Shoes correct--not a crease in
them. Well, perhaps the features lacked distinction; the angle of the nose was
a bit too acute; the lower lip heavy, somewhat sensual. But what friendly keen
brown eyes! What delicate ears! And the chin--how enigmatic! The chin would
puzzle any reader of the human countenance. Forty-seven. Did he feel
forty-seven? Could he even believe that he was forty-seven? He felt
thirty--thirty-one. And the simpleton thought that he looked at most thirty-five.
In two and a half years, however, he would be fifty. God! What a prospect!
Well, he didn't care one damn how old he was, or looked, so long as he felt ...
On the whole, quite a presentable creature. But nobody would glance twice at
him in the street. Nobody could possibly guess that he was anyone out of the
ordinary. A pity, possibly. Yet what is, is, and must be accepted with
philosophy. Nevertheless, he was acquainted with idiots, asses, greenhorns and
charlatans whose appearance was so distinguished that they could not enter a
restaurant without arousing respectful curiosity. Funny world.
The séance at the mirror lasted three
seconds--time to adjust the necktie, no more. He moved off. The clock over the
counter showed five minutes to four. Clocks had their moods; they raced, they
stood still, in discordance with the mood of the beholder, maliciously intent
on exasperating him.
Within recent months Evelyn had hung the walls of the
great hall with large, old coloured prints of antique, sunk or broken-up
Atlantic liners, and underneath each a smaller photograph of a modern vessel.
He glanced at an American print of a French liner of the sixties, paddle and
sail. He read the quaint legend beneath: "Length
That contrarious clock still showed five minutes
to four. Long Sam stood moveless; his janissaries stood moveless; young Reyer
sat moveless. The electric lamps burned with the stoical endurance of organisms
which have passed beyond time into eternity. The great hall seemed to lie under
an enchantment. Its darkened extensions, the foyer and the immeasurable
restaurant, seemed to lie under an enchantment. The brighter corridor and
grill-room seemed to lie under an enchantment. Diminished men awaited with
exhaustless patience the birth of day, as they might have awaited the birth of
a child.
ARRIVALS
Sound and lights of a big car, heard and seen
through the glazed frontage of the hall! Revolution of the doors! Long Sam was
already outside; his janissaries were outside; the doors were whizzing with the
speed of the men's exit. Reyer came round the counter. The enchantment was
smashed to bits: phenomenon as swift and unexpected as a street-accident.
Evelyn wondered who could be arriving with such a grandiose pother at four
o'clock in the morning. But his chief concern was the clock, which now showed
three minutes to four. If Jack Cradock did not appear within three minutes the
stout, faithful little man would be late for his rendezvous. And it was Jack's
business to be not merely on time but before time. Evelyn was uneasy. Uneasily
he glanced down the dim vista of the foyer and the restaurant, his back to the
doors through which Jack ought to enter. He heard voices: Long Sam's, Reyer's
and another's.
He turned, in spite of himself, at the tones of
that third voice, polite, but curt, assured, authoritative. Between a felt hat
and a huge overcoat he saw a face with which he was not unacquainted, Sir Henry
Savott's (baronet). Then he remembered that Sir Henry, passenger by the
"Caractacus"--45,000 tons--from
"Hope you haven't got up specially to meet
us," said Sir Henry. "Too bad!"
"No," said Evelyn quietly and
carelessly.
The infernal impudence of these spoilt
millionaires! To imagine that he, Evelyn, would get up specially to meet
anybody on earth!
"I'm glad," said Sir Henry, who was
sorry, hiding all consciousness of a rebuff.
"See. You've come by the 'Caractacus'?"
"Yes. My daughter has driven me and her maid
and some of the light stuff up from
"You're three days late," said Evelyn.
"Yes," Sir Henry admitted.
"Funny rumours about that ship," said
Evelyn.
"Yes," said Sir Henry darkly, in a
manner definitely to close the subject of rumours. He was a large shareholder
in the company which owned the line.
Evelyn perceived two girls in conversation with an
assiduous and impressed Reyer. The young man's deportment was quite good, if a
trifle too subservient. One of the girls wore a magnificent leather coat.
Doubtless Gracie, celebrated in the illustrated press for her thrilling
performances at the wheel at Brooklands. The other, less warmly clad, must be
the maid.
Gracie looked suddenly round, and Evelyn saw her
face, which however he hardly recognised from the photographs of it in
illustrated papers. At a distance of twenty feet he felt the charm of
it--vivacious, agreeable, aware of its own power. Perhaps very beautiful, but
he could not be sure. Anyhow, the face--and the gestures--of an individuality.
Evelyn at once imagined her as a mistress; and as he fenced amiably with the
amiable Sir Henry, who he had some reason to believe would one day soon be
trying to engage him in high finance, his mind dwelt upon the idea of her as a
mistress. He was not an over-sensual man; he was certainly not lascivious. He
was guilty of no bad taste in conceiving this girl, whom he now saw for the first
time, as a mistress in the privacy of his heart. What goes on in a man's heart
is his own affair. And similar thoughts, on meeting young and attractive women,
wander in and out of the hearts of the most staid and serious persons,
unsuspected by a world of beholders apt to reason too conventionally. Evelyn's
was an entirely serious soul, but it had a mortal envelope. He was starved of
women. For years women had been his secret preoccupation. He desired intimacy
with some entrancing, perfect woman. Not the marital intimacy. No. Never again
the marital intimacy. He would make sacrifices for the desired intimacy. But
not the supreme sacrifice. Work first, career first, woman second, even were
she another Helen.
For nearly twenty years Evelyn had been a widower.
Six weeks after his marriage a daily series of inescapable facts had compelled
him to admit to himself that his wife was a furiously self-centred neurotic who
demanded as a natural right everything in exchange for nothing. An incurable.
He had excused her on the ground that she was not to be blamed for her own
mental constitution. He had tolerated her because he was of those who will chew
whatever they may have bitten off. He had protected himself by the application
of the theory that all that happens to a man happens in his own mind and
nowhere else, and therefore that he who is master of his own mind is fortified
against fate. A dogma; but it suited his case. At the end of three years Adela
had died, an unwilling mother with a terrific grievance, in childbed; and the
child had not survived her. The whole experience was horrible. Evelyn mourned.
His sorrow was also a sigh of transcendent relief. Agonising relief, but
relief. Not till the episode was finished did he confess to his mind how
frightfully he had suffered and how imperfectly he had been master of his mind.
He had never satisfactorily answered the great, humiliating question: "How
could I have been such a colossal fool, so blind, so deaf, so utterly mistaken
in my estimate of a woman?" He was left with a quiet but tremendous
prejudice against marriage. I have had luck this time, he thought. Once is
enough. Never again! Never again! He divided wives into those who were an asset
and those who were a liability; and his strong inclination was to conclude, in
the final judgment, that of all the wives he knew not one was an asset. One or
two of them might have the appearance of an asset, yet if you could penetrate
to essentials, if you could learn the inner conjugal secrets, was there one who
was not a liability? He tried to stand away from himself and see that he was
prejudiced, but he could never honestly convict himself of a prejudice in this
matter.
He saw the maid and Reyer pass towards the lift
like apparitions. He noticed that the pretty but tired maid was well-dressed,
probably in clothes that a few months earlier her mistress had been wearing;
but that nevertheless every nervous movement and glance of the girl divulged
her station. He heard Sir Henry's voice and his own like faint echoes. He saw the
janissaries pass towards the lift like apparitions carrying ghostly suit-cases.
He saw Miss Savott herself go towards the doors like an apparition, then
hesitate and glide towards her father like an apparition. And in those brief
seconds the sole reality of his mind was the three years of marriage with
Adela, years whose thousand days and a day swept in detail through his memory
with the miraculous rapidity of a life re-lived by a drowning man.
"Gracie, this is my friend, Mr. Orcham, the
king of his world--I've told you. My daughter."
And now Gracie was the reality. Instinctively he
put one hand to his chin as he raised his hat with the other. Why had he not
shaved? The hair on his enigmatic chin seemed half an inch long.
"I do hope you haven't got up specially to
meet us," said Gracie.
Her father's words, but spoken differently! What a
rich, low, emotional, sympathetic voice, full of modulations! A voice like shot
silk, changing at every syllable!
"No, I didn't," he replied. "But if
I'd known you'd be here so early I certainly might have done. The fact is, I've
got up to go with my meat-buyer to Smithfield Market."
He looked and saw the faithful Cradock standing
meekly expectant at the entrance. The dilatory clock at last showed four.
"I must just lock up the car," said
Gracie. "Shan't be two minutes." She ran off.
"I'm going to bed," Sir Henry called
after her.
"All right, daddy," she called back, not
stopping.
"I'm fortunate enough to be able to sleep
whenever I want to!" said Sir Henry to Evelyn. "Useful, eh?"
"Very," Evelyn agreed.
Wonderful with what naïve satisfaction these
millionaires attributed to themselves the characteristics of Napoleon! He
accompanied Napoleon to the lift, and stayed for a moment chatting about the
hotel. It was as if they were manœuvring for places before crossing the line in
a yacht race.
When Evelyn returned to the hall Gracie Savott
also was returning. She now carried the leather coat on her arm, revealing a
beige frock.
"No, no," she said when he offered to
take the coat. "But have you got a gasper?"
"I never smoke anything else," said
Evelyn.
"Neither do I," said Gracie.
"Thanks."
He thought: "What next?"
The next was that Gracie moved a few feet to a
table, Evelyn following, and put the newly lighted cigarette on an ash-tray,
opened her bag, and began to titivate her face. She was absorbed in this task,
earnest over it; yet she could talk the while. He somehow could not examine her
features in detail; but he could see that she had a beautiful figure. What slim
ankles! What wrists! Les attaches fines. She had a serious expression,
as one engaged on a matter of grave importance. She dabbed; she critically
judged the effect of each dab, gazing closely at her face in the hand-mirror.
And Evelyn unshaved!
"Has daddy really gone to bed?" she
asked, not taking her eyes off the mirror.
"He has."
"He's a great sleeper before the Lord. I
suppose he told you about our cockleshell the 'Caractacus.'"
"Not a word. What about it? We did hear she'd
been rolling a bit."
"Rolling a bit! When we were a day out from
New York, she rolled the dining-room windows under water. The fiddles were on
the tables, but she threw all the crockery right over the fiddles. I was the
only woman at dinner, and there wasn't absolutely a legion of men either. They
said that roll smashed seventeen thousand pounds' worth of stuff. I thought
she'd never come up again. The second officer told daddy next day that he
never thought she'd come up again. It was perfectly thrilling. But she did come
up. Everyone says she's the worst roller that ever sailed the seas."
During this narration Gracie's attention to the
mirror did not relax.
"Well," said Evelyn calmly. "Of
course it must have been pretty bad weather to make a big ship like that three
days late."
"Weather!" said Gracie. "The
weather was awful, perfectly dreadful. But it wasn't the weather that made her
three days late. She split right across. Yes, split right across. The
observation-deck. A three-inch split. Anyhow I could put my foot into it. Of
course it was roped off. But they showed it to daddy. They had to. And I saw it
with him."
"Do you mean to say--" Evelyn began,
incredulous.
"Yes, I do mean to say," Gracie stopped
him. "You ask daddy. Ask anyone who was on board. That's why she's going
to be laid up for three months. They talk about 're-conditioning.' But it's the
split."
"But how on earth--?" Evelyn was
astounded more than he had ever been astounded.
"Oh! Strain, or something. They saidit
was something to do with them putting two new lifts in, and removing a steel
cross-beam or whatever they call it. But daddy says don't you believe it. She's
too long for her strength, and she won't stand it in any weather worth talking
about. Of course she was German built, and the Germans can't build like us.
Don't you agree?"
"No. I don't," said Evelyn, with a smile
to soften the contradiction, slightly lifting his shoulders.
"Oh, you don't? That's interesting now."
Evelyn raised his cane a few inches to greet Jack
Cradock, who replied by raising his greenish hard hat.
"Now," thought Evelyn, somewhere in the
midst of the brain-disturbance due to Gracie's amazing news. "This is all
very well, but what about Smithfield? She isn't quite a young girl. She must be
twenty-five, and she knows that I haven't got up at four o'clock for small-talk
with women. Yet she behaves as if I hadn't anything to do except listen to her.
She may stay chattering here for half an hour."
He resented this egotistical thoughtlessness so
characteristic of the very rich. At the same time he was keenly enjoying her
presence. And he liked her expensive stylishness. The sight of a really smart
woman always gave him pleasure. In his restaurant, when he occasionally
inspected it as a spy from a corner behind a screen, he always looked first for
the fashionable, costly frocks, and the more there were the better he was
pleased. He relished, too, the piquancy of the contrast between Gracie's
clothes and the rough masculinity of her achievements on Brooklands track in
the monstrous cars which Sir Henry had had specially built for her, and her
night-driving on the road from Southampton. Only half an hour ago she had
probably been steering a big car at a mile a minute on a dark curving road. And
here with delicate hands she was finishing the minute renewal of her delicate
face. Her finger-nails were stained a bright red.
So the roll from which nobody hoped that the ship
would recover, the roll which had broken seventeen thousand pounds' worth of
stuff, was merely 'thrilling' to her. And she had put her little foot into the
split across the deck. What a sensation that affair ought to cause! What unique
copy for the press! Nevertheless, would it cause a sensation? Would the press
exploit it? He fancied not. The press would give descriptive columns to the
marvels and luxuries of a new giant liner. But did anybody ever read in any
paper--even in any anti-capitalistic paper--that a famous vessel rolled, or
vibrated, or shook? Never! Never a word in derogation! As for the incredible
cross-split, result of incorrect calculations of the designer, no editor would
dare to refer to it in print. To do so would damage Atlantic traffic for a
whole season--and incidentally damage the hotel business. The four-million-pound
crack was protected by the devoted adherence of the press to the dogma that
transatlantic liners are perfect. And let no one breathe a word concerning the
relation between editors and advertisement-managers.
Miss Savott had kept the leather coat on her arm
while doing her face. The face done, and her bag shut again, she dropped the
cloak on the small table by her side. Womanish! Proof of a disordered and
inconsequent mind. She resumed the cigarette, which had been steadily sending
up a vertical wavering wisp of smoke.
"Mr. Orcham," she said ingratiatingly,
intimately, stepping near to him, "will you do something for me? . . .I
simply daren't ask you."
"If I can," he smiled. (Had experience
taught her that she was irresistible?)
"Oh, you can! I've been dying for
years to see Smithfield Market in the middle of the night. Would you mind very
much taking me with you? I would drive you there. The car's all ready. I didn't
lock it up after all."
Here was his second amazement. These people were
incredible--as incredible as the split in the 'Caractacus.' How did she suppose
he could transact his business at Smithfield with a smart young woman hanging
on to him?
She added, like an imploring child:
"I won't be in the way. I'd be as small as a
mouse."
They read your thoughts.
Not 'as quiet as a mouse.' 'As small as a mouse.'
Better. She had a gift for making her own phrases.
"But surely you must be terribly tired. I've
had four and a half hours' sleep."
"Me! Tired! I'm like father--and you--I'm
never tired. Besides, I slept my head off on the ship."
She looked appealingly up at him. Yes,
irresistible! And she well knew it!
"Well, if you really aren't too tired, I
shall be delighted. And the market is very interesting."
And in fact he was delighted. There were grave disadvantages,
naturally; but he dismissed them from his mind, to make room for the
anticipation of being driven by her through the night-streets of London.
Sitting by her! He was curious to see one of these expert racing drivers, and
especially the fastest woman-driver in the world, at the wheel.
"You're frightfully kind," said she.
"I'll just--"
"How did you know I'm never tired?" he
interrupted her.
"I could see it in your shoulders," she
answered. "You aren't, are you?"
"Not often," he said, proud, thrilled,
feverish.
"See it in my shoulders," he thought.
"Odd little creature. Her brain's impish. That's what it is. Well, perhaps
she can see it in my shoulders." Indeed he was proud.
"I'll just fly upstairs one moment. Shan't
keep you. Where's the lift?" But she had descried the lift and was gone.
"Reyer," he called. "Just see Miss
Savott to her suite."
Reyer ran. The lift-man judiciously waited for
him.
And Evelyn, Nizam of the immense organism of the
hotel, reflected like an ingenuous youth:
"I know everyone thinks I'm very reserved.
And perhaps I am. But she's got right through that, into me. And she's
the first. She must have taken a liking to me. Here I've only known her about
six minutes and she's--" Somewhere within him a point of fire glowed. He
advanced rather self-consciously towards the waiting Cradock. And, advancing,
he remembered that, on her first disappearance, after saying she would be two
minutes, Gracie Savott had been away only half a minute. She was not the sort
of girl to keep a man waiting. No!. . . But barely half his own age.
THE
MEAT-BUYER
Jack Cradock's age was fifty-nine. He was short,
stoutish, very honest, and very shrewd. His clothes were what is called 'good,'
that is to say, of good everlasting cloth well sewed; but they had no style
except Jack's style. His income nearly touched a thousand a year. With his
savings he bought house-property. No stocks and shares for him. He had as fine
an eye for small house-property as for a lamb's carcass. He had always been in
the Smithfield trade. His father had been a drover when cattle strolled
leisurely to London over roads otherwise empty. He went to bed at eight o'clock,
and rose at three--save on Sundays. Daylight London seemed to him rather odd,
unnatural.
He had been meat-buyer to the hotel in the years
when it was merely a hotel among hotels, before Evelyn took control of it. In
those years there existed in the buying departments abuses which irked Jack's
honesty. He saw them completely abolished. He saw the hotel develop from a
hotel among hotels into the unique hotel, whose sacred name was uttered in a
tone different from the tone used for the names of all other hotels. He
recognised in Evelyn a fellow-devotee of honesty in a world only passably
honest; a man of scrupulous fairness, a man of terrific industry, a man of most
various ability and most quiet authority, a real swell. Jack had heard that
Evelyn gave lectures on wines to his own wine-waiters, that he tasted every
wine before purchase, and chose every brand of cigar himself; and Jack
marvelled thereat. He had heard, further, that Evelyn knew everything about
vegetables; but Covent Garden, which he regarded as a den of thieves, had no
interest for Jack. Apart from potatoes and occasional broad beans and spring
onions, he never ate vegetables; salads he could not bear.
Of course Evelyn did not know as much about meat
as Jack--who did?--but he knew a lot, and he did not pretend to more knowledge
than he possessed. That was what Jack liked in Evelyn: absence of pretence. He
adored Evelyn with a deep admiration and a humble, sturdy affection equally
deep. Evelyn often asked after his wife, and the boy in the navy.
He was now waiting for his august governor with
impatience well concealed. He saw Gracie run off to the lift. He himself had
never been in any but the service-lifts. He had never seen the restaurant
except when it was empty and the table-tops dark green instead of white, and
the chairs packed; but he knew the restaurant-kitchen, and had frequent
interviews with the gesticulatory and jolly French chef in the chef's office
outside whose door two clerks worked. He had never been in any bedroom. He
imagined all manner of strange and even unseemly happenings in the suites. He
rarely had glimpses of the hotel's clientele, and his shrewd notion was that he
would be antipathetic to it. Still, it wanted the best meat, and he provided
the best meat; and that was something. He strove conscientiously to think well
of the clientele.
He did not like the look of Miss Gracie Savott.
She coincided too closely with what he would describe in his idiom as 'a bit
too tasty.' He was aware that women, more correctly ladies, smoked, but he
objected to their smoking, especially the young ones; his married daughter,
nevertheless a fine and capricious piece, did not smoke, and had she attempted
to do so would probably have been dissuaded from persevering by physical
violence at the joint hands of her father and her husband. As a boy he had seen
ancient hags smoking short clay pipes on the house-steps of large villages. A
hag, however, was a hag, and a cutty pipe suited her indrawn lips. But that a
fresh young girl, personable, virginal, should brazenly puff tobacco--that was
different.
Nor could he approve of Gracie's general demeanour
towards the governor. Too bold, too insinuating, too impudent. Hardly decent!
Most shocking of all was the spectacle of Gracie daring--daring to paint and
powder her saucy face in the presence of the governor. Shameless! And the
governor tolerated it! If the governor had not been above all criticism Jack
would have ventured in his heart to criticise the demeanour of the governor
towards Gracie. Too boyish, too youthful; a hint of the swain about it! Well,
the chit was gone now.
The governor strolled slowly down the hall to the
doors where Jack stood waiting. A little self-conscious, the governor was, in
his walk. Seldom before had Jack seen the governor self-conscious. His
confidence in the governor was a great solid rock. He felt a momentary tremor
in the rock. It ceased; it was not a tremor; it was imperceptible: he had been
mistaken. Yet...
"Morning, Jack. Sorry to keep you. Shan't be
a minute."
"Morning, governor. No hurry, but we ought to
be getting along. I have a taxi waiting." The customary tranquil
benevolence of the governor's tone reassured him.
"Just tell me again about that Jebson young
man. I want to know exactly before I see him. You said he's only recently come
into the business."
"Yes, sir," Jack began. "And if you
ask me, he thinks he's the emperor of Smithfield. His uncle's a tough 'un, but
nothing to young Charlie Jebson. I get on pretty comfortably with everybody in
the markets except him. Tries to make out he don't care whether he does
business or not. But he can't put that across me. No! And everybody but him
knows he can't. His uncle knows it. Ten shilling a stone's the right price for
the best Scotch. And Charlie knows that too. But 'ten and six,' he says. 'Ten
and two,' I say, wishing to meet him. 'Ten and two! You've got the b. ten and
two fever, Cradock,' he says. 'And you've got the b. half-guinea fever.' I
says. 'Don't ask me to come back,' I says. 'Because I shan't. I've got my best
coat on,' I says. Then he turns on me and gives me a basinful, and I give him
one. Nothing doing, governor. And his uncle's afraid of him. It was all over
the Market."
"Well," said Evelyn, with a faint, mild
smile. "We'll give him a miss in future."
"Yes, governor," said Jack anxiously.
"But supposing he takes it, supposing he accepts of it! Jebsons have the
finest Scotch beef in the market. It was Charlie's grandfather as started the
Scotch beef trade in Smithfield. And the best Scotch--it's none so easy to come
by. Sometimes three days and I don't see a side I fancy--not what you may call the
best."
"Try him with ten and four."
"Yes, governor, and have all the rest of 'em
jumping at me. Besides, I told him ten and two was my last word."
"That's enough," said Evelyn. "If
you said it you said it, and we shan't go back on you, even if we have to buy
Argentine!" He soothingly patted Jack's shoulder.
Jack was more than soothed--he was delighted. This
was the rock, and never had it quivered.
"The fact is," said Jack in an easier
tone, "Charlie's got it into his head that I'm making a bit on it. And
that's why when you said you'd come up with me one morning and show yourself, I
thought it 'ud be a good move. If that won't settle Master Charlie, I don't
know what will."
To himself Jack was thinking: "Well then, why
doesn't he come? I could have told him all this in the taxi. And this is the
first time I've ever had to tell him anything twice. I'm going to be
late."
"Listen!" said Evelyn, after some more
unnecessary talk. "You go on. Take the taxi you've got. I'll follow. I'll
ask for Jebsons', and you'll find me somewhere near it. Sir Henry Savott--very
important customer and a very important man too, in the City--wants me to take
his daughter and show her Smithfield. Bit awkward. Couldn't refuse though. They
have a car here. I might get there before you, Jack." Evelyn laughed.
Jack mistrusted the laugh. He had no suspicion
that the paragon of honesty had told him a lie; but he mistrusted the tone of voice
as well as the laugh. Something a wee bit funny about it.
"Do you mean that young lady you were talking
to, governor?" Jack asked in a voice that vibrated with apprehension.
"Yes, that's the one. Off you go now."
Jack passed quickly in silence through the
revolving doors. He was thunderstruck. He could hardly have been more perturbed
if the entire hotel had fallen about his ears. The entire hotel had indeed
fallen about his ears. The governor, the pattern, the exemplar, the perfect
serious man, taking that prancing hussy into Smithfield Market! Of all places!
There was never a woman to be seen in Smithfield before nine o'clock, unless it
might be a street-singer with her man going home after giving a show outside
the Cock Tavern. The talk to-morrow morning! The jokes he'd have to hear
afterwards--and answer with better jokes! Rock? The rock was wobbling from side
to side, ready to crash, ready to crush him. He climbed heavily into the taxi,
sighing.
THE
DRIVE
For the first ten minutes of waiting Evelyn
forgave the girl. During the second ten minutes he grew resentful. It was just
like these millionaires to assume that nothing really mattered except their own
convenience. Did she suppose that he had risen at three-thirty for the delight
of frittering away twelve, sixteen, nineteen irrecoverable minutes of eternity
while she lolled around in her precious suite? Monstrous! Worse, he was
becoming a marked man to Reyer, Long Sam, and the janissaries. They did not yet
know that he was waiting for a girl; but they would know the moment she
appeared and went off with him. Worse still, she was destroying the character
with which he had privately endowed her. She arrived, smiling. And in an
instant he had forgotten the twenty minutes, as one instantly forgets twenty
days of bad weather when a fine day dawns.
"Sorry to keep you. Complications," said
she, with composure.
He wondered whether the complications had been
caused by a forbidding father.
She had changed her hat, and put on a thin, dark,
inconspicuous cloak.
The car was Leviathan. A landaulette body, closed.
She opened one of its front-doors, and picked up a pair of loose gloves from
the driver's seat. An attendant janissary found himself forestalled, and had to
stand unhelpful.
"Open?" she asked, in a tone expecting
an affirmative answer.
"Rather."
"No. I'll do it. This is a one-girl hood. You
might just wind down the window on your side."
In ten seconds the car was open.
"But I'm going to sit by you," said
Evelyn.
She was lowering the glass partition behind the
driver's seat.
"Of course," said she. "But I like
it all open so that the wind can blow through."
By the manner in which she manœuvred Leviathan out
of the courtyard, which an early cleaner had encumbered with a long gushing
hose-pipe, Evelyn knew at once that she was an expert of experts. In a moment
they were in Birdcage Walk. In another moment they were out of Birdcage Walk,
and slipping into Whitehall. In yet another moment they were in the Strand. It
was still night. The sun had not given the faintest announcement to the
revolving earth's sombre eastern sky that he was mounting towards the horizon.
There was an appreciable amount of traffic. She never hesitated, not for the
fraction of a second. Her judgment was instantaneous and infallible. Her
accelerations and decelerations, her brakings, could hardly be perceived.
Formidable Leviathan was silent. Not a murmur beneath the bonnet. But what
speed--in traffic! Evelyn saw the finger of the speedometer rise to
forty--forty-two.
"Do you know the way?" he asked.
"I do," she replied.
Strange that she should know the way to
Smithfield.
Suddenly she said:
"What brought you into the hotel
business?"
He replied as suddenly:
"The same thing that brought you to motoring.
Instinct. I was always fond of handling people, and organising."
"Always? Do you mean even when you were a
boy?"
"Yes, when I was a boy. You know, clubs and
things, and field-excursions. I managed the refreshment department at Earl's
Court one year. Then through some wine-merchant I got the management of the Wey
Hotel at Weybridge. I rebuilt that. Then I had to add two wings to it."
"But this present show of yours?"
"Oh! Well. They wanted a new manager here,
and they sent for me. But I wouldn't leave the Wey. So to get me they bought
the Wey."
"And what happened to the Wey?"
"Nothing. I'm still running it. Going down
there this morning. Can't go every day. When you've got the largest
luxury-hotel in the world on your hands--"
"The largest?"
"The largest."
"Have you been to America? I thought in
America--"
"Yes. All over America. I expected to learn a
bit in America, but I didn't. You mean those '2,000 bedrooms--2,000 bathrooms'
affairs. Ever stayed in one? No, of course you haven't. Not your sort. Too
wholesale and rough-and-ready. Not what we call luxury-hotels. Rather
behind the times. They haven't got past 'period'-furnishing. Tudor style.
Jacobean style. Louis Quinze room. And so on. And as for bathrooms--well, they
have to come to my 'show' to see bathrooms."
He spoke as it were ruthlessly, but very simply
and quietly. When she spoke she did not turn her head. She seemed to be
speaking in a trance. He could examine her profile at his ease. Yes, she was
beautiful.
At Ludgate Circus, a white-armed policeman was
directing traffic under electric lamps just as in daylight.
"How funny!" she said, swinging round to
the left so acutely that Evelyn's shoulder touched hers.
In no time they would reach their destination. For
this reason and no other he regretted the high speed. The fresh wind that
precedes the dawn invigorated and sharpened all his senses. He recalled Dr.
Johnson's remark that he would be content to spend his life driving in a
postchaise with a pretty woman. But the pretty woman would not have been
driving. This girl was driving. She profoundly knew the job. Evelyn always had
a special admiration for anybody who profoundly knew the job. She even knew the
streets of commercial and industrial London. Before he was aware of it, the
oddest thoughts shot through his mind.
"Her father might object. But I could handle
her father. Besides--what a girl! Lovely, and can do something! No one who
drives like her could possibly not have the stuff in her. I've never met
anybody like her. She likes me. No nonsense about her! What a voice! Her voice
is enough. It's like a blooming orchestra, soft and soothing, but so. . . Here!
What's this? What's all this. It isn't an hour since I met her. I'm the wildest
idiot ever born. Marriage? Never. A mistress? Impossible. Neither she nor any
other woman. The head of a 'show,' as she calls it, like mine with a
mistress!"
He laughed inwardly, awaking out of a dream. And
as he awoke he heard her beautiful voice saying, while her eyes stared straight
ahead:
"What I admire in you is that you don't act.
I know you must be a pretty biggish sort of a man. Well, father's pretty big--at
least I'm always being told so--but father can't help acting the big man,
acting what he is. He's always feeling what he is. You're big and so you
must know you're big; but you just let it alone. It doesn't worry you into
acting the part. I know. I've seen lots of big men."
"Oh!" murmured Evelyn, cautious,
non-committal, and short of the right words. But he was thinking rapidly again:
"And she hadn't met me an hour
ago! What a girl! No girl ever said anything as extraordinary as what she's
just said. And it's true, what she says. Didn't I see it in her father? I was
afraid I might have seemed boastful, the way I talked about me and my 'show.'
But apparently she didn't misunderstand me. Most girls would have
misunderstood. Really she is a bit out of the ordinary."
Smithfield Markets with their enclosed lighted
avenues shone out twinkling in the near distance, on the other side of a large,
dark, irregular open space of ground. Gracie glanced to right and left, decided
where she would draw up, and, describing a long, evenly sustained curve, drew
up in a quiet corner, slow, slower, slowest--motion expiring without a jar into
immobility. She clicked the door and jumped down with not a trace of fatigue
after a bedless night nearly ended. Her tongue said nothing, but her demeanour
said: "And that's that! That's how I do it!"
"Well," remarked Evelyn, still in the
car. "You said something about me. I'll say something about you. You can
drive a car."
Gracie answered: "I don't drive any
more."
"What do you mean--you don't drive any
more?"
"I mean race-track driving. I've given it up.
This isn't driving."
"Had an accident?"
"An accident? No! I've never touched a thing
in my life. But I might have done. I thought it wasn't good enough--the risk.
So I gave it up. I thought I might as well keep the slate clean." She
smiled ingenuously, smoothing her cloak.
"And what a slate! What a nerve to retire
like that!" Evelyn reflected, and said aloud: "You're amazing!"
He had again the sensation of the romantic quality of life. He was uplifted
high.
"So here we are," said Gracie, suddenly
matter-of-fact.
A policeman strolled into the vicinity.
"Can I leave my car here, officer?" she
questioned him briskly, authoritatively.
The policeman paused, peering at her in the dying
night.
"Yes, miss."
"It'll be quite safe?"
"I'll keep an eye on it, miss."
"Thank you."
Evelyn, accustomed to take charge of all
interviews, parleys, and pow-wows, had to be a silent spectator. As he led her
into the Market, he trembled at the prospect of the excitement, secret and
overt, which her appearance would cause there.
GRACIE
AT SMITHFIELD
Gracie, though for different reasons, felt perhaps
just as nervous as Evelyn himself when they entered the meat-market; but within
the first few moments her nervousness was utterly dissolved away in the strong
sense of romance which surged into her mind and destroyed everything else
therein.
The illimitable interior had four chief colours:
bright blue of the painted constructional ironwork, all columns and arches;
red-pink-ivories of meat; white of the salesmen's long coats; and yellow of
electricity. Hundreds of bays, which might or might not be called shops, lined
with thousands of great steel hooks from each of which hung a carcass, salesmen
standing at the front of every bay, and far at the back of every bay a sort of
shanty-office in which lurked, crouching and peering forth, clerks pen in hand,
like devilish accountants of some glittering, chill inferno.
One long avenue of bays stretched endless in
front, and others on either hand, producing in the stranger a feeling of
infinity. Many people in the avenues, loitering, chatting, chaffing, bickering!
And at frequent intervals market-porters bearing carcasses on their
leather-protected shoulders, or porters pushing trucks full of carcasses, sped
with bent heads feverishly through the avenues, careless of whom they might
throw down or maim or kill. An impression of intense, cheerful vitality,
contrasting dramatically with the dark somnolence of the streets around! A
dream, a vast magic, set in the midst of the prosaic reality of industrial
sleep! You were dead; you stepped at one step into the dream; you were alive.
Everything was incredibly clean. The blue paint
was shining clean; the carcasses were clean; the white coats of the salesmen
were clean; the chins of the salesmen were clean and smooth; many of them
showed white, starched collars and fancy neckties under the white coats. Very
many of them had magnificent figures, tall, burly, immense, healthy, jolly.
None of them had any air of fatigue or drowsiness or unusualness. The hour was
twenty minutes to five, and all was as customary as the pavements of Bond
Street at twenty minutes to noon. And the badinage between acquaintances,
between buyers and sellers, was more picturesque than that of Bond Street.
Gracie caught fragments as she passed. "You dirty old tea-leaf."
"Go on, you son of an unmarried woman."
Gracie was delighted. A world of males, of
enormous and solid males. She was the only woman in the prodigious, jostling
market. A million males, and one girl. She savoured the contrast between the
one and the million, belittling neither. Of course Evelyn and she were marked
for inquisition by curious, glinting eyes. They puzzled curiosity. They ought
to have been revellers, out to see the night-life of London. But the sedate,
reserved Evelyn looked no reveller, nor did she in her simple, dark cloak. But,
she thought, they knew a thing or two, did those males! With satisfaction she
imagined the free imaginings behind their eyes. She was proud to be the one
against the million. Let them think! Let their imaginations work! She felt her
power. And never, not even at
Withal, at a deeper level than these Dionysiac
sensations, was a sensation nobler, which rose up through them. The desire for
serious endeavour. At the wheel of a racing-car, built specially for her to her
father's order, Gracie had been conscious of a purpose, of a justification. The
track involved an austere rule of life; abstinence, regularity, early hours,
the care of nerves, bodily fitness. Eight or ten months ago she had exhausted
the moral potentialities of racing. Racing held nothing more for her. She had
tired of it as a traveller tires of an island, once unknown, which he has
explored from end to end. She had abandoned it. Her father had said: "You
can't stick to anything." But her father did not understand.
She had fallen into sloth and self-indulgence,
aimless, restless, unhappy. Her formidable engine-power was wasting itself. She
had rejoined her smart friends, formed the habit of never wanting to go to bed
and never wanting to get up, scattered her father's incalculable affluence with
both hands, eaten, drunk, gambled, refused herself no fantastic luxury (Sir
Henry being negligently, perhaps cynically, compliant), lived the life
furiously. And the life was death. Against his inclination, her father had
taken her with him to America. She had had hopes of the opportunities and the
energy of America. They were frustrated. In New York she had lived the life
still more furiously. And it was worse than death. While in New York Sir Henry
had put through one of his favourite transactions: sold his splendid London
house at a rich profit. He had a fondness for selling London homes over the
heads of himself and Gracie. He had two country-houses; but the country meant
little to Gracie, and less to him. Hence, this night, the hotel. The man would
reside in hotels for months together.
Gracie had reached the hotel, in the middle of the
night, without any clear purpose in mind. She had loved with violence more than
once, but never wisely. She had now no attachment--and only one interest:
reading. She had suddenly discovered reading. Shakspere had enthralled her. On
the Atlantic voyage she had gulped down two plays of Shakspere a day. At
present, for her, it was Shakspere or nothing. The phenomenon was beyond her
father; but it flattered his paternal vanity, demonstrated to him that he had
begotten no common child. First racing, now Shakspere! Something Homeric about
Gracie, and she his daughter! Out of Shakspere and other special reading, a
project was beginning to shape in the girl's soul, as nebulae coalesce into a
star. But it was yet too vague to be formulated. Then the hotel. Then Evelyn Orcham,
whose name Sir Henry had casually mentioned to her with candid respect. Then
the prospect of fabled Smithfield before dawn. Evelyn had impressed her at the
first glance: she did not know why. And she divined that she in turn had
impressed him. She admired him the more because he had not leapt at her
suggestion of going with him to Smithfield, because for a few moments he had
shown obvious reluctance to accept it. Not a man to be swept off his feet. A
self-contained, reserved man. Shy. Quiet. Almost taciturn, with transient moods
of being confidential, intimate. Mysterious. Dangerous, beneath a conventional
deportment. You never knew what might be hidden in the depths of a man like
that. Enigmatic. Diffident; but very sure of himself. In short. . . was he
married? Had he a hinterland? Well, his eyes didn't look as if he had.
And now she was in Smithfield, and her prophetic
vision of it, her hopes of it, had been right. Smithfield had not deceived her.
A romantic microcosm of mighty males, with a redoubtable language of their own.
A rude, primeval, clean, tonic microcosm, where work was fierce and
impassioned. A microcosm where people got up early and thought nothing of
getting up early, and strove and haggled and sweated, rejoicing in the
purchase and sale of beef and mutton and pork. To get up early and strive,
while the dull world was still asleep: this it was that appealed to Gracie.
Freshness and sanity of earliest dark cool mornings! She wanted to bathe in
Smithfield as in a bath, to drench herself in it, to yield utterly to it.
Smithfield was paradise, and a glorious hell.
BIRTH
OF DAY
"Ah! There's Cradock," said Evelyn.
"He's our buyer. I'll introduce him to you. The little man there. The one
that's sticking a skewer into that lamb."
Gracie recognised the man who had been waiting in
the great hall of the hotel. Having stuck the skewer into the carcass, Jack
pulled it out and put it to his nose. Then, while Evelyn and Gracie watched, he
stuck a skewer into the next lamb, and finally left a skewer in each lamb: sign
that they were his chosen.
"Chines and ends," Gracie heard him say,
as he scribbled in a note-book.
He saw Evelyn.
"Here we are, Cradock," said Evelyn.
"This is Miss Savott. Knows all about motor-racing. Now she wants to know
all about Smithfield."
Jack clasped her slim hand in his thick one.
"I do think your market is marvellous, Mr.
Cradock!" Gracie greeted him, genuine enthusiasm in her emotional low
voice. Her clasp tightened on the thick hand, and held it.
"Glad to meet you, miss."
"It's so big and so clean. I love this blue
paint."
"Glad to hear that, miss. There's some of 'em
would sooner have the old green. . . a bit of it over there." He pointed.
"That's nice too. But I prefer the blue,
myself."
Jack was conquered at once, not by her views on
blue and green paint, but by her honest manner, by her beauty, and by the
warmth of her trifling, fragile, firm fingers. He thought, "Governor knows
what's what. Trust him!" And since the relations of men and women are
essentially the same in all classes, and his ideas concerning them had been
made robust and magnanimous by many contacts with meat-salesmen of terrific
physique, he began privately to wish the governor well in whatever the governor
might be about. Anyhow it was none of his business, and the governor could
indeed be trusted, had nothing to learn.
"You see those lambs, sir," he murmured.
"I guarantee there isn't ten lambs like them in all London to-day!"
Evelyn nodded. The carcasses were already lifted
off their hooks. Gracie saw them put on a huge carving block, and watched a
carver in bloody blue divide them with a long razor-knife and a saw. In a
moment the operation was performed, and so delicately and elegantly that it had
no repulsiveness. The carvers were finished surgeons for Gracie, not butchers.
"That's got to be served, for lunch at the
hotel this morning," said Jack to her. "We hang the beef for five or
six days--used to hang it for twelve or fourteen. But you ladies and gentlemen
alter your tastes, you see, miss, and we have to follow. You see all that
calves' liver there. Not so many years ago, I could buy as much as I wanted at
sixpence a pound. Would you believe me, it costs me two shillings these days!
All because them Harley Street doctors say it's good for anæmia." He
turned to Evelyn: "That's Charlie Jebson, governor. Next door." He
jerked his head.
"Let's go and talk to him," said Evelyn,
easily.
Mr. Charles Jebson was a very tall man, with a
good figure, and dandiacal in dress.
"This is my governor, Mr. Orcham, Charlie.
And this is Miss Savott, come to see what we do up here. Mr. Charles
Jebson."
Charles became exceedingly deferential. He shook
hands with Gracie like a young peer in swallow-tails determined to ingratiate
himself with a chorus-girl. Gracie smiled to herself, thinking: "What a
dance I could lead him!"
"You do get up early here, Mr. Jebson,"
she said. "When do you sleep?"
"I don't, miss," he replied, smirking.
"At least--well, three or four hours. Make it up Sundays. Perhaps you know
the Shaftesbury, in Shaftesbury Avenue. Express lunch and supper counter.
That's mine. They call me 'the governor' there, when I go in of a night to
tackle the books and keep an eye on things. Not so much time for sleep, you'll
freely admit." Gracie's notion of him was enlarged. White coat before
dawn. Restaurateur in the centre of theatre-land at supper-time! A romantic
world!
"It's all too marvellous!" she said
admiringly.
Charlie showed pride. A procession of four laden
porters charged blindly down the avenue, shouting. Gracie received a glancing
blow on the shoulder. She spun round, laughing. Jack moved her paternally away
to shelter. A nun, hands joined in front, eyes downcast, walked sedately along
the avenue, a strange, exotic visitant from another sphere. The spectacle
startled Gracie, shaking all her ideals, somehow shaming her.
"Why is she here?" she demanded of Jack
with false casualness.
"I couldn't say, miss, for sure. Little
Sister of the Poor, or something. Come for what she can get. Food for orphans,
I shouldn't be surprised. They're very generous in the Market." He added
discreetly, as Gracie made as if to return to Evelyn, "Governor's got a
bit of business with Mr. Jebson."
"Oh yes." And she asked him some
questions about what she saw.
"Refrigerators," he said. "Thirty
years ago when I first came here there wasn't an ice-box in the place."
Gracie could overhear parts of the conversation
between Charlie and Evelyn. Evelyn laughed faintly. Charlie laughed loudly. It
went on.
"I hope we shall be able to continue to do
business together, Mr. Jebson," Evelyn said at length.
"It won't be my fault if we don't, sir,"
Charlie deferentially replied.
"That's good," said Evelyn. "I know
there's no beef better than yours. I didn't know you had a restaurant. I've
often noticed the Shaftesbury. One night I shall come in. I'm rather interested
in restaurants." He laughed.
"Thank you, sir. It'll be a great
honour when you do."
General handshaking, which left Charlie Jebson
well satisfied with the scheme of the universe. The three proceeded along the
avenue.
"That'll be all right now, I think,"
Gracie heard Evelyn murmur to Jack Cradock. And she recalled what Evelyn had
said to her about an instinct for handling people. As it was extremely
difficult to walk three abreast in the thronged avenues, Jack, now elated,
walked ahead. But sometimes he lagged behind. Everybody knew him. Everybody
addressed him as Jack. (The Smithfield world was as much a world of Christian
names as Gracie's own.) Nevertheless the affectionate familiarity towards Jack
was masked by the respect due to a man who was incapable of being deceived as
to the quality of a carcass, who represented the swellest hotel in London, who
had a clerk, who spent an average of a hundred pounds sterling a day, and who
would take nothing but the best.
Cradock stopped dead, in the rear.
"Hello, Jim. I want a hundred pounds of
fat."
"Two and four," was the reply.
"That's where you're wrong. Two
shillings."
"And that's where you're wrong."
"Two and two," said Jack.
"Oh," said Jim, with feigned disgust.
"I'll give it you for your birthday. I know how hard up you are."
Jack scribbled in his book and strode after the
waiting pair. But a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Hello, Jack. Not seen you lately. Had a fair
holiday?"
"Yes," said Cradock. "I have had a fair
holiday. I'm not like some of you chaps. When I go for a holiday I take my
wife." He hurried on.
"Excuse me, miss," he apologised to
Gracie.
The trio arrived at a large fenced lift.
"Miss Savott might like to go down,"
Evelyn suggested.
Cradock spoke to the guardian, and the chains were
unfastened.
"If you'll excuse me, governor. I'll see you
afterwards." And to Gracie, with a grin: "I've got a bit to do, and
time's getting on. If I don't keep two ton o' meat in stock down at the
Imperial Palace the governor would pass me a remark." With a smile kindly
and sardonic, benevolent and yet reserved, Jack Cradock stood at the edge of
the deep well as the rough platform, slowly descending, carried the governor
and young lady beyond his sight.
"What a lovely man!" said Gracie,
appreciative.
"You heard that phrase in America!" was
Evelyn's comment.
They smiled at one another. The hubbub and
brightness of the vast market vanished away above their heads. The lift
shuddered and stopped. They were in silence and gloom. They were in a crypt.
And the crypt was a railway station, vaster even than the Market, and seeming
still vaster than it was by reason of the lowness of its roof.
"As big?" said the lift-attendant
disdainfully in response to an enquiry. "It's a lot bigger than Euston or
St. Pancras or King's Cross. If you ask me, it's the longest station in
London...No, the meat trains are all come and gone an hour ago." An engine
puffed slowly in the further obscure twilight. "No, that's only some
empties."
Vague, dull sounds echoed under the roof: waggons
being hauled to and fro by power-winches, waggons swinging round on
turn-tables. Men like pigmies dotted the endless slatternly expanse. The untidy
platforms were littered with packages: a crate of live fowls, a case of dead
rabbits, a pile of tarpaulins. The pair walked side by side along a platform
until they were held up by a chasm through which a waggon was being dragged by
a hawser. When the chasm was covered again they walked on, right to the
Aldersgate end of the station, whence the Farringdon Road end was completely
invisible in the gloom. Neither spoke. Both were self-conscious.
"What are you thinking about?" Gracie
asked curtly.
"If you want to know, I was thinking about
that split ship of yours. And you?"
Gracie's low, varied voice wavered as she replied:
"I was only thinking of those lambs, when
they were in the fields, wagging their silly little tails while they sucked
milk in."
Evelyn saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. He
offered no remark. Nervously Gracie pulled her cloak off and put it on her arm.
"It's so hot. I mean I'm so hot," she
said.
She had indeed for a moment thought of the lambs.
But the abiding sensation in her mind, in her heart and soul, was the sensation
of the forlorn sadness of the deserted dark crypt, called by the unimaginative
a railway station, and of the bright, jostling back-chatting world of men
suspended over it on a magical system of steel girders. All the accomplishment
of adventurous and determined laborious men--men whom her smart girl friends
would not look twice at, because of the cut of their coats, or their accent, or
their social deportment! She wanted ardently to be a man among men; she felt
that she was capable of being a man among men. Her ideals, shaken before, were
thrown down and smashed. She liked Evelyn for his sympathetic silence. She
persuaded herself that he knew all her thoughts. By a shameless secret act, she
tried to strip her mind to him, tear off every rag of decency, expose it to
him, nude. And not a word said.
"Ah!" she reflected with a yearning.
"His instinct for handling people! Could he handle me? Could he handle
me?"...
When they regained the surface, Jack Cradock was
waiting for them. She was astounded to see by the market-clocks that the hour
was after half-past six. Then something disturbingly went out. A whole row of
electric lights in the broad arched roof of the central avenue! New shadows
took the place of the old. She glanced at the roof. Grey light showed through
its glass. Dawn had begun. Never in Gracie's experience was a dawn so
mysterious, so disconcerting, so heartrending. Jack Cradock was very amiable,
respectful, self-respecting, and matter-of-fact.
Outside she resumed her dark cloak, tipped the
policeman before Evelyn could do so, and slowly climbed into the car. She drove
to the hotel slowly, not because of the increased traffic in the lightening
streets, but as it were meditatively.
"I might write down my impressions of all
that," she murmured to Evelyn once, half-emerging for an instant from her
meditation.
THE
HOTEL WAKING UP
In the courtyard of the hotel a lorry loaded with
luggage was grinding and pulsating its way out. The courtyard had dried after
its morning souse.
"That's the last of the big luggage for the
'Leviathan'," Evelyn explained, as Gracie brought the car to a standstill
in front of the revolving doors and the two janissaries. "Special train
leaves Waterloo at 8.20. Passengers hate to have to catch it, but they always
do manage to catch it--somehow."
Gracie made no reply. A chauffeur, who had been
leaning against the rail of the luggage-hoist in a corner of the yard, advanced
towards the car.
"Good morning, Compton," Gracie greeted
him, as she followed Evelyn out of the car. "How long have you been
here?"
"About an hour, miss."
"Have you had the big stuff sent
upstairs?"
"Oh yes, miss."
"There's the beginning of a rattle in the
bonnet here. Have a look at it."
"Yes, miss. Certainly, miss. Any orders,
miss?"
"Not to-day. But I don't know about Sir
Henry."
"No, miss."
"Better put the car in the hotel garage, and
tell them to clean her. If I want her I'll get her out myself. I'm going to
bed. You ought to get some sleep, too."
"Very good, miss."
In her beautiful voice Evelyn noticed the
nonchalance of fatigue. He was glad she was tired, just as earlier he was glad
she had not been tired.
On the steps under the marquise she took off her
cloak; then preceded Evelyn to the spinning doors.
"There's something at the back of your left
shoulder," said Evelyn, in the doorway.
"What?" She did not turn round.
"A stain. Why! It's blood."
"Blood?"
"Yes. You must have got it after we came up into
the Market again. You weren't wearing your cloak then. You were wearing it
before. And you couldn't have got it down in the station."
"What a detective you are!" she said,
still not turning round.
Evelyn saw a deep flush gradually suffuse her
neck. How sensitive she was! No doubt she hated the thought of blood on her
frock.
"The valet will take it out for you, if your
maid can't. They're very good at that, our valets are."
"At getting out blood-stains?"
"Any stains." Evelyn gave one of his
short laughs, though her tone had rather disturbed him. The blood-stain was
obscene upon her. He hated it.
She glanced back, not at Evelyn, but at the
janissaries, who, well-trained, averted their eyes. He wished that she would
put on her cloak again, and in the same instant she put it on, while her bag
slapped against her corsage. Then she entered. On the outer mahogany of the
head-porter's desk hung a framed card: "s.s. Leviathan. The special
boat-train will leave Waterloo at 8.20a.m.," followed by the date.
"How many departures by the 'Leviathan' this
morning, Sam?" Evelyn asked. Long Sam was half-hidden within his lair.
"Eighteen, sir," said Sam, consulting a
book that lay open on the desk.
''Hm!"
The great hall had much the same nocturnal aspect
as when they had left it, but with a new touch of lugubriousness, and a more
intense expectancy--expectancy of the day, impatient now and restless. Day had
begun in the streets and roads and in St. James's Park, but not in the hall.
The fireman was handing to Reyer his time-clock, which checked the performance
of his duties more exactly and ruthlessly than any overseer could have done.
Reyer, comatose and pale from endless hours of tedium, accepted it negligently.
A high pile of morning newspapers lay on the
counter near the still-closed book-and-news shop. Evelyn strode eagerly towards
it, and examined paper after paper.
"Not a word," he called to Gracie.
"Not a word about what?"
"Your split ship. I looked at the posters in
Fleet Street. Nothing on them. Of course there wouldn't be. Terrific thing, and
yet they can hush it up. And there isn't a newspaper office in London that
doesn't know all about it by this time. And you'll see it won't be in the
evening papers either."
Gracie, standing hesitant, said nothing. She was
too weary, or too depressed, to be interested any more, even in her complexion.
Reaction! But Evelyn felt no fatigue. His imagination was now no longer
responsively awake to the fatigue of Gracie. On the contrary he felt
extraordinarily alive.
"See," he said, pointing through glass
walls to the grill-room, where a couple of men, attended by two waiters, were
already breakfasting, "my hotel's waking up for the day. You're just in
time to see my hotel waking up. It's a great moment."
He loved to watch his hotel waking up. Something
dramatic, poignant, in the spectacle of the tremendous monster stirring out of
its uneasy slumber.
A youngish woman in a short black frock approached
through the dark vista of the restaurant and the foyer. She tripped vivaciously
up the first flight of steps, then up the second. She entered the hall.
"Good morning, Miss Maclaren."
"Good morning, sir." Bright Scottish
accent, but serious.
"Housekeeper," he murmured to Gracie.
"That is to say, one of our housekeepers. We have eight, not counting the
head-housekeeper, who's the mother of us all." Affection in his eager
voice.
Gracie stared and said nothing.
"Isn't Miss Brury on duty to-day, Miss
Maclaren?" he continued.
"She's unwell, sir."
"Sorry to hear that. Things are a bit late
this morning."
"Yes, sir. Something wrong with the clocking
apparatus. Turnstile wouldn't turn. Mr. Maxon couldn't explain it, but he got
it put right."
"Everyone except heads of departments has to
clock in," Evelyn explained to Gracie. "Thirteen hundred of 'em, not
counting the Laundry and the works department--outside."
"What a swarm!" Gracie spoke at last;
there was no answering enthusiasm in her tone, but Evelyn was not dashed. He
had forgotten the split ship and the blood-stain. He was the creative artist
surveying and displaying his creation--the hotel. He was like a youth.
A procession of girls and women followed Miss
Maclaren through the vista of the restaurant and the foyer into the great hall.
They wore a blue uniform with brown apron, and carried pails, brooms, brushes
and dusters. Some of them swerved off into the corridor leading towards the
grill-room. Others began to dust the Enquiries and Reception counters. Others
were soon on their knees, in formation, cleaning the immense floor of the hall.
Miss Maclaren spoke sharply, curtly, now and then to one or other of them.
"You always have to be at them, but they're a
very decent lot," she murmured as it were apologetically to Evelyn, her
hands folded in front of her, nun-like, while surreptitiously she summed up
Gracie with hostility.
"Yes," thought Evelyn, enjoying the
scene as though he had never witnessed it before. "The women-guests are
fast asleep on their private embroidered pillows upstairs, all in silk pyjamas
and nighties, and these women here have cleaned their homes and got breakfasts
and washed children and been sworn at probably, some of them, and walked a mile
or two through the streets, and put on their overalls, and here they are
swilling and dusting like the devil!" And aloud he said to Gracie:
"Come and see the restaurant. Won't take a moment."
They went down steps and down steps. (The earth's
surface was level beneath, but the front part of the hotel had been built over
a basement; the back part had not.) One lamp still kept watch over the main
part of the dead restaurant; but in a far corner was another lamp, and beneath
it a fat man was furiously cleaning about a thousand electroplated cruets. Rows
of cruets. Trays of cruets. Beyond, a corridor leading to the ball-room in the
West Wing.
"Yes," said Gracie feebly.
They returned.
"Here's the ladies' cloak-room," said
Evelyn, even more animated, and turned aside.
He took her arm and led her in. Room after room.
Table after table. Chair after chair. Mirror after mirror. Clock after fancy
clock. In the dim twilight of rare lamps the long suite of highly decorated
apartments looked larger even than it was. A woman was polishing a mirror.
"It's a wonderful place," said Gracie
politely. "I think I must go to bed, though."
He escorted her to the lift. Leaving the liftman
to wait, she stood back from the ornate cage--such a contrast with the
shuddering wooden platform at Smithfield--and glancing up at Evelyn, her eyes
and face suddenly as shining and vivacious as his, she said to him in her
richest voice, low, emotional, teasing:
"Do you know what you are?"
"What am I?"
"You're a perfect child with a toy!"
What would his co-directors, the heads of
departments, the head-housekeeper, Jack Cradock, have thought, to hear him thus
familiarly and intimately addressed by a smart chit who was also a stranger?
"Am I? I do believe I am," he answered,
enraptured.
But when the lift had taken her up out of sight,
he thought, though lightly: "Who does she think she is, cheeking me, after
inviting herself to Smithfield and all that? Never saw her in my life until
this morning, and she has the nerve to call me a child!" Nevertheless, her
impudent remark did please him. He indeed admitted, proudly, that he was a
child--one part of him, which part had carelessly forgotten to grow up.
The mishap with the turnstiles was prominent in
his mind. The organisation of the hotel was divided into some thirty
departments, and the head of each had a fixed conviction that his department
was the corner-stone of the success of the hotel. Evelyn, Machiavellian,
impartially supported every one of these convictions, just as he consistently
refrained from discouraging the weed of interdepartmental jealousies inevitably
sprouting from time to time in the soil of strenuous emulation which he was
always fertilising. Thus the head Floors-waiter did not conceal his belief that
the room-service was the basis of prosperity; the Restaurant-manager knew
that the restaurant was the life-blood of the place; the manager of the
grill-room was not less sure that the grill, where at lunch and at supper the
number of celebrities and notorieties far surpassed that of the restaurant
(though it cost the hotel not a penny for bands), was the chief factor of
prosperity; the Audit-manager was aware that without his department the hotel
would go to hell in six months; the Bills-manager had no need to emphasise his
supremacy; the head of the Reception, who could draw from memory a plan of
every room with every piece of furniture in it, and who knew by sight and name
and number every guest, and had a file-record of every guest, including the
dubious, with particulars of his sojourns, desires, eccentricities, rate of
spending, payments--even to dishonoured cheques, who could be welcoming,
non-committal, cool, cold and ever tactful in five languages--this marvel had
never a doubt as to the identity of the one indispensable individual in the
hierarchy of the hotel. And so on.
And there were others--especially those
mightinesses the French, Italian and Viennese chefs. Evelyn always remembered
the ingenuous, sincere remark of the chief engineer, who passed his existence
in the lower entrails of our revolving planet, where daylight was utterly
unknown. "You see those things," the chief engineer had said to a
visitor. "If they shut up, the blessed hotel would have to shut right
up." 'Those things' were the boilers, which made the steam, which actuated
the engines, which drew the water from the artesian wells, made the electric
light and the electric power, heated the halls, restaurants and rooms, froze or
chilled perishable food, baked the bread, cooked the meat, boiled the
vegetables, cleansed and dried the very air, did everything except roast the
game over a wood fire.
Evelyn had admitted, to himself, the claim to
pre-eminence of the chief engineer. But now he began to wonder whether the
turnstile and clocking-in satrap was not entitled to precedence over even the
chief engineer. For if the hotel depended on the engine-hall the engine-hall
depended on the presence of its workmen. He smiled at the fanciful thought as
he descended by tiled and concrete slopes and narrow iron staircases, glimpsing
non-uniformed humble toilers of both sexes in soiled, airless rooms and
enclosures, towards the cave of the Staff-manager's second-in-command who
watched and permitted or forbade the entrances and exits of thirteen hundred
employees.
The cave was a room of irregular shape, full of
machines and pigeon-holes and cognate phenomena. The second-in-command, a
dignified and authoritative specimen of the middleclass aged fifty or so, sat
on one side of a counter. On the other side stood a young woman starting on her
day out, dressed and hatted and shod and powdered and rouged for the undoing or
delight of some young male: in her working-hours a chamber-maid. Between them,
on the counter, lay a dispatch case, on which the girl kept a gloved hand.
"You can't leave with that thing until I've
seen inside it," said authority.
"But why? It's mine."
"How long have you been here? Not long,
eh?"
"A month."
"Well, when you've been here a month of
Sundays you'll have got into your head that nobody can take anything out of
here without me seeing what it is."
"I call it a wicked shame."
"It may be. But it's the rule of the hotel.
Last year I caught a girl slipping out with a pair of sheets where they
oughtn't to be."
"This despatch-case won't hold a pair of
sheets," said the girl. "Anyone can see that."
Authority made no reply, but glanced inquisitively
at a small group of men who were clocking in. The girl sulkily opened the
despatch-case. Authority looked into it.
"That necklace yours?"
"Yes."
"Where did you get it from?"
"A lady gave it me."
"What floor? What number? What name? Is she
still here?"
Question and answer; question and answer.
"Off you go," said authority, having
written down the details on the slip-permit which the girl had handed to him:
"You'll know next time."
Off the girl went, haughtily. Evelyn felt sorry
for her, as he emerged from the doorway where he had been listening to the
encounter.
"Good morning, sir." Authority
had suddenly changed to subservience.
"I hear you had some trouble with the
turnstiles this morning, Maxon," said Evelyn benevolently.
"Trouble, sir? Turnstiles?" replied
subservience, as if quite at a loss to understand the sinister allusion.
"Yes. Some charwomen were kept waiting."
"Oh! I see what you mean, sir. That wasn't
turnstiles, sir. They've told you wrong. I'll show you what it was."
Subservience sprang round the counter.
The two bent together over a steel contraption, and
subservience explained.
"No turnstiles about that, sir.
Clocking."
"Why didn't you let 'em through, for
once?" Evelyn asked.
"Well, sir, I thought I should get it right
every minute. Only a touch. And it wasn't long. It wasn't above five minutes.
And it won't happen again. And if it does happen again, and it's your wish,
sir--"
Evelyn changed the subject. After some general
chat, whose sole object was to indicate to the excellent Maxon that Maxon
enjoyed his special regard, he departed, having first jotted a reminding note
for himself. The rule about outgoing packages irked his feeling for decency.
But it was absolutely necessary. There was simply no end to the running of a
hotel. How would Gracie Savott have behaved if confronted with the rule? A
certain liveliness for authority! She was getting into bed now. Nothing had
been said as to a further meeting.
When Evelyn returned to the great hall Monsieur
Adolphe, the perfectly attired, rosy-cheeked Reception-manager, who was an
Alsatian but who had submerged the characteristics of his origin under a
cosmopolitanism acquired during twenty-five years of activity in continental
and London hotels, was hurrying busily about; for the "Leviathan"
departures had begun.
American women, with the drawn, set faces of too-early
rising, and great bouquets of flowers, were appearing, followed by placatory
men who desired tranquillity even at the price of honour. If husbands and
fathers suffered unjustly from wives and daughters, the injustice was at once
passed on by husbands and fathers to baggage-porters and other officials.
Adolphe's role was to establish an illusion of general loving-kindness. He
fulfilled it: that was his life-work. But Evelyn stood always first in his
mind, and for Evelyn's sake he cut short the oration of a Chicago millionaire.
"Sir Henry Savott has just telephoned down to
enquire what time it would be convenient for you to see him to-day, sir. I've
sent the message up to your room."
"Why did the message come to you,
Adolphe?"
"I suppose because you'd been seen once or
twice in the hall, and you weren't in your rooms. Excuse me, sir." Adolphe
hastened away into the courtyard, half running.
Day had at length dawned in the great hall, which
lived again, after the coma of the interminable night.
"If that fellow Savott really is
Napoleon," Evelyn reflected, "he ought to be fast asleep now, instead
of pursuing me with telephone-messages that take everything for granted. How
does he know that I've not gone to bed same as he has?" He smiled in
anticipation of protracted, fierce, and yet delicately manœuvred tussles with
Savott. The fight for and against the rumoured hotel-merger was going to start
sooner than he had expected. He smiled a second time, because he had firm hold
of something that Sir Henry passionately wanted. Great fun! He reflected
further: "It'll do that fellow no harm to cool his heels for a day or
two."
Then he went to the counter, and wrote a reply to
Sir Henry:
"Mr. Orcham is very sorry to say that he has
outside appointments which will keep him away from the hotel all day."
Nothing about to-morrow or the next day? No. More effective to say nothing
about to-morrow or the next day. He had the goods, and delay and uncertainty
would only inflame the desirer and so impair the desirer's skill in
negotiation.
"What number--Sir Henry Savott?" he
demanded, looking up across the counter at a clerk. "Page!" he
called. "Telephone. Sir Henry Savott, 365."
Adolphe came in hurrying, explaining with a laugh:
"I had to give Senator Gooden an extra shake of the hand because he came
to us from another hotel, and I don't want him to go back there ever."
"Good," said Evelyn. "I've seen to
Sir Henry Savott. You know nothing."
"Quite, sir," said Adolphe
comprehendingly, and dashed off.
Car after car was now leaving the courtyard for
Waterloo. Mowlem, the day head-porter, was at his grandest at the revolving
doors. Evelyn ascended, and, looking at his watch, entered his private
apartments. 7.45. At 7.45 he breakfasted. There, on the centre-table in the
sitting-room, was his breakfast, with the newspapers arranged in what Evelyn
had decided was the order of their importance to him. There, on the buffet, the
spirit-lamp burned under a silver dish. There, near the door, stood his own
man, with a smile of greeting. Evelyn shut the door on the whole world. He had
half-an-hour to himself. No mail was ever brought to his rooms. Telephoning was
harshly discouraged. Punctuality. Everything in its place. All the angles were
right-angles. A logical orderliness. No will but his own functioned in those
two rooms. He sat down, sipped at iced water, opened a newspaper, cleared his
throat, stretched his legs, tore up the now answered telephone-message from Sir
Henry Savott.
"All right, Oldham," he gave the signal.
"Bit colder this morning, eh? Autumn." His voice was full of happy
kindliness.
"Yes, sir," Oldham agreed, content, and
with ceremonious gestures served the bacon and poured out the Costa Rica
coffee.
Fresh rolls. Fresh toast. Piles of butter on ice.
It was heaven, a heavenly retreat.
"I'll shave after breakfast, Oldham."
"Yes, sir. I have put out the things."
"Good."
Evelyn was secure and at ease. He had many matters
on his mind: the clocking-in; the chambermaid--no insult intended; Sir Henry
Savott; the relations between Jack Cradock and Charlie Jebson; a hundred others
big and little. But they did not trouble him, because he knew he could deal
with them all. He loved them. He needed them. They exhilarated him. They were
his life. Without them he would have sunk into tedium. His life was perfect.
Nobody could interfere with it, nobody disarrange it.
And then the tiny thought sneaked into his mind on
tip-toe like a thief: was his life perfect? Yes! It was perfect. And it was
full. Was it full? Was no corner of it empty? Did nothing lack? Yes! No! His
life lacked nothing. It was balanced. Its equilibrium was stable. Supposing a
woman, a beautiful woman, came into that sacrosanct room, as of right,
flaunting her right, and began fussing about his health, commenting on his
pallor, demanding to look at his tongue, fussing about the flowers and the
exact disposition of the flowers, opening a newspaper and leaving it inside out
on the floor, complaining of her loneliness in the world, complaining of her
dressmaker, asking him whether he thought she looked five years younger than
her real age, and, having been answered in the affirmative, asking him whether
he really thought she looked five years younger than her real age;
asking him whether he loved her, suggesting that he was disappointed in her!
And so on and so on.
He knew it all. He had 'been there.' Intolerable!
Delicious at rare moments, hell the rest of the time! His life was full.
Another drop, and the glass would splash over. He had for years been lightly
dreaming of a mistress. Silly! Boyish! A mistress would be a liability, not an
asset. His career came first, with his usefulness to society, his duty to
shareholders. He was a serious man with a conscience, not a gambler; commerce
with women was the equivalent of gambling; it was staking tranquillity of
conscience, staking his very soul, against a smile, a kiss, an embrace, the
elegance of frocks and jewels. He opened a paper, gazed at the lines of type,
and, engaged secretly in the controversy which beyond all others had agitated
ambitious and powerful men for thousands of years and never been satisfactorily
settled, he could make absolutely no sense of the news. Suddenly it occurred to
him that Sir Henry might be wanting to see him, not about the scheme for a merger,
but about his excursion with Gracie Savott into the wilds of London in the
middle of the night. The girl might have wakened and told her father.
"Another slice, sir?"
"I think I will. I was up rather early.
Remind me to shave."
THE
NEW LIFE
When Gracie entered the drawing-room of her suite,
she went straight to the windows and opened them wide, looked at St. James's Park
below, along whose avenues men and girls were already hurrying earnestly
northward in the direction of the Green Park and Piccadilly; she thirstily
drank in large draughts of the foliage-perfumed air, for it seemed to her that
she could still smell Smithfield's meat. The flame-tinted new curtains waved
their folds high into the room. Naturally Tessa the maid had forgotten the
standing instruction to open windows on arrival. After a few cleansing moments
Gracie passed into her bedroom. It was dark. She impatiently switched on the
electricity. A suitcase, unfastened, lay on the floor, and a jewel-case, shut,
on the bed. No other sign of habitation! The dressing-table was bare, save for
the customary hotel pin-cushion and small china tray. The curtains had not been
opened, nor the blinds raised.
"Tessa!" she called, after opening the
window. No answer. She had a qualm of apprehension. She passed into the
bathroom. Not a sign of habitation in the bathroom either. It might have been a
dehumanised bathroom in a big furniture store. The next door, ajar, led to a
smaller bedroom, Tessa's. Gracie pushed against it. Darkness there too. Gracie
turned the switch. Tessa was stretched asleep on, not in, the bed. Gracie could
see the left wrist which she herself had bandaged two or three hours earlier,
and on the bandage was a very faint reddish discoloration. Gracie, who several
years earlier after witnessing rather helplessly a motor-accident at Brooklands
had qualified for a first-aid certificate, examined the bandage in silence. No
danger. The wrist had bled since the bandaging, but was bleeding no longer.
Tessa slept undisturbed. Her pretty face was so pale, tragic, and exhausted in
sleep that Gracie crept out of the bedroom and softly closed the door in a
sudden passion of quasi-maternal pity. The qualm of apprehension recurred.
In the bathroom she threw down her hat and cloak,
and pulled off the beige frock. Yes, the blood on the shoulder was very plain.
The swift, startling realisation of its origin had alone caused her to blush
when Evelyn remarked on it. That blood came not from Smithfield, nor was it the
blood of any slain animal. When Gracie had come up to the suite for two minutes
before starting for Smithfield she had found Tessa in the maid's bedroom, a vague
figure in the unlit gloom, and had summoned her very sharply--sharpness of
excitement working above secret fatigue. A sudden alarmed cry from Tessa:
"Oh! I've cut myself with the scissors!" A hand knocking against her
shoulder in the gloom. How had the girl contrived to injure her wrist, and what
was she doing with the scissors in the dark? Gracie, too hurried to pursue the
enquiry, had dragged Tessa into the light of the bathroom, found the simple
first-aid apparatus without which she never travelled, and bound up the wrist.
The wound was somewhat sanguinary, but not at all serious. Tessa was an
efficient maid, but apart from the performance of her duties lackadaisical,
characterless, and slothful. She could sit idle for hours, not even reading,
and when she read she read sentimental drivel. She was older by two years than
Gracie, who always regarded her as a junior. A doctor had once pronounced her
anæmic. The wrist duly nursed, Gracie had soothed and enheartened Tessa and
told her to sit down for a bit; then, after changing hat and cloak, had run
out. Thus in the suite had been spent the twenty minutes that Evelyn had spent
waiting in the great hall.
Flickers of suspicious surmising had gleamed at
intervals in Gracie's mind. She recalled having explained to Tessa, many months
ago, a few picturesque details of anatomy learnt in the first-aid course--how
there was a certain part of the wrist which, etc., etc.--how an incision upon
that part would be just as effective, and assuredly less painful and messy, than
an attack on the throat with a razor, etc. Playful teasing. Nothing more.
Forgotten as soon as said. Remembered now. Had not Tessa's manner been
sometimes strange on board the ship? Had not Gracie sometimes fancied that she
might be victimised by an unrequited love--in the style of her novelettes?
Absurd. Yet not wholly absurd. No one more capable of a desperate act when
roused than your silly, taciturn, lackadaisical anæmic. Gracie was rendered
solemn, was snatched momentarily away from self-contemplation, by the idea that
she had perhaps for days been terribly close to a mortal tragedy without
guessing it...However, Tessa was asleep. The peril of a tragedy, if peril there
had been, was over. No wonder that, quitting the bedroom, Gracie had gazed on
the maid as a mature mother on a senseless child.
In her own bedroom Gracie knelt down and unpacked
the suit-case; then arranged the toilet-table; then undressed completely,
turned on the water in the bathroom and bathed. She opened the door of Tessa's
room to make sure that the noise of the water had not wakened the girl. Not a
sound there. She put on blue silk pyjamas, and surveyed herself, moving to and
fro, in the wardrobe mirror. She laid her small, elaborately embroidered
travelling pillow on the hotel pillow, lit the bed-lamp, drew the blinds,
closed the curtains, got into bed, switched off the lamp. She shut her eyes.
She was intensely conscious of her body, of the
silkiness of her pyjamas, of the soft ridges of embroidery in the pillow.
Luxurious repose. Extreme exhaustion; not merely physical; emotional.
Exhaustion induced by the violence of her sensations and her aspirations in
Smithfield Central Market and in the crypt below it. Thoughts of Tessa had
receded. Once again she was absorbed in self-contemplation. Despite fatigue, an
impulse to initiate immediately her secret project grew in her. It became
imperious. She fought it, was beaten. She lit the lamp, hesitated, arose, put
on the rich dressing-gown from the foot of the bed, passed into the drawing-room,
carrying with her the jewel-case. It was locked--of course. The key was
probably in Tessa's bag. She was bound to go back to Tessa's room. Still no
sound nor movement there. She found the bag; she found the key-chain. Now, she
was no more interested in Tessa.
In the drawing-room she opened the jewel-case, and
took from it a morocco manuscript-book, virginal, which she had bought in New
York. It had a lock, and the tiny key hung from the lock by a silk thread
coloured to match the binding of the gilt-edged book. She sat herself at the
desk, with the book opened in front of her, and seized a pen. The moment, she
judged, was critical in her life. It might, it should and would, mark the
beginning of a new life.
Slowly had been forming in her the resolution to
write--to write literature. She had written one or two poems, and torn them up.
No doubt they were worthless. But she knew them by heart. And perhaps they were
not worthless. She had determined to write a journal of her impressions. She
wrote the word 'London,' with the date, and underlined it, her hand trembling
slightly from excitement, her mind thrilled by the memory of acute sensations
felt in Smithfield. Her sensations seemed marvellous, unique. If only she could
put them on paper. Formidable enterprise!
Her eye fell on a three-signal bell-tablet on the
desk, 'waiter, valet, maid.' She must have some tea. She pressed the little
knob for the waiter. True, she needed tea, but what influenced her as much as
the need was a wish to delay the effort of writing the first momentous sentence
in the book, the inception of the new life.
When the waiter had received her order he said:
"If you please, miss, there is a
telephone-message for Sir Henry; he does not answer the telephone and his
bedroom door is locked."
"What next?" thought Gracie, startled;
and asked the waiter in a casual tone:
"What is the message?"
The waiter gave her a telephone-slip. She read:
"Mr. Orcham is very sorry to say that he has outside appointments which
will keep him away from the hotel all day." She said to the waiter:
"All right. I'll see that Sir Henry gets the message."
She was alarmed. She knew her father. If he had
been suggesting an interview with Mr. Orcham, and this was the reply to the
suggestion, there would certainly be an explosion, and trouble between the two
men. The Napoleonic Henry Savott was just about the last man to tolerate such a
curt message--especially from a hotel-manager! And somehow she could not bear
the prospect of trouble between these two powerful individualities. ("Why
can't I?" she asked herself.) After she had drunk the celestial tea, she
rang up her father in the next suite. Fortunately Napoleon had wakened.
"I say, dad--yes, it's me--do you know you've
been fast asleep and they've been trying to get a message to you, from Mr.
Orcham. He says he'll let you know as soon as possible later in the day. He's
frightfully sorry, but he's just had to go out on very urgent business."
She rang off.
Well, there it was! She'd done it. She had
ravelled the skein, and she would have to unravel it. How? She would face the
problem later. Such was Gracie's method. Anyhow she would have to communicate
with Mr. Orcham. But later. A rush of the most vivid impressions of Smithfield,
sensations at Smithfield, swept from her brain down her right arm. She could
actually feel their passage. She began to write. She wrote slowly, with
difficulty, with erasures. Everything but Smithfield vanished from her mind.
The concentration of her mind was positively awful; that is to say, it awed
her. The new life had opened for her.
CONFERENCE
That morning Evelyn called the ten o'clock daily conference
of heads of departments in his own office. In the absence of instructions to
the contrary, it was held in the office of Mr. Cousin. Emile Cousin, the
hotel-manager (whose name was pronounced in the hotel in the English way), was
a Frenchman, similar to Evelyn in build, and of about Evelyn's age, but
entirely grown up, whereas bits of the boy remained obstinately embedded in
Evelyn's adult constitution.
'Director' was Evelyn's official title, short for
'managing director'--the medium of communication between the organism of the
hotel and the Board of Directors of the company which owned both the Palace and
the Wey. The authority of the Board (of which Evelyn was vice-chairman) stood
above Evelyn's in theory, though not in practice.
It was out of a sort of private bravado that
Evelyn presided that morning at the conference, which had not seen him for over
a week. He had been up extremely early; he had been to Smithfield; he had
trotted about the place; he had accomplished all the directorial correspondence;
and a full day's work lay before him. But his appointment at the Laundry was
not till eleven o'clock. He had, as usual, time in hand, and he would not waste
it; he would expend it remuneratively. He was tired. More correctly, he would
have been tired if he had permitted himself to be tired. He did not permit. He
exulted in the exercise of the function of management, and especially under
difficulties. Could any private preoccupation, could any hidden fatigue, impair
his activity? To ask was to answer. Nothing could disconcert, embarrass,
hamper, frustrate his activity. "You understand," he would joyously,
proudly, say to himself, "nothing!" It was in the moments which made
the heaviest demand upon his varied faculties that he lived most keenly; and it
was in those moments, too, that his demeanour was lightest.
The room was spacious; it had been enlarged some
years earlier by the removal of a wall, and so changed from an oblong into the
shape of an L. It had two vases of flowers, and there were plants in a box on
the window-sill. (The spacious window framed a view of the picturesque back of
a Queen Anne house and the garden thereof.) Evelyn did not particularly want
the flowers and the plants. But Miss Cass did.
Miss Cass was Evelyn's personal secretary, aged an
eternal thirty, well dressed, with earnest features and decided movements. She
had a tremendous sense of Evelyn's importance. She was his mother, his
amanuensis, and his slave. She could forge his signature to perfection. Among
her seventy and seven duties, two of the chief, for her, were the provision of
flowers, and the maintenance of a supply of mineral water on Evelyn's huge,
flat desk. She had to make a living, and her salary was good; but the richest
reward of her labours came on the infrequent occasions when Evelyn pulled a
blossom from a vase and stuck it in his button-hole.
At conferences Evelyn sat behind the desk, with
his back to the window; Miss Cass sat on his left at the desk, and Mr. Cousin
on his right. The other members of the conference--being, principally, the
Reception-manager, the Audit-manager, the Staff-manager, the
Banqueting-manager, the chief engineer, the chief Stocktaker, the
Bands-and-Cabaret-manager, the Publicity-manager, the Works-manager, and the
white-haired head-housekeeper (only woman in the conference, for secretarial
Miss Cass was not in the conference but at it)--sat about the room in odd
chairs. Two of them were perched like twins each on the arm of an easy-chair.
Neither the Restaurant-manager nor the Grill-room manager was in attendance,
both having been at work very late. Their statistics, however, were in the
hands of Miss Cass. The nationalities represented were Italian, French, Swiss
and British, the last being in a minority. Evelyn and the sedate, reserved Mr.
Cousin were smoking cigars. The rest--such as smoked--contented themselves with
cigarettes. Subtle distinction between seraphim and cherubim in the hierarchy!
"Who's No. 341, 2 and 3?" asked Evelyn,
glancing casually at a paper--the typed night-report.
"A Mr. Amersham--Australian," answered
the Reception-manager instantly. "Why, sir?"
"Nothing. I only happened to notice that a
lady couldn't persuade herself to leave his rooms till three o'clock this
morning. Colonials are always so attractive," Evelyn continued without a
pause, extinguishing several smiles: "Give me yesterday's figures for the
restaurant, Miss Cass."
Miss Cass obeyed. "Ah! Nineteen pounds up on
last year, but twenty-one more meals served. So it can't be that people aren't
satisfied with the music or the cabaret. Average bill slightly less, and
consumption of champagne per head distinctly less than last year. If we go on
at this rate our £100,000 stock of wine will last for about fifty years. In
fact Prohibition would serve no purpose. Might suggest to Maître Planquet that
he ought to season his dishes with a view to inducing thirst."
Maître Planquet was the chef and grand vizier of
the restaurant kitchens, and had been decorated by the French Government with
the Academic Palms.
General deferential mirth. Everybody loved the
Director's occasional facetiousness. Even Mr. Cousin, who never laughed, would
smile his mysterious, scarcely perceptible smile. Everybody was relieved that
the Director could joke about those statistics. A discussion broke out, for the
most part in imperfect if very fluent English.
"I'd like to see the comparative graphs
to-night, Miss Cass," Evelyn tried to end it, interrupting the wordy
Banqueting-manager.
Evelyn knew, and they all knew, that the public
tendency towards sobriety at meals could not be checked. The clientèle was a
wind which blew where it listed. But there was good comfort in the fact that
the clientèle, if increasingly austere, continued to grow in numbers. Evelyn,
however, perceived that he could not end the discussion; at any rate he could
not end it without a too violent use of his powers. It proceeded. He listened,
watchful, and with satisfaction. Most of those men, and the woman, he had
trained in their duties. And he had trained all of them in the great principle
of loyalty to the hotel. They showed indeed more than loyalty; they showed
devotion; they lived devotion.
The majority of them had homes, wives, children,
in various parts of London; real enough, no doubt; cherished; perhaps loved.
But seen from within the hotel these domestic backgrounds were far distant,
dim, shadowy, insubstantial. When the interests of the hotel clashed with the
interests of the backgrounds, the backgrounds gave way, eagerly, zealously. The
departmental heads had their hours of daily service, but these hours were
elastic; that is to say, they would stretch indefinitely--never contract.
Urgently summoned back too soon from a holiday, the heads would appear,
breathless--and smiling; eager for the unexpected task. One or other of them
was continually being tempted to a new and more splendid post; but nobody ever
yielded to the temptation unless Evelyn, frankly consulted, advised yielding.
(He did occasionally so advise, and the hotels and restaurants of Europe, and
some in America, were dotted with important men whose prestige sprang from
their service at the Imperial Palace.) There were many posts, but there was
only one Imperial Palace on earth. The Palace was their world and their
religion; its pre-eminence their creed, its welfare their supreme aim. They
respected and adored Evelyn. He was their god. Or, if the Palace was the god,
Evelyn was the god-maker, above god.
There they sat, fiercely disputing, some in the
correctness of morning-coats, others (who had no contacts with the clientèle),
in undandiacal lounge-suits, smoking, gesticulating, wrangling, the Englishmen
and Mr. Cousin taciturn, the other foreigners shooting new foreign lights on
the enigma of the idiosyncrasies of the British and American clientèle: not one
of them advancing a single constructive suggestion for fostering the appetites
of the exasperating clientèle And there sat Evelyn, the creator of the
modernised Palace, and of the religion of the Palace, and of the corporate
spirit of its high-priests; a benevolent expression on his face, but an
expression with a trace of affectionate derision in it. He let them rip, not
because they were furthering the cult of the god by their noise, but because he
enjoyed the grand spectacle of their passion. He deeply felt, then, that he had
created something more marvellous than even the hotel. He knew that he was far
their superior in brains, enterprise, ingenuity, tact; and this conviction
lurked in his steady, good-humoured smile; but he knew also that in strenuous selfless
loyalty he was not their superior. After all, the rewarding glory of success
was his, not theirs.
The altercation flagged, and, seeing her chance,
Mrs. O'Riordan, the head-housekeeper, sixty-two years of age and as slim and
natty as a girl in her black artificial silk, killed it with a question. Mrs.
O'Riordan, who lived her whole life in two small rooms on the eighth floor,
could only simulate an interest in the appetites of the incomprehensible
clientele. What occupied her incessant attention was the upholstery of the
chairs on which people sat, the carpets which they trod, the rooms in which
they slept, the cloak-rooms to which the ladies retired, etc. She ate little,
and somewhat despised cookery.
"I haven't got much time," said Mrs.
O'Riordan. "What is going to be done about that mink-fur business?"
And her glance said: "You are males. You ought to know. Answer me."
Mrs. O'Riordan, though she had no disinclination
for the society of men, exhibited always a certain slight sex-bias,
half-defensive, half-challenging. She was a widowed Yorkshire gentlewoman, had
had two Irish military husbands, and still possessed three sons, one of whom
regularly sent flowers to her with his best love on her birthday, while the
other two, in India, only wrote to her in reply to her rare letters to them. In
the solitude of her eyrie on the eighth floor, absorbed morning and night in
the direction of her complex department, she sometimes found a minute to regret
that neither of her husbands had given her a daughter. She would have liked a
girl in those houses in County Meath. Together, she and a daughter would have
formed a powerful opposition to the male ascendancy.
"Mink?" asked Evelyn, his tone conveying
astonishment that he should be in ignorance of any happening within the hotel.
"I only heard of it myself an hour
since," said Mr. Cousin.
"You were not in your office at half-past
twelve last night, Mr. Cousin," Mrs. O'Riordan addressed the French
manager, with a polite implication of reproach for slackness.
"No," said Mr. Cousin. "I went home
at a quarter to twelve."
"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Riordan drily.
"This happened at twelve-thirty."
She then related to Evelyn how a lady who had been
dining with two other ladies had presented a ticket in the ladies' cloak-room,
and on receiving a fur in exchange for it had asked for her 'other fur,'
alleging positively that she had deposited two furs, the second one a priceless
mink, given to her by a deceased friend in Chicago. The head of the cloak-room
(who was better acquainted with the secret nature of women than the most
experienced man in the universe), while admitting the deposit of several minks
that evening by other guests (who had reclaimed them and departed), denied any
knowledge of the fur from Chicago. Unfortunately, the ground-floor housekeeper,
Miss Brury, was by chance in the cloak-room, and, being the head-attendant's
official superior, she had taken charge of the dispute on behalf of the hotel.
Unfortunately--because Miss Brury was very tired and nervous after an exhausting
day of battle with the stupidity and obstinacy of subordinates and she had been
over-candid to the guest, who had surpassed her in candour. The episode had
finished with a shocking display of mutual recrimination. Both women had had
hysterics. Guests of both sexes had paused at the open door of the cloak-room
to listen to the language; and finally the owner of the alleged missing fur had
burst through them, and rushed frantically across the hail crying aloud that
the hotel was the resort of thieves, that the hotel-staff was in league with
thieves, and that she would have the law on the lot of them.
Mrs. O'Riordan concluded:
"Long Sam told me that by the time she
reached the doors she was demanding about a million pounds damages. No, she hadn't
a car and she wouldn't have a taxi--said she wouldn't, not for a million
pounds--another million pounds--be beholden to the hotel for anything...Oh yes,
I came downstairs. I was reading. They fetched me--for Alice Brury...No, the
two companions of the infuriated lady had left earlier. She'd stayed talking to
someone...Miss Brury's in bed today."
Even Evelyn blenched at this terrible story,
unique in the annals of the hotel. It was utterly incredible, but he had to
believe it. And it was less incredible than the fact that he had been about,
off and on, since four in the morning and yet no rumour of it had reached him.
It was not on the night-report. Well, it could not have been on the
night-report, whose records did not begin till one o'clock. But Reyer must have
heard of the thing. Long Sam also. Suddenly the obvious explanation of the
mystery occurred to him. Everybody had been assuming that he was already
familiar with the details of the episode, he who always knew everything. And if
he kept silence about the horror, what underling would care or dare to
refer to it in his presence?
He saw shame on every face in the room. And well
might there be shame on every face, for the pride of every person was
profoundly humiliated.
"I've just been talking to O'Connor,"
said Mr. Cousin, impassible. "He's coming at once. He says he thinks he
may have heard of the lady before. He's calling at the Yard."
O'Connor was the private detective of the hotel.
"I daresay he has," Evelyn observed.
"The woman is almost certainly--well, doesn't matter what she is. She may
get away with it. And if we have to pay her her million pounds or the National
Debt, of course we shall pay it and look pleasant, and that will be that. It's
that scene that matters. You're sure Miss Brury started it, Mrs.
O'Riordan?"
"She admits it herself," answered the
Irishwoman. "But when you think of the provocation--"
"There can't be any such thing as provocation
in this hotel," Evelyn interrupted her blandly. "There never has been
before, and there mustn't be again. If the customer is Judas Iscariot, he's
still the customer till he's safely outside the hotel. That's a principle. The
hotel turns the other cheek every time. I'm afraid we shall have to find
another job for Miss Brury."
Murmurs of assent.
"The poor thing says she wouldn't stay on
here for anything."
"Well then," said Evelyn. "We must
struggle on as best we can without her."
"Yes," retorted Mrs. O'Riordan, rendered
audacious and contrarious by nerves. "It's all very well for you men to
talk like that. But if you knew the difficulties--" She glanced at Mr.
Semple, the Staff-manager, as if for moral support. But the prudent Mr. Semple
gave no response.
"We'll have a chat later," said Evelyn.
He was thinking that at least a year was required
for the training of a housekeeper, and that Mrs. O'Riordan had referred not
long ago to the dearth of really good candidates. Mrs. O'Riordan was in favour
of engaging women of her own class, her theory being that gentlewomen could
exercise better authority over chambermaids and valets, and also could deal
more effectively with peevish and recalcitrant visitors; and Evelyn had agreed
with her, had thought that he agreed with her; at any rate he had expressed
agreement. Miss Brury was of a lower origin. She had failed to stand the
racket. Her failure had seriously smirched the hotel. Would a gentlewoman have
done better? Possibly, he thought. But he was by no means sure. Still, he would
support Mrs. O'Riordan's desire for gentlewomen on the Floors. Mrs. O'Riordan,
invaluable, irreplaceable (not quite, of course, but nearly), showed the
independent attitude which comes from the possession of a small private income.
He had known himself to accept her ideas against his own judgment. The fact was
that she had a certain quality of formidableness...
Delicate situation, this, arising out of the scene
and out of the dearth of good candidates. But he had complete confidence in his
ability to resolve it. What a damned nuisance women were, gentlewomen as well
as their social inferiors! He knew that the Banqueting-manager was boiling up
for a commotion with the head-housekeeper about the use of a room near the
ball-room. Tact--The telephone bell rang, and Miss Cass answered it.
"S O S from Weybridge, sir," said Miss
Cass to Evelyn.
"Some difficulty with the contractors over
the alterations to the restaurant. The work is at a standstill. Mr. Plott would
be very much obliged if you could run down there at once, instead of this
afternoon. But you can't. You are due at the Laundry at eleven. It's after
half-past ten."
"Why can't I?" said Evelyn instantly.
"I could go to the Laundry this afternoon. Tell them I'll be there at
three--no, four. And tell Mr. Plott I'm coming to him now. And ask if my car is
waiting."
"It's bound to be, sir. Brench is always
early."
"I'll leave the rest to you, Cousin,"
Evelyn murmured to the hotel-manager.
In twenty seconds he was quitting the office, with
gay nods and smiles, and a special smile for Mrs. O'Riordan. He was not gravely
alarmed about the Wey restaurant. Nor was he flinching from problems at the
Palace. Nor was his gaiety assumed. Problems were his meat and drink. He saw in
the longish drive to Weybridge an opportunity for full happy reflection. He
knew that he would return to the Palace, with detailed solutions whose
ingenuity would impress everybody. His life was of enthralling interest to him.
No other kind of life could be as interesting. To-morrow, in addition to the
General Meetings of the Company, there would be Sir Henry Savott to manipulate.
Perhaps if he conferred with Sir Henry in the latter's suite, as he properly
might, he would encounter Gracie again. But the figure of Gracie had slipped
away, like a ship standing out to sea.
LAUNDRY
The already famous Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry
occupied part of a piece of freehold ground in a broad, tram-enlivened street in
Kennington. The part unbuilt upon was a rather wild garden in which were many
flowers. Evelyn foresaw the time when the Laundry would have to be enlarged,
and the garden would cease to be. But at present the garden flourished and
bloomed, and work-girls were taking their tea and bread-and-butter in it under
the bright, warm September sun.
The spectacle of the garden and the lolling,
lounging tea-spilling work-girls delighted Evelyn on his arrival that
afternoon, as it always delighted him. He would point out to visitors the
curving flagged paths, the scientifically designed benches, the pond with
authentic gold-fish gliding to and fro therein, and the vine. The vine bore
grapes, authentic grapes. True, they were small, hard, sour and quite
uneatable, but they were grapes, growing in the open air of Kennington, within
thirty feet of roaring, red trams. He was perhaps prouder of the garden as a
pleasance for work-girls than of the Laundry itself. He had created the
Laundry. He had not designed the buildings nor the machinery, nor laid brick on
brick nor welded pipe to pipe, nor dug the Artesian wells nor paved the yards.
But he had thought the whole place and its efficiency and its spirit into
being--against some opposition from his Board of Directors.
It was a success. It drew over half a million
gallons of water a week from the exhaustless wells; it often used six thousand
gallons of water in an hour. It employed over two hundred immortal souls,
chiefly the enigmatic young feminine. It fed these girls. It taught them to
sing and to act and to dance and to sew and to make frocks. It kept a doctor
and a dentist and a nurse for them. It washed all the linen of the Imperial
Palace and the Wey hotels and all the linen that the hotel guests chose to
entrust to it. It served also three hundred private customers, and its
puce-tinted motor-vans were beginning to be recognised in the streets. It paid
ten per cent. on its capital, and, with the aid of the latest ingenuities of
American and English machinery, it was estimated to increase the life of linen
by one-third. And considering the price of linen...Americans who inspected the
Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry said that while there were far larger laundries
in the United States, there was no laundry comparable with Evelyn's, either
industrially or socially. Evelyn believed them. What he had difficulty in
realising was that without his own creative thought and his perseverance in
face of obstruction, the Laundry would never have existed. To him it always had
the air of a miracle. Such as it was, it was his contribution towards the
millennium, towards a heaven on earth.
As he entered the precincts a few of the uniformed
girls smiled diffidently to greet him, and he smiled back and waved his stick,
and passed into the building. He was a quarter of an hour late, but this
lamentable fact did not disturb him. For he had done over four hours'
concentrated hard work down at Weybridge. He had telephoned for the architect
and for the principal partner of the contracting firm of builders, and they had
both obeyed the summons. He and they and the manager of the Wey had measured,
argued, eaten together, argued again and measured again, and finally by dint of
compromises had satisfactorily emerged from a dilemma which, Evelyn softly maintained,
common sense and foresight ought to have been able to avoid. Oh yes, he awarded
part of the blame to himself! He had quitted the Wey in triumph. He had left
the manager thereof in a state of worshipping relief, and the architect and the
contractor in a state of very deferential admiration. He was content with
Evelyn Orcham. A hefty fellow, Evelyn Orcham!
The one stain on the bright day was that he had
settled nothing in his mind on the way down about the Miss Brury calamity; and
on the way up to London he had been too excited by his achievement in the
suburb to think about anything else. (Assuredly he was not completely grown
up.) However, there was time enough yet to think constructively upon the Miss
Brury calamity. He was conscious of endless reserves of energy, and as soon as
he had dealt with the simmering trouble at the Laundry he would seize hold of
the Palace problem and shake it like a rat!
And there stood Cyril Purkin, the manager of the
Laundry, in the doorway leading to the staff dining-room. A short, fairly thin
figure; a short but prominent pawky nose; small, cautious, 'downy,' even
suspicious eyes; light ruffled hair; and a sturdy, half-defiant demeanour. A
Midlander, aged thirty-eight, Evelyn sometimes wondered where the man bought
his suits. They were good and well-fitting suits, but they had nothing whatever
of a West End cut. The origin of his very neat neckties was similarly a mystery
to Evelyn. His foot was small and almost elegant.
Mr. Purkin had begun life as a chemical engineer;
he had gone on to soap-making, then laundry management, then soap-making again,
then laundry management again. One day, when the foundations of the Imperial
Palace Hotel Laundry had hardly been laid, Evelyn had received a letter which
began: "Sir--Having been apprised that you are about to inaugurate a
laundry on modern lines, I beg respectfully to offer my services as manager. I
am at present..." The phrasing of the letter was succinct, the calligraphy
very precise, regular and clear, and the signature just as formal as the rest
of the writing. The letter attracted Evelyn. How had the man been clever enough
to get himself 'apprised' of the advent of a new laundry on modern lines? And
how came he to have the wit to write to Evelyn personally? Evelyn's name was
never given out as the manager of the Imperial Palace. Mr. Purkin's
qualifications proved to be ample; his testimonials were beyond cavil. His talk
in conversation was intelligent, independent, very knowledgeable; and he had
strong notions concerning the 'welfare' side of laundries, which notions
specially appealed to Evelyn. He was engaged. He gave immense satisfaction. His
one weakness was that he was the perfect man, utterly expert, utterly reliable,
superhuman.
He was still the chemical engineer. He seldom
mentioned sheets, chemises, collars, towels, stockings, and such-like common
concrete phenomena. He would discourse upon the 'surface tension' of water
'breaking down,' albumen, 'Base Exchange,' centrifugal cleansing, the sequence
of waters, 'residual alkalis,' chlorine, warps and woofs, 'efflorescence,'
etc., etc. He had established a research department, in which he was the sole
worker.
As he deferentially shook hands with the great man
his attitude said:
"Of course you are my emperor, but between ourselves
I am as good as you, and you know it, and you know also that I have always
delivered the goods."
And yet somewhere behind Mr. Purkin's shrewd
little eyes there was something of the defensive as well as of the sturdy
defiant, together with a glimmering of an uneasy consciousness that he had not
always delivered the goods and that he too was imperfect--though no fault of
his own.
"I must really show you this, sir," said
he, introducing Evelyn into the small managerial room where on the desk lay a
pile of examination papers. "Question," he read out, picking up a
paper, "Why are white fabrics blued in order to procure a general
appearance of whiteness?' Answer: 'White fabrics are blued because there are
more yellow rays in the spectrum, and we use blue to counteract the yellow
rays.' Wouldn't you say, sir, that that's rather well and tersely put for a
girl of sixteen and a half? These exam. papers are useful as an index to
character as well as to attainments."
Evelyn heartily agreed, and for courtesy's sake
glanced at the paper.
"I see you've got all the painting
finished," said he. "Looks much better."
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purkin. "Ah! I
must show you one thing that I thought of. An idea I had, and I've carried it
out."
He drew Evelyn into the Laundry itself, walking
with short, decided steps. They passed though two large and lofty interiors
filled with machines and with uniformed girls (the girls did not all have their
tea simultaneously), girls ironing, girls folding, girls carrying, girls
sorting, amid steel in movement, beat, moisture, and a general gleaming
whiteness. He halted, directing Evelyn's attention to a row of pipes near the
ceiling, painted in different colours.
"Red for hot water, blue for cold water,
yellow for steam. The three primary colours. When a minor repair is necessary
it isn't always easy to tell at a glance everywhere which pipe is which. By
this system you can't make a mistake. Costs no more. I thought you'd
approve."
"Brilliant," said Evelyn.
"Brilliant. I congratulate you." Possibly a trace of derision in
Evelyn's benevolent laudatory tone.
"And there's the new drier," Mr. Purkin
continued, and led his chief to a room where two women, one mature, overblown
and beautiful, and the other young but as plain as a suet pudding, were working
in a temperature of 119 degrees. Evelyn had to admire and marvel again. Nor was
that the end of the tour of novelties. Mr. Purkin's ingenuity and his passion
for improvements were endless. And as Evelyn went from table to table and from
machine to machine and from group to group of girls, busy either individually
or in concert, and from pile to growing or lessening pile of linen, and as he
sought for the private lives and the characters of girls in the lowered, intent
faces of girls, he sardonically thought: "This chap is putting off the
fatal moment on purpose. And doing it very well too. Creating all this
atmosphere of approval. Damn clever fellow! Pity he isn't clever enough to see
that I can see though him."
But, back in Mr. Purkin's prim, stuffy, excessively
neat little office, the Midlander boldly summoned the moment.
"I'm glad you were able to come to-day, sir,
because I was getting anxious for you to see for yourself we aren't standing
still here. I know you're always interested, very interested, but we like to
see you here, all of 'em like to see you. It makes us all feel that we kind of
'belong'...Oh! Upon my word, I was forgetting to tell you that the number of
pieces from private customers passed the twenty thousand mark last week--at
last. You'll receive the figures to-morrow."
"Good! Good! You always said it would."
"But there was another thing I wanted to see
you about."
"Oh!" Evelyn exclaimed, feigning
ignorance.
"Yes. About those frilled dress-shirts last
Thursday."
"Oh! That!"
"Yes," continued Mr. Purkin. "Yes,
sir. You may have forgotten, but I can assure that I haven't."
Now the affair of the frilled shirts was one of
those molehills which are really mountains. In a few hours it had swollen
itself into a Mont Blanc. A guest who was a public character and who had been
staying at the Palace for weeks and spending quite a lot of money, had
complained about the ironing of his frilled evening shirts. Mrs. O'Riordan
herself had taken the matter up. Mrs. O'Riordan had given her word that the
frilled shirts should be ironed to the owner's satisfaction, and at the end of
ten days Mrs. O'Riordan had redeemed her word. Triumph for the hotel. Smiles
from the guest. And for Mr. Immerson, the hotel's Publicity-manager, material
for one or two piquant newspaper paragraphs. On the last day of his sojourn the
guest had reached the state of being convinced that his celebrated frilled
shirts had never been so perfectly done before. No laundry like the Imperial
Palace Hotel Laundry! His desire was to leave the Palace with the largest
possible stock of frilled shirts ironed by its Laundry. "Can I rely on
having these three shirts back to-night?" he had asked. Of course!Could
he doubt it? Was it not a basic principle of the Laundry that all linen
consigned in the morning was delivered absolutely without fail the same
evening? It was.
But the unique shirts had not been delivered, and
the next morning the guest, disillusioned, wounded, inconsolable, had had to
depart without them. A child disappointed of a promised toy, a religionist
whose faith has been suddenly struck from under him, could not have exhibited
more woe than the deceived guest. True, the shirts were sent after him by
airmail to Paris and got there first. But inefficiency remained inefficiency and
the Laundry's lapse had shocked every housekeeper at the Palace. The
foundations of the Palace had for an instant trembled. The unimaginative
individuals who snorted that three shirts ought not to be enough to shake the
foundations of a nine-storey building simply did not understand that such
edifices as the Imperial Palace were not built with hands.
Evelyn had by no means forgotten the affair. A
minor purpose of his visit to Kennington had indeed been to get to the bottom
of it. He knew that Mr. Purkin guessed this, and that Mr. Purkin knew that
Evelyn knew that he guessed. Nevertheless the two men continued to pretend.
"I was under the impression that it had been
explained," said Evelyn. "You had only one girl who specialised in
these preposterous shirts, and she was taken ill or something at the very
moment when your need of her was most desperate."
"No, sir," said Mr. Purkin with brave
candour, "the matter has not been explained--to you; at least not
satisfactorily. The girl, Rose, was not taken ill. She merely walked out and
left us in the lurch. We have the best class of girls here. I remember when
laundry staffs had to be recruited from riff-raff. We've altered all that, by
improving the conditions. I knew Rose; I thought highly of her; I knew her father,
a house-painter, most respectable. And yet she walks out! She'll never walk in
again, I may say, not as long as I'm manager here. Naturally I got the shirts
done, in a way, next morning. But that's not the point."
The drama of Mr. Purkin's deep but restrained
indignation genuinely affected Evelyn. It seemed to produce vibrations in the
physical atmosphere of the office.
"What a man!" thought Evelyn
appreciatively. "Such loyalty to the I.P.H.L. is priceless. Of course his
sense of proportion's a bit askew; but you can't have everything." He said
aloud, gently: "Why did this Rose walk out?"
"Ah!" replied Mr. Purkin. "I will
tell you, sir." He went to a file-cabinet, and chose a card from two or
three hundred cards, and offered it to Evelyn. "That's why she walked
out."
On the card was a chart of the wicked girl's
mouth, of her upper jaw and her lower jaw. "Look at it, Mr. Orcham.You see
the number of bad teeth on it. I ordered her the dentist. She made an excuse
twice--something about her mother's wishes, I'm certain it wasn't the father.
As you know better than anyone, every girl who's engaged by me here has to
promise she'll allow us to keep her in good health, mother or no mother. On
that afternoon I told her I'd made an appointment for her with the dentist for
the next morning, and that she positively must keep it. I spoke very quietly.
Well, as soon as my back is turned out of this Laundry she walks! Without
notice! Of course it was the staff-manageress's business to see to it. But as
she had failed twice, I had to take the matter up myself. No alternative.
Discipline is discipline. And just look at the charts of that
mouth!"
"Quite!" said Evelyn. He was laughing,
but not visibly. "Quite!"
"The truth is," Mr. Purkin continued,
"there would have been no bother--I'm sure of it--if only I'd had a little
more moral support."
At this point Mr. Purkin pulled out his
cigarette-case and actually offered it to the panjandrum. Probably no other
member of the Palace staff, no matter how exalted, with the possible exception
of Mr. Cousin, would have ventured upon such a familiarity with Evelyn. But Mr.
Purkin was exceedingly if secretly perturbed, and the offering of a cigarette
to the great man was his way of trying to conceal his perturbation; it was also
a way of demonstrating the Purkinian conviction that he was as good as
anybody--even Evelyn.
"Thanks," said Evelyn, taking a
cigarette, not because he did not fear Mr. Purkin's cigarettes, but because he
sympathetically understood the manager's motive--or the first part of it.
"You mean support from the staff-manageress?"
"I mean Miss--er," muttered Mr. Purkin,
and he blushed. He would have given a vast sum not to blush; but he blushed,
this pawky, self-confident, disciplinary Midlander. He had opened his mouth
with the intention of boldly saying Miss Violet Powler, the staff-manageress's
name; but his organs of speech, basely betraying him, refused their office. A
few seconds of restraint ensued.
"Sex!" thought Evelyn. "Sex! Here
it is again."
He did not object to sex as a factor in the
problems of a great organism. He rather liked it. And he knew that anyhow it
was and must be a factor ever recurring in those problems. He had heard,
several months earlier, that an 'affair' was afoot between Mr. Purkin and
Violet Powler. How did these rumours get abroad? He could not say. Nobody could
say. In the present case a laundry-girl might have seen a gesture or a glance,
or caught a tone--nothing, less than nothing--as the manager and the
staff-manageress passed together though the busy rooms. The laundry-girl might
have mentioned it slily to another laundry-girl. The rumour is born. The rumour
spreads with the rapidity of fire, or of an odour, or of influenza. It rises
from stratum to stratum of the social structure. Finally it reaches the august
ear of Evelyn himself. For it could not be lost; it could not die; and it could
not cease to rise till it could rise no higher.
Evelyn had gathered that the affair was a subject
for merriment, that people regarded as comic the idea of amorous tenderness
between the manager and the staff-manageress of the Laundry. In his own mind he
did not accept this view. To him there was something formidable, marvellous,
and indeed beautiful in the mystic spectacle of Aphrodite springing from the
hot dampness of the Laundry and lodging herself in the disciplinary soul of
Cyril Purkin. Nor did be foresee harm to the organism in the marriage of Cyril
and Violet.
"I wouldn't say one word against her,"
said Mr. Purkin, exerting all his considerable powers of self-control. "I
chose her out of scores, and probably a better woman for the job of
staff-manageress couldn't be found. But in this matter--and in one or two
others similar--I'm bound to admit I've been a bit disappointed. Discipline is
the foundation of everything here, and if it isn't enforced, where are you? I'm
bound to say I don't quite see...She's inclined to be very set in her
views." He lifted his eyebrows, implying imminent calamity.
"Curse this sex!" thought Evelyn.
"She's refused him. Or they've had a row. Or something else has happened.
He wants her to go. He'll make her go. He can't bear her here. She's on his
nerves. But he's still in love with her, even if he doesn't know it. What a
complication! How the devil can you handle it? Curse this sex!"
But he was moved by the sudden disclosure of Mr.
Purkin's emotion, and he admired Mr. Purkin's mastery of it. He had never felt
more esteem for the man than just then.
Mr. Purkin lit both cigarettes, and the pair
talked, without too closely gripping the thorns of the situation.
"Well," said Evelyn at length gently.
"We'd better leave things for a while. If I do get a chance perhaps I
might have a chat with Miss Powler--"
"Well, Mr. Orcham, if anybody can do anything
you can." But Mr. Purkin's accents gave a clue to his private opinion that
not even Mr. Orcham could do anything.
Soon afterwards Evelyn left, saying that he would
'see.' For the moment he could not 'see.' As he walked away, the last batch of
girls was quitting the garden. He got into his car.
"Home."
Brench touched his hat.
"Wait," said Evelyn suddenly, and
descended from the car.
He had changed his mind. Why postpone the
interview with Violet Powler? Was he afraid of bringing the trouble to the
stage of a crisis? He was not.
He re-entered the buildings by the 'A' gates,
which admitted vans loaded with soiled linen. The linen, having passed through
the Laundry and become clean, was basketed and piled into vans which drove out
through the 'B' gates. He wandered alone, apparently aimless, in the warm,
humid, pale departments, until he recognised the door lettered
"Staffmanageress." It was half open.
Without touching it he glanced in. Miss Violet
Powler sat facing the window, her back to the door. She was talking to a young
tall woman. A small table separated them, and on this table lay a finished
shirt and some coloured threads.
"But Lilian," Miss Powler was saying.
"You know well enough that a red thread means starched; you know that no
articles from No. 291 have to be starched, and yet you put a red thread into
this one. Why? There must be some explanation, and I want you to tell me what
it is." Her tone was soothing, persuasive.
"But, miss," said the woman, holding up
a red thread, "this isn't a red thread--it's green--not starched."
"That's a green thread?"
"Yes, miss."
"Take it to the window and look at it."
The woman obeyed. "Yes, miss. It's green all right," said she,
turning her head and confidently smiling.
Miss Powler paused, and then she began to laugh.
"Very well. Never mind, Lilian. You come and
see me before you start work to-morrow, will you?"
Lilian, puzzled, left the room, and Evelyn stood
aside for her to pass out.
"Colour-blind, eh?" Evelyn walked
straight into the small office laughing. "I happened to hear. Door open.
Didn't want to break in. So I waited."
"Yes, Mr. Orcham. Please excuse me. I hadn't
the slightest idea you were at the door. Yes, colour-blind."
Evelyn put his hat on the small table and sat
down. Miss Powler shut the door.
"As a funny coincidence I really think that
ought to have the first prize." Evelyn laughed again, and Miss Powler
smiled. "I suppose she's the one woman in the place who ought to be able
to be relied on to tell green from red, and she's colour-blind! No, not first
prize. No. It deserves a gold medal." His stick joined in the laughter by
tapping on the floor. "Sort of thing you can't possibly foresee, therefore
can't guard against, eh? Unless Mr. Purkin decides to institute eye-tests for
the staff. But of course those delightful coincidences never happen twice.
How's the Dramatic Society getting along?"
Miss Powler sat down at her desk.
It was her way of smiling, her way--at once
dignified and modest--of sitting down, and her way of answering his question
about the Laundry A.D.S., that suggested to him a wild, absurd, fantastical
scheme for killing two birds with one stone.
Miss Powler wore a plain, straight blue frock,
quite short. (The hotel rule prescribing black for heads of departments did not
obtain in the Laundry.) As she sat down her knees had been visible for an
instant. Her brown hair was laid flat, but glossy. Without being pretty, her
features were agreeable, and her habitual expression was very agreeable. Her
eyes, dark brown, were sedate, with some humour somewhere behind them, waiting
a chance to get out. No powder, no paint. An appearance which mingled
attractiveness with austerity.
Evelyn had in his office a private card-index of
all the Company's principal employees. He rarely forgot anything once learnt,
and now he had no difficulty in recalling that Miss Powler lived in Battersea,
the daughter of a town-traveller in tinned comestibles--certainly a humble
town-traveller. But there are women who when they leave the home lose their
origin, just as a woman's hat loses its price when it leaves the shop. Only an
expert could say with assurance of a hat on a woman's head in the street
whether it cost five guineas or two. Miss Powler might have been the daughter
of a humble town-traveller, or of a successful dentist, or even of a solicitor.
"Well," Evelyn began, "you're the
staff-manageress, according to the label on your door, and I must tell you that
I think you managed the Lilian member of the staff very nicely. Very
nicely." Miss Powler smiled. "But all cases aren't so simple, are
they?"
"They aren't, sir."
"I've been asking Mr. Purkin about the Rose
member. Mrs. O'Riordan, our head-housekeeper at the Palace, was particularly
anxious for me to enquire into Rose's case. In fact, between ourselves, that
was one of the reasons why I came down here to-day." Two fibs and a
semi-fib! He had not asked Mr. Purkin. Mr. Purkin had started the subject and
volunteered all information. Mrs. O'Riordan had shown no anxiety whatever for
him to investigate the affair. And the affair was not strictly one of the
reasons for his visit, seeing that he had not heard of it until after the visit
had been definitely arranged. But the two and a half fibs did not irk Evelyn's
conscience. They were diplomatically righteous fibs, good and convincing fibs, designed
to prevent possible friction. On a busy day he might tell as many as fifty such
fibs: and he had never been found out. Miss Powler gave no sign of constraint
or self-consciousness. To all appearance she had no nerves.
"I was sorry to lose Rose," said Miss
Powler. "She was a first-rate fancy ironer. But of course if she hadn't
gone of her own accord she'd have had to go all the same. Because she'd never
have let the dentist attend to her. She's too fond of her mother for that. She
adores her. The mother's rather pretty and really very young. When she was
Rose's age she was a chorus-girl in a touring company for six months. She ought
to have kept on being a chorus-girl. She certainly wasn't fit to be a mother.
Her head's full of the silliest ideas, poor thing! One of her ideas is that
dentists pull teeth out for the sake of doing it. Makes them feel proud, she
thinks. No use arguing with that sort of a woman. They really believe
whatever they want to believe."
"I know what you mean."
"She made Rose promise not to see the
dentist, said it was slave-driving for an employer to force a girl to see a
dentist. And all that. She'll go on the stage, Rose will, and her father won't
be able to stop her. I'm very sorry for the girl. Naturally, if Mr. Purkin
makes a rule and gives an order, there's nothing more to be said. I quite see
his point of view. Yes. I agree with him--I mean about discipline. But I do
think you can't improve silly people when they get obstinate. If they can't
understand, they can't, and you can't make them. It couldn't be helped, but I
always sympathise with the girl in Rose's position. I wish you could have heard
her talk about her mother. She never mentioned her father. Always her mother.
She worshipped her mother. And yet she gave you the idea too that she was
mother to her mother, not her mother's daughter."
Evelyn had several times before had casual chats
with Miss Powler, on Laundry affairs. But now he felt as if he were meeting her
for the first time. The interview had all the freshness of a completely new
revelation: like the rising of a curtain on a scene whose nature had been
almost completely unsuspected. She had said not a word against the disciplinary
Mr. Purkin. She had on the contrary supported his authority without reserve.
Withal she had somehow left Mr. Purkin stripped of every shred of his moral
prestige. She had been responding to the humanity of the Rose problem, while
for Mr. Purkin the humanity had had no existence. She had faced the fact of the
silliness of Rose's mother, and yet had warmed to the passion of Rose for the
foolish creature.
Further, Evelyn now had knowledge in two cases, of
her attitude towards women under her control and direction, and there was in it
no least evidence of that harsh, almost resentful inflexibility which nearly
always characterised such a relation. And her attitude towards himself was
either distinguished by a tact approaching the miraculous, or was the natural,
unstudied results of a disposition both wise and kindly in an exceptional
degree; perhaps she had no need for the use of tact, did not know, practically,
what tact was. Evelyn began to think that he had been under-estimating the
physical qualities of her face and form. Five minutes earlier he would have
described her as comely. But now he was ready to say that she was
beautiful--because she must be beautiful, because, being what she was, she
could not be other than beautiful. He had to enlarge his definition of feminine
beauty in order to make room for her in it. Then her foot. Perhaps large or
largeish. But a girl like her ought surely to have something to stand on! And
were not small feet absurd, a witness of decadence? Then her ankles. Not slim.
Sturdy. Suddenly be remembered the museum at Naples. An excursion which had not
revisited his memory for a dozen years. He saw the classical sculptures. Not
one of the ideal female figures in those sculptures had been given slim ankles.
Every ankle was robust, sturdy; the fashionable darlings of to-day would call
them thick. Yes, Miss Powler had classical ankles.
But he would not argue about her ankles, or her
feet, or her figure, or her face. In his reckoning of her he could afford to
neglect their values. What principally counted was her expression, her
demeanour, her tone, the gentle play of her features, and the aura of tranquil
benevolence and commonsense which radiated from her individuality. Mr. Purkin
was a clumsy simpleton. He had not known how to make her love him. She did not
love him. He did not deserve that she should love him. Why in God's name should
such a girl love a Mr. Purkin?
Then her accent; a detail, but he considered it.
Miss Brury had acquired a West End accent, with all the transmogrified vowel
sounds of the West End accent. Miss Powler's accent was not West End. Neither
was it East End, nor South. One might properly say that she had no accent. Was
she educated? Not possibly in the sense in which Miss Brury was educated. But
she was educated in human nature. Her imagination had been educated. And she
possessed accomplishments assuredly not possessed by Miss Brury. Could she not
dance, act, sing, direct a stage? Was not hers the energy which had vitalised
the Imperial Palace Hotel Laundry Amateur Dramatic (and Operatic) Society? It
was no exaggeration to say that she was better educated than Miss Brury. Anyhow
she would be incapable of Miss Brury's fatal hysteria.
Evelyn rose. Miss Powler rose. He moved. He
stopped moving.
"I had another reason for calling
to-day," he said, yielding happily to a strong impulse. (Fourth fib.)
"We may soon be needing someone rather like you at the Palace." He
smiled. "I can't say anything more just now. But perhaps it wouldn't be a
bad thing if you considered whether you would care for a change. Don't answer.
Good-bye."
But her face answered, discreetly, in the
affirmative. He departed. He flattered himself that he had discovered the
solution of two entirely unrelated problems.
SHADES
Evelyn's car had not moved three hundred yards
from the Laundry before it was stopped by an oncoming car which sinfully
swerved across the street, threatening a bonnet-to-bonnet collision.
Fortunately this amazing and inexcusable assault took place in a fairly empty
space of road. Evelyn did not at first realise what had happened. His
chauffeur, grandly conscious of being in the right, and with a strong sex-bias
which had persuaded him that women-drivers were capable of any enormity, sat
impassive and even silent, prepared to await developments and a policeman.
Evelyn put his head out of his saloon window. The
driver of the other car smiled and waved a hand freely. It was Gracie Savott.
Gracie backed her car a few feet and then swerved forward again to her proper
side and drew up at the kerb. Evelyn, fully sharing for the moment Brench's
sex-bias, got down and walked across the street between approaching trams to
Gracie's car.
"I've written all my impressions of
Smithfield," she gaily called out to him as he passed in front of her and
gained the security of the pavement.
Evelyn was startled by her astonishing performance
with the car, and so resentful, that he could hardly bring himself to raise his
hat.
"Was it to tell me that that you stopped
me?" he asked stiffly. (By heaven, what next?)
"Don't crush me." She pouted.
"How did you know it was my car?" The
second question was softer than the first.
"That's nicer," she said, smiling.
He thought that her tone was damned intimate. But
fairness made him immediately admit to himself that his own brusque tone had
set the example of precocious intimacy.
Gracie said:
"I asked the number of your car before I left
the hotel. How else? And I was about five minutes in getting it. They told me
you'd probably be at the Laundry, and they gave me the address. I had an
instinct I might meet you on the way; that was why I asked the number. And a
good thing I did!"
Evelyn's resentment was now submerged by a
complete bewilderment. Was the girl pursuing him, and if so to what end? His
bewilderment in turn was lost in dismay, in alarm for the demi-god Orcham's
reputation. What would his staff think of this young woman demanding his
whereabouts and the number of his car? What couldthe staff think? He had
been first seen with her at
Clever of her to think of obtaining the number of
the car before starting!...Had she really intended to enquire for him at the
Laundry? And why? What was her business? And if her business was so cursedly
urgent, hadn't she enough ordinary gumption to telephone? She was evidently an
adventuress--in the sense that she loved adventure for its own sake. She was a
wild girl. Had she not positively invited him, a stranger, to take her to
Smithfield?
"Is anything the matter?" he asked.
"Not yet. But I must talk to you."
"Well?"
"Not here. We can't talk here," she
said. "And not at the hotel either."
"Certainly not at the hotel," he
silently agreed. And aloud--"Where, then?"
"If you'll get in--"
"But what about my car?"
"Send it home. I'd come with you in your car,
but I can't leave mine here in the street, can I?"
Mist was gathering in South London. Dusk was
falling. Trams with their ear-shattering roar swept by, looming larger than
life in the vagueness of the mist.
Evelyn crossed the road again.
"I shan't want you any more to-night,"
he said with an exaggerated nonchalance to Brench.
The imperturbable man touched his cap, and glided
away.
"She looks a bit better now. I've had her
cleaned," said Gracie as she curved her own car into a side street in
order to turn back eastwards.
She was wearing the leather coat, and loose gloves
to match it. She pushed the car along at great speed among the traffic, driving
with all the assured skill of which Evelyn had had experience twelve hours
earlier in the day. Once again he was at her side. A few minutes ago he had
been in the prosaic industrial environment of the hotel Laundry. And now he was
under the adventurous hands of this incalculable girl on another earth. He felt
as helpless as a piece of flotsam in some swift shadowy tideway of that other
earth. His masculinity rebelled, asserted itself. He must somehow get control
of the situation.
"Well?" he repeated, uncompromisingly.
"Not yet." Second time she had used
those mysterious words. "I know a place." Still more mysterious! And
there was nothing the matter 'yet'!
Evelyn's thought was: "What has to be will
be."
Philosophical? Worthy of a man? No! Only a
pretence of the philosophical. As for Gracie, she uttered not a syllable more.
She drove and drove.
In Westminster Bridge Road a large public-house
gleamed in the twilight. It had just opened to customers, and Labour was
passing through its swing-doors. And through the doors, and through the
windows, frosted into a pattern, could be seen glimpses of mahogany and glazed
interiors, with counters and bottles and beer-handles and shabby tipplers of
both sexes, and barmen in shirt-sleeves rolled up. The public-house stood on a
corner. Gracie twisted the car round the corner and stopped it, opposite a
protruding sign which said "Shades."
"Here it is," said Gracie, with a slight
movement towards him which indicated that he was expected to get out of the
car.
"Here?" he questioned.
"Yes."
"Do you know the place?" he questioned
further.
"No. But I happened to notice it as I drove
down. It calls itself the Prince of Wales's Feathers."
"Do you mean you want to go in here?"
"Yes. To talk. Why not? We couldn't have a
safer place." Evelyn had never entered a London public-house. He
shrugged his shoulders--those shoulders which she had admired. His faculty of
amazement was worn out. He descended. Gracie locked the steering. Then she
glanced into the body of the car. Nothing there to tempt thieves.
"That ought to be all right," she
murmured.
She stood at the heavy, narrow double doors,
expectant that he should open them for her. He pushed hard against one of them.
As soon as Gracie had squeezed through the door banged back on Evelyn. Then he had
to push it a second time. He too squeezed through, and the door gave a short
series of quick bangs, diminuendo.
A small room. A counter in front of them. Shelves
full of bottles behind the counter. No barman at the counter. To the left a
glazed mahogany partition, very elaborate. A panelled mahogany wall opposite
the partition, and another opposite the counter, and advertisements of alcohol
across the panels. A very heavily sculptured ceiling. A sanded floor. Along the
two panelled walls ran two mahogany benches, with a small round barrel, its top
stained in circles, at the angle. A powerful odour of ale. Sound of rough
voices, strident or muttering, over the curved summit of the partition.
"Oh! What a horrible lovely place!" said
Gracie, sitting down on a bench near the barrel. "But it's exactly what I
thought it would be."
A barman appeared at the counter.
"This is mine," said Gracie to Evelyn,
and to the barman:
"Two light sherries, please." And to
Evelyn: "That right?"
"Right you are, miss," said the barman
with cheerful heartiness, and reached down a bottle from one of the shelves.
Evelyn had been afraid that she might order beer;
but she had ordered the only correct, the only possible, thing; sherry had at
least an air of decorum; also it was the only wholesome aperitif. The girl knew
her way about; he supposed that all these girls did; he supposed it was proper
that they should, and although he did not quite like it he strove to broaden
his views concerning girls in order to like it. "A bit too much of the
oriental attitude about me about young women!" he thought.
"Here you are, sir," said the barman,
addressing Evelyn this time. And Evelyn had to fetch the two full glasses from
the counter.
"One and four, sir."
Evelyn paid.
The counter was wet with sherry. The barman rubbed
it hard with a towel that had once been clean. The hearty, hail-fellow-well-met
barman in his shirt-sleeves, to say nothing of the dirty towel, made a rude
contrast with the manners which obtained at the celebrated Imperial Palace American
bar, where the celebrated head-barman was a strict teetotaller with a head like
that of a Presbyterian minister and a dispensing knowledge in the head of a
hundred and thirteen different cocktails. At the Palace drinks were
ceremoniously brought to seated customers by young men in immaculate white
jackets--and Evelyn knew the exact sum per dozen debited by the Laundry to the
hotel for the washing and getting-up of the white jackets. And no waiter there
would venture to name the price of a drink until asked.
"You give me that twopence," said
Gracie, fumbling in her bag, as Evelyn sat down with his change in his hand.
"And I'll give you eighteenpence."
He accepted the suggestion without argument. Why
should not girls pay if they chose? As for the particular case of Gracie, she
probably spent on herself the equivalent of Evelyn's entire income, which
nevertheless yielded a considerable super-tax to the State. Evidently her big
baggage had arrived at the Palace, for she was wearing another frock and still
another hat. Beneath and above the stern chic of the leather coat was visible
the frivolous chic of the frock and the hat.
"Yours!" said Gracie, raising her glass.
"You aren't cross, are you?"
"No. Why should I be?"
"I don't know," said Gracie. "But
you look so severe I'm frightened."
"Take more than that to frighten you,"
Evelyn retorted, forcing a grim smile.
"Not a bad sherry this," he added,
enquiring with his brain into the precise sensations of his palate. He was
proud that he and no other selected the wines for the Palace. He recalled some
good phrases from his formal lectures to the wine-waiters upon their own
subject.
"But it is rather a jolly place, isn't
it?" said Gracie. "Do come down off the roof to the
ground-floor."
He smiled less grimly. Why not be honest? It was
indeed rather a jolly place: strange, exotic, romantic. And he did like the
freedoms of the barman, after the retired, artificial, costive politenesses of
the Palace service. He saw charm even in the dirty towel. (And she had discovered
the place, and had had the enterprise to enter it.) He was seeing London,
indigenous London. The Palace was no part of London. Why not for a change yield
to the attraction of the moment? Of course if he were caught sitting with a
smart young woman in a corner of the Prince of Wales's Feathers in Westminster
Bridge Road, his friends or his customers or his heads of departments might
lift an eye-brow. But he could not be caught. Moreover the Feathers would be
the height of respectability to ninety-nine decent Londoners out of a hundred.
And even if it were not respectable--well, Gracie was above respectability.
Violet Powler would not be. But Gracie was. She had robust ideas about things.
He was bound to admire her robust taste, and her adventurous enterprise. Violet
Powler would shrink from the invitation of the Feathers. He himself had shrunk
from it. He suffered from masculine timidity and conventionality. Gracie and
her sort had something to teach him.
"You know the telephone-message you sent to
daddy this morning." Gracie began her business. "Well, daddy was fast
asleep, and it came to me." She told him quite frankly what she had done.
"That's why I wanted to see you." Here she lit a cigarette, and
Evelyn, determined to surpass her, lit a cigar. She explained to him her
father's Napoleonic sensitiveness. "I'd like you to do something. I
couldn't bear any trouble between you and daddy," she finished, with
eagerness. Her rich, changing voice fell enchantingly on his ear.
What did that mean: couldn't bear any trouble
between him and Sir Henry? Did it mean that any such trouble might compromise
the relations between her and himself, and that was what she couldn't bear?
Odd, flattering, insidious, specious implication! He leaned closer to her:
"What would you like me to do?"
Intimacy was suddenly increased. How was it that
they had become so intimate in a dozen hours of spasmodic intercourse? He knew.
It was because they had gone off together on a romantic excursion in what was
for her the middle of the night. One visit to strange Smithfield before dawn
would create more familiarity, demolish more barriers between soul and soul,
than ten exquisite dinners exquisitely served within the trammels of a polite
code.Never again could they be mere acquaintances.
"Couldn't you ask daddy to dinner
to-night--and me? He'd appreciate it frightfully."
Evelyn was astounded afresh. What on earth would
the incredible girl say next? He could not phrase a reply.
Fortunately at this juncture four men entered the bar.
They were clad somewhat in the style of Mr. Cyril Purkin, but more flashily.
They had glittering watch-chains, jewelled rings, rakish hats and neckties and
tie-pins, and assurance. If not prosperous, they looked prosperous. They
glanced casually at Eve1yn and Gracie, and glanced away. Men of the world, whom
vast experience of the world had carried far beyond the narrow curiosity of
hard-working persons--persons who had to look twice at sixpence. Evelyn was
decidedly more interested in them than they were interested in him and Gracie.
They leaned against the counter, called, "Jock," "Jock,"
and when Jock came they ordered four double whiskies. They were discussing the
day's racing. Then they talked about the secret significance of 'acceptances.'
They sipped the whiskies.
One of them, the fattest, having sipped, and gazed
at his glass, said in a meditative hoarse voice:
"When I've had a drop over night, do you know
what I do? I get up early and I go down to my cellar in my nighty, and I draw
myself a port-glass of gin, and I drink that and it puts me right. Yes. That
puts me right."
"Well, give me Eno every time," said
another gravely. At length in a murmur Evelyn answered Gracie's suggestion:
"No."
"No?"
"No. That wouldn't suit my book at all. Your
father would misunderstand it."
A pause.
"He'd think I'd mean what I shouldn't
mean," Evelyn added.
"I see," said Gracie. "I hadn't
thought of that." She did see. "Well, if daddy asks you to
dinner to-night, will you come?" Gracie demanded.
Why shouldn't he? If anybody's pitch was likely to
be queered by the invitation and the acceptance thereof, it would be Sir
Henry's, not Evelyn's. But what a girl! What an incomprehensible feminine,
unfeminine creature!
"Yes," said Evelyn. "With pleasure.
But in the restaurant, not upstairs But he won't ask me?"
"Oh! Won't he? You leave that to me."
A horn tooted outside.
"That's children playing with the car!"
Gracie exclaimed , jumping up and draining her sherry.
Evelyn rose quietly also. He laughed. Gracie
laughed. Yes, how thrillingly exotic she seemed in the heavy, frowsy,
smoke-laden, fume-poisoned interior! They hurried out like children merrily
excited by the prospect of a new escapade. The real children round the car ran
off, bounding and shrieking with mischief.
"We may as well go," Gracie suggested.
"Yes, I ought to be going."
Near the junction of Bridge Street and Whitehall
Evelyn asked Gracie to stop.
"Why?"
"Because I want to get out," said
Evelyn.
"But I'll drive you to the hotel."
"No, thanks!" Evelyn answered very drily
and firmly. And got out. He had no intention of being seen by his door-porters
driving up to the Imperial Palace in Gracie's car with Gracie at the wheel. It
simply would not do. And Gracie yielded with a sweet, acquiescent, almost
humble smile. That was the only way to treat young women. Firmness. Let them be
as capricious and arbitrary as they chose; what they really liked was to be
compelled to obey.
Having moved forward a couple of score yards,
Gracie halted the car again and waited for Evelyn to come up with it
"You're afraid of being seen with me in my
car," she said, smiling not humbly but mischievously, half-resentfully.
"I am." Evelyn was blunt and careless,
but secretly a trifle surprised by the accuracy of her thought-reading.
Gracie drove on. This curt exchange seemed to
Evelyn to be further startling proof of intimacy.
He took deep breaths. He was conscious of a
much-increased sense of being alive.
DAUGHTER
AND FATHER
Gracie had no sooner entered her sitting-room at
the Imperial Palace, leaving the door ajar as she left most doors ajar, than
her father pushed open the door and peeped in. She was just dropping her
leather coat on to a chair, which was already encumbered with a rug. Sir Henry
inferred from the coat that his daughter had been out in the car. He wondered
why, but asked no question. The relations between these two were peculiar, yet
logical enough, considering their characters. Before he got his title his wife
had divorced him, and obtained the custody of the child, then aged seventeen.
She obtained also an alimony of five thousand a year. She had tried for ten
thousand, and failed. Five thousand or ten thousand: the figure had no
practical interest for Henry Savott, but he had fought her ruthlessly.
After three weeks of living with her mother,
Gracie had walked into her father's office one day, and said: "Daddy, I
understand now." "Understand what?" "You know." Henry
Savott had looked harshly at her and growled: "Better late than
never." Gracie had then announced that she had not the least intention of
living any longer with her mother. "I'm not going to be in anybody's
'custody'! What a word!" Henry Savott had reminded her that she was a
minor, and that the decree of the High Court of Justice explicitly put her in
her mother's power. Gracie, frequently a realist, had merely laughed. "I'd
love to see the Court that could make me live with anybody I don't want to live
with. I'm coming to live with you, daddy."
Henry Savott had been tremendously flattered. His
daughter's unsolicited testimonial was the finest gift ever bestowed upon him,
and he instantly saw that it would do much to restore his damaged prestige in
the social world. He offered objections to Gracie's plan, but not convincingly.
His maiden sister, who hated his wife, was induced to take theoretical charge
over his household.
Gracie had enjoyed freedom from the very beginning
of her new life; for her father was absorbed in his vast financial schemes, and
her aunt, a hypochondriac with a magnificent constitution, was absorbed in the
complex ritual of the treatment of her imagined diseases. As a rule
hypochondriacs live for ever. But Miss Savott proved not to be immortal. She
died suddenly, untimely, of a malady whose existence had concealed itself even
from the hypochondriac's ferreting morbidness. Attired in black on the evening
of the funeral, father and daughter had had one of their short, clear,
monosyllabic conversations, the result of which was that Gracie at twenty
became the head of Sir Henry's household. The unspoken but perfectly understood
undertaking on Sir Henry's part was:
"Don't make a fool of yourself, and I won't
make a fool of myself or of you. You leave me alone and I'll leave you
alone." Twenty years earlier such an arrangement would have been regarded
as immoral, but the Savotts were of those rather rare persons who look often at
the calendar, not to know the day of the month, but to remind themselves of the
Annus Domini. And the arrangement, being between two realists, worked. It
suited both of them. Both possessed the faculty of not seeing what it might be
inconvenient to see. Sir Henry in his old-fashioned way sometimes felt
transient qualms; Gracie never.
Sir Henry had an immense admiration for his
daughter, and especially for her worldly common sense. He was proud of her
racing achievements, which had cost him a lot of money in the building of
monstrously engined cars. In every department of expenditure she was an
extremely costly child. But he was free; she was free; she was a capable
hostess; and domestic extravagance never disturbed him; for he had a sense of
proportion.
The miscarriage of a financial operation in the
City might well in a day reduce his resources by more than Gracie could
possibly squander in twenty years.
Such was their situation, and it explains why Sir
Henry hid whatever curiosity he might have felt about the leather coat.
Two books lay on the floor of the littered,
luxurious room. Sir Henry picked them up; for though he had learnt that his
daughter's enormous untidiness was incurable, his own instinct for order would
out.
"The Bible and Shakspere," he murmured.
"Still?"
"The Bible and Shakspere still. And I don't
know which is best," said Gracie.
"Why this surprising passion for the
classics?" he twitted her.
"I only like them--that's all," said
Gracie negligently. "I'm just reading the Psalms."
"Why the Psalms?" he continued to twit
the girl, "I should have thought the biography of David would be more in
your line--as a contemporary young woman."
"The Psalms are David's
biography," Gracie replied.
He reflected:
"How does the kid think of these remarks of
hers. Something in that. I never thought of it." He was not an ardent reader.
"Oh!" he said.
"Yes. The finest thing in all the Bible is in
the Psalms."
"Oh!" he repeated, smiling. "What's
that? I'd like to hear."
Gracie quoted with a certain solemnity:
"Be still, and know that I am God.' Be
still."Sombrely contemplative, she gazed at her parent, so dapper, so
physically fresh in his age, so earthly, so active in his unending material
schemes, so deaf and blind to the spiritual, so regardless of all that was
incalculable by an adding machine. He fancied that her eyes were fixed upon his
magnificent, regular white teeth, which she had once called cruel, and
instinctively he closed his lips on them, thus ceasing to smile.
"Shall I ever get to the bottom of this kid's
mind?" he asked himself, puzzled, uneasy, as it were intimidated; but
still admiring. He dropped the books on to a table.
Then there was a second swift disconcerting change
in Gracie's mood.
"What are you going to do to-night,
daddy?"
"I'm going to bed. You know I never do
anything the first day, anywhere."
She seemed not to be listening to him.
"Because," she continued, "I've
just seen Mr. Orcham."
"I'm waiting to hear from him," said Sir
Henry drily.
"He's only this minute come back into the
hotel. Been out all day."
"How do you know?"
"Don't I say I've just seen him?"
"You seem to be very friendly with him?"
Sir Henry quizzed her.
"Oh! I am! He took me to Smithfield Market
this morning."
"He asked you to go to Smithfield with
him!"
"No. I asked him to take me."
"When?"
"After you went off to bed."
"I hope he didn't think I'd put you up to
it," said Sir Henry, disturbed.
"How could he have thought that? I didn't
know he was going to Smithfield until a minute before you went off. I'm glad I
asked him. It was most frightfully amusing. And if I'd gone to bed I shouldn't
have been able to sleep. It filled in the time perfectly. I was thinking you
might invite him to dinner tonight."
"I invite him to dinner! And in his own
hotel! No fear! The last thing I want is for him to think I'm running after
him. You can understand that. If he doesn't suggest anything, after my message
to him, I shan't suggest anything."
Gracie said with absolute tranquillity:
"Then you go to bed, and I'll ask him. I like
him." Sir Henry exercised the self-restraint which experience of Gracie
had taught him.
"He won't accept."
"I'll bet ten to one he will."
"In the restaurant? He won't."
"Well, we'll see."
Sir Henry reconsidered the position. If Orcham
accepted an invitation from Gracie alone, it would mean that he might be getting
wrong notions into his head. If he declined, undesirable complications might
ensue. Sir Henry went to the door.
"You ask him for both of us. Nine o'clock.
Send a note down. Let me know the reply." Sir Henry departed without
waiting for Gracie to speak.
"Father," she ran to the door and called
out after him in the corridor:
"What's his Christian name?"
She wrote, in her large hand: "Dear Mr.
Evelyn Orcham. Father and I would be so glad if you would dine with us tonight
in the restaurant. Nine o'clock. Please don't disappoint us. Yours sincerely,
G. S."
She rang for the waiter.
Mrs. O'Riordan, the head-housekeeper, brightly
sustaining the cares of her kingdom, entered, in front of the waiter, to pay
one of those state-visits which she vouchsafed only to very important guests or
very angry guests. She enquired whether Gracie's comfort and satisfaction were
complete and without flaw. Gracie, recognising at once a superior member of the
hotel-hierarchy, invited Mrs. O'Riordan to sit down. The two had quite a long
chat. Then Gracie lavished more than an hour and a half upon her evening
toilette, melancholy Tessa helping her as well as a bandaged wrist permitted.
GREEN
PARROT
Evelyn entered the foyer at one minute to nine.
Certainly one of his gods was Punctuality, though there were greater gods in
his pantheon. When master of his movements he was never late, nor early; his
knowledge of the hour, and of the minute of the hour, was almost continuous.
A thin stream of guests was passing from the great
hall through the foyer into the restaurant. Other guests were sipping cocktails
at the small tables in the foyer; and still others were seated on the sofas,
contributing naught to the night's receipts of the foyer, but safeguarding
their stomachs. Not a single guest recognised Evelyn; Mr. Cousin would have
been recognised and saluted by several of them; Evelyn's personality was more
recondite. Only the knowing ones knew that Mr. Cousin, the manager, had a
superior.
In the lounge were two cloak-room attendants,
knee-breeched and gorgeous, who looked as if they had escaped from the Court of
the Prince Regent, two cocktail pages in white and gold, a foyer-waiter dressed
as a waiter, and two head-waiters of the restaurant, who stood on the lower
stairs to receive diners; for every arriving party was personally conducted to
its table and not abandoned by the conductor until the head-waiter of the table
had received it into his hands. All these employees were immediately and
acutely aware of the unusual presence of Evelyn, but, under standing orders,
they ignored it: not an easy feat.
At nine o'clock Sir Henry Savott appeared; he
glanced at his watch, and his austere face betrayed a high consciousness that
punctuality was the politeness of emperors. He descried Evelyn. The two smiled,
mutually approached, shook hands, and as it were took positions for a duel.
"I was just going to telephone up to you, and
suggest an appointment for to-morrow," said Evelyn genially, "when I
got your daughter's most kind invitation."
"Very good of you to accept at such short
notice," said Sir Henry. "Have a cocktail?"
"Yes, thanks," said Evelyn simply, and
indicated an empty table.
"What's the matter with the bar?" asked
Sir Henry. "Ihear you've had it redecorated."
"But Miss--er--Gracie?"
"Gracie has never been known to be less than
a quarter of an hour late for lunch or dinner," said Sir Henry. "Like
most women she has a disorderly mind. Not disordered," he added.
The two males exchanged a complacent,
condescending look which relegated the entire female sex to its proper place,
and strolled side by side up the stairs, along the broad corridor which led
past the grill-room into the American bar.
The cocktail department comprised two large rooms:
the first was permitted to ladies; the second, containing the majestic bar, was
forbidden to them. By a common impulse Sir Henry and his guest for the evening
walked without hesitation into the second room and sat down in a corner. Each
waited for the other to open. Neither knew that the mind of the other was
preoccupied with one sole image: that of Gracie. Evelyn was thinking: "She
said she'd fix it, and she's fixed it." Sir Henry was thinking: "What's
the meaning of this whim for getting this fellow to dinner?...'Be still, and
know that I am God.' Good God!" (But naïve pride was mingled with his
non-comprehension.)
Sir Henry glanced around with feigned curiosity at
the floodlighting, the silvern ceiling, the Joseph's-coat walls decorated in
rhomboidal shapes which bar-frequenters described as cubistic or futuristic or
both. He did not like it.
"Very original," he commented.
"Charming. I expect it was good for a bit of useful publicity, this
was."
"It was," said Evelyn. "Change from
the traditional British bar, eh?" He saw himself and Gracie incredibly
hobnobbing in the Prince of Wales's Feathers in Westminster Bridge Road.
A white-jacketed, black-trousered youth ceremoniously
approached.
"Maddix," Evelyn murmured to him before
Sir Henry could speak.
The youth hurried away.
There were four solemn revellers at the bar, and a
priest and an acolyte behind it. The ascetic priest was a thin, short,
middle-aged man with a semi-bald cranium, a few close-cropped grey hairs, and
an enormous dome of a forehead above grey eyes. Leaving the bar and his
customers to the care of the acolyte, the priest came tripping with dignity
across the room and halted in silence at Evelyn's elbow.
"Well, Maddix, what's your latest?
Apollo?" Evelyn asked, hardly smiling.
"The Apollo is quite new, sir. But my latest
I've christened Green Parrot. I only really finished it last night."
"Not on the market yet?"
"Not as you might say, sir."
"Well, Sir Henry, will you try a Green
Parrot?"
"Good evening, Sir Henry," said Maddix,
his tone a mixture of deference and self-respect.
"Why of course it's Maddix!" Sir Henry
exclaimed, holding out his hand. "How are you, Maddix? Haven't seen you
since God knows when--at the Plaza in New York. You were a very famous figure
there."
Maddix took the offered hand with reserve.
"Yes, sir," he agreed placidly. "I
suppose I was. I suppose I was the best-known barman in New York for twenty
years. Prohibition and Mr. Orcham brought me back home."
"And how are the boys?" Sir Henry
enquired.
"Which boys, Sir Henry? The general bar
population?"
"No. Your two sons of course." A swift
change transformed the impassive countenance of the legendary world-figure, the
formidable man whose demeanour divided the general bar population of the two
greatest capitals in history into two groups, the group which ventured to
address him as 'Maddix,' with or without familiar additions, and the group
which did not venture. The countenance relaxed and showed human emotion.
"Thank you for remembering them, Sir Henry.
The eldest is still over there. Fur trade. Seems to be dollars in it. The other
one's with me and his mother, here."
"And what's he doing?"
"Well, Sir Henry, you may think it queer. But
I've got a tennis court back of my little house at Fulham, and the boy's gone
mad on tennis. He means to be a professional player. His mother isn't very
pleased. But I say, 'What can you do--if he's made up his mind?' Between
parents and children things aren't what they used to be, are they, Sir
Henry?"
"They are not," the millionaire
concurred, thinking of Gracie.
"A Green Parrot then, Sir Henry?"
"I'll risk it."
"And you, sir?"
Evelyn said:
"Soft."
"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Maddix.
"I should prefer to mix that Green Parrot myself." He went away.
"A character!" observed Sir Henry.
"How did you manage to get him away from New York?"
"I saw him once or twice when I was over
there," Evelyn answered placidly. "He said he'd like to come home. I
believed him. Considering Prohibition! A man who can live for twenty years
behind a New York bar and never pick up an American accent--and never use a
word of American slang--well, there must be something incurably English about
him. I told him I had the finest American bar in the world, and I wanted the
finest barman in the world to take charge of it. He came. Of course he gets the
salary of an Under-Secretary of State. So he ought to."
"Not quite the cocktail hour here, is
it?" said Sir Henry, again glancing around at the large, half-empty room.
"No. It's too late and too early. But it'll
soon be the liqueur hour. Extraordinary how many men prefer to come in here for
a drink at the end of a meal. They feel more at home near a bar, even if they
don't stand at it."
Two fat men in lounge-suits wandered in. The first
word that Evelyn caught in their self-conscious conversation was the word
'Acceptances.' He knew and cared absolutely nothing about racing; but he had
the wit to gather that Acceptances were one of the few human phenomena capable
of making all men kin. The talk among the leaners against the bar suddenly rose
to loudness. "And I say that gin is the--" he heard, from an
affected and disputatious voice. (He would have liked to hear a profound remark
concerning women from some other quarter of the room; but he was disappointed.)
He thought:
"There was a quality about that wigwam in the
Westminster Bridge Road that this place hasn't got. The free-and-easy! This
place is too stiff." And he began to wonder how the Prince of Wales's
Feathers' quality could be added to the qualities of the Imperial Palace
American bar. "No!" he decided. "Couldn't be done. Wouldn't do,
either." But he regretted its absence from the too correct and august
atmosphere of the place.
Then a procession moved from the bar in the
direction of Evelyn and Sir Henry: an acolyte solemnly bearing a tray upon
which were two small glasses, one green, one yellow, followed by the priestly
Maddix. Evelyn took the yellow glass, Sir Henry the green. The acolyte bowed
and retired. Maddix stood awaiting in silence the verdict of Sir Henry. Evelyn
absurdly wished that Maddix, with rolled-up shirt-sleeves exposing hairy
forearms, might have exclaimed freely: "Well, what abaht it, guv'nor?"
Observing that Sir Henry's eyes were on Evelyn's
glass, not on his own, Maddix allowed himself to remark:
"Mr. Orcham is not much for cocktails."
"I'm much more for cocktails than you are,
Maddix," Evelyn said. And to Sir Henry: "Maddix is a strict
teetotaller."
"Then how do you manage to invent these
things?" asked Sir Henry, gazing now at the green glass.
"I taste. I never swallow."
Sir Henry both tasted and swallowed, and putting
on the air of a connoisseur, amiably delivered judgment: "Very original.
Very good."
Maddix bowed his gratitude--a bow hardly
perceptible; he had divined that to the millionaire all cocktails were more or
less the same cocktail. The experience of decades, the inventive imagination of
a genuine creator, and some good luck had gone into the conceiving of the Green
Parrot cocktail, and the millionaire recked not, sympathised not, understood
not! He had been friendly enough about the human offspring of the cocktail
genus, but to the miracles of cocktail art God had decreed that he should be
insensible. As a fact Maddix did not know more than ten men in London who truly
comprehended the great classical principles of the cocktail. Evelyn was one of
the ten.
Sir Henry began to talk to Evelyn. Maddix sedately
walked away, the artist sardonic because unappreciated by a barbaric public.
Presently Evelyn glanced at his watch.
"Perhaps we ought to go back to the foyer.'
"Lots of time," said Sir Henry
soothingly.
At that moment the whole room, from the bar to the
furthest corner, became agitated with a unique agitation, and every masculine
face seemed to be saying: "Strange things have happened, but this is the
strangest." Oblivious of the printed notice prominently displayed at the
entrance, a woman was intruding. And not merely a woman, but a young woman, a
beautiful woman, proud of bearing, clad in a magnificent frock of mauve and
pink, and glinting with jewels. And neither apology nor challenge in her mien.
Maddix started instinctively into protest at this desecration; then stopped,
thinking: "A greater than me is here. Let him deal with the unparalleled
outrage." And yet the outrage was delicious to every beholding male, even
to Maddix himself. The woman went straight to Evelyn and Sir Henry, who both
rose quickly. Sir Henry at any rate felt that she must be removed at once.
Evelyn did not care whether she was removed or not: in the Palace he was above
all laws; the one law was his own approval.
"I got tired of waiting for you in the
foyer," the smiling woman greeted them with entirely unresentful charm.
"So I asked where you were."
The two men were like sixth-form boys convicted of
an impropriety.
"Been waiting long?" asked Sir Henry.
"Oh no! Not more than an hour. This place is
more old-fashioned than I thought it was." Such was her indication of awareness
that she was where she knew she had no right to be. "I think a
public-house would be more up-to-date than this. I know I should adore
public-houses. Don't you adore them, Mr. Orcham?"
"I'm not very well acquainted with
public-houses," said Evelyn.
"Never been in one?"
"Oh yes. Once."
"How long ago?"
"Oh! Not very long ago."
Evelyn saw in her something of the woman who at
the banked corners of the Brooklands track had many times staked her life on the
accuracy of an instantaneous appraisal of positions, speeds and distances. He
perceived that she liked his replies. He admired her tremendously. He was
dazzled by her. He knew that she knew he was dazzled by her. Sir Henry also was
somewhat overset, and quite incapable of reproaching her for the wilful
audacity of her invasion. She had put him in the wrong. She triumphantly led
out the two men as though they had been captives to an Amazon. She vanished
from the view of the room, and to all the seated, entranced males the room
seemed to be suddenly darkened.
VOLIVIA
In the American bar the hour for cocktails had
nearly finished, but guests were still drinking them, though perhaps with more
refined gestures, in the foyer; and people were still passing down through the
foyer into the restaurant.
Dinner-time at the Imperial Palace, if still not
as late as in Venice, Paris, Madrid, was getting later, and nearer and nearer
to supper-time. A crowded, confused scene of smart frocks, dowdy frocks, jewels
genuine and sham, black coats, white shirts, white table-cloths, silver, steel,
glass, coloured chairs, coloured carpets, parquet in the midst, mirrors,
melody, and light glinting through the crystal of chandeliers.
A tall and graceful youngish man, with an
expression of gentle smiling melancholy on his dark face, greeted Gracie, Sir
Henry and Evelyn on the lower steps, and led them to a table on the edge of the
empty parquet. Having seated them, he stood with bent, attentive head at Sir
Henry's elbow.
"You're doing some business here to-night,
Cappone," said Evelyn, losing the self-consciousness which usually
afflicted him on the rare occasions when as a diner he descended those broad
steps into the restaurant. Cappone's response was a soft triumphant smile. Sir
Henry, always self-conscious at first in a public place, concealed his
constraint as well as he could under a Napoleonic brusquerie. Gracie, stared at
by a hundred eyes until she sat down, was just as much at her ease as a bride
at a wedding. Created by heaven to be a cynosure, rightly convinced that she
was the best-dressed woman in the great, glittering, humming room, her spirit
floated on waves of admiration as naturally as a goldfish in water. Evelyn,
impressed, watched her surreptitiously as she dropped on to the table an inlaid
vanity-case which had cost her father a couple of hundred pounds.
"Same girl," thought Evelyn, "who
was hobnobbing with me in a leather coat about two minutes since in the Prince
of Wales's Feathers!"
Surely in the wide world that night there could
not be anything to beat her! Idle, luxurious rich, but a masterpiece!
Maintained in splendour by the highly skilled and expensive labour of others,
materially useless to society, she yet justified herself by her mere
appearance. And she knew it, and her conscience was clear.
Mr. Cappone having accepted three menus from a man
who stood behind him with a tablet in his hand, distributed them among his
guests.
"Well now, let's see," said Sir Henry,
applying eye-glasses to his nose, and paused. "Oh! Look here, Cappone, I
think we'll leave it all to you."
"Very well, Sir Henry. Thank you," said
Mr. Cappone, gathering up the menus, and departing with his subaltern.
"That's right, isn't it, Orcham?" Sir
Henry questioned.
"You couldn't have done better, Savott,"
said Evelyn, curt and confident.
"I suppose he's the head-waiter," said
Gracie, indicating Mr. Cappone.
"Head-waiter!" Evelyn exclaimed, with an
intonation somewhat sardonic, laughing drily. "I'm glad he didn't hear
you. There are thirty head-waiters in this room. No. Cappone is the manager of
the restaurant." The more Gracie dazzled him, the more was he determined
to keep these Savotts in their place. After all, was he not old enough to be
the girl's father? It was as if he resented her dominion equally with her
ignorance of hotel terminology.
"And all he has to do is to look romantic and
be exquisitely polite?" Gracie went on, quite wilfully unaware of her
place.
"Yes. That's all," Evelyn agreed, and
paused. "Well, there may be one or two other things he has to do. Settle
the menus with the chef. Attend conferences. Watch the graph curves of the
average bill every day. Explain satisfactorily the occasional presence of a
worm in a lettuce--not so simple, that! Know the names and private histories
and weaknesses and vanities and doings of every regular customer. Talk four
languages. Keep the peace among his staff over the distribution of the tips.
Know exactly how every dish is cooked. Persuade every customer that he has got
the best table in the place. Prevent customers who prefer the prix fixe
from choosing more expensive things than the price will stand. Find new
waiters, because even waiters die and quarrel and so on. That's one of his
worries, the waiter question. You can't bring foreigners into the country, and
English lads simply refuse to go abroad to finish their education. Cappone says
that English waiters would be as good as any, and better in some ways; only
there's one thing they can't learn, and it's the most important thing."
"Ha! What's that?" Sir Henry demanded.
"That the customer is always right, of
course. It's that terrible British sense of justice! Well, those are a few of
the odd trifles that our graceful friend has to think about, besides looking
romantic," Evelyn ended with a faint sneer. He thought:
"Why am I talking like this? Why have I got
the note wrong?"
"It's perfectly thrilling," said Gracie,
with an enchanting, excited, modest smile.
Evelyn said to himself:
"She understands. She has imagination. More
than daddy has."
"Yes, yes," Sir Henry grunted absently,
his inquisitive small eyes prying into the far corners of the restaurant.
"Do tell us some more," Gracie pleaded,
leaning eagerly towards Evelyn across the table, her beautiful face all lighted
up.
"About waiters?"
"About anything. Yes, about waiters."
Evelyn's tone had apparently not in the least ruffled her. She was admiring
him. She was kissing the rod.
"Well," said Evelyn. "Cappone says
that English waiters look very smart in the street, off duty, but in the
restaurant they don't care how they look, whereas his precious Italians look
very smart on duty, and don't look like anything on earth in the street. I mean
the commis of course, the youths in the long aprons. Not the chefs de
rang. English or not, they have to look smart on duty."
He forced Sir Henry to meet his gaze. These people
had got to know the sort of man they'd asked to dinner, and he would teach
them. If daddy fancied he was going to buy the Imperial Palace for nineteen and
eleven--
Mr. Cappone reappeared, to lay an orchid on the
table in front of Gracie, who glanced up at him, and without a spoken word gave
the Restaurant-manager such a smile as Evelyn had never before seen. And Mr.
Cappone gave her a smile, respectful and yet adoringly masculine, that made
Evelyn say to himself: "I couldn't smile like that to save my life."
"He's a dear," Gracie murmured, picking
up the exotic flower. And to Evelyn: "Go on. Go on."
But at that moment a waiter arrived with a dish of
caviare on a carriage, and another with three tiny glasses on a tray.
"Hello! What's this?" asked Sir Henry,
suddenly attentive. "Vodka," said Evelyn. "I hope it's
vodka." And his tone said: "No doubt you thought it was gin."
The repast began. They were all hungry. The unique
caviare, the invaluable vodka, rapidly worked a miracle in the immortal spirit
of Sir Henry. Gracie ate and drank with exclamatory delight. As for Evelyn, his
testy mood faded away in fifteen seconds. The table now participated in the
festivity of the great room. God reigned. The earth was perfect. No stain upon
it, no sorrow, no injustice, no death! And life was worth living. Beauty
abounded. Civilisation was at its fullest bloom. There was no yesterday, and
there would be no to-morrow. And all because the pickled ovarian parts of a
fish, and a liquid distilled from plain rye, were smoothly passing into the
alimentary tracts of the three ravenous diners.
Then in the orchestra a drum rolled solemnly,
warningly, even menacingly; and everyone looked towards the orchestra,
expectant. The orchestra, having for more than an hour drawn out of a series of
Hungarian melodies the last wild, melancholy sweetness, began to play Russian
dance music. The high curtains at the end of the room moved mysteriously apart,
revealing a blaze of light behind. In the midst of this amber radiance stood a
dark woman, half-clad or quarter-clad in black and white: costume of an
athlete, ceasing abruptly at the arm-pits and the top of the thighs. She was
neither beautiful nor slim nor elegant as she stood there, nor was her
performer's smile better than good-natured.
"So you've fallen for it," said Gracie,
under the loud applause which welcomed the apparition.
"Fallen for what?" asked Evelyn.
"Cabaret."
"We've had a cabaret here for two
years," said Evelyn.
It was true, however, that for a very long time
the Imperial Palace had set its face against cabaret. The Palace had been above
cabaret, was too refined and dignified for cabaret, needed no cabaret,
flourishing as it did on its prestige, its food, and the distinction of its
clientele. But Evelyn had recognised that the Time-Spirit was irresistible, and
cabaret had come to the Palace. Of course not the ordinary run of cabaret.
Inconceivable that the Palace cabaret should be that!
Soup and hock were unobtrusively delivered at Sir
Henry's table. Waiters on the edges of the room were unobtrusively inserting
new tables between tables.
The woman stepped into the centre of the
dancing-floor with all the mien of a victor; for, although this was only her
third evening; she knew that she was a success. Everybody knew that she was a
success. Waiters glanced aside at her as they did their work. In the distances
guests were standing up to watch. In two days the tale of Volivia's exhibition
of herself had spread like a conflagration through what is called the
town--without the help of the press. When she opened Volivia had been nobody.
Now, because she had so unmistakably succeeded at the Palace, she could get
contracts throughout the entire western world of luxury. Her muscles knew it as
they contracted and expanded, making ripples on her olive skin.
She flowed into a dance, which soon developed into
a succession of abrupt, short, violent motions. Ugly! Evelyn was witnessing the
turn for the first time. He was puzzled. "The public is an enigma,"
he thought. "They like it; but what do they like in it? I wouldn't look
twice at it myself." Nevertheless the woman held his gaze. He snatched a
glance at Gracie, who was completely absorbed in the spectacle, her vermilion
lips apart; at Sir Henry, whose eyes were humid. Then his gaze was dragged back
to the dancer. She was now beginning to circle round the floor; faster and
faster, in gyrations of the body, stoopings, risings, whirlings: arms uplifted,
disclosing the secrets of the arm-pits. In her course, she came close to the
tables, so close to Sir Henry's table that Evelyn could have touched her. He
saw her rapt face close; he heard her breathing. The sexual, sinister quality
of her body frightened and enchanted him. She passed along. His desirous
thought was:
"She will be round again in a moment."
He understood then why she was a success, why the rumour of her ran from mouth
to mouth through the town. Faster and faster. Someone applauded. Applause
everywhere, louder and louder. Waiters stood still. Faster and faster. Her face
was seen alternately with her bare back: swift alternations that sight could
hardly follow. Louder and louder applause. A kind of trial of endurance between
Volivia and the applause. At last she manœuvred herself into the centre of the
floor, and suddenly dropped on to the hard floor in a violent entrechat.
And kept the pose, smiling, her bosom heaving in rapid respirations, her
tremendous legs stretched out at right-angles to her torso. And, keeping the
pose, ugly as in itself it was, she now appeared graceful, elegant, beautiful and
young. The applause roared about the great room, wave of it responding to every
invisible wave of conquering sensual sexuality which effused powerfully from
her accomplished body.
Sir Henry applauded loudly; Gracie applauded without
any reserve. Evelyn wanted to applaud, but he restrained himself; he did not
want to be seen applauding--not that anyone would have noticed him in the
excited din.
Volivia rose, bowed and retired: Aphrodite,
Ariadne, Astarte. The applause persisted. Volivia returned, and, with her, two
male dancers, boyish, said by the learned to be her brothers, and by the more
learned to be her nephews, or even her sons. They came into the category of the
grotesque, dancing on their ankles, on the outer sides of their calves, with
their knees seldom unbent. They had a reception whose enthusiasm was little
less warm than that of Volivia's. Then Volivia, whose departure from the floor
had hardly been observed, returned again, for a final trio or ensemble with the
youths. This conclusion was the apogee of the number. Nothing whatever of the
anti-climax about it. Call it a tumult, a typhoon, a tangled dervish confusion,
so sensational in its mingling of two sexes that diners neglected to dine and
forgot to breathe.
"The roof'll be off in a minute,"
shouted Sir Henry, furiously clapping, in the deafening clamour. Again Evelyn
did not applaud. After the three had retired, Volivia reappeared alone, to
accept that which was hers. The curtains joined their folds and hid her. The
diners breathed, but did not yet eat. They were sorry that the number was over,
but also relieved that it was over.
The next and last number was a clown, who
translated the classical tradition of the English music-hall droll into French.
He was an artist in the comic, and the diners laughed, but with more amiability
than sincerity. And they ate.
Evelyn thought:
"What on earth has Jones Wyatt been thinking
about? This clown fellow has been set an impossible task. It's not fair to him.
He must come before Volivia, not after. I'll have it altered for the midnight
performance."
"You know, really," said Sir Henry,
while the clown was clowning. "Those boys were better than the girl."
Evelyn nodded carelessly, reflecting: "Does he mean it? Or is he just
pretending to be judicial, saving his face for us and for himself too? After
the exhibition he's been making of himself!" If Sir Henry was trying to
save his face there were others in the restaurant making a similar attempt.
"Where did you pick her up?" Sir Henry
continued, as if indifferently curious.
"Prague, I believe. Praha's its new name,
isn't it? I have a man always running about the Continent after really good
turns. They're not so easy to find."
"Cost you a lot?"
Evelyn hesitated. He was on the point of saying
"Oh! A goodish bit. I don't remember the exact figure." Just to keep
Sir Henry in his place! Then he changed his mind. There was a more effective
way of keeping Sir Henry in his place. The way of the facts. "Yes. Volivia
and Co. stand us in for eighty pounds a week. The other turn forty or fifty.
Bands and cabaret come to not a penny less than twelve hundred a week."
And he added to himself: "Get that into your head, my friend."
"Bands so much?" Sir Henry gave an
excellent imitation of imperturbability.
"Yes."
"How many bands?"
"Three."
"One's American?"
"Yes. Here they are." Evelyn waved
towards the bustle and the glitter of new instruments on the bandstand.
"I knew they got biggish money in New
York," said Sir Henry.
"They get biggish money in London,"
Evelyn retorted. "Why! I happened to be going out by the Queen Anne
entrance the other day, and the whole alley was blocked with cars. I asked the
porter about it--he's a waggish sort of a chap. He told me they were the cars
of 'the gentlemen of the orchestra'!"
"By Jove!" Sir Henry exclaimed, glancing
round. "There's Harry Matcham. The very man I want to see. That big round
table."
"Lord Watlington?"
"Yes. Gracie, I think I'd better step over to
him now and fix a date. Excuse me, Orcham--one second."
Mahomets go to mountains.
During this interlude of chat, Gracie had not
uttered one word. Nor had she eaten. She was playing, meditative, with the
chain of her vanity-case.
"Step over, daddy," she said.
"Lord Watlington hasn't had a dinner-party
here for quite a long time," said Evelyn. "Cappone was beginning to
think he'd deserted us." Gracie did not speak. Evelyn went on: "I see
Mrs. Penkethman with him, and Lady Devizes and the two Cheddars. Rather
Renaissance young men, those Cheddars, don't you think?" Gracie still did
not speak. Evelyn went on:
"I don't recognise any of the others."
"You know," said Gracie suddenly,
looking up into Evelyn's eyes with a soft smile, "that wouldn't do in a
drawing-room."
"What wouldn't do?"
"That Volivia show."
"No. Scarcely," Evelyn agreed. "A
drawing-room would be a bit too intimate for it. But if it pleases people in a
restaurant--well, there you are; it pleases them. Volivia's the biggest cabaret
success we've ever had here. Now before the war that turn wouldn't have been
respectable. I do believe it would have emptied any restaurant--or filled it
with exactly the sort of person we don't want. But we give it now, and
the Palace is just as respectable as ever it was. More, even. Look at the
people here!"
"It was shameless," said Gracie.
"Perhaps too shameless," Evelyn replied.
"I admit I should have had my doubts about it if I'd seen it on the first
night. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It's audiences that make
a show respectable--or not. I've heard our Cabaret-manager say it takes two to
settle that point--the show and the audience. But I don't think so. The
audience settles it. I'm sure some of these variety artists start out to
be--well, questionable." He was choosing his words so as to avoid abrading
Gracie's girlish susceptibilities. He meant 'indecent.' "But sufficient
applause, frank, unreserved applause, will make them feel absolutely virtuous
with the very same show."
He was defending his Imperial Palace against the
delicious girl who had used the adjective 'shameless.' She had changed now from
the invader of the cocktail bar.
"I'm sorry you think it was shameless,"
he said.
Gracie smiled at him still more exquisitely and
more softly. "I loved it for being shameless," she said, not with any
protest in her rich, dark voice, but persuasively. "Why shouldn't it be
shameless? We aren't shameless enough. What's the matter with the flesh anyway?
Don't we all know what we are? If I could give a performance like Volivia's,
wouldn't I just go on the stage! Nobody should stop me, I tell you that."
Some emphasis in the voice. Then she restrained the emphasis, murmuring:
"I'm rather like Volivia. Only she was born to perform, and I
wasn't."
Evelyn was very seriously taken aback, partly by
the realisation that he had completely misjudged her attitude, and partly by
the extraordinary candour with which she had revealed herself. If she had
averted her gaze, if her voice had been uncertain, he would have been less
disconcerted. But she had continued to face him boldly, and her tones, though
low, had given no sign of any inward tremor. And she had not made a confession,
she had made a statement. She was indeed as shameless as Volivia. But how
virginally, and how unanswerably!
Evelyn thought:
"I suppose this is the modern girl. I mustn't
lose my presence of mind." He said, trying to copy her serenity: "And
yet you say Volivia wouldn't do in a drawing-room! Why not?"
"Simply because in a drawing-room she'd make
me feel uncomfortable. If I feel uncomfortable I always know something's wrong.
But here I didn't feel a bit uncomfortable. You did, and so did daddy.
But not me. Besides, you wouldn't agree that what can't be done in a
drawing-room oughtn't to be done at all. A big restaurant's much the same as a
bedroom. You see what I mean?"
"Not quite."
"Well, you will," said Gracie with
gentle assurance. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"
"In the middle of dinner?"
"Why not? What a question, from you!"
The Californian "Big Oak Band," with its
self-complacent leader Eleazer Schenk at a green and yellow grand piano, was
just emitting its first wild woodland notes; the first professional dancing
couple was just taking the floor beneath the patronising glances of the
dandiacal, tight-waisted bandsmen; and Sir Henry's wine-waiter was just pouring
forth champagne from a magnum bottle. The general gay noise of chatter had
increased. For not only at Sir Henry's table, but everywhere up and down the
room, great wines after elaborate years of preparation were reaching their final,
glorious, secret goal, quickening hearts as well as tickling palates. And under
the influence of these superfine golden and ruby and amber liquids, valued at
as much as five shillings a glassful, quaffed sometimes in a moment, the
immortal tendency to confuse indulgence with happiness was splendidly
maintained. The graph-curves of alcohol consumption per head might be
downwards, to the grief of the hierarchs of the Imperial Palace; but on this
Volivia night the sad decline was certainly arrested for a space. Mr. Cappone
and his cohort of head-waiters and humbler aproned commis knew all about
that.
"I don't dance," said Evelyn shortly.
He rarely did dance, and never on his own floor.
For him, there would have been something improper in him, Director of the
Imperial Palace, deity of thirteen hundred employees, disporting himself on the
Palace floor. And further, he had not yet in the least recovered from the shock
of Gracie's shattering remarks upon the moral excellence of shamelessness. 'We
all know what we are,' etc. There she sat, to the left of him, lovely, radiant,
elegant, fabulously expensive, with her soft smile, her gentle, thrilling tone,
her clear, candid gaze, her modest demeanour--likening restaurants to bedrooms,
and--'we all know what we are'! And he, Evelyn, monarch of the supreme luxury
hotel of the world, had ingenuously been thinking that in his vast and varied
experience he had nothing to learn about human nature!
"Oh! So you don't dance!" said she most
sweetly.
She might, Evelyn reflected, be a bewildering
mixture of contradictions, but she was the most enchanting creature he had ever
met. She had bowed her glory in instant acquiescence.
"Why do you have American bands here?"
she enquired in a new tone, as if conversationally to set him at ease after his
curt refusal to dance. Yes, she was the ideal companion. He recalled the
obstinacies of his dead wife.
"Because they're the best," he replied,
in relieved, brighter accents. "We're miles behind them in this country.
You see, the dance craze started earlier over there than here. They're better
disciplined, and they have a better rhythm. They've taught us a lot. An English
player who takes his work seriously will give his head to play next to an
American for a month. Rather! Of course we get the best even of the Americans,
because we give the best treatment, to say nothing of the best
advertisement--not direct advertisement. Oh no! Never! The tall fellow with the
saxophone--he earns fifty pounds a week. We give them a sitting-room and dressing-rooms,
and a valet, and two porters to carry their instruments about. We even press
their clothes for them free of charge. They behave like dukes, and we behave to
them as if they were dukes. But we wouldn't look at 'em if we could find
any English band as good, or nearly as good."
He had spoken with earnestness, for he was very
sensitive on the subject of engaging American bands in a London hotel. Italian
and French and Swiss managers, chefs, waiters--yes! They needed no defence. But
American bands had to be defended.
"Well, I never knew that," said Gracie,
her voice full of understanding and sympathy. "I thought it was a question
of fashion, and pleasing American customers."
"Not in the least!" said Evelyn with
fire. "We make fashions here. We don't follow fashions. And we don't
kowtow to Americans or anybody else. The Palace is the Palace." He
laughed. "Excuse me," he added, lightly apologetic.
"I like to hear you," said Gracie, and Evelyn
felt that she did like to hear his vehemence. She was a girl of quick
comprehension.
Sir Henry returned to his table. Gracie
immediately rose.
"Mr. Orcham and I are going to have just one
dance, daddy," she said calmly. "You get on with your trout. Then we
shall be level again." And she looked down at seated Evelyn with an
expectant, beseeching, marvelously smiling glance.
"But--"
Evelyn checked himself, mastering his amazement at
her wanton duplicity. As for shamelessness!...He might have resisted, but for
the half-timid supplication in her smile. No! He knew that he could not anyhow
have resisted. He was caught. Mixture of contradictions! She was utterly
incalculable! He rose in silence, forced a smile in response to hers, and took
the hand of the baffling enigma. And no sooner had he taken her hand than he
thought: "After all, why shouldn't I dance on my own floor? It isn't as if
her father wasn't here." They embarked upon the sea of the floor, which
was very rapidly filled with craft. From time to time in their circumnavigation
they passed close by Mr. Eleazar Schenk, who, neglecting his fingers in a tune
which they had been playing twice nightly for six or seven months, looked at
Evelyn with a glance of condescending and naughty recognition. "I wish
that fellow's contract was over," thought Evelyn, ignoring the glance.
At first neither he nor Gracie spoke. Then Gracie
said:
"Are you doing it on purpose?"
"What?"
"Holding me off?" She put the question
with a cordial, delicately appealing upturned smile. No criticism in it. A mere
half-diffident suggestion.
"Sorry," said Evelyn, and drew her body
nearer to his, so that they were touching, so that in the steps his foot was
between her feet.
"You are a fibster," she said, with the
same upturned smile. "You dance beautifully."
"I don't know any steps except this
one," Evelyn muttered. "It's too monotonous for you."
"I'm loving it," said she, and for a
moment shut her eyes, as if to exclude all sensations save those of the music
and of being in motion with him, enclosed in his arm.
He could feel her legs against his, her body
against his, her back against his right hand, and the clasp of her fingers upon
his left hand. But there was nothing of Volivia in her contacts, only a
delectable, yielding innocence. Or so it appeared to him. He desired not to
enjoy the dance, but he was enjoying it. He would have been resentful of her
trickery, but he could not summon resentment. He thought: "Is it possible
that she has taken a fancy to me? If not, what can be the explanation of her
game?" Then he privately withdrew the word 'game.' She was not a flirt,
or, if a flirt, she had lifted flirtation to the plane of genius. He was
intensely flattered, for, though she had trapped and annoyed him, he admired
her tremendously. He admitted to himself that she was the most surprising,
wondrous creature he had ever encountered. She was unique. A man cannot be more
flattered than by the confiding, devotional acquiescence of a beautiful and
stylish younger woman. Yes, her mien was devotional. And all the while he could
feel the firmness of her legs under the filmy frock. His emotion was well
hidden, but it surpassed anything in his experience.
A voice said behind him:
"Hello, darling!"
"Hello, Nancy darling," said Gracie.
The much-pictured Nancy Penkethman, dancing with
one of the Cheddar brothers. The two couples sailed almost side by side.
"When am I going to see you, darling?"
asked Nancy. "I'm perishing to hear all about New York."
Evelyn could feel upon him the inquisitive
peerings of Nancy and one of the Cheddar brothers.
"What's wrong with to-night, darling?"
said Gracie. "Up in my rooms. I'm staying here. So's father.
Eleven-thirty, say. Bring the others along. We'll have a time."
"The Lord Harry won't come. He's got a
political date with the P.M."
"Never mind. Bring whoever'll come."
The two couples separated in diverging curves.
(Evelyn's manœuvre.)
The Big Oak Band ceased. Dancers clapped, Gracie
hesitated. Evelyn loosed his partner. He had been chilled by the fact that
Gracie was capable of being wakened out of the ecstasy of the dance by the
sight of a friend, and of being at once sufficiently prosaic to arrange a
meeting.
"Thank you very much," he said
conventionally.
"I loved it," Gracie repeated.
"Good band, eh?" Sir Henry greeted them
loudly. He had disposed of his trout, and grouse was being served.
"The best," said Evelyn.
"I say, daddy. Did you order a sweet?"
"No," Sir Henry replied. "I ordered
nothing, and I never do order a sweet."
"But I want one," said Gracie.
"Well, have one. The Imperial Palace is
yours."
"What about a soufflé?"
"That will take twenty to twenty-five
minutes," Evelyn put in.
"What does that matter, sweetie?"
('Sweetie'! However, Evelyn knew that in Gracie's universe the word had no more
significance than 'darling'; and he let it slip away.) "And while we're
waiting couldn't we just go and see the kitchens? I've never seen a hotel
kitchen, and I'm crazy about hotels now. 'Crazy'! Pardon!" Gracie laughed,
placing her hand on her mouth. "Reminiscence of New York, of course."
"Crazy about hotels now!" Evelyn
repeated in his mind. "That's not a bad notion," said Sir Henry,
obviously attracted by the notion.
Evelyn said that he would have the greatest
pleasure in showing them the kitchens. One of his fibs.
CUISINE
The kitchens of the Imperial Palace restaurant
were on the same floor as the restaurant itself, and immediately adjoining it. You
passed through an open door, hidden like a guilty secret from all the
dining-tables, then up a very short corridor, and at one step you were in
another and a different world: a super-heated world of steel glistening and
dull, and bare wood, and food in mass raw and cooked, and bustle, and hurrying
to and fro, and running to and fro, and calling and even raucous shouting in
French and Italian: a world of frenzied industry, whose denizens had leisure
and inclination for neither the measured eloquence nor the discreet deferential
murmuring nor the correct and starched apparelling of the priests and acolytes
of the restaurant. A world of racket, which racket, reverberating among metals
and earthenware, rose to the low ceilings and was bounced down again on to the
low tables and up again and down again. A world without end, a vista of
kitchens one behind the other, beyond the range of vision. The denizens were
all clad in white, or what had been white that morning, and wore high white
caps, with sometimes a soiled towel for kerchief loosely folded round the neck;
professional attire, of which none would have permitted himself to be deprived.
The shock of the introduction into the Dantesque
Latin microcosm, of the transition from indolent luxury to feverish labour, was
shown in Gracie's features.
"You'll soon get used to it," said
Evelyn, thinking with admiration how sensitive was the puzzling creature.
"See here!" He examined a board studded with hooks, near the
entrance, and pulled from one of them an oblong of flimsy pink paper.
"See?" He pointed to the scrawled word 'soufflé.' "'37.' That's
your table."
"And what's that?" asked Gracie, putting
her finger on certain perforated figures.
"'10.12.' That's the time of the order. We
stamp it. There's the machine that does it."
"Good! Good!" ejaculated Sir Henry,
tersely.
Evelyn restored the paper to its hook.
"Oh!" cried Gracie, suddenly childlike.
"Do let's see the soufflé made."
"We will!" answered Evelyn eagerly, also
childlike in sympathy. But he thought: "Has she come here because she is
really interested, or because she wants to persuade me that she is
interested?" His mind was peopled with sinister suspicions which,
previously squatting in dark corners, had on a sudden sprung upright and into
the open. "But what a marvellous figure she makes here in her
finery!" he thought.
"Oh!" Gracie cried again, perceiving a
tank into which fresh water was spurting. "What's this?"
A cook sprang forward and, seizing a long handle with
a net at the end, plunged it into the water and lifted out the net full of
struggling fish.
"Des truites," said he proudly.
"They little know the recent fate of three of
their brothers!" said Sir Henry with gaiety.
"How horrible! How can you, father? Put them
back, please do." Gracie had laid a protesting hand on Sir Henry's arm.
The trout were dropped into the water.
Two waiters at the delivery-counter snatched up
two loaded trays which had mysteriously been placed there, and hastened off
into the other world.
"You're pretty busy here!" said Sir
Henry, surveying the noisy scene.
"This is nothing," Evelyn replied
negligently. "You should see the place at a quarter to two when everyone
wants lunch at the same moment, and watch the battle at that counter. There'd
be sixty cooks here then. This is comparatively a slack time."
Then approached down the vista a youngish, plump,
jolly man, not to be distinguished by his attire from anybody else.
He had heard by the inexplicable telegraph which
functions in workshops that the Director was in the kitchen, with guests; and
he was hurrying.
"Ah!" said Evelyn. "Here's
Planquet, the chef of chefs."
The man arrived, bowing.
"Let me introduce Maître Planquet,"
Evelyn began the ceremonial of presentation.
The master-cook protected himself against the
hazards of contact with the extraneous world by a triple system of defence.
Outermost came the cushion of his amiable jollity. Next, a cushion of
punctilious decorum--obeisances, deferential smiles, handshakings, which expressed
his formal sense of a great honour received; for he needed no one to tell him
that only visitors of the highest importance would be introduced by the
Director himself. Third, and innermost, a steel breastplate forged from the
tremendous conviction that the kitchens of the Imperial Palace restaurant were
the finest kitchens in the universe, and that he, Planquet, a Frenchman, was
the head of the finest kitchens in the universe, and therefore the head of his
ancient profession.
When he genially admitted, in response to a
suggestion in French from alert Gracie, that he was a Frenchman from the South
of France, his tone had in it a note of interrogation, implying: "Surely
you did not imagine that any but a Frenchman of the Midi could possibly be the
head of my profession?" His tone also indicated a full appreciation of the
fact that Gracie was an exceeding pretty woman. Behind the steel breastplate
dwelt unseen the inviolable vital spark of that fragment of the divine which
was the master's soul.
While Sir Henry vouchsafed to him in the way of
preliminary small-talk that he and his daughter and Mr. Orcham were in the
middle of dinner in the restaurant, his unregarding, twinkling gaze seemed
negligently to recognise that a restaurant, and perhaps many floors of a hotel,
might conceivably be existing somewhere beyond the frontier of the kitchens,
and that these phenomena were a corollary of the kitchens--but merely a
corollary.
"Ah!" said Gracie, over a dishful of
many uncooked cutlets, meek and uniform among various dishfuls of the raw
material of art. "They have not yet acquired their individualities."
The master gave her a sudden surprised glance of
sympathetic approbation; and Evelyn knew that the master was saying to himself,
as Evelyn was saying to himself: "She is no ordinary woman, this!"
And for an instant the Director felt jealous of the master, as though none but
the Director had the right to perceive that Gracie was no ordinary woman. The
master's demeanour changed, and henceforth he spoke to Gracie as to one to whom
God had granted understanding. He escorted her to the enormous open fire of
wood in front of which a row of once-feathered vertebrates were slowly
revolving on a horizontal rod.
"We return always to the old methods,
mademoiselle," said he. "Here in this kitchen we cook by electricity,
by gas, by everything you wish, but for the volaille we return always to
the old methods. Wood fire."
The intense heat halted Gracie. The master,
however, august showman, walked right into it, seized an iron spoon fit for
supping with the devil, and, having scooped up an immense spoonful of the fat
which had dripped drop by drop from the roasting birds, poured it tenderly over
them, and so again and again. Then he came back with his jolly smile to Gracie,
as cool as an explorer returning from the arctic zone.
"Nothing else is worth the old methods,"
said he, and made a polite indifferent remark to Sir Henry.
But the next minute he was displaying, further up
the vista, a modern machine for whipping cream. And later, ice-making by hand.
"The good method of a hundred years
since." Then, further, far from the frontier, in the very hinterland of
the kitchens, was heard a roar of orders. Two loud-speakers suspended from a
ceiling over a table!
"Yes," the master admitted to Gracie's
questioning, ironic look. "It is bizarre, it is a little bizarre, this
mixture. But what would you, mademoiselle?"
Two shabby young men were working like beavers
beneath the loud-speakers and round about, occasionally bawling acknowledgments
of receipt of orders to colleagues in some distant county of the master's
kingdom.
The party went in and out of rooms hot and rooms
cold, rooms large and rooms small, rooms crowded with industry and rooms where
one man toiled delicately alone. And the master explained his cuisine to
Gracie, as one artist explains an art to another artist who is ignorant but who
has instinctive comprehension. Down by a spiral staircase into the bakery and
the cakery. Up into an office with intent clerks and typewriters. And everywhere
white employees raised eyes for a second to the Director and his wandering
charges and the master, and dropped them again to their tasks.
Evelyn, with Sir Henry, was behind the other two. He
watched the changing expressions on Gracie's face as she turned, and tried to
read them, and could not. Then Sir Henry left him and with an authoritative
query drew the master from Gracie's side. Evelyn joined her. They had
mysteriously got back to the kitchen of the wood fire and the revolving
game--but not the same game was revolving. Gracie approached the huge hearth,
beckoning, and he stood close to her.
"What is she going to say?" he thought.
He half-expected, after the exposure of the realities of cookery which she had
been witnessing, that she would say that never again could she enjoy a meal.
She confronted him with a swift movement; then paused, her lips apart. He saw
Sir Henry cross-examining the master across the busy, reverberating kitchen. And
on the edge of his field of vision be saw Gracie's beauty, and the dazzling
smartness of her frock.
"I must work!" she exclaimed, in a rich,
passionate whisper. "I must work! This place makes me ashamed.
Ashamed. I wish I could put a pinafore on, and work here, with all these men,
instead of going back to that awful restaurant full of greedy rotters. Why
can't I work? I must begin my life all over again." Then, more quietly:
"Well, I did start some work this morning, after Smithfield. Oh! I told
you, didn't I? I swear I will keep it up. Don't you believe me?" Her tone
was now wistfully appealing for confidence and encouragement.
"Yes, I believe you. Of course you will keep
it up," said Evelyn, staggered by the astonishing outburst. He recalled
that in the morning she had made a vague brief reference to writing. Was
writing, then, to be her work?
"There's no 'of course' about it," she
said sadly.
A man strode through the kitchen carrying a pale
dish on a tray.
"Oh! My soufflé!" cried Gracie. "It
is. I know it is. I'd forgotten all about it, and you never reminded me!"
She almost ran to the master.
"Good-bye, maître! Au revoir. You have
been all that is most amiable to us. Thank you. Thank you."
"But--"
"Thank you again."
Her tone was definite, imperative.
The master, puzzled, took the proffered highly
manicured hand. She was reducing him to his proper social level, after all this
pretence about maîtrise. But the master brought his defences into
action.
"Too honoured!" he said, with geniality,
with deference; and yet the steel breastplate glinted through. The touch of his
hand round hers indicated the proud reserve which as the prince of his great
world he was entitled to show to no matter whom. And the master consoled his
pride further by a Gallic reflection upon the nature of beautiful girls. Toys!
Still, Gracie had very much impressed him.
Gracie scurried off towards the frontier, Evelyn
following.
"My soufflé! It's gone!"
And indeed a waiter was now disappearing with it
over the frontier. The tail of Gracie's brilliant skirt disappeared after him.
The whole kitchen was momentarily agitated by the flying spectacle.
When Evelyn and Gracie reached table No. 37,
having traversed the staring restaurant in a scarcely dignified dash, the
soufflé was already magically deposited on the side-table from which No.37 was
served.
Sir Henry did not arrive till quite five minutes
later. What remained of the soufflé was then cold. But Sir Henry did not fancy
souffles.
"That fellow has a nerve!" thought
Evelyn, "pumping the ingenuous Planquet before my face, and behind my back
too!"
ESCAPE
At ten minutes to eleven Evelyn said that urgent work
compelled him to leave them. He had not asked Gracie to dance again, and she
had given not the slightest sign that she wished him to do so. Time had passed
quickly. Evelyn had been relating the somewhat melodramatic professional
history of Maître Planquet. Also quite a number of minutes had gone to the
business, suddenly undertaken by Gracie, of writing a note and sending it
across to Nancy Penkethman and obtaining a reply.
"But you're coming upstairs to my little
party later," she said to Evelyn with a confident inviting smile.
"You coming, daddy?" she added negligently to Sir Henry.
"No," said Sir Henry, promptly,
positively and curtly.
Gracie kept her smile waiting for Evelyn's answer.
A smile which could not reasonably have been described otherwise than as
irresistible. Since the visit to the kitchens her demeanour to the guest had
been even more exquisitely agreeable than before. Forgotten, apparently, was
the short passionate outburst concerning work!
"I'm afraid I mustn't," Evelyn said
quietly. He had no intention whatever of going to her party, to meet people
whom he did not personally know, and of the frivolous, notorious sort, which he
had no desire to know. Indeed he had been wondering how a unique girl such as
Gracie, and a public power such as Lord Watlington, could have arrived at
intimacy with smart, merely ornamental futilities such as Nancy Penkethman,
Lady Devizes and the two tall Cheddars. Further, his sense of proportion, of
the general plan of a day and of a life, made him hostile to the very idea of
these suddenly, capriciously arranged festivities. Still further, he was tired,
and he thought that Gracie ought to be tired too.
But he had a far stronger motive for refusing. He
emphatically did not want to placard himself too strikingly with a famous girl
like Gracie. Already (he recalled again and again) the entire upper-staff of
his hotel was certainly aware that he had taken her to Smithfield at an ungodly
hour that morning, and that immediately on their return to the Palace he had shown
her over parts of the hotel. Also that she had been enquiring for him in the
afternoon and had asked for the number of his car. And had he not dined with
her that night? Was he not still, in fullest publicity, sitting at her father's
table? Had she not danced with him? Had he not exhibited to her the kitchens of
Maître Planquet? Impossible that he should add fatuity to indiscretion, and
increase tittle-tattle, by going to her infantile party, which probably he
would not be permitted to leave till 2 or
"Oh! But you can't say 'No,'" Gracie
protested sweetly.
"Afraid I must," Evelyn insisted, and
rose to depart. "So many thanks for your hospitality," he said in a
formal tone, addressed equally to father and daughter.
"But I've told them you're coming!" said
Gracie.
"Whom?"
"Nancy Penkethman. In my note. I've promised
you to them."
Evelyn laughed a little, saying: "A young
woman as beautiful as you are is entitled to break any promise. I'm so sorry.
Good night. I'm fearfully sorry."
"I say, Orcham," Sir Henry stopped him.
"Yes?"
"You aren't forgetting my message to you this
morning?"
Evelyn acted shame and alarm.
"Upon my soul I was!" he exclaimed.
"Old age! Old age. Do forgive me. You wanted to see me--wasn't it?"
"I'd like to have five minutes some
time."
"You and your five minutes!" thought
Evelyn. "Do you imagine I can't see through you?" And aloud:
"I'll be delighted if I can be of any use."
"I'm busy to-morrow morning," said Sir
Henry.
"And my afternoon's full up," Evelyn
instantly retorted; and added, in a tone intentionally sardonic: "Our
Annual Meeting."
"Oh, really! Well, there's no frantic
hurry," said Sir Henry, very calm. "Shall we say day after to-morrow,
or the day after that. I shall be here for a few days, might be here for a few
weeks." Evelyn drew out his pocket engagement-book and they fixed a
rendezvous.
"It's coming at last," said Evelyn to
himself as he walked away. "As if the man didn't know I knew he knew all
about the shareholders' meeting!" He was only sardonic, not apprehensive.
As for Gracie, the girl's smile, at parting, had
lost none of its delicious, acquiescent sweetness. She might be erratic,
wayward, unpredictable; but she had manners.
Evelyn went straight to his private office,
satisfied with his own fortitude, but uncomfortable. He saw a thin line of
light under the shut door. Miss Cass, hatted and coated, bag in one hand, was
tidying his great desk. He was not expected in his office that night, and in
the morning he liked the desk to be absolutely clear, save for a bottle of
mineral water and a glass and some flowers.
"Anything urgent?" he demanded.
"No, sir. Nothing."
The next moment Miss Cass was gone, having shown
her usual reluctance to quit work. Three days a week she enjoyed evening-duty till
11 p.m.--for the hidden life of the Palace, never dreamt of by visitors,
extended daily over a period of sixteen hours, and more--but Miss Cass would
willingly have served every night till eleven o'clock, or even twelve; indeed,
she hated to leave her subaltern in command of the Director's sacred welfare.
Evelyn took a cigar out of a box of Partagas in
the middle drawer of the desk. Having lit it, he telephoned to the manager's
room, and instructed the assistant-manager, M. Cousin not being there, to see
what could be done about changing the order of the two turns in the midnight
cabaret. Then for some minutes he devoted himself to a cigar worthy of
devotion. Then there was a knock at the door, and, without waiting for
permission, entered--Gracie. Evelyn was really disturbed, by the thought not of
a danger to come, but of a danger past. If Miss Cass had been present at this
astounding incursion! If Miss Cass had met Gracie even near the door in the
corridor! A beautiful, stylish girl, unannounced, without an appointment, a
girl with whom he was already far too closely associated in the minds of the
upper-staff, invading the holy of holies after eleven o'clock at night! And to
find the secret retreat, she must have made an enquiry. Therefore some member
of the staff knew of her visit! Therefore many others of the staff would soon
know! Monstrous! Incredible! He had lived dangerously in his time; but among
men of business, not in this fashion.
"May I come in?"
"But you are in!" Evelyn smiled
humorously.
"Then you don't want to see me?"
"I'm delighted to see you."
Evelyn was standing. Gracie approached the desk,
and sat down opposite to him. Evelyn sat down.
"Now why won't you come to my tiny
party?" she began at once. "You aren't working. You're only smoking."
"Yes, I'm working," he said. "You
know, there's quite a lot of work goes on in this head of mine."
He was rapidly recovering from the shock of her
unlawful irruption. She made an enchanting picture in front of him. Before
speaking again she opened her bag, and critically beheld her face in the mirror
thereof.
"Do you know--I must tell you," she
said, "I'm sure you would prefer me to be straight with you. I must tell
you you're misjudging me."
"Misjudging you?"
"Yes. Or you wouldn't have said what you did
about me being so beautiful I was entitled to break any promise. If I am
rather good-looking, I can't help it. And I loathe the idea that good looks
'entitled' a girl to behave in a way that a plain girl wouldn't dare to behave
in. I say I loathe it, and I do. I'm not that sort. I do hope you
understand." She was imploring comprehension.
"Yes," Evelyn admitted sedately.
"Quite. I oughtn't to have said it. But I was only joking. I never once
thought you were that sort." He would have preferred that their intimacy
should not grow. But there it was, growing like the bean-stalk. And in spite of
himself he was helping it to grow. "But I've got something to say,
too," he proceeded. "Why did you make that promise to your friends
without asking me? I was there while you were writing the note. You might just
as easily have asked me."
"I might," she murmured, as it were
absently. She was now busy at her face, acting upon her own criticism of it.
"I ought. But I didn't. I'm frightfully sorry. It was cheek. But as I've
got myself into a hole, you won't leave me in it. You'll just lift me out of it
like a perfect dear. Don't be a spoiled darling. It wouldn't suit you."
Evelyn shook his head, smiling.
"I can't make out why you want me to
come," he said.
"No, of course you can't. That's why you're
such a dear. I want you to come because you're wonderful." Her eyes left
the mirror and gazed at him.
"I'm not a bit wonderful," he said.
"I know you mean that. But you aren't a
judge. I'm a judge, and I tell you you're wonderful. And I'm dying to have you
at my party."
"Well," he thought, "she's an
enchantress all right. But not for me. And she can't come it over me. Why the
devil should I go to her party if I don't want to? I'm not a friend of hers,
and it's no use her pretending I am. I won't go. And I won't and I won't."
But also he was thinking again, obscurely, that he
must in some strange way have made an impression on her. And that she was
bringing something new into his life. He was an extremely successful man. He
had achieved his ambition. He had a passion for his work. He was at the very
top of his world, secure. He had scaled Mount Everest, and there was no higher
peak on earth. What else had he to live for, he, still under fifty? But she was
bringing something new into his life. He had glimpses of vistas hitherto
unnoticed. Was it conceivable that she was in love with him? Or was he a
fatuous ass? If the former, what then? No, he was a mere hotel-keeper. True,
her father had risen, and he had been an early riser, like Evelyn. But her
father, though he had risen from a lower level than Evelyn, was a financier,
immensely wealthy--if only on paper. And her father had begotten a daughter who
in the last few years had raised him higher even than he was before. Through
the magic of his daughter, he consorted on equal terms with the--well, with the
smartest individuals in London. Evelyn tried to disdain smartness, but be did
not completely succeed in disdaining it. Smartness had prestige for him. And he
was a mere hotel-keeper. What absurd nonsense! Yes, absurd nonsense, but there
it was! She was a marvellous girl. In two seconds he lived again through the
whole of his day with her. Marvellous! He was free to marry. But as a wife,
what a hades of a nuisance would the marvellous girl be! Liability; not asset.
"And I've been thinking these ridiculous
thoughts for hours!" he said to himself, admitting that his mind was as
disorderly as any girl's.
He said lightly to her:
"I hope you aren't really dying. I hope you
won't die: because I honestly can't come. I've got an appointment in ten
minutes from now. I should love to come, but--" He broke off. "You do
believe me, don't you?"
"I'm not sure," she replied quietly,
sadly. "I'm terribly suspicious, I can't help it, but I've a feeling you're
treating me the same as you did when we began to dance."
"Oh! How?"
"Holding me off. I'm more frank than you
like, and it makes you afraid."
Here indeed was candour--candour either brazen or magnificently
courageous! He was shaken by the strong, sudden force of a temptation to yield,
to go to her party. Why not? He had no appointment; he had nothing to do; and
the sense of fatigue had left him. Her candour had expressed the exact truth
about him, whether she knew it was the truth or not. He now desired to go to
the party, to throw up his hands and say comically: "Come along. Upstairs.
The lift! The lift! I can't wait." It was not that he was the least bit in
love with her. If she attracted him, he did not know why. She had beauty, but
he was not a man to over-estimate the value of feminine beauty; he had held
beauty in his arms. She had brains, or what in a woman passed for brains; but
he was alive enough to the defects of her brilliant mental apparatus, and he
esteemed that her brain was much inferior to his own. He had, in fact, a
certain sex-bias.
Nevertheless he desired to go to her impromptu
party. That is to say, he desired to stay in her company, hated to let her out
of his sight, feared that if he did he would regret having done so. She
intrigued him considerably; and he admired her manners, and keenly savoured her
admiration: that was all. But was it not sufficient? The party would assuredly
be amusing, and if it was not amusing he could leave it. As for the gossip of
the staff, to think twice about such a trifle was childish. Every one of his
reasons for refusing her was either false or utterly silly. The trouble perhaps
was that he was too proud to go, too proud to withdraw his word and surrender.
He had said he could not go, and he would not go--not if he should have to
regret his obstinacy for evermore. Why the devil could she not take 'No' for an
answer?...Forcing herself into his private office as she had done!
"I must ask you to forgive me," he said,
with a smile as sad as her smile.
"You've been very patient with me," she
sighed, and snapped her bag to, and rose. "Good night."
"Good night." He followed her to the
door and opened it.
"I'll see you to the lift," he said. She
turned on him, transformed.
"No, please! I couldn't bear
that!"
Fury, resentment, anger were in her rich voice.
She banged the door, wrenching the handle out of his hand.
What an escape--for him, not for her! But an iron
weight seemed to have settled in his stomach. And he was blanketed in a heavy
melancholy. He said aloud in the empty, desolated office: "Have I ruined
my life? Was this the turning-point?"
Evelyn woke up in a state of some bewilderment.
His feet felt cramped. He looked at them and saw that he was still wearing his
evening shoes; also his dress-suit; also that many lights were burning; and
finally, that instead of being in bed, as he had assumed, he lay on the sofa in
the sitting-room of his private suite. Then, gradually passing into full
wakefulness, he remembered that he had sunk on the sofa, not to sleep, but to
reflect, to clear his thoughts, before getting to bed. He glanced at the clock,
which announced twenty minutes to two, and at first he was sceptical as to its
reliability; but his watch confirmed the clock. Characteristic of the man of
order that he at once wound up his watch!
He rose uncertainly to his cramped feet, and lit a
cigarette. He had slept without a dream for nearly two hours and a half;
surprising consequence of extreme fatigue! His body appeared to him to be as
refreshed and restored as though he had slept the usual six hours. He must now
really get to bed.
But his brain was furiously active, engaged in an
unending round of thought:
"That damned party is still going on. There
were pros and cons, but I ought to have accepted the invitation. I was a fool
to refuse. It was nothing after all. Only a little improvised party. Surely I
was entitled to refuse. Surely she might have taken No for an answer. Her
outburst was inexcusable, and it showed what she's capable of. The damned party
is still going on. There were pros and cons, but I ought--"
And so on without end. Revolutions of an enormous
fly-wheel in his brain, dangerously too big for his brain, leaving no space
therein for such matters large and small as the substitution of Miss Powler for
Miss Brury and vice versa, the changing about of the two cabaret turns, the
vague Machiavellian menace of Sir Henry Savott, the everlasting problem of the
downward curve in expenditure per head of customers in the restaurant, etc.
He glanced around the sitting-room, where
everything exactly fitted his personality and everything was in its place; home
of tranquillising peace; but now disturbed by a mysterious influence. No peace
in the room now. He had held the room to be inviolable; but it had been
violated--and by no physical presence. And Evelyn was no longer, as formerly,
in accord with the infinite scheme of the universe, with the supreme creative
spirit. He had never consciously felt that he had been in such accord. Only now
that he was in disaccord did he realise that till then he had been in accord.
Disconcerting perceptions! Curse and curse and curse the girl! She carried hell
and heaven about with her, portable! She was just not good enough. She
continually flouted heaven's first law...No hope of sleep. To get to bed would
be absurd and futile. He would go downstairs. To do so might stop the
fly-wheel.
He opened the door, extinguished all the lights,
shut the door, opened it to be sure that he had extinguished all the lights.
The dark room seemed to be full of minatory intimidations: a microcosm of
invisible forces hitherto unsuspected. He shut the door on them; but soon he
would have to open it again.
Descending a short flight of stairs, he walked
along the main corridor of the floor below his own, under the regularly
recurring lamps in the ceiling, past the numbered doors, each with a bunch of
electric signal bulbs over its lintel. Inhabited rooms, many of them--not all,
for it was the slack season--transient homes, nests, retreats of solitaries or
of couples. Shut away in darkness, or in darkness mitigated by a bed-lamp. Some
sleeping: some lying awake. Pathos behind the closed, blind doors. Not only on
that floor, but on all the Floors. Floor below floor. He always felt it on his
nocturnal perambulations of the Imperial Palace. And he could never decide
whether the solitaries or the couples, the sleepers or the sleepless, were the
more pathetic. The unconsciousness of undefended sleep was pathetic. The
involuntary vigil was pathetic. Salt of the earth these wealthy residents in
the largest and most luxurious luxury hotel on earth, deferentially served by
bowing waiters, valets, maids! They pressed magic buttons, and their caprices
were instantly gratified. But to Evelyn they were as touching as the piteous
figures crouching and shivering in the lamp-lit night on the benches of the
Thames Embankment.
He rang for the lift. Up it promptly came, and a
pale, sprightly, young uniformed human being in it, who not long since had been
a page-boy and was now promoted to the distinguished status of liftman. Night
was common day to him; for, as hair grows night and day, so did the service of
the Palace function night and day, heedless of sun and moon.
"Evening, Ted."
"Good evening, sir."
"Let me see, how many years have you been
with us?"
"Six, sir."
"Excellent! Excellent!...Ground-floor,
please." Evelyn noticed the No. 3 on the lift-well as the cage fell from
floor to floor. The third floor was the floor of the party. Renewed disturbance
in his brain! "When do you come on day-work?"
"I hope in five weeks, sir."
''Ah!"
The mirrored lift stopped. The grille slid
backwards. Evelyn stepped out.
"Thank you, sir," said Ted, sat down,
and resumed the perusal of thrilling fiction.
The great hall was empty of guests; the
scintillating foyer too. The entrance to the ladies' cloak-room glowed with
brilliant light. A footman stood at the entrance to the darker gentlemen's
cloakroom, and within, at the counter, the head-attendant there was counting
out money from a box. And in the still glittering restaurant only one table was
effectively occupied--by two men and a woman. All the other tables were oblong
or round expanses of bare white cloth. Eight or nine waiters shifted restlessly
to and fro. A gigolo and his female colleague--the last remaining on duty of a
corps of six--sat at a tiny table apart.
The orchestra, which Evelyn could not see from his
peeping place, began to play a waltz, which reverberated somehow mournfully in
the vast, nearly deserted interior. The professional dancers rose, attendant,
then advanced. The gigolo took the woman from the table of three, his companion
took one of the men. The second man stayed at the table and passed the time in
paying the bill. The waiter bowed, ceremoniously grateful, as he received back
the plate with a note and a pile of silver on it. To Evelyn the waltz seemed
interminable, and the two lone couples on the floor the very images of pleasure
struggling against fatigue and the burden of the night. The female gigolo was
young and elegant; she must get some handsome tips, Evelyn thought. "Tips!
My God!" he murmured to himself, recalling that in one week in June the
waiters' tips in the restaurant had totalled more than eight hundred pounds.
The waiters kept their own accounts, but they were submitted to Cousin, who
submitted them now and then to Evelyn.
The orchestra, after threatening never to cease,
most startlingly ceased. But at once it burst vivaciously and majestically into
"God Save the King." The three males stood to attention; the women
stood still. Then the three guests sat down again at their table, and Evelyn
could hear the murmurs of their talk; he could hear also the movements of the
departing band. The professional dancers had vanished. The waiters waited. At
length the trio of guests left the sick scene of revelry, and came up the steps
into the foyer. Evelyn turned his back on them. In a moment the table was
emptied. In three more moments every cloth had been snatched off the rows of
tables, and every table changed from white to dark green. The two male guests continued
to talk in the gentlemen's cloak-room. The woman had disappeared into the
ladies' cloak-room apparently for ever. But she came forth. The trio renewed
conversation. Never would they go. They went, slowly, reluctantly, up the
stairs into the great hall. The restaurant and the foyer were dark now, save
for one light in each. The head-attendant of the vestiaire was manipulating
switches. The entrance to the ladies' cloak-room was black.
"Ludovico!" Evelyn called to the last
black-coated man, taunting the gloom of the restaurant. Ludovico span round,
espied, and came hastening.
"Sir?"
"Did Volivia perform first or second in the
second cabaret?"
"First, sir. The other turn--clown, I forget
his name, sir--refused to appear first."
"Why?"
Ludovico raised his shoulders.
"All right, thanks. Good night."
And Ludovico ran down the steps again, and he too
vanished. The gentlemen's cloak-room was black and empty. The great hall was
silent, the foyer deserted except by Evelyn. The public night-life of the
Imperial Palace had finished. But not the private night-life.
Refusing the lift, with a wave of the hand to the
liftman, Evelyn began to climb the stairs; but he was arrested by the sight of
the gigolo (coat-collar turned up, and a grey muffler wrapped thickly round his
neck) and the girl-dancer (with a thin cloak hanging loosely over her frail
evening frock). The pair were walking about two yards apart, the woman a little
in front of the man: bored, fatigued, weary. For the purpose of symbolising the
graceful joy of life he had held her in his arm a dozen times during the long
spell of work; but now each displayed candidly a complete indifference to the
other; each had had a surfeit of the other. They passed through the melancholy
gloom of the foyer, up into the great hall, and at the revolving doors thereof
Long Sam negligently saluted them--too negligently, thought captious Evelyn. He
followed, aimless, but feeling a sickly interest in them.
Approaching the doors, he acknowledged Long Sam's
impressive salute with rather more than the negligence which Long Sam had
dispensed to the working dancers--just to punish him! Through the glass Evelyn
saw the pair standing under the gigantic marquise, reputed to weigh several
tons. They exchanged infrequent monosyllables. The gigolo shivered; not the
girl. Then a taxi drove up, with a porter perched on the driver's step. The
gigolo opened the taxi and the girl got in. Bang! The taxi curved away and was
lost in the darkness.
The gigolo departed on foot. His feet traced a
path as devious as a field-path. Fatigue? And he also receded into
invisibility. Where did he live? Why did he not drive home, like the girl? What
was his private life? And what the girl's? After all, they were not dancing
marionettes; they were human beings, with ties of sentiment or duty. What was
the old age of a gigolo? There was something desolate in that slow, listless,
meandering departure.
"Morbid is the word for me to-night,"
thought Evelyn, as he turned towards the hall and nodded amiably to Reyer, the
night-manager, who stood behind the Reception-counter as listless as the
dancers. His mind was not specially engaged with Gracie; he was afflicted by
the conception of all mankind, of the whole mournful earthly adventure. He
began a second time to climb the stairs. It was his practice to make at
intervals a nocturnal tour of inspection of the hotel; so that the night-staff
saw nothing very unusual in his presence and movements.
He walked eastwards the length of the first-floor
main corridor all lighted and silent, and observed nothing that was abnormal.
Then up one flight of the east staircase, and westwards the length of the
second-floor main corridor. At the end of it, he looked into the waiters'
service-room. It was lighted but empty. By day it would be manned by two
waiters. From midnight till
Evelyn minutely inspected and tested the
impeccably tidy service-room: the telephone to the central switchboard, the
telephone phone direct to the bill-office, the gravity-tubes which carried
order-checks to the kitchen and bills and cash to the bill-office, the geyser,
the double lift with a hot shelf and a cold shelf; the books of bill-forms and
order-checks, the ice, the machine for shaving ice to put round oysters, the
dry tea, the milk, the mineral waters, the fruit, the bread, the biscuits, the
condiments, the crockery, the cocktail jugs, the iced-water jugs, the silver
and cutlery all stamped with the number of the floor, the stock-lists hung on
the wall, and the electrically controlled clock which also hung on the yellow
wall. Nothing wrong. (Once he had memorably discovered fourth-floor silver in
the fifth-floor service-room: mystery which disconcerted all the floor-waiters,
and which was never solved!) Everything waiting as in a trance for a
life-giving summons. He went out of the room content with the organisation
every main detail of which he had invented or co-ordinated years ago, and which
he was continually watchful to improve.
Back again along the corridor, up another flight
of stairs to the third-floor corridor lighted and silent. Room No. 359. Rooms
Nos. 360-1. Rooms Nos. 362-3-4. Rooms Nos.365-6-7-8 Not a sound through that door:
which was hardly surprising, in view of another quiet boast of the Palace that
no noise from a corridor could be heard in a room, and no noise from a room in
a corridor. Was she asleep, and in what kind of a night-dress--or would it be
pyjamas? Or was her party still drinking, chattering, laughing, smoking,
card-playing?
Then in the distance of the interminable corridor
he descried two white tables drawn apart from the herd of tables that stood at
the door of every service-room. And then both night-waiters emerged from the
service-room with dishes, bottles and glasses which they began to dispose on
the two tables. Evelyn turned swiftly back, and concealed himself in the bay of
a linen-closet. After a few moments he heard the trundling of indiarubber-tyred
castors on the carpet of the corridor, the fitting of a pass-key into a door,
the opening of a door, more trundling. Then he looked forth. Corridor empty.
Door of Nos. 365-6-7-8 half open. Both waiters were doubtless within the suite.
He came out of the bay, and walked steadily down the corridor. Blaze of light
in the lobby of the suite. Hats and coats on the hat-stand. Animated murmur of
voices through the open door between the lobby and the drawing-room. Impossible
to distinguish her voice. He went on, and into the service-room, which was in
all the disorder of use. The pink order-check book lay on the little desk near
the telephone. He examined the last two carbons in it. Suite 365. Time, 1.51.
Two bottles 43. (He knew that 43 was Bollinger 1917.) One Mattoni. One China
tea. One kummel. One consommé. Six haddock Côte d'Azur. Quite a little banquet
before dawn: stirrup cups, no doubt! What a crew of wastrels! What
untriumphant, repentant mornings they must have! But he felt excluded by his
own act from paradise. He gazed and gazed. A telephone tinkled. He took up the
receiver. "421--four, two, one--"
A waiter returned into the cubicle, maintaining at
sight of the Director an admirable impassivity.
"Here, Armand. Telephone," said Evelyn,
with equal impassivity. He handed over the receiver and left. The other waiter
was disappearing at the other end of the corridor, on his way back to his
permanent post on the fourth floor.
Evelyn marched as it were defiantly, but on feet
apparently not his own, past No. 365. Door shut. No sound of revelry by
night...He would not continue his tour of inspection. He could not go to bed.
He descended, flight after flight of the lighted, silent staircase; glimpse
after glimpse of lighted and silent corridors, all so subtly alive with
mysterious, dubious implications. The great hall had not changed. Reyer leaned
patient on his counter, staring at a book. Long Sam and one of his janissaries
stood mute and still near the doors. The other janissary was examining the
marine prints on the walls. As soon as he saw Evelyn he moved from the wall as
though caught in flagrant sin.
"What's it like outside, Sam?" Evelyn
called out loudly from the back of the hall.
"Fine, sir. A bit sharp;
Evelyn would have gone for a tranquillising walk,
but he hesitated to travel back to the eighth floor for hat and overcoat, and
he would not send for them. He spoke to Reyer:
"I suppose there are no overcoats not working
around here anywhere?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"All right. Never mind. I only thought I'd go
out for a minute or two."
"Have mine, sir. May be on the small side, mais
à la rigueur--" He smiled.
While Evelyn was hesitating, Reyer dashed through
a door far behind the counter, and returned with an overcoat and a hat. Long
Sam helped Evelyn into the difficult overcoat.
"Not too bad," said Reyer, flattered,
proud, and above all exhilarated by this extraordinary and astonishing break in
the terrible monotony of the night.
"Splendid!" said Evelyn, nodding thanks.
A showy, but cheap and flimsy overcoat. No warmth
in it. Very different from Evelyn's overcoats. (Unfamiliar things in the
pockets.) Well, Reyer was only a young night-manager. Fair salary. But not a
sixteen-guinea-overcoat salary. A narrow, strictly economical existence,
Reyer's. The hat was too large, at least it was too broad, for Evelyn. Now
Evelyn had a broad head, and he believed in the theory that unusual width
between the ears indicates sagacity and good judgment. Strange he had not
previously noticed the shape of modest Reyer's head! He would keep an eye on
Reyer. A janissary span the doors for his exit.
The thoroughfare which separated the Imperial
Palace from St. James's Park was ill-lit. Evelyn had tried to persuade
Authority to improve the lighting; in vain. But his efforts to establish a
cab-rank opposite the hotel had succeeded, after prodigious delays. Two taxis
were now on the rank; and there were two motor-cars in the courtyard. The
chauffeurs dozed; the taxi-drivers talked and smoked pipes. He crossed the road
and leaned his back against the railings of the Park, and looked up at the
flood-lit white tower over the centre of the Palace façade.
By that device of the gleaming tower at any rate
he had out-flanked the defensive reaction of Authority. The tower was a
landmark even from Piccadilly, across two parks; and simple provincials were
constantly asking, "What's that thing?" and knowing Londoners
replying: "That? That's the Imperial Palace Hotel." But nowhere on
any façade of the hotel did the words 'Imperial Palace' appear. Evelyn would
never permit them to appear. He believed deeply in advertising, but not in
direct advertising. Direct advertising was not suited to the unique prestige of
the Imperial Palace.
In the façade a few windows burned here and there,
somehow mournfully. He knew the exact number of guests staying in the hotel
that night; but their secrets, misfortunes, anxieties, hopes, despairs,
tragedies, he did not know. And he would have liked to know every one of them,
to drench himself in the invisible fluid of mortal things. He was depressed. He
wanted sympathy, and to be sympathetic, to merge into humanity. But he was
alone. He had no close friend, no lovely mistress--save the Imperial Palace.
The Palace was his life. And what was the Palace, the majestic and brilliant
offspring of his creative imagination and of his organising brain? It had been
everything. Now, for the moment, it was naught.
"What a damned fool I am!" he reflected.
"Why the devil am I so down? I don't care twopence about the confounded
girl. Am I, the hotel-world-famous Evelyn Orcham, to go running around
like a boy after a girl? It's undignified. And I don't mind who she is,
or what she is! Anyway I've taught her a lesson!"
He withdrew his body from the support of the Park
railings, and walked briskly westwards. Restlessness of the trees in the chill
wind! Large rectilinear dim shapes of the enormous Barracks (whose piercing
early bugles made the sole flaw, in the marvellous tranquillity of the hotel).
Then the looming front of Buckingham Palace, the other Palace! And even there,
high up, a solitary window burned. Why? What secret did that illuminated square
conceal? He felt a sudden constriction of the throat, and after a long pause
turned back. Three motor-cars in quick succession hummed and drummed eastwards.
Eternal restlessness of trees beyond the railings! He thought he could detect
the watery odour of the lake in the Park. The seagulls had revisited it in
scores that day. He had seen them circling in flocks over the lake. Very
romantic. What a situation for a hotel in the midst of a vast city! He walked
as far as Whitehall, too melancholy and dissatisfied even to think connectedly.
And at last he re-entered the Palace. One of the taxis had gone, and both the
motor-cars. Everything as usual in the great hall. Reyer behind his counter.
"Much obliged," he said, smiling with
factitious cheerfulness, as he gave up the overcoat and the large soft hat.
"Not at all, sir," answered Reyer,
pleased.
"That the night-book?"
Reyer handed the book to him. He read, among other
entries:
"Three ladies and two gentlemen left No. 365
at 3.5. One of them was Lady Devizes."
Evelyn thought: "She's by herself now.
Perhaps her maid is undressing her. She must be terribly exhausted, poor little
thing." She was pathetic to him.
"My floor, please," he said to the
liftman, and went to bed. Next morning among the early departures he saw the
name of Miss Savott.
THE
VACANT SITUATION
Just before noon, on the morning of Gracie's most
unexpected departure, Evelyn was entering the Palace after a business interview
in Whitehall. He felt tired, but he had slept, and none but a close student of
eyes and of the facial muscles which surround them would have guessed that he
was tired. Evelyn could successfully ignore fatigue. Indeed he now took pride
in the fact that after two very short nights and one very long and emotionally
exhausting day, and with a critical day still in front of him, he had
deliberately intensified the critical quality of the latter by adding to his
anxieties the inception of a new and delicate task: which task concerned the
future of Miss Violet Powler.
As for Gracie, he had learnt that she had left for
the Continent by the
Passing through the ever-spinning doors into the
great hall he gave a benevolent nod to Mowlem, the day hall-porter, who
rendered back the salute with equal benevolence and more grandeur.
Mowlem was one of about a dozen members of the
staff each of whom considered himself the most important member of the
staff--after Evelyn. He was quite as tall as Sam, and broader, but he pretended
to no physical prowess. On the very rare occasions when law and order seemed to
be in danger in the great hall he had methods subtler than Long Sam's of
meeting the situation. American citizens nearly always became his friends.
Once, an ex-President of the United States, suffering from the English climate
and insomnia, had caused Mowlem to be roused from bed, and the two coevals had
spent a large part of a night in intimate converse. Mowlem was understood to be
writing, with expert assistance, a book of reminiscences of the Imperial Palace
entrance-hall, for a comfortable sum of money.
While crossing the hall, Evelyn heard his own name
spoken in a discreet feminine voice behind him.
"Can you give me one minute?" asked Mrs.
O'Riordan, who also had been out on an errand.
The head-housekeeper in her street attire looked
as smart and as spry as any visitor, and she was modestly but confidently
conscious of this momentous fact.
"Two," said Evelyn, having glanced at
the clock.
He moved towards a corner at the end of the
Reception counter, and the Irish 'mother' of the Palace followed him.
"I think I've found someone to take
Miss Brury's place," said Mrs. O'Riordan, confidentially murmuring.
"She's young, but she's had experience, and--she's a gentlewoman."
"That's good," said Evelyn, cautiously,
recalling the head housekeeper's theory about the advantage of engaging gentlewomen
as floor-housekeepers.
He divined at once that Mrs. O'Riordan was
specially anxious to be persuasive. Her grey hair never prevented her from
exercising a varied charm, of which charm she was very well aware. As she stood
before him, he could plainly see in her, not the widow aged sixty-two, but a
vivacious Irish maiden of twenty-five or so. The maiden peeped out of Mrs.
O'Riordan's bright eyes, was heard in her lively though subdued voice, and
apparent in the slight quick gestures of her gloved hands. At her best, and
when she chose, Mrs. O'Riordan had no age. The accent which she had put on the
word 'think' was a diplomatic trick, to hide the fact that she had decided
positively on the successor to Miss Brury. And the successor was no doubt a protégée
of the head-housekeeper's, a favoured aspirant. Assuredly Mrs. O'Riordan had
not discovered the exactly right girl by chance in the last twenty-four hours.
He foresaw complications, a new situation to be handled; the tentacles of his
brain stretched out to seize the situation.
Then he noticed a young woman in converse with
Mowlem. A young woman dignified, self-possessed, neat, carefully and pleasingly
clad; but at a glance obviously not a gentlewoman. Withal, Mowlem was treating
her as a gentlewoman; for the old man had the same demeanour towards everybody.
Never would Mowlem have been guilty of the half-disdainful demeanour which on
the previous night Long Sam had adopted to the professional dancers. The young
woman was Violet Powler, certainly telling Mowlem that she had an appointment
with the Director for noon, and enquiring the way to his office.
Evelyn, because he was tired and had a full day's
work before him, had boyishly determined to straighten out the Brury affair
without any delay, and Miss Cass had received early instructions to get Miss
Powler on the telephone at the Laundry. He averted his face from the doors so
that Violet should not see him.
"Perhaps you would like to have just a look
at her?" Mrs. O'Riordan suggested.
"Yes, I should," he smiled. "But
you can take her references and have everything ready in the meantime. Only
don't clinch it. I have someone in mind myself for the job."
Mrs. O'Riordan did not blench, but that she was somewhat
dashed was clear to Evelyn. Inevitably she was dashed.
"Oh, of course," she said with sweet
deference. "If that's it--"
"Not at all!" Evelyn smiled again, and
more lightly. "You go on with yours, and we'll see. I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if yours is far more suitable than mine."
"Is she a gentlewoman, may I ask?" Mrs.
O'Riordan asked.
Evelyn's eyes quizzed her.
"That depends on what you call a gentlewoman.
She's had what I should call a very good education."
"But her people?"
"Her father's a great traveller." Evelyn
wanted to laugh outright and boldly add: "A town-traveller." But
prudence stayed him.
"Oh!" murmured Mrs. O'Riordan,
indicating that she did not feel quite sure about the social status of great
travellers, and indeed that there were great travellers and great travellers.
At this moment Evelyn was excusably startled by a
most unexpected and strange sight: Sir Henry Savott talking to Violet Powler,
three or four yards down the hall, away from the doors. Sir Henry was smiling;
Violet Powler was not; but the two had an air of some intimacy. What next?
Evelyn kept his nerve.
"Well, I shall be hearing from you," he
said to Mrs. O'Riordan, and departed quietly in the direction of his office.
Naturally he could appoint whomever he liked to a
floor-housekeepership in the Palace. And none would cavil. But peace, real
peace, had to be maintained, and immense experience had taught him the
difficulty of eliminating friction from the relations between women, even
gentlewomen! There was nothing he feared more in the organism of the Imperial
Palace than secret friction. Moreover he knew what he owed, of respect and fair
dealing, to the faithful and brilliant Mrs. O'Riordan. But he was absolutely
set on appointing Violet Powler. The idea of doing so was his, and he had an
intuition--he who derided intuitions in other people--that it would prove
satisfactory. He admitted to himself that he had his work cut out.
POWDER
AND ROUGE
"This interview is unofficial," said
Evelyn.
Violet Powler was sitting opposite to him on the
other side of the big desk in the Director's private office. She had loosened
her black cloak, and Evelyn saw under it the same blue frock which she had been
wearing on the previous afternoon. Her hat was a plain felt. He could see
nothing of her below the waist. He remembered that her feet were not small, nor
her ankles slim; but he could not recall whether she had high-heeled shoes. As
a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace she would have to wear black, and high
heels, and he rather thought that the force of public opinion among the
housekeepers would corrupt her to make up her face. Those pale pink lips would
never do on the Floors of the Palace. If she kept them untinted every
floor-housekeeper would say on the quiet to every other floor-housekeeper that
poor Violet--what a Christian name! Battersea or Peckham Rye all over!--had
been imported from the Laundry, and what could you expect?...No!
He had been inclined yesterday to regard her as
beautiful; but now, detached, rendered a little cynical by recent events, he
decided that she was not beautiful. Her features were regular. She was
personable. It was her facial expression--sensible, sober, calm, kindly,
contented--that pleased him. She would have no moods, no caprices. She was
certainly not one of your yearners after impossible dreams, your chronic
dissatisfied, all ups and downs. Even Mrs. O'Riordan had moods, despite her
mature age.
"The matter is in the hands of Mrs.
O'Riordan, our head-housekeeper," Evelyn said further. "I've really
nothing to do with it. But I thought I'd better find out first whether you
thought the job would suit you. We want a new floor-housekeeper here. There are
eight Floors and eight floor-housekeepers."
He then told Miss Powler what were the duties of a
floor-housekeeper. He told her with an occasional faint glint of humour. Her
serious face did not once relax; but he fancied that he could detect a faint
answering glint in her brown eyes. He was determined to see the glint in her
eyes, because he had discovered her as a candidate for floor-housekeepership;
as such she was his creation; therefore she simply had to be perfect, and
without humour she could not be perfect. (Not that many of the
floor-housekeepers had humour. Mrs. O'Riordan generally had, but sometimes
hadn't.) Still, he was obliged to admit that Miss Powler's eyes were less
promising to-day than yesterday. Yesterday, however, she was at home in her own
office. To-day she was in the formidable office of the Director, and might be
nervous. Yesterday he had acquitted her of all nerves.
"It really all comes down to a question of
human relations," he finished. "I'm quite sure you could manage the
chambermaids excellently. They're the same class as our laundry-maids, and you
know them. But the visitors are a very different proposition, and quite as
difficult. And partly for the same reason. The supply of chambermaids is not
equal to the demand. Neither is the supply of guests." He almost laughed.
Miss Powler's lips relaxed at the corners into a
cautious momentary smile.
"You mean, sir," said she, gravely,
straightening her already straight back, "I've been used to being given in
to, and with guests I should have to give in."
A crude phrase, but it showed that she had got
down to essentials.
"Not give in, only seem to give
in," he corrected her. "Say a bedroom's cold because the visitor hasn't
had the sense to turn on the radiator. Well you turn it on, and fiddle about
with it, and then admit that there was something wrong with it, but you've put
it right, and if it isn't right you'll send a man up to see to it. Then just
before you leave you say: 'These radiators are rather peculiar'--they
aren't--'may I show you how they turn on?' You've won, but the guest thinks
she's won. It's always a she. No. That's not fair. It isn't always a she. Mrs.
O'Riordan says there's nobody more exasperating than a New York stockbroker all
strung up after five days' strenuous business life at sea in a liner."
Violet did smile. "It appears that American men are super-sensitive to the
bugle-calls in the mornings. Wellington Barracks next door, you know. Those bugles
can't be explained away. They'd wake Pharaoh in his pyramid. I've thought of
keeping a graph to show the curve of explosions of temper due to those bugles.
Probably about half a dozen a week. Well, you always say that the bugles were
unusually loud that morning; you've never heard them so loud before; and that
I'm negotiating with the War Office to get them done away with. I'm not of
course. But it soothes the awakened, especially if you admit that the bugles
are absolutely inexcusable. As they are. Put them in the right, and they'll eat
out of your hand, visitors will. If you argue you're lost. So's the hotel. Now
I've given you a sort of general idea. What about it?"
"I should like to try," said Violet with
composure. "I often have to do much the same with my laundry-maids."
Evelyn laughed.
"If I may say so," Violet added.
"I think you may," said Evelyn. And to
himself: "She's all right. But I'd better not be too funny." He said
in a formal tone: "Then I'll mention you to Mrs. O'Riordan."
"Thank you, sir. I'm very much obliged to you
for thinking of me," said Violet, with dignified gratitude.
"Of course there would have to be a period of
training."
"Yes, sir. I understand that."
"But in your case it oughtn't to be long...In
your place I wouldn't say a word at the Laundry. Mrs. O'Riordan might have
somebody else she prefers."
"No, sir. Of course." Violet spoke here
without conviction. Her steady face seemed to say: "You aren't going to
tell me that this Mrs. O'Riordan will refuse anyone that's been mentioned to
her by you."
Sbe rose to leave, for Evelyn's manner amiably
indicated that the interview was over. Evelyn did not move from his chair.
Suddenly he decided that he would just touch on a detail which had been
intriguing him throughout the interview, but which he had hesitated to bring
into the conversation.
"I happened to see you talking to Sir Henry
Savott in the hall. Then you know the great man?" He spoke with bright
friendliness, socially, as one human being to another, not as a prospective
employer to a prospective employee.
"Well, sir. I know him, if you call it
knowing. He came up to me--in the hall. My sister was his housekeeper, at a
house he had at Claygate--he sold it afterwards. My sister was ill in the
house, and as I happened to be free, I was engaged to do her work, for a month.
Of course I could see my sister every day, and she kept me right. I could
always ask her." Violet's demeanour was perfectly natural and tranquil,
but reserved. She added: "It's a small world; but I've heard it said you
meet everyone in the hall of this hotel, sooner or later." She smiled,
looking Evelyn straight in the face.
"But this is very interesting," said
Evelyn, animated. He was intrigued still more; for, like many other people, he
had heard all sorts of stories about Sir Henry's domestic life. "Then you
do know something of housekeeping?"
"A little, sir. I think I managed it all
right. But of course, as I say, I had my sister to tell me things."
"A large staff?"
"About forty, sir--indoor and outdoor. My
sister had charge of everything, indoor and outdoor."
"Then you had charge of
everything?"
"Yes, sir. But my sister was there."
"Sir Henry entertained a lot?"
"Yes, sir. A very great deal, and often
without warning us." Evelyn opened Miss Powler's dossier, which contained,
among other things, her references and testimonials.
"You didn't say anything about this, I see,
when you came to us."
"Oh no, sir."
"I suppose you didn't count it as a regular
engagement."
"No, sir. And it was so short. But if I had
asked him I think Sir Henry would have given me a testimonial."
"Was Lady Savott there?"
"Oh no, sir." Just a slight betraying
emphasis on the 'no.' "I've never seen her ladyship."
"Then you left, and your sister took on the
work again."
"Yes, sir, for a bit."
"She left. No?"
"My sister is dead, sir."
"Oh!" Evelyn's face showed sympathy.
"She was older than you?"
"Yes, sir. Five years. Nearly six."
"Did she die in the house?"
"No, sir. After she'd left. Sir Henry asked
me to go back. But I was very comfortable at the Laundry then. So I didn't go.
I don't believe much in chopping and changing."
"Quite. You know Miss Gracie?"
"Yes, sir."
"She was living in the house?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"An extraordinary young lady, isn't
she?"
"Yes, sir," Violet replied with
imperturbable blandness; but their eyes somehow exchanged a transient glance of
implications--or Evelyn thought so.
Perhaps, he thought, she should not have put any
implications into her glance. On the other hand perhaps he himself should not
have used the inviting word 'extraordinary' about Miss Gracie. The fact was,
that when he liked the person to whom he was talking, he had a tendency to
speak too freely. He had often observed this in himself. He admitted that
Violet had taken little or no advantage of his friendly social tone. No
expansiveness in her short, guarded answers to his inquisition! Discretion
itself!
He felt inclined to try to break down her
discretion. Not in order to get at secrets, though he divined that there were
secrets, but simply for the pleasure of breaking down her discretion. A slight,
impish wantonness in him. He checked it. The disclosure about Miss Powler's
professional sojourn at Sir Henry's house was very agreeable to him. It would
help him in his handling of Mrs. O'Riordan. In his mind he instantly composed
the tale which he would relate to Mrs. O'Riordan. She could never withstand its
allurement. Large house. House of a millionaire. Staff of forty. Everything
managed by Violet, who had taken control at a moment's notice, and had given
entire satisfaction. And had said nothing about her success to anyone. He would
say nothing about the sister giving counsel in the background. Or he would only
casually allude to the sister. He could make an irresistible story, and the
more irresistible because of his now-strengthened conviction that Violet was a
real 'find,' and would soon prove herself a pearl among Palace
floor-housekeepers. Strange glance she had given him in accepting his
suggestion that Miss Gracie was an extraordinary young lady!
He rose, gaily. Yes, she had high heels.
Excellent. No need to say anything about the heels. And she had her own
smartness. She was smart in her world; she evidently gave attention to her
clothes. And if she could be smart in her world, why not in the world of the
Palace? She would be capable of anything. Later, he would be able gently to
tease the beloved Mrs. O'Riordan: "My discovery, Miss Powler! Not yours,
mother. Mine!"
Miss Powler went towards the door. Her hand was on
the knob.
"You know," he said, on an impulse,
"there'd be one thing, rather important, if you don't mind my mentioning
it--"
"Please."
"If you do come here--powder and rouge."
He waved a hand. The lightness of his tone was meant to soothe her
She flushed ever so little. He had got under her
guard at last. The flush amused and pleased him. She had no caprices, no moods,
no nerves. Yet the flush!
She was equally different from the girl that Mrs.
O'Riordan had once been, and from Gracie Savott. These two had feminine charm.
They were designed by heaven to tantalise and puzzle a man, to keep him for
ever and ever alert in self-defence, alert against attack. Whereas Miss Powler,
sedate, cheerful, kindly, tactful, equable, serious, reserved...But what was
feminine charm? It might have a wider definition than he had hitherto imagined.
He had read somewhere that every woman without exception had charm. He liked
Miss Powler's muscular shoulders, and the way she held them; and her sturdy
ankles. "And that Gracie girl liked my shoulders," he thought.
Considered as an enigma, Miss Powler, with her impregnable reserve, was at
least on a level with the Gracie girl. Nothing on earth so interesting as the
reactions of sex on sex. It was as if Gracie had pulled a veil from his eyes so
that he was perceiving the interestingness of all women, for the first time.
Revelation.
"Yes, of course, sir," said Miss Powler.
"To tell the truth, I'd thought of that. It would be part of the
business."
"They'd put you up to all that here."
"Yes, sir. If necessary. But I know something
about make-up."
"Oh?" Evelyn was surprised.
"Well, sir. You see. Our amateur dramatic
society. I've had to make up plenty of girls. They love it. And I've had to
make up myself too." The flush disappeared.
"Of course!" Evelyn exclaimed. "I was
forgetting that." And indeed he had totally forgotten it. She had caught
him out there. He felt humbled. She might well know a bit more about make-up
than any of the housekeepers.
She opened the door.
"It would hardly do at the Laundry," she
said. "I shouldn't like it there. Not but what a lot of the laundry-maids
themselves do make up. But here I might like it."
She smiled. For one second she was a girl at
large, not a laundry staff-manageress seeking to improve her position. Evelyn
did not shake hands with her. Why not? he asked himself. Well, there was an
etiquette in these ceremonials. A Director did not shake hands with a
floor-housekeeper. He stood still near the closed door, thinking.
THE
BOARD
The Imperial Palace had a number of private rooms
in the neighbourhood of the restaurant, used chiefly for lunches, dinners and
suppers, and each named after an English or British sovereign. At twenty
minutes past two on the day of Evelyn's interview with Miss Powler, six men sat
smoking in the Queen Elizabeth room round a table at which they had
lunched--after a Board meeting.
At one end of the table was the West End celebrity
and wit, old Dennis Dover; at the other Evelyn. At the sides were two youngish,
exceedingly well-groomed men, a much older man, and a middle-aged man. The last
was Mr. Levinsohn, unmistakably a Jew, solicitor to the Imperial Palace Hotel
Company Limited, and senior partner in the great 'company' firm of Levinsohn
and Levinsohn. The other three were Messrs. Lingmell (old), and Dacker and
Smiss (the youngish dandiacal pair). Except for Mr. Levinsohn, the company
consisted of Directors of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company Limited. The
celebrated Dennis Dover was chairman of the Board, Evelyn being vice-chairman
and managing-director of the Company. Youngish Dacker in addition to being on
the Board worked daily in the Company's offices as Evelyn's representative and
buffer. Youngish Smiss also worked daily in the Company's offices, his special
charges being the business side of the Wey Hotel and the Works Department in
Craven Street off Northumberland Avenue. ("Outpost in the enemy
country!" Mr. Dover had once called the Works Department.) Mr. Lingmell
did little but attend Board meetings. He was a director because he had always
been a director. Twenty-five years earlier he had retired from hard labour with
a sufficient fortune gained in the wholesale brandy trade, and he still had the
facial characteristics which one would conventionally expect to find in a man
who had dealt on a vast scale in brandy because he liked it.
As for Dennis Dover, now past seventy, of huge
frame, with a large pallid face, his renown in the West End was due partly to
his historic connection with the management of grand opera, partly from his dry
and not unkind wit, and partly from his peculiar voice: which was not a voice
but only about one-tenth of a voice; it issued from a permanently damaged
throat through his fine lips in a hoarse thin murmur. Strangers thought that he
was suffering from a bad cold, and that his voice would become normal in a day
or two. It had not been normal for several decades. Youngish Dacker, when he
first joined the Palace Board and appeared somewhat nervously at his first
Board meeting, had happened to have a very sore throat. "Morning, Dacker.
Fine December fog to-day, eh?" Dover had greeted him in the hoarse thin
murmur. And dandiacal Dacker had replied in a hoarse thin murmur unavoidably
just like Dover's: "Good morning, Mr. Dover. Yes, a fine December
fog." Mr. Dover, whose infirmity no one had ever dared to ridicule to his
face, had leaned forward to Dacker and murmured with a grim smile: "Young
man, men have been shot at dawn for less than that."
Glancing at his watch and at Evelyn, Mr. Dover
benevolently and encouragingly thus addressed Mr. Dacker and Mr. Smiss:
"Now, you lily-livered, have some brandy, for
your hour is at hand."
At half-past two, in the larger banqueting-room,
the Board had to confront its judges, the shareholders, at the Annual General
Meeting, which meeting was to be followed on this occasion by a Special General
Meeting. The youngish men smiled as easily as they could; for indeed they had
betrayed apprehensions concerning the special meeting, at which was to be
proposed a resolution limiting the voting powers of shareholders Everybody at
the table felt apprehensive about the fate of that resolution, but Mr. Dacker
and Mr. Smiss alone had failed to conceal anxiety. The fate of the resolution
might well involve the fate of the Imperial Palace Hotel itself.
"Obey your venerable chairman,
gentlemen," murmured Dennis Dover, and raised his mighty bulk and filled
the glasses of Messrs. Dacker and Smiss with Waterloo brandy (which Mr.
Lingmell said was so old as to be indistinguishable from water). "Your
alarm does you credit, seeing that you won't have to speechify at the meeting
and that you hold no shares worth mentioning, and that if the Palace goes to
pot the ancient prestige of the Palace will set forty hotels fighting for your
services...To the Resolution! To the Resolution!"
The toast was drunk, but by Evelyn and Mr.
Levinsohn in Malvern water; and the Chairman descended cautiously back into his
chair.
Mr. Dover had a good right to the position he held
in the Company. Not merely was he the largest shareholder. His father, aged
fifty odd when Dennis was begotten in the hotel itself, had built the original
Palace. He had first called it the Royal Palace, because of its proximity to
Buckingham Palace; but in 1876, when Disraeli made Queen Victoria Empress of
India, Mr. Dover had loyally changed 'Royal' to 'Imperial.' The name Palace had
been copied all over the world. Dennis always maintained that the French use of
the word palace as a generic term for large luxury hotels had derived
from the reputation of the original Palace for luxury, and was not due to the
prevalence of imitative Palace Hotels throughout Europe.
In the late 'fifties the Palace luxury had made it
the wonder of the earth. It was then reputed to have a bathroom on every floor;
and some people stayed in it in order to see what a bathroom was really like.
Then a Crown Prince stayed in it, then a monarch, and Queen Victoria would
recommend it to some of her foreign distant cousins. Soon the Palace had
established two royal suites. Soon, despite the fact that every hotel-expert in
London had condemned it as being too impossibly big, it became too small, and
the elder Dover had enlarged it. More than once it had been enlarged, altered,
replanned, reconstructed; but the Queen Anne character of its charming façade
had always been preserved. The last and greatest and most ruthless of the
enlargers was Evelyn. When Evelyn had finished--but he had never finished--all
that had survived of the original Palace was the Queen Anne character of the
façade; not the façade, only the character.
As a child Dennis Dover had lived under the roof
of the Palace, in its most majestic days. The elder Dover had amassed incalculable
money under that roof. But he had made a common mistake. He had forgotten that
the earth revolves. He had assumed that luxury could go no farther than his
luxury had gone. When he died, rich, though not as rich as in the grandest
days, the Imperial Palace, with all its unique prestige, was beginning to be a
back number. Trustees under the will of the founder had done no better than
trustees usually do. Then Dennis Dover had taken command, and the public had
been invited to buy the Imperial Palace. The public, ingenuous as ever, and
blinded by the glitter of prestige, had bought. The Palace recovered a little,
lost ground a little, recovered a little, paid a dividend, passed its dividend,
and was on the very edge of being transmogrified into a block of superlative
flats, when Dennis Dover had chanced to sojourn at the Wey Hotel and to find
Evelyn, then in his thirties.
In ten years Evelyn, starting as an invalided
A.S.C. officer towards the end of the war, and spending three-quarters of a
million borrowed in instalments with much difficulty on debentures, had, after
the formation of a new company, made the Palace for the second time in its
career the wonder of the wide world. Twice in its career the prestige of the
Palace had thus shot up like a rocket; but Evelyn had no intention that it
should ever fall like a rocket.
Such, perhaps too briefly stated, was the history
of the Imperial Palace Hotel, whose royal suites, owing to a dearth of royalty,
were now occupied by cinema-kings, presidents of republics and similar
highnesses.
As the six passed in irregular formation through
corridors and downstairs towards the larger banqueting-room (called the
Imperial--the smaller banqueting-room was called the Royal) Dennis Dover
stepped between Dacker and Smiss, and putting a hand paternally on the nearest
shoulder of each of them, and looking down from his superior height at their
upturned young faces, squeakily murmured:
"You don't mind me referring to the colour of
your livers, boys? Sign of affection."
They smiled. They knew their own worth; and they
hoped that the Chairman knew it and knew also that their interest in the Palace
was fanatical, and that they were intensely proud of having been elevated to the
Board at a cost to themselves of only a hundred qualifying shares each. What
they did not know was that father Dennis Dover loved them the more for their
apprehensiveness concerning the Resolution.
The Chairman himself was apprehensive, but he was
old enough to be a fatalist; and the risks attending a resolution to be
proposed at a meeting of a limited liability company could arouse no emotion in
one who would soon be crossing the supreme frontier. Old Lingmell was equally
unmoved, but not for the same reasons as father Dennis. He never spent time in
thinking about the supreme frontier. His investments were secure, and the earth
and the fruits thereof were good enough for him. Mr. Levinsohn felt no emotion
either; for him the matter was strictly professional, one among a hundred such
matters. As for Evelyn, he felt a certain anxiety; but he was built on a rock,
the rock of his creative, organising brain, which the foolishness of no
shareholders could damage, which was more valuable than any investments, and
which had a world-market waiting to compete for it.
SHAREHOLDERS
The six men sat in a row behind a long
green-topped table at one side of the square-shaped Royal banqueting-hall; and
ageing Mr. John Crump, secretary of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company and a
member of Evelyn's directorial staff, sat at one end of the table, with
minute-books, balance-sheets, the register of shareholders, and--most important
of all--a pile of proxies, under his hand. The Chairman and Evelyn were in the
middle of the six, who had no documents beyond a sheet or two of rough notes or
blank paper. Evelyn discouraged the exhibition of documents in business, and
father Dennis, with whom his understanding was always sympathetically perfect,
regarded documents as a symptom of a fussy mind.
In front were the shareholders, two or three
hundred of them, including a few women, ranged in rows on the brilliant
parti-coloured and gilded banqueting chairs, and each holding a copy of the
white annual report and accounts.
Those chairs, with the rich pendant chandeliers,
were the sole reminder of the original purpose of the spacious chamber. At
night, and sometimes at the lunch hour, tables were joined together in lengths,
in the shape of an E, or a rake, or a Greek letter, or a horse-shoe; they were
white, then, covered with china, plate, cutlery and glass, flower-decked,
gleaming, brilliantly convivial; and the people sitting round them,
ceremonially clad, grew more and more jolly under the influence of the
expensive succulence provided by Maître Planquet, until by the time the
speeches had begun and the cohort of waiters, marshalled by Amadeo Ruffo the
Banqueting-manager, had vanished away through the service-doors, every
banqueter had become the most lovable and righteous person of his or her sex,
in every breast all food and drink had been transformed by a magical change
into the milk of human kindness, and the world had developed into the best of
all possible worlds: with the final result that the attendants in the
cloak-room received tips far exceeding the ordinary.
Now, the scene was dramatically different. The
rows of shareholders, some stylish some dowdy, some harsh some gentle, some
sagacious some silly, some experienced some ingenuous, some greedy some easily
satisfied, some avaricious some generous, were all absorbed in the great affair
of getting money--the money which paid for banquets. A nondescript,
unpicturesque, and infestive lot, thought Evelyn, who knew a number of them by
sight and a few by name. Some faces were obviously new, and Evelyn looked at
these with suspicion.
Without rising, father Dennis said in his hardly
audible hoarse murmur:
"The secretary will kindly read the notice
convening the meeting."
And Mr. John Crump, nervous as always on august
occasions, got up and read the notice in a voice rendered loud and defiant by
his nervousness.
Then three unpunctual shareholders crept in on
guilty tiptoes, and sat down, and chairs scraped on the parquet.
Then father Dennis cumbrously rose.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began in his
murmurous squeak.
"We're off!" thought Evelyn, humorously
agog.
Yes, they were off, and there would be no surcease
until the Resolution was carried or lost by the votes at the special meeting.
Father Dennis never wasted words on shareholders,
partly on account of his throat, and partly because he delighted to starve them
of words--at the end of a good year--and also to shock them by his casual brevity.
He said, while some shareholders put hands to
ears:
"Figures speak louder than loud-speakers. I
am sure that you have all studied our figures with that impartial
conscientiousness which distinguishes all good shareholders. I need not
therefore weary you with information of which you are already in full
possession. I will merely remark, as much for my own satisfaction as for yours,
that last year was a record year in the Company's history, that our net trading
profit after deducting fixed dividend on preference shares, debenture interest
and sinking-fund charges, was equivalent to twenty and a half per cent. on our
ordinary capital, and that we propose to declare a final dividend making
fourteen per cent. per annum, for the year, instead of last year's eleven per
cent., and incidentally I will point out that we are allotting £75,000 to our
reserve fund, instead of last year's £60,000. I move the adoption of the
accounts and the payment of the dividend as recommended, and I call upon Mr.
Evelyn Orcham, our managing director and orator, who will be less summary than
myself, to second the motion." With that he subsided into his chair, and
glanced sardonically around as if to say: "You can put that in your pipes
and smoke it; and go to hell."
No applause greeted the statement of good tidings.
The shareholders had been in possession of the tidings for days. At a banquet
they would have loudly applauded a silly and insincere speech which was not
worth twopence to their pockets. But to-day their stomachs had not been warmed.
And they were shareholders--who take as a right all they can get and whose
highest praise is forbearance from criticism.
Evelyn rose. He was not an orator, and
speechifying made him nervous. But he always knew just what he wanted to say
and he would say it plainly, if too slowly. Now and then he would employ an
unusual adjective which tickled him. The sheet of notes which he held in his
hand was merely something to hold. He was not positively inimical to
shareholders, for they were necessary to his life-work. But he disdained them
as a greedy, grasping and soulless crew whose heads were swollen by an utterly
false notion of their own moral importance. Nevertheless he used a tone
different from the Chairman's. The Chairman was a London figure, and could
carry off any tone; and there was a pacifying glint in the Chairman's old eye.
Evelyn loved the Chairman's brief pronouncements, which father Dennis called
his 'turn.' But part of Evelyn's job as a hotel-manager was to flatter shareholders.
Bad might come again, and then shareholders who had been flattered would be
easier to handle than shareholders who been treated year after year with
cynical curtness. Therefore Evelyn flattered, but with a hidden private
cynicism which even exceeded the Chairman's.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began.
"Your hotels"--and his thought was "Your hotels? Good
God! They aren't your hotels. You couldn't have started them. You couldn't run
them. You don't understand them. You've no idea what wonderful, romantic things
they are. You know nothing about them, except a few arithmetical symbols which
I choose to offer you and which are beyond your comprehension. You didn't buy
shares because you are interested in hotels; only because you believed that you
could squeeze a bit of money out of them. Whereas 'your' hotels are my
creation. I live for them. I have a passion for them. Without me they would be
hotels, common hotels, not the hotels. If I left them, as I could, your
precious dividends would diminish and might disappear. 'Your' hotels are mine,
and if you denied this I could prove it to you quick enough. Ignoramuses! Is
any one of you aware, for instance, that at this moment I am wondering how the
devil I can entice my customers in my restaurant and my
grill-room to consume more than a dozen and a half champagne per hundred
covers? Does any one of you guess that in my opinion an average of one-sixth of
a bottle of champagne per person dining or lunching is a shockingly low
average--especially considering the qualities of my champagne? Not one
of you! Barbarians! Benighted savages! Unworthy of respect! 'Your'
hotels!"
In the midst of these lightning reflections he
went on aloud to the audience:
"Your hotels, thanks entirely to the willing
and generous co-operation which the Board has received from you in supporting
us in a policy of large annual expenditure in order to keep your establishments
abreast or in front of the times"--("This sentence is getting out of
hand," he thought. "I'd better kill it.")--"your hotels, I
say, have passed through an extremely difficult year not without credit. I will
first of all refer to the difficulties."
And he did refer to the difficulties: the poorness
of the previous London season, the obstinately high price of commodities; the
dearth of good service; the austerity of customers; the rapacity of customers,
who once asked only for food and drink at meals, then demanded music, then
demanded dancing-floors, and now were demanding cabarets; the unwillingness of
Americans to come to Europe in the anticipated numbers; the monstrous and
crushing absurdity of the licensing laws; the specious attractions of
continental resorts; the curse of the motor-car, which had pretty well
strangled week-end business to death; and forty other difficulties...until you
might have been excused for wondering why the Imperial Palace Hotel had not
been forced into so-called 'voluntary' liquidation. The brighter side of the
enterprise he glossed over. The arithmetical symbols he touched upon lightly,
using the plea that they were self-explanatory to shareholders so intelligent
as the shareholders of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company Limited.
"In conclusion," said he, "I should
like to refer to one point. Your hotels, and particularly the Imperial Palace,
have been called dear--in their charges. I resent the word, and I think that
you will resent it. They are expensive; but dear they are not. We try to give,
and I claim that we do give, better value for money than any other hotel in
this country. And the proof that the public shares this opinion lies in the
undoubted fact that the public is patronising your hotels more and more. The
public cannot be deceived for long. Many hotels have attempted to deceive it,
and they have failed to do so. We--I mean everybody present when I say
'we'--have not attempted to deceive it. I am sure that you, the shareholders,
would never agree to a policy of pretending to the public that your hotels are
what they are not. We maintain that they are the most luxurious and efficient
in the world, and that their charges are as low as is consistent with the
desire for perfection which animates us all. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you
for the patience with which you have listened to my halting remarks--our ironic
Chairman ought not to have dubbed me 'orator'--and I have great pleasure in
seconding the motion."
One or two shareholders clapped, but, finding
themselves unsupported, ceased abruptly.
"Good old platitudes!" thought Evelyn,
as he sat down, relieved at having safely accomplished his speech, and he
surreptitiously winked at smiling father Dennis. The meeting was finished, save
for questions and formalities. "And these people in front will go home
feeling that they've done thing important!" thought Evelyn.
The Chairman asked drily:
"Any questions, ladies and gentlemen?"
A mature lady rose and with a self-possession
unusual and perhaps indecorous in a shareholder of her sex asked why in the
Profit and Loss account all payments--wages, salaries, washing, licences,
advertising, bands, fees, liveries, insurance, stationery, electric light,
repairs, renewals, etc., etc., etc., etc.--were lumped together in one huge
item. To which the Chairman responded that such was the universal custom in
Profit and Loss accounts of limited companies.
The lady's question was a very justifiable one; it
jabbed a hole in the beautiful convention which regulates the pacific union
between shareholders and Board. Many shareholders would have liked further
illumination of the subject. Some knew the right answer. But as the lady wore
an eyeglass, a starched white collar and a sailor's-knot tie, she got no help;
the subject was not further illuminated, and feminine curiosity, which had thus
flouted the sacred immemorial customs of company practice, went unsatisfied.
Then a gentleman apologetically enquired whether
Atlantic telephone had had any 'repercussions' upon the business of the hotels.
The Chairman answered that so far as he knew the Atlantic telephone had had no
'repercussions'--he mischievously gave the faintest emphasis to the splendid
word--but that the managing director might have something to say. Evelyn said
that the Atlantic telephone had had no repercussions, but that the shareholders
might be interested to learn that in the past year visitors at the Imperial
Palace had spent £6,123 in using the Atlantic telephone; that was appreciably
more than £100 a week.
There were no other questions from shareholders.
What questions indeed could shareholders ask, after a record year, a fourteen
per cent. dividend, and an allocation of £75,000 to reserve? The resolution was
carried unanimously. Two directors who had to retire were re-elected
unanimously. The auditors were reappointed unanimously. And what the official
report described next day as a 'hearty' vote of thanks to chairman, directors
and staff was carried unanimously. Evelyn's heart lightened, prematurely--a
mechanical repercussion. It grew heavy again as the Chairman rose and said:
"The proceedings of the Ordinary General
Meeting being now terminated, the Secretary will kindly read the notice
convening the Special General Meeting."
"Now we really are off!" thought
Evelyn.
THE
RESOLUTION
In calling upon Evelyn to move the Resolution
which was the sole reason for the Special General Meeting, father Dennis
hoarsely and squeakily murmured:
"The meeting will I hope pardon me if I refer
to a purely personal matter. I am suffering to-day from rather serious
throat-trouble, and my medical adviser, in whom I have as much confidence as a
sane man can have in a medical adviser insisted that I should make only one
speech--and that as short as possible," he added with a roguish old smile.
Titters of laughter, which were, however,
sympathetic. Every year the Chairman thus mentioned his throat, as though the
malady had but quite recently supervened.
Evelyn did not wholly regret the sad state of the
Chairman's throat, because in practice it raised himself from second-fiddle to
first-fiddle at the annual gatherings. Also the nervousness which had beset him
in his speech at the Ordinary Meeting was now completely dissipated in exciting
emotion. Let none imagine that the moving of a Resolution at a Special General
Meeting of the shareholders of a limited liability company cannot be emotional.
Liability may be limited by Act of Parliament, but not emotion--neither drama.
The shareholders were fully acquainted with the
terms of the startling Resolution, but Evelyn began by reading it in tones
which almost justified the Chairman's description of him as an orator. The
Resolution provided that instead of having one vote per share, each shareholder
should have only one vote per five shares. And further that no shareholder, no
matter how large his holding of shares, should have a total of more than ten
votes. He pointed out that obviously the Resolution gave an advantage to the
small shareholder, since a holder of fifty shares would wield the same voting
power as a holder of fifty thousand shares. And he pointed out that, as the
Chairman of the Board happened to be the largest shareholder in the Company,
the Board could not be accused of an attempt to favour its own individual
interests at the expense of any other shareholders.
Then he spoke very vaguely of the possibility of
foreign interference in the destinies of the Company. He made no accusation. Oh
no! He spoke of a mere possibility--but a possibility against which, if the
shareholders in their wisdom agreed, it might be advisable to protect the
Company. Were the shareholders prepared to allow the control of a British
company to pass out of British hands? If so, well and good. If not, the
Resolution was the surest safeguard, the only real safeguard, against such a contingency--a
contingency which, he ventured to think, was of a most sinister nature. The
shareholders, who were doubtless thoroughly acquainted with all the phenomena
of industry and finance, had of course noticed in past months that foreign
interests had been ousting British interests in various very important British
undertakings. He would not assert that any scheme was definitely afoot for
getting control of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company. He would be content to
say that in the last couple of years, and especially in the last few months,
blocks of shares had changed hands, and transfers had been registered, in a
manner calculated to arouse the suspicions, but no more than the suspicions, of
a watchful Board. The Board had desired the attendance of their good friend Mr.
Levinsohn, who had acted with signal success for many years as solicitor to the
Company. He, the speaker, could not pretend to Mr. Levinsohn's unique authority
in Company affairs, and Mr. Levinsohn would give the shareholders his valuable
views on the subject before them. Confessing that his own feelings as to the
proper course to be followed for the welfare of the Company were both clear and
deep, and then formally moving the Resolution, Evelyn sat down.
Certainly he had shown some emotion, some sense of
the drama of the occasion. But his clear and deep feelings, though he might not
have admitted the fact even to himself, were due less to a regard for the
welfare of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company than to the risk of his life-work
and his career being imperilled by the substitution of any other Board for the
Board which while nominally his master was really his tool.
Evelyn's heart knocked against his waistcoat, but
its beat was strong and regular. He was nervous again; his glance flitted
nervously about the banqueting chamber, in which the sobriety of the
green-topped table contrasted so strangely with the glory of the chandeliers,
the brightness of the decorated walls and the gaiety of the chairs.
Ruffo peeped cautiously in through the double
service-doors and the doors slowly and silently shut him out of sight
Father Dennis's face had an expression of bland,
negligent cynicism. Lingmell's bloated, wise features were calm and absorbed in
his everlasting dream of fleshly satisfactions. The two old men were still
incapable of excitement. The two younger directors were employed in subduing
their fever into an imitation of tranquillity. Evelyn understood them, but he
doubted whether they understood him. He was too far above them in attainments
and position to be fully understood by them. They might work hard; they might
display a heroical loyalty; but never could they reach his height, for they had
not his qualities. He felt sorry for them; for either their ambitions were
humble or their ambitions would be disappointed. The future king of the world
of hotels was not on the Imperial Palace Board; perhaps he was hidden somewhere
in the upper staff.
The shareholders, stiff on their festive chairs,
were grim, unresponsive, waiting, flinty-souled.
Then Mr. Levinsohn stood on his feet. He was
impassive, absolutely at ease. Noticeably, unmistakably a Jew, he reeked as
little of anti-Semitism as of a few drops of rain. He was above race. He had
been elected to the Carlton Club. He knew half the secrets of the City. The
demand for his counsel exceeded the supply. The lowest fee charged by his firm
for permitting the appearance of its august name on a company prospectus was
seven hundred and fifty guineas. The universal City opinion was that he had a subtler
and profounder comprehension of the mentality of shareholders than any other
man in England. He surveyed the body of Imperial Palace shareholders as an
alienist might survey a ward of lunatics in an asylum; his handsome, hard,
semi-oriental face was as mysterious as the placid surface of a bottomless
ocean.
Mr. Levinsohn said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I shall not detain you
long. Need I say that I share the sentiments expressed by your Vice-chairman.
At the same time I think that--patriot as he is, and a man of imagination,
something of the artist in him, no one can be the great organiser Mr. Orcham is
without having a large amount of imagination--he has perhaps not quite
sufficiently stressed the strictly practical business side of this
proposal."
Mr. Levinsohn paused, rubbing his blue chin. The
attention of the shareholders had been seized instantly. They were wondering
what would come next. What! The Company's solicitor criticising the
Vice-chairman! But nothing mattered, not even that; for they, the shareholders,
were judges and jury; and naught but horse-sense could sway them; and from
their verdict there could be no appeal. Evelyn was slightly puzzled; but he
said to himself that Mr. Levinsohn was anyhow the first man who publicly at a
Company meeting had shown a real understanding of him. Curious, how this
middle-aged Jew, speaking in a gentle conversational tone, as careless about
the form of his sentences as one individual to others in a lounge, could
without any apparent effort or art, put a spell upon those tough shareholders!
Having placated his chin, Mr. Levinsohn proceeded:
"We are all men and women of business here,
and we are all patriots, and anxious if possible and fair to ourselves to keep
British commercial enterprises in British hands. But patriotism is a burden,
and in common justice the burden ought to be equally shared among the citizens.
Your shares stand on the Stock Exchange round about thirty-five shillings--in
my opinion decidedly below their real value. Supposing a group of foreign
interests--say American, purely as an illustration--came along and offered you
fifty-five shillings a share, as might well happen. Patriotism might urge you
to refuse, but in refusing you would be throwing away something like two and a
half million pounds, you, a comparatively small body of citizens. The loss in
actual cash would not be shared equally by the electorate, it would fall
exclusively on you. Would this be fair? It would not, and I should be rather
surprised if your Vice-chairman did not say the same. The suggestion would be
monstrous. No reasonable person could make such a demand on you. Let us look
facts in the face. You would accept the offer, and you would be right."
(Murmurs of assent from the gilt chairs.) "And another thing. True, the
magnificent Imperial Palace and Wey hotels would be lost to British control.
But the wealth of Great Britain would have been increased by two and a half
million pounds and you would have at your absolute disposal the total
purchase money, between six and seven million pounds, for reinvestment in
British industry and commerce under British control. It seems to me clear that
if the--purely hypothetical--offer were actually made, the truest patriotism
and the most far-seeing business sagacity would accept the offer. Your Company
might cease to exist, but it is necessary to take a broad view, and in the
broad view British industry and commerce as a whole would gain a considerable
advantage. Bad business is never good patriotism."
The first genuine applause of the meeting greeted
this aphorism.
"I have nearly finished," Mr. Levinsohn
continued. "But not quite. I have spoken of an offer, purely hypothetical
as I say. Can an offer so handsome ever materialise? It never could materialise
if the prospective buyers of your undertaking first obtained control of the
Imperial Palace Company by quietly getting hold of a majority of the shares,
which as things stand would mean a majority vote at a General Meeting. If by
this means any prospective buyers first obtained control they would be sellers
as well as buyers, and they would sell to themselves at any price they chose to
name, and those of you who had kept your shares would find yourselves between
the upper and nether millstones. You would get left. The Resolution before the
meeting will, if you pass it, prevent this quite possible ramp. For these
reasons, if you ask my advice--not otherwise--I should advise you to vote for
the Resolution. Let me say that I am entirely disinterested. I hold no shares
in your Company, or in any of the many companies which do me the honour to
employ my professional services."
Mr. Levinsohn, having finished in the same
conversational tone as he had used at the start, quietly sat down.
No applause. A number of shareholders were
whispering to each other in small groups.
"Talk about an artist!" thought Evelyn.
"This fellow is a finished artist. I can manage a hotel. But this fellow
has shown me that I don't know the first thing about handling shareholders.
Makes a good effect first by pretending to disagree with me. Then simply rolls
them all up. Damned clever of him not to tell the Board beforehand exactly what
line he was going to take!" He would have liked warmly to shake Mr.
Levinsohn's hand, which he felt sure was always quite cold.
Mr. Smiss timidly seconded the Resolution.
"Any observations?" asked father Dennis
quietly. "The Board will be glad to have the views of shareholders, and to
answer any questions."
A pause. Then a little, scrubby man rose from the
front row and, looking round at his fellow shareholders behind him, said ina
rasping voice:
"With great respect for the wisdom of the
Board, and giving full weight to the opinions which have been so ably expressed
by the Vice-chairman and my friend the Company's solicitor, I venture to differ
from them as to the advisability of passing this most drastic and even
revolutionary Resolution. I may say that I am not without experience in the
management of public companies, as my friend Mr. Levinsohn knows. My experience
has taught me that ownership ought never to be divorced from control--"
At this point father Dennis pushed a scribbled
note along the table to Mr. Levinsohn. "Who is your friend? How many
shares does he hold? D.D." Mr. Levinsohn wrote on the paper and pushed it
along to Mr. Crump, the secretary. In a moment father Dennis had the reply:
"Dickingham, a solicitor. Probably one of Savott's nominees and speaking
for all of them," in Levinsohn's handwriting; and at the bottom, in Mr.
Crump's: "1,500. Bought six months ago."
Dickingham was continuing: "This Resolution,
if carried, would obviously divorce ownership from control." He turned
again to the people behind him: "If you pass the Resolution, you will be
entirely in the hands of the Board. Large shareholders will have no power. And
it is well known that the average small shareholder always supports his Board.
I make no reflection upon the small shareholder. I am one myself, and I make no
doubt that there are many here. As a rule the small shareholder is right to
support his Board. But the result will be the same, whatever his motives: an
autocracy of the Board, an autocracy which will last as long as the Board
chooses it shall last. If a similar Resolution to this could be translated into
politics--which happily for our national welfare it cannot--and put before the
House of Commons as a measure of electoral reform, it would be laughed out of
the House by every political party. In fact no political party would dare to
introduce such a measure, were such a measure conceivable. I admit that it is
not. The principle which has made the Empire what it is is the principle of
control going hand in hand with ownership. The Resolution would abolish control
by ownership."
The speaker amplified his arguments at length, and
ended: "There is a proverb: 'Where your treasure is, there is your heart
also.' I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, to think of all that that wisdom means.
I feel that at this moment the fortunes of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company
are trembling in the balance."
Mr. Dickingham was applauded in several parts of
the room. Then three other men rose in succession, and, with much less suavity
of phrasing than Mr. Dickingham, spoke against the Resolution. Then silence.
Father Dennis lifted himself, and hoarsely
squeaked:
"I have the pleasure to put the Resolution.
Those in favour--" Many bands were raised. "The Resolution appears to
be carried. But of course, if any of you would prefer a poll to be
taken--"
"Poll! Poll! Poll!" cried a number of
voices, fiercely, savagely. "Poll! Poll!"
Mr. Crump began to finger the pile of proxies by
which some dozens or scores of absent shareholders had delegated their voting
powers to the Board.
Mr. Dickingham was on his feet:
"Mr. Chairman, if you will permit me to
suggest it, I should like to examine the proxies--of course in collaboration
with my friend the Company's solicitor."
"I have not the smallest objection,"
squeaked father Dennis magnanimously.
The battle was now joined.
Evelyn drew symmetrical patterns on a piece of
paper, continually enlarging them and making them more elaborate and shading
them. His absurd heart was still more insistently beating. Mr. Dickingham had
said truth: the fortunes of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company were indeed
trembling in the balance. Perhaps also Evelyn's own fortunes. The autocrats of
a big merger of hotels might or might not invite him to manage the whole lot.
But the Palace was the Palace, unique. Anyhow he would not accept a subordinate
position, as manager of one hotel, not even were that hotel the Imperial Palace
itself. Either he would be autocrat or he would be nothing--he would start life
again. He could not bear to look at the group of the two 1awyers and the
secretary, examining the proxies, comparing them with the share-register. He
could not judge the total strength of the opposition. Nor could anybody else on
the Board or off it.
Presently he heard father Dennis say:
"Shareholders now kindly substantiate their claims to vote."
Shareholders approached the table, some
diffidently, some defiantly. The assembly was in disorder. Noise of voices,
explanatory and argumentative. Mr. Crump had rather more than he could do, but
the two lawyers in their professional calm and patience helped him both
practically and morally. One by one the shareholders returned to their seats.
Then Mr. Dickingham sat down, his face illegible.
Mr. Crump rose and ceremoniously delivered a paper
to the Chairman, who showed it to Evelyn and lifted himself again:
"The Resolution is carried, by a majority of
22,111 votes," he squeaked, and then added with characteristic
gratuitousnaughtiness: "Ownership has exercised control."
"For the last time," shouted Mr.
Dickingham in his rasping tone, springing up.
"An improper observation," said the
Chairman, smiling.
"I am sorry you should think so, sir,"
said Mr. Dickingham, pale and furious. "And I will point out to those
shareholders who do not know it that you closed the Transfer books a month ago,
and I understand will keep them closed until after the confirmatory meeting a
fortnight hence. You have thus prevented new genuine holders of shares from
voting at this meeting or the next. If it had not been for this piece of sharp
practice, probably illegal, your Resolution would have been lost to-day, and
well you know it!"
Some uproar. Father Dennis replied with
extraordinary mildness:
"The Board followed a perfectly normal
procedure in closing the Transfer books. They acted within their rights. And
they certainly did their duty. This gentleman"--he indicated Mr.
Dickingham to the other shareholders--"is a lawyer. He is therefore aware
that this is not the proper place to raise a legal question. There are the Law
Courts. May I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of the statutory Special
General Meeting a fortnight hence for the purpose of formally confirming the
Resolution which you have been good enough to pass to-day. The proceedings are
now terminated."
Before the room had begun to empty, Mr. Levinsohn
came up to the Chairman.
"Good afternoon, Dover," he said briefly
and evenly. "I have another meeting at four o'clock." He shook hands
with father Dennis and with Evelyn, and left, hurrying.
Everybody left. Shareholders could be heard in lively
but hushed conversation beyond the open doors at the end of the
banqueting-room. Evelyn had glimpses of them taking their hats and coats at the
special vestiaire outside. Lingmell departed, with one nod which served for
both father Dennis and Evelyn, the thought in his mind being that he had done
his duty by the Imperial Palace Hotel Company and was free for a time to devote
himself completely to himself. Dacker and Smiss went off at speed,
conscientiously to resume at once the round of their important daily work. Mr.
Crump gathered together his paraphernalia and, piling it all on the large
Register, carried the whole away like a laden tea-tray. Ruffo entered through
the service-doors, anxiety on his face. He was responsible for the arrangement
of the room for a banquet that evening, and wanted the place to himself and his
waiting minions at the earliest possible moment. Nevertheless, seeing Evelyn
and father Dennis still together, he disappeared yet again. Evelyn, however,
had noticed him and his impatience. Father Dennis and Evelyn had sat side by
side without speech. Evelyn slowly tore up his patterned paper into smaller and
smaller pieces.
"Rather a lark!" hoarsely murmured
Dennis Dover, with a grim, benevolent humorous smile at Evelyn.
"What?"
"Savott wandering about the hotel while all
this has been going on. Eh?" He spluttered laughter and touched Evelyn on
the arm.
'He knows by this time," said Evelyn.
"You may bet your shirt he does!" said
the old man, giving another shaking laugh.
Evelyn smiled. He reflected that he had been wrong
about old Dennis. Old Dennis was not old. And he was not always cynical in his
cheerfulness. There was still a free, impulsive, warm youth in that body so
aged, so cumbrous, so unwieldy, and so dilapidated. His bleared eyes gazed into
Evelyn's eyes with quick sympathy. What could it matter to old father Dennis
whether or not the Imperial Palace changed ownership? Nothing. Father Dennis
had lived beyond such trifles. But it mattered tremendously to Evelyn, and
father Dennis's delight was for Evelyn. He was fondly attached to Evelyn. And
Evelyn, realising this exquisite fact anew, felt tears spring to his eyes. He
wanted to be by himself--he was so happy, so overcome by the spirit of
loving-kindness pouring into him and permeating him from its magic source in
the secret and divine place hidden somewhere in father Dennis's coarse mortal
envelope.
They rose and left the room together, and before
they had reached the vestiaire, Ruffo and his shirt-sleeved corps had rushingly
invaded it, carrying tables. Evelyn put the old gentleman into his vast
overcoat, walked down the steps with him to the Queen Anne entrance, and helped
him into his car.
"We must have that Board meeting to-morrow to
elect our chairman," said Evelyn as he was closing the door of the car.
"I reminded Lingmell," squeaked father
Dennis. "Noon, isn't it? But he won't come. Doesn't matter. There'll be a
quorum without the old ruffian." The car moved.
Evelyn strolled to his private office. Dacker, his
alter ego in the affairs of the Palace, was standing at the big desk.
"I was just waiting for you, sir."
"Want anything?"
"No, sir. I thought you might."
An even increased devotion in his tone. His
features were all joyous exhilaration.
"No. Nothing," said Evelyn. "I'm
going to have my tea upstairs. I'll be down at five again."
"Yes, sir." Dacker's smooth face said:
"You are entitled to your retreat on this magnificent occasion. In your
absence I shall watch over your interests."
Evelyn went up in the lift to his home, and
telephoned:
"Get hold of Oldham, will you, please, and
ask him to bring me my tea here. The Darjeeling, tell him. Thanks."
He dropped into the easiest chair that the Works
Department of the Palace could devise and make. A masterpiece of comfort. He
picked up the current number of The Economist, his favourite weekly, and
began to read it. A pretence! He did not read it. He was too happy to read, or
even to think. He yielded his mind utterly to the sensation of happiness,
saying to himself that he had never been so happy, never at any previous moment
of all his life. The vista of his life in the future stretched beautifully
before him. This kind of happiness had no complications. Nobody had the right
to violate his retreat, man or woman. His monarchy was as absolute as that of a
sultan--sultan without a purdah.
Oldham softly entered with the tea-tray, which he
set on a table by Evelyn's side.
"I've brought you some hot ry-vita in case
you should fancy it, sir."
"Thanks, I shall."
"Thank you, sir."
Oldham glanced about the ordered room to see that
its orderliness was perfect. It was perfect. Then he glanced at his master.
Happiness was on Oldham's face too. Proud happiness, not for himself, but for
Evelyn. Oldham knew. They all knew. Probably Oldham did not understand just
what had occurred. But he knew that something supremely good for Evelyn had
occurred. And his devotion was exalted. Evelyn thought:
"What have I done to win all this loyalty? I
don't deserve it."
SUSAN
The reason why Evelyn altered his rendezvous with
Sir Henry Savott, Bart., from a mere encounter in the Directorial private
office to a super-intimate dinner in his own living-rooms upstairs was simple.
He had chanced, on the morning after the meetings of shareholders, to sit side
by side with Savott in the barber's shop of the Imperial Palace. Here,
white-robed, in the most modern operating-theatre in London, ensconced in
arm-chairs (from Chicago) which by a turn of a handle could be transformed into
sofas or beds or stretchers fixed at any desired angle from the perpendicular
to the horizontal, cropped, lathered, shaved, laved, anointed, trimmed, rubbed,
combed and brushed by forty instruments and decoctions and oily perfumed
compounds actuated or administered by electricity or caressing human hands, the
two men had simultaneously submitted themselves to similar experiences.
They had begun together; they talked amiably from
chair to chair; they heard a fellow-patient enquiring from an operator how in
an electric scalp-massage the current passed from the throbbing machine into
the skull; they exchanged confidential smiles at such naïveté; they heard the
candour of unwitting customers concerning the characteristics of the Imperial
Palace and the peculiarities of other visitors; and they exchanged more smiles;
they overheard bits of extraordinary feminine conversations through partitions
which imperfectly separated the male department from the female, and out of
discretion forbore to glance at one another; they discovered that neither of
them had ever in his life accepted the services of a manicure, and further that
in nearly every detail they had the same tonsorial tastes; they chatted freely
about neckties, collars, handkerchiefs and evening waistcoats. And, finishing
simultaneously, they had stood up together, recreated, shining, and scented,
and beheld themselves in mirrors and seen that they were marvellously fine. The
sole difference between them was that whereas Sir Henry paid cash Evelyn only
scribbled his initials on a check.
They left the luxurious marble apartment, cronies.
There is nothing like a barber's shop for producing rapid intimacy. Yet they
had not bared their souls. In the entrance-hall Sir Henry had praised the
operators and the installation. And in return Evelyn had said: "I say,
supposing we alter our date? Come and dine with me to-night in my secret castle
upstairs, if you're free. We shall be more at home there," And Sir Henry
had said: "I'm not free. But I'll get free. Eight-thirty? Would that suit
you?"
And Maître Planquet had received special orders;
the guardian of the wine-cellars too. And Miss Cass, learning the new
arrangement, had of her own accord intimated that it would be a pleasure to
instruct the florist about just a few choice flowers.
Thus the two met again in Evelyn's sitting-room at
precisely eight-thirty. No uneasy waiting about for women. They were too
intimate to feel the need for shaking hands.
"Very nice of you to have me escorted up
here," said Sir Henry, who had found a white-gloved page-boy waiting
outside the door of his suite.
"Well," said Evelyn, "it's a little
withdrawn, my castle. Have a glass of sherry?"
"If I might have one of your 'soft'
cocktails," Sir Henry suggested.
"Two," Evelyn murmured to Oldham, who
was in attendance
None but Oldham himself ever served at a meal in
that room. A waiter assisted, but he was forbidden by law from appearing in
front of the screen which hid the door.
"I see I'm behind the times," said
Evelyn, observing that Sir Henry wore a flower in his smoking-jacket, and he
took a flower from a vase and inserted its stalk into his buttonhole.
"That's better."
Sir Henry laughed deprecatingly. Evelyn poked the
fire, whose function was exclusively to cheer, not to supplement the radiators.
As they stood before the fire, sipping orange-juice, smoking cigarettes, and
talking of nothing in particular Evelyn thought:
"After all, why shouldn't I have him up here?
Shows him who I am, and that I'm not suspicious of him, don't want to hold him
off, as I held off his strange daughter--so she said! Fact is I can handle him
better up here than down in my office. He's thinking already I'm going to fall
for him. I don't like his teeth, but he's a lot more agreeable to-day than he
was yesterday. He's damned civil. Is it all put on for my benefit? No. Couldn't
be. There's something about him that rather appeals to me. His tone. His eye. A
shade too small, his eye, but--He may be quite all right. And I don't care a
curse what his reputation is. Don't I always say you ought to take
people as you find them? He may be a thoroughly decent fellow. Well, then!
After all, it isn't a sin to want to buy the Imperial Palace. Anybody's
entitled to try. And anybody's entitled to lay hold of all the shares he can
before he starts to bargain. Childish to bear him a grudge. And if he imagines
he can get the better of me--well, we shall see."
Oldham took the emptied glasses, and Evelyn and
his guest sat down to the small round table.
"I really must congratulate you on your
castle," said Sir Henry, glancing round.
"Well," said Evelyn, "one does what
one can to be comfortable. No reason, is there, why I should make any visitor
more comfortable than I make myself?"
"You're right."
It was a man's menu. No caviare. No oysters. No
hors d'œuvre. Turtle soup. Sole Palace. Pré-salé with two vegetables. No
sweet. A savoury. Oldham offered a 1921hock. Sir Henry accepted, but Evelyn
noticed that he drank only a mouthful. The same thing happened to the
champagne.
"They understand food and drink in your
castle," said Sir Henry.
"As to that," said Evelyn, "I'll
tell you my motto: Plain, and as perfect as you can get it. I hope it hasn't
been too plain."
"Couldn't be," said Sir Henry tersely.
No trace in him of the gourmand whom Evelyn had observed at the dinner in the
restaurant.
The meal was finished in less than half an
hour--before they had passed beyond small-talk about such trifles as the Stock
Exchange, international politics, protection; on all of which, as it seemed to
Evelyn, Sir Henry spoke sound, impartial, unsentimental sense. In short, they
agreed. Sir Henry tasted port, refused cognac, and drank coffee. Oldham handed
Partaga cigars, and, the table having been cleared of all but finger-bowls,
ash-trays, and cigars, bowed interrogatively, got a nod from Evelyn, and
disappeared, closing the door without a sound.
"Shall we sit by the fire?" Evelyn suggested,
after a pause, and said to himself: "It's getting time he began."
They sat in easy-chairs on opposite sides of the
hearth, with a smoker's table between them.
"This is very pleasant," thought Evelyn;
but he felt like an infantryman five minutes before zero-hour. He was of course
firmly decided that Sir Henry, and not himself, should be the first to mention
business. Sir Henry seemed to be absorbed in the delight of his cigar. He
puffed it vigorously, gazed at it as if in ecstasy, and puffed it again.
"Tranquillity, the hush before wild weather," thought Evelyn.
"I saw from the departure list that Miss
Gracie has left us," said Evelyn, feeling the host's duty to keep
conversation alive.
"Yes," said Sir Henry, suddenly
vivacious. "Yesterday morning. Gone to Paris with Lady Devizes and one of
the Cheddars. Decided it all in a minute, as they do." He gave a short,
dry laugh. "Woke me up to tell me she was off. Girls are a problem,"
he added confidentially. "Only thing to do is to leave them alone. At least
that's my conclusion. Most of them are fools, if you ask me. But Gracie isn't.
How did she strike you, Orcham?"
"Well," said Evelyn, careful to appear
detached and judicial. "I hardly know her. But I should say she's about as
far from being a fool as any young woman I ever met. I certainly never met one
more intelligent."
Sir Henry leaned forward: "Quite. But do we
want a lot of intelligence in a woman?"
"Yes."
"I suppose we do. Yes, you're right, we
do...We do." Sir Henry looked at the fire.
"And as for beauty--" Evelyn stopped.
"You know," said Sir Henry eagerly.
"I'm her father and all that. But Gracie really is
extraordinary."
"I can believe it."
"She's given up motor-racing. Perhaps she was
right. But it would have been just the same if she hadn't been right. She's
taken to literature now. Writes. Naturally she wouldn't show me anything. Reads
nothing but Shakspere and the Bible. Very strong on the Psalms. You'd never
guess what she thinks is the finest thing in the Bible. She quotes it to me.
'Be still, and know that I am God.' Forty-sixth Psalm." Sir Henry laughed
nervously. "I'm dashed if I understand just what it means, but you know,
it sticks in your mind. Mystical, I reckon." He sniggered. "I've been
thinking about it ever since. What does it mean? It means something to her. I
expect you think I'm making a noise like a father."
The Biblical phrase fell into Evelyn's mind like a
lighted torch into a heap of resinous wood. Flames burst forth. The whole heap
was on fire. He knew, or rather fancied he knew, what the phrase meant. And
whatever it meant, it was the most remarkable sign of Gracie's
extraordinariness that had yet been disclosed to him.
"Perhaps," he said, meditative.
"Perhaps, we aren't still enough. Never occurred to me before, but
perhaps we aren't." He was astonished at the effect of the phrase on him.
He too, after all, did not surely know what the phrase meant, but he felt what
it meant, and the spiritual emotion which it aroused in him put the whole of
his mind--his ideals, his aims, his principles, his prejudices--into a strange
and frightening disorder. Saul, smitten on the way to Damascus! The talk had
taken an odd, a disconcerting turn. And through that extraordinary girl with
her visits to Smithfield before dawn and her
"Well, well!" Sir Henry murmured, as if
to indicate that that was that, and no use worrying your head about it! And
Evelyn saw that the subject could not profitably be pursued further. Moreover
he had a strong instinctive desire not to discuss it. He preferred to let the
phrase burn undisturbed in his mind. But, he thought, how could even a Sir
Henry switch off from it abruptly to business? Business--after that mighty and
menacing command!
In a new, casual tone Sir Henry said: "I met
a friend of mine here yesterday morning."
"Oh?"
"When I say 'friend' I mean I know her. A
girl named Violet Powler."
"Yes," said Evelyn. "I noticed you
talking to her in the hall. She's staff-manageress in my Laundry."
"So she told me."
"I'm thinking of taking her on here. What
about her?"
"Oh! Nothing. Only she's a first-rater,
Violet is."
"She said she'd been acting for a time as
your housekeeper at--I forget where. Claygate, did she say?"
"Yes. It was while her sister was ill. Those
two sisters were wonderful. It's a positive fact that inside twenty-four hours
Violet had picked up the entire job. I never saw anything like it. Never! I
tried to get her back again; but she wouldn't come. I gave up trying."
"Why wouldn't she? I should have thought it
was a much better situation than anything I could offer her."
"Perhaps it was. But of course I don't know
how good your situations are. I know I'd have given her practically any salary she
cared to ask. I wouldn't like to say whether Violet or Susan was the best of
the two. Susan was the eldest."
"Died, didn't she?"
"She did," said Sir Henry quietly. And
still in a very quiet pathetic voice, and with gaze averted, he went on:
"When I tell you I very nearly married Susan--" He ceased.
"Well!" thought Evelyn, with more than
the notorious swiftness of thought: "If Susan actually was anything
like Violet, that's the best thing I ever heard about you!"
He was indeed astounded. He saw Violet Powler in a
new light, as the sister of an exceedingly opulent Lady Savott; but he could
not imagine Susan as stepmother to a Gracie. And yet, why not? If she was
anything like Violet, she would have been adequate for that or any other role.
He was flatteringly confirmed in his opinion of himself as a judge of
individualities.
More ammunition for him in his imminent contest
with Mrs. O'Riordan about the selection of Violet Powler as a Palace
floor-housekeeper!
"Really!" he breathed sympathetically.
He truly felt sympathetic.
As Sir Henry was looking at the hearthrug Evelyn
could scrutinise his face at leisure, without rudeness. He saw the Savott
reputation in those features. The small eyes with their perforating and yet
far-away gaze, the hard jaw, the inhuman regular teeth! (Evelyn's teeth were
somewhat irregular, and he thanked God for it.) But there must be, there was,
another facet, unnoticed by the world of affairs, to Henry Savott's
individuality. He could see it now, in the attitude humble and soft. And even,
if under the influence of Savott's confession, he only imagined he saw it, it
must still be there: for not merely must Savott have responded to the fineness
of Violet's sister, but she in turn must have found fineness in Savott.
"My private affairs," said Sir Henry,
"used to fill a lot of space in the newspapers. So I daresay you know more
about them than I do myself." He glanced up, with a terrible sardonic
smile, then lowered his eyes again. "It was before I got free of Lady
Savott that I wanted to come to an understanding with Susan. But she was so
afraid she'd be mixed up in the divorce proceedings, and I couldn't make her
see she wouldn't be, couldn't possibly be. You know if a woman doesn't see a
thing for herself you can't reason her into seeing it. No. She wouldn't give
even a provisional consent. Didn't like the idea of it. And when I was free it
was just too late. I did everything I could to save her life. Everything...She
was on my side right enough against Lady Savott. She knew the facts. She'd seen
'em. It was seeing Violet yesterday that brought it all back to me. Funny, I
don't know to this day whether Violet knew how things were between her sister
and me! I doubt whether Susan ever said a word to a soul. Tremendously
reserved; and as for discretion!...Excuse me boring you. It came over me, all
of a sudden. Well, well!" Sir Henry gave renewed attention to the Partaga.
Evelyn was flattered once more by the confidence.
He was saddened; but his sadness was not unpleasant; it had a quality of beauty.
Strange, startling encounter, there in the handsome and comfortable room, after
the perfect meal, the perfect wines, and in the middle of the perfect cigar!
And flowers in their button-holes! Strange encounter with this dictatorial and
ruthless specimen of the top-dog; prince of practitioners of company-mongering,
whose schemes might and did imperil the happiness of thousands of under-dogs,
and also many middle-dogs! All his wealth and all his power had not sufficed to
save him from the fate of being himself, in a different sense, an under-dog
too. Well might the man's heart echo with the Psalmist's intimidating 'Be still
and know that I am God!' Genuine and affecting sympathy for the survivor of the
tragedy drew Evelyn towards Sir Henry. And yet in the very moment of his
compassion, he was thinking: "I bet it hasn't prevented him from amusing
himself since."
"Now look here!" said Sir Henry in a
voice suddenly strong and perhaps more domineering than he meant it to be.
"I've not come here to make a nuisance of myself."
"Not at all," Evelyn mildly interjected.
"Yes, yes. A damned nuisance!" Sir Henry
stood up and stood straight. "I've come here to try to do a bit of
business, anyhow to begin it. You know what it is of course."
"What I do know," thought Evelyn,
"is that whether you intended it or not, you and I'll never be on a purely
business footing again." He kept silence and waited, merely waving his
cigar as a sign of concurrence.
DOGS
"Now," said Sir Henry, still standing,
with his back to the fire, and perhaps somewhat masterfully, looking down upon
Evelyn, who lounged in the easy-chair. "I want you to believe that I have
nothing whatever to conceal from you. If I tried to conceal anything from a man
like you, I know I shouldn't succeed--for long. You know too much about your
business, and you're far too clever. Don't think I'm flattering you. I'm not.
And what's more, you must know I'm not. You must know very well that in your
own line you're the first man in the world. Now don't you? Honest to God!"
"There are one or two pretty fine men in
Germany," said Evelyn.
"Do you think they are equal to you? Do
you?"
Evelyn leaned forward, and with his elbows on his
knees let his forearms droop towards the floor.
"Do you wish to make me talk like a conceited
ass?" he asked, cigar between teeth.
"No. I wish you to answer a question. Yes, or
no?"
All Evelyn's intense natural reserve rose up to prevent
him from giving a direct answer.
"How can I tell? How do I know whether the
German fellows aren't equal to me? I'm an interested party."
"Of course you're an interested party. But
I'm not asking you what you know. I'm asking you what you think.
You have an opinion. What is it?"
"Well, I don't think they are equal to
me."
"Confession is good for the soul," said
Sir Henry, smiling, and making a brilliant display of his teeth.
"I'm not so sure about that," Evelyn
thought. "And why does he use these worn-out phrases? 'Confession is good
for the soul!' Good God!"
"Thanks" said Sir Henry. "May I
have another cigar?"
Evelyn negligently pointed to the box on the
table. Sir Henry picked one, bit the end off--his sharp teeth made a matchless
cigar-cutter--and lit the new cigar from the old, violently puffing forth
clouds of blue smoke.
"He doesn't know a lot about
cigar-smoking," Evelyn thought. "He's got that cigar too hot right at
the start. And he's finished one already, and mine's only half through."
"Well," resumed Sir Henry, carefully
dropping the end of the old cigar into the fire and turning to Evelyn again,
with a benevolent expression. "So far so good. Well, as I say, I'm going
to be perfectly open with you. That isn't always my way in big negotiations.
But it's my way this time, because I feel it'll be the best way with you. No
other reason. No question of moral principle and so on. Candour isn't
necessarily the best policy. It often isn't, by Jove. But in this case it is. I
reckon myself a very good judge of character. You can appreciate frankness,
because you aren't sentimental."
"That's true," thought Evelyn, really
flattered again. "He is a bit of a judge of character. And he's
devilish different tonight from the man who stood me a dinner the night before
last." Evelyn was impressed, and he admitted to himself that his first
estimate of Sir Henry had been inadequate. He said nothing; just waited.
"I'll tell you something possibly you don't
know. Let me mention a few hotels. For instance, the Majestic in London, your
only serious rival, and the Duncannon in London. The Concorde and the Montaigne
in Paris. The Minerva at Cannes. The Escurial in Madrid. The Bottecini at San
Remo. The Albergo Umberto in Rome."
"That's eight."
"Yes. What do you think of them?"
"Not a bad selection," said Evelyn
coldly. "Fairly representative Very fairly."
His mind passed with extreme rapidity through the
list. He was well acquainted with every one of the eight, either from personal
knowledge or from reliable report; with its good and its bad characteristics,
the nature of its clientele, its efficiencies and inefficiencies, its past, its
present and its prospects; also with the percentages of its dividends earned,
its dividends actually paid out, or in the alternative its trading loss. And in
his mind, assessing all the eight simultaneously and instantaneously, he
considered and decided--by no means for the first time--how each of them could
be improved. An imposing lot truly; but less imposing to Evelyn than to a
layman; as a first-rate virtuoso's piano-playing is less imposing to
another first-rate piano virtuoso than to a layman.
And what he would have called 'the conceited ass'
in himself reflected upon the immense fuss which would be made of him if he
walked into any one of them and presented his card: "Mr. Evelyn Orcham,
Managing Director, Imperial Palace Hotel, London." Of which immense fuss
he had on various occasions had experience. For he was a retiring man, though
he would never coddle his shyness to the extent of hiding his identity from
fellow-managers.
"I now have control of all the eight,"
said Sir Henry with lightness, ineffectually trying to pretend that to have
obtained the control of eight such hotels was to a person built on his scale a
mere trifle of an achievement. "I don't say I've bought them. I've
actually bought one--and no doubt you can guess which one--but I have options
which will give me control of the other seven at any moment I choose."
"The Majestic?" said Evelyn, naming the
establishment which Sir Henry had bought.
Sir Henry nodded, smiling.
"Not a vast amount of profit-earning
there," said Evelyn.
"On the hotel itself, no. But think of the
real estate owned by the company, my friend. Its value has appreciated by a
good sixty per cent. in the last fifteen years. And the figure they put it at
in their Balance Sheet is grotesquely below the value to-day."
"Quite. I agree. But you spoke of it as a
serious rival to the Palace. It isn't. They haven't even the sense to spend
fifteen thousand pounds on replacing their worn-out carpets and curtains. To
say nothing of the furniture."
"I haven't particularly noticed the carpets
and curtains," Sir Henry rather haltingly admitted.
"You will next time you go in there,"
Evelyn answered drily. But less drily than he felt. For Savott's announcement
had excited in him sensations of admiring wonder. Though the man might show the
foibles of a Napoleon he had, too, a true Napoleonic grandeur of conception,
and, if he in fact held the boasted options, which he probably did, he
certainly had in addition a Napoleonic power to realise his conception. As he
stood there on the hearthrug in the comfortable modest room, insulting a fine
cigar by smoking it too quickly, he was tossing millions about. And he had had
the courage and the originality to love and fight for the daughter of a small
town-traveller; and the misfortune to lose her. A few minutes earlier he had
been a wistful emblem of tragedy. He was still that emblem, for Evelyn; but he
was a great deal more now: he was an emblem of confident, imaginative might.
Evelyn marvelled at him, and pitied him. He wanted
to say to him eagerly, "You're a bigger chap than I thought." And he
wanted magically to raise Susan Powler from the dead, so that he might see a
cherished woman fold the ruthless giant in her honest arms and kiss away
calamity from those ferreting eyes, and by her homeliness reduce a colossus to
the human dimensions of a lover. Evelyn was thrilled.
"You've got eight," said he with feigned
cold indifference; and paused. "But you want nine."
"I want the Imperial Palace," Sir Henry
exclaimed, and could not refrain from a grandiose Napoleonic gesture. "If
I can't bring the Imperial Palace into my merger, I'll drop it. I could sell the
Majestic at a profit already. I would sell it. And I'd get rid of my options
too. I'd clear out of hotels and try something else. I haven't the least desire
to mess about with an affair if it's going to be only second-class.
Second-c1ass isn't a bit my line. But I'll admit I don't want to clear out of
hotels. The luxury hotel, as you've made it, my dear Orcham, seems to me to be
the most characteristic of all modem creations. It stands for the age, just as
much as the Pyramids did for Egypt. Our age can be proud of it--I mean as an
organism. It's marvellous, and there never was anything like it before. The
luxury hotel--"
"What about the department-store?"
Evelyn interjected.
"I agree," said Sir Henry quickly.
"The department-store is just as characteristic, and original, as
the luxury hotel. But as you probably know, I've handled the
department-store--both here and in Australia. My department-store merger is a
proved success--and half the City prophesied failure for it. Well, that's done.
And now I'm in for a hotel-merger. Only, it must be first-class. Splendid!
Gorgeous! Something to sing about and write home about! Otherwise I wouldn't
give tuppence for it. Of course there've been hotel-mergers already. I expect
you know a lot more about my friend Hoster's merger than I do. It's pretty big.
I've no dependable information as to how it's doing. But however well it's
doing it wouldn't be good enough for me. To my nose it smells of the suburban
street and the provincial up from the country and the conducted tour and God
knows what else! No, no! The Imperial Palace is the standard for me. And that's
why I'm so keen on interesting you in my proposition. Orcham, I'm damnably
keen."
Evelyn was moved by the surprising lyricism of the
City man. He was beginning to glimpse the qualities which had lifted up Sir
Henry to be a figure in the world of high finance. His imagination was
impressed--by the revealed fact that Sir Henry had imagination. He beheld Sir
Henry with a satisfaction that was aesthetic. He was even ever so little
scared. But he showed none of his emotion.
"I can't quite understand this mania for
mergers. It seems to me to mean the destroying of individuality," he said.
Nobody could be more misleading, more mystifying, than Evelyn when his mind was
fluid and he had to play for time.
"Destroying of individuality!" cried Sir
Henry. "Oh, hang it! I've let the thing out." He seized the
match-box.
"No, Savott!" Evelyn stopped him.
"You can do most things in this room, but you aren't allowed to re-light a
good cigar." He stretched his arm, plucked the extinct cigar from his
guest's fingers, and threw it into the fire. "Oblige me by taking a fresh
one."
Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders humorously, and
obliged, and resumed his talk while lighting the fresh cigar.
"Destroying of individuality!" he
repeated, muttering at first with the cigar between his teeth. "You of all
people to say that! Look at the present case. It would mean the extension of your
individuality. It would give your individuality a scope--a scope--well, you see
my idea? I won't say anything about your greatest abilities. But take your
efficiency. A merger means the spread of your efficiency; it means the spread
of the Imperial Palace standard. Is that nothing? Destruction of individuality!
Why! On the contrary! A merger always means increased power and influence for
the top-dog. And why is the top-dog the top-dog? Why are you a top-dog?"
"Yes. But what about the under-dog?"
Evelyn asked, thinking again the thoughts which had stirred in his mind earlier
about top-dogs and under-dogs and middle-dogs.
"It's no use talking about under-dogs,"
said Sir Henry, with a transient impatience. "Nothing can stop mergers.
They've come, everywhere, in everything. They're still coming, and they'll keep
on coming more and more. They're bound to. All big enterprises will get bigger,
and small enterprises will be swallowed up or go to hell. Bound to. I'm not a
scientist, and I couldn't make a very clear story of evolution. But I've got
the hang of it. And what I say is, the merger is evolution. Anyhow, part of it.
There it is! It may be a bit rough on a lot of people. But what are you
going to do about it? Pull it up with a jerk? You can't. You might as well try
to tie a rope to the moon and pull that up. Evolution will go on. Where to? We
don't know. At least I don't. Nor care either. All I know is I feel in my bones
I've got to go on. Do you suppose I'm taking on this job for money? I've made
money. I'm a rich man, very rich. And I want money--want it all the time. I'm interested
in money, but I'm much more interested in my instincts. And I'm sure my
instincts are right. If they lead me to money, I can't help that. Money's a
side-issue. Pleasant enough, of course--but only a side-issue. I'm pushing
evolution forward. Somebody has to push it forward, and I'm somebody. What will
happen next, after mergers have had a fair show? Who can tell? Not me. It
doesn't concern me. Something--call it God or Nature or what you
please--something's put certain instincts into my bones, I tell you. I'm
not a religionist, but I have a conscience. Yes, I'm conscientious. Sense of
duty, somewhere down inside me! And the duty is to use my instincts. Or let
them use me. I shouldn't like to say which it is. There might be some bad
consequences. Well, let there be! My conscience will be clear. And I know jolly
well there'd be some good consequences. And soon!"
"Does he think he's a besom and going to
sweep me into a corner?" thought Evelyn, sardonic. But Evelyn was bluffing
to himself; for he could feel that he was being swept up by the vigorous besom
and already on his way to the corner. The power of the City Napoleon loomed
formidably over him. "This fellow's situation precarious?" he
thought, recalling sinister rumours concerning the reality of Sir Henry's
position. "Rot! His position could never be precarious. And if one
situation went to smithereens he'd build another and a better one in about half
a minute. Still, that Resolution was a pretty wise precaution." He had to
fight against the impulse to enrol himself as a partisan of Henry Savott.
He said aloud, in a voice that made Sir Henry's
seem coarse and rhetorical:
"As we seem to be talking, I may as well tell
you that my sentiments about the plight of the under-dog in this evolution of
yours are rather strong. In a place like this you get some very melodramatic
contrasts, and they make you think. And when I think for instance of you in
your suite, or me here, and then of some of the fellows and girls down in the
basements, I get a sort of a notion that there must be something wrong
somewhere. And your mergers aren't likely to do such a devil of a lot to put it
right. The reverse."
Sir Henry dropped smoothly into an easy-chair
opposite Evelyn and when he spoke his restrained tone showed that he had
accepted the reproof of Evelyn's quietude.
"And hasn't there always been something
wrong? And won't there always be?" he enquired, almost insinuatingly.
"When there are no under-dogs the world will have to come to an end,
because there won't be anything to improve. Perfection's another name for
death, isn't it? And I must just ask you again: What are you going to do about
it? About these under-dogs? Mergers mean mass-production and lower prices.
What's the matter with this country is that there isn't enough mass-production.
Mass-production is the only chance for the under-dog, as far as I can
see."
Sir Henry had spoken slowly and more slowly. He
paused. Then began again, very low and very deliberate.
"I'm continually hearing about the
soul-destroying monotony of organised labour in these days. One man doing one
tiny fraction of a job all day every day. Well, that's part of the penalty of
cheap prices. But people forget that cheap prices aren't all penalty. They do
have the advantage of raising the purchasing power of the under-dog; therefore
raising his standard of life. Do you want to go back to the old methods? Even
if you could, you'd only raise prices and lower the standard of life. But you
couldn't go back. Because we simply don't go back. And do you want to stand
still? Everyone knows you can't stand still. Then you must go forward. More
mass-production! And--more machinery! I seem to see that machinery may at last
put an end to the under-dog. It may wipe him off the earth by throwing him out
of work. Well, somebody has to suffer. Anyhow when he's dead he isn't an
under-dog. See here! On the voyage over, this last week, I thought I'd have a
look at the innards of the ship. I thought they must be rather like a hotel,
and I wanted to pick up all I could in the hotel line. I did pick up some
trifles. Of course you know, but I didn't know, that there are no
bottle-washers in those big ships. All the washing-up's done by machinery and
the drying and everything, and better done than any bottle-washer ever did it
or ever could do it."
"Oh yes!" said Evelyn. "All the big
hotels have that machinery. Been in use for years."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute." Sir
Henry spoke more loudly, and with some excitement. "There are no miserable
bottle-washers any more in the big shows. They're gone. They may have died of
starvation, and their families with them. But they're gone. No more monotonous,
dirty, greasy, soul-destroying labour for bottle-washers. Now that's all to the
good. That's what I call an advance. And lots of other underdogs will follow
the bottle-washers. Frightful martyrdoms no doubt for a generation or two. But
it can't be helped. There is a chance that mass-production and machinery will
abolish the under-dog. There's no other chance. So in the sacred cause of
social progress I am determined to bear with fortitude the present and future
misfortunes of your under-dogs." Sir Henry laughed grimly.
"You may be right," said Evelyn
reluctantly. Then, a little ashamed of this assumed reluctance, he added in a
more sympathetic tone: "You probably are right. Anyhow it's soothing to
the mind to think you are...But I'm afraid I've been leading you off the
point."
"No, no!" Sir Henry amiably smiled.
"I led myself. It was I who began about dogs. However, I'll get back. I've
nearly finished. I told you I'd be perfectly open with you, and I will. It's a
bit unusual for a buyer to be enthusiastic about what he wants to buy. Doesn't
help him in bargaining, does it? I can't help that. I'm after the Imperial
Palace, and you know why. No one knows better. But the Imperial Palace would be
no earthly use to me without Mr. Evelyn Orcham. Without him I wouldn't have it
at any price. He is the Imperial Palace. He brought it from ruin to the
most brilliant success in the shortest time on record. Of course there are
hotels that have started from nothing and succeeded terrifically from the very
day they opened. There are at least two in London. And even Mr. Evelyn Orcham
couldn't teach much to the fellows that run them. Only they're cheap hotels.
Even under-dogs--some under-dogs--stay in them for a day or two without being
broke. They aren't luxury hotels, and it's the luxury hotel and nothing else
that interests me. I want something I can look at, with women walking around
that I can look at, and money flowing out of pockets like water. There's no fun
in running a cheap hotel."
"Oh yes, there is," Evelyn contradicted.
"Well, naturally there is. I mean not my sort
of fun, and your sort of fun. I couldn't bear anything that I had a hand in to
be spoken slightingly of. I couldn't bear it! 'Must be funny kind of places,'
I've heard people--some of your visitors--say of those cheap hotels; and if I'd
been in control of the funny kind of places I should have knocked the people
down. Simply that. Because I couldn't have borne it. You don't know me if you
think I shouldn't. You understand me--what I mean?"
"Perfectly," said Evelyn. "I
daresay I should feel the same. But I'm not a prize-fighter."
"Well, I am," said Sir Henry with
emphasis. "Off the point again!" He sniggered; then suddenly became
serious: "Now Mr. Evelyn Orcham isn't merely the king of the hotel world.
He's boss of the market in hotel-managers. And there aren't any under-bosses.
There's nobody but him--for a buyer like me, who won't have anything but the
best. He owns the finest article in the market--himself--and he can put his own
price on it, without arguing. He's in the strongest position that any seller
could be in. You see, I realise all that, and I wouldn't pretend I don't. I want
to buy Mr. Evelyn Orcham. Damn it! Of course I want to buy him. He's the
foundation-stone and the keystone and everything of my blooming arch. And I'm
ready to pay for him. And when I've got him safe, I want to make him the
head-god of the greatest hotel-combine that ever was. Nine big luxury hotels!
And I want him to put his stamp on all of them, so that everybody can see the
brand at a glance. I want everybody in the luxury world to know that every one
of those nine belongs to the Orcham group--and nothing more need be said, no
questions asked, no doubts raised, no qualms, no fears, apprehensions. 'It's an
Orcham hotel. It's dear, but it's worth the money. You know where you are in
his shows.' That's how the luxury crew have got to talk among themselves. And
that's how they would talk, by God! Why! In London and Madrid and Paris and San
Remo and Cannes and Rome we should put every other swell hotel out of business.
Right out. We should divide the luxury crew into two sections--those who had
the sense and the money to stay in an Orcham, and those who hadn't... Now,
Orcham, is it worth your while to take the thing on? Or am I a ranting
idiot?"
Evelyn answered at once:
"If you want my candid opinion, I should say that
you don't coincide very closely with my idea of a ranting idiot. But it isn't
worth my while to take the thing on. You see, I'm very fond of the Imperial
Palace. There's a genuine attachment between us. I'm happy here. I'm content. I
don't want anything else."
Sir Henry jumped up from his chair, and began to
eat his cigar instead of smoking it.
"Then you will excuse me," he burst
forth, stressing nearly every syllable. "But what I say is you've no right
to be happy and content here. How old are you? You can't be fifty. Fancy any
man under fifty being happy and content! I'm a long sight older than you; but
I'm not happy and I'm not content. And I don't want to be, either. When I'm
happy and content I shall be so near to being dead that you wouldn't notice the
difference. Why man, if you're happy and content you might as well say you
haven't got anything else to live for! And what would you have to live
for? You've made this place once, complete. You've exercised your genius on it.
You can't go on making it. It's made. All you have to do is to keep it where it
is. A touch here and a touch there. No more. And your genius going to waste!
Waste! You've realised one ambition, and a jolly good ambition. You've created
the finest luxury hotel in the world. Haven't you got any more ambitions? Or
are you at the end? Under fifty! Shall you be satisfied to sit down and fold
your arms?" He spread out his arms, and then folded them. But folding his
arms did nothing to tranquilise his almost fierce excitement.
With a casual air Evelyn remarked:
"There isn't much sitting down and folding of
arms about this place."
Dropping his arms, Sir Henry, cigar between teeth,
went back to his chair once again, sat down, and folded his arms anew, but with
a comic, apologetic gesture. He stared at Evelyn, faintly smiling.
"Excuse me!" he said, as it were
ruefully, and pleadingly. "I really do beg you to excuse me. When I get
keen I'm apt to--well, you know. So do I know--curse it!" He showed
considerable charm. Indeed for the moment he was irresistible.
"Not at all!" said Evelyn, making no
effort to resist, and with a smile quite as charming as his guest's. "Not
at all. You're very interesting. A talk is a talk. Do go on." As a fact he
found Sir Henry more than interesting--acutely disturbing. But his reserve was
a shield to him. And although upon occasion he could, like Sir Henry, put all
his cards on the table, he chose not to do so on this occasion.
"Let me say just one thing more," Sir
Henry said, ingratiating, appealing, astonishingly placid after his fevered
eloquence. "Your talents are being wasted here--in my opinion, that
is. Are you justified in wasting them? Perhaps you are. I'm merely asking the
question. There's still quite a great deal to do in the world. Perhaps luxury
hotels aren't the be-all and end-all of life. But they're a factor. And they
happen to be your field. And what we want more and more to-day is efficiency.
Efficiency is a speciality of yours. Why shouldn't nine luxury hotels set an
example of absolutely tiptop efficiency? Any efficiency, particularly when it's
spectacular, stimulates all other efficiencies."
Sir Henry's voice died away. He rose slowly, and
held out his hand.
"You aren't going?"
"Yes," said Sir Henry. "Thanks
immensely for a perfect evening. I couldn't have enjoyed an evening more."
"But--"
"Seems to me I ought to give you a chance to
think it over. That's all I ask. For you to think it over. No hurry. I should
hate to hurry you. You'll ring me up, or I'll ring you up. I'm not leaving the
Palace yet. I don't vanish out of hotels like Gracie. Au revoir. Your
hospitality is the sort I can appreciate. Of course being in the Imperial
Palace it would be."
Evelyn shook bands unwillingly. At the door Sir
Henry turned.
"And I say," he murmured with another
rueful smile, "I rely on you to forgive all the noise I've made."
He departed. The door banged.
Evelyn gently threw the last inch of his first
evening cigar into the fire.
"A masterly exit," he thought.
EARLY
MORN
Evelyn had luck that night. He did not possess the
Napoleonic gift of sleeping at will and for any willed length of time. Indeed he
seldom slept uninterruptedly for more than three hours together, and he praised
God when God granted him a total of five and a half hours' sleep in three
instalments. He probably did not sleep well because he was not very interested
in sleep. What really interested him was waking up, getting up, and satisfying
himself by contemplation of the dawn that the ancient earth was revolving as
usual. But on just that night it mysteriously happened to him to receive from
heaven five hours' unbroken sleep. So that he arose with full mental vigour in
the morning twilight and drew the curtains and raised the blinds and beheld
glistening roofs and clouds gliding above them from the eternal south-west; and
began to reflect upon a new problem, as eagerly curious about it as a child
about a new toy.
It was in these earliest morning hours, after a
fair night, that Evelyn most pleasantly savoured life. He had leisure then,
more time than was necessary for the due performance of what he called his
'chores.' He possessed three dressing-gowns of different thicknesses. Oldham
always laid them side by side in an unvarying order on the back of his
easy-chair. He chose the one which seemed to him to suit the temperature of the
morning. He turned on the electric radiator. Steam-heating was good enough for
the visitors to the Palace, but not for its Director. He turned on all the
lights, for he liked the fullest illumination, Saying that whatever he was
doing he preferred to see clearly what it was.He beheld the room, and the
tidiness of the room provided fresh satisfaction every morning. Every morning
was the beginning of the world and of his existence. No clothes and no linen
were ever left lying in the room. Nothing was out of place: neither the books
on the large bed-table, nor the glasses and bottle and weekly papers and
cigarette-box on the square table behind the bed, nor the appointments on the
dressing-table, nor the pumps and slippers on the floor.
Now, he lit the finest cigarette of the day, and
opened windows wide, and, warm in his camel-hair gown, defied the tang of the
air of sunrise. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and the encased
watch on the bed-table, and noted with relief and pride that they announced
precisely the same minute of the same hour. He considered what suit he would
wear, what shirt, what necktie, what handkerchief, what socks, what shoes. He
hated anew the prospect of shaving. He drank the celestial juice of two oranges
carefully distilled for him overnight by Oldham. He ate half a handful of seedless
raisins, also prepared for him by Oldham.
Among the books on the bed-table was an
India-paper Bible. He scarcely ever read it, but he liked to feel that in case
he wanted to read it the Bible was handy. On this morning he picked up the
Bible, found the Psalms, found the Forty-sixth Psalm. Yes. There it was, the
memorable sentence: "Be still and know that I am God." The sentence
awed him. It seemed to contain the whole wisdom of thirty centuries of human
experience. And he had lived for nearly fifty years in ignorance of it. He
repeated and repeated the sentence. But no better than on the previous night
could he have defined its significance, even to himself. He strolled into the
bathroom, strolled back, leaving the door ajar, took off his dressing-gown,
and, with customary conscientiousness, performed blood-stimulating physical
exercises on the floor and upright in front of an open window. Then he shut the
windows, resumed the dressing gown, and luxuriously, voluptuously, and a little
breathlessly reclined in the easy-chair. One chore done!
As a rule at this stage of the day he read
periodicals. But now he had no desire to read. He wished to enjoy his mind. He
was not given to self-analysis. He would think out his plans, but the
originating cause of all his plans had little interest for him. He lived his
life by deep impulses into which he never enquired. He rather despised the
individuals who were always worrying themselves about themselves. His attitude
was God's: I am that I am. To wonder why he was what he was hardly occurred to
him. And whither he was going did not trouble him more than whence he had come.
He constructed no chart, wrote out no annual balance-sheet. He merely knew,
felt, that he had work to do and that he was doing it pretty well and was
thereby kept continually busy.
But to-day, in the freshness of the morning and
the cherished order of the room, he entered upon some sort of an examination of
that unexplored strange creature, Evelyn Orcham. At leisure, and secure from
any invasion, he began to reflect, not without mild excitement. He was happy.
Henry Savott had feverishly informed him that at his age he had no right to be
happy. Nevertheless he was happy. He damned Henry Savott. Still, the man had
impressed him. In his daily life Evelyn was more used to bestow wisdom than to
receive it. And to have positively explosive instruction flung in his face with
violence was to say the least disconcerting.
The younger son of the Chief Customs Inspector of
an important East Coast port, Evelyn had been brought up with two extremely
taciturn men--his widowed father and his brother. The two men and the boy
seldom talked and never argued, even at meals. The two men showed no curiosity
about anything, and apparently thought that nothing was worth talking about.
Each was an individual island entirely surrounded by spiritual solitude; and
the boy became an island. The elder brother entered the Customs service,
married a girl who chattered incessantly, and reached in course of time the
chief inspectorship of another East Coast port. His children were growing up.
He asked no more from life. He never wrote to Evelyn, nor Evelyn to him.
Immediately on leaving school Evelyn heard casually of a catering job at a
provincial Exhibition, and on the strength of a school reputation as organiser
of field-excursions, casually wandered off to get the job, and got it. Nobody
either encouraged or discouraged his enterprise of leaving home. He just
departed with an exchange of "Ta-ta, ta-ta." And he never saw his
home again. His father died while away on holiday, and at the funeral Evelyn
spoke about forty words to his brother, and his brother about twenty words to
Evelyn. "Ta-ta, ta-ta," once more. Withal, the pair were conscious of
mutual esteem. Evelyn rose by step and step to the top of his profession. When
he arrived at the panjandrumship of the Imperial Palace Hotel he sat down to
write the news to his brother. But he desisted and cast the sheet into the
waste-paper basket, because he was afraid that his grave and silent brother
might reply on a post-card and despise him for breaking the grand family
tradition of taciturnity. All he could be sure of about his brother was that he
was not dead; for tradition would assuredly have summoned him to a brother's
funeral.
Once fairly established in the hotel world, Evelyn
of course had to learn the art, and especially the craft, of conversation. He
learned it as he might have learned mathematics or juggling or conjuring. He
talked, but he remained reserved. He had always been, and he still was,
reserved even with the person whom be least mistrusted--himself. At no period
of his wonderful ascent had he made many friends.
The career of hotel-management was as absorbing as
that of ship-captaincy. There were, in practice, no fixed, regular hours of
work for the chief and his immediate subordinates. During twenty hours daily,
from
As for Evelyn, he had forsaken sports and pastimes
many years ago. And why should Evelyn embarrass himself with a pack of friends
when he was happy without them?
But on this particular morning he saw his present
as well as his future in the new searchlight directed upon them by Henry
Savott. He was the celebrated panjandrum of the Imperial Palace Hotel. He had
'got there.' Good! And in ten years, in twenty? When he was approaching three
score and ten, would be have retired-unthinkable--or would he still be the
panjandrum of the Imperial Palace Hotel? Would not the livelier of his
acquaintances and colleagues then be saying behind his back: "Yes,
terrific fellow! Made the place! Perhaps he's been there a bit too long. Thirty
years. In a groove. You can't teach him anything now"? Possibly he was
already fairly deep in a groove of habit and self-complacency. Was it not true
what Savott had said, that a touch here and a touch there should suffice to
keep the vast organism of the Imperial Palace in the path of prosperity? Could
he, Evelyn, deny that his talent for imaginative efficiency was being to some
extent wasted? He sat quiet, and waited for inspiration. Without at all
realising it, he was fulfilling the behest of the Psalmist's deity: "Be
still and know that I am God."
He heard a faint whine. It was the sound of the
vacuum cleaner which twice a week a chambermaid and a valet between them
employed upon his sitting-room. The day had started. The humble were abroad and
active. But how came it that he could hear the sound across the bathroom, in a
bedroom theoretically impervious to all noise? Ah! He had left the bedroom door
ajar. He rose and shut the door. The whine ceased to be audible.
Could he successfully inspire the managers of
eight hotels in four different countries with his own spirit, energy,
enthusiasm, tact, tireless ingenuity in organisation? He might be able to teach
Rome and Madrid. But could he teach Paris and the Riviera; he an Englishman,
handicapped, despite his renown, by the fact of being a native of the land
which had the worst hotels in Europe? Well, he thought he could. He knew he
could. Already he could see how he would have to set about the mighty task:
stay in each of the hotels, say nothing, watch, praise, study local conditions,
allow for local standards; a touch here and a touch there at first; cautious
suggestions; then bolder strokes; a few abrupt dismissals; exchanges of
important members of staffs between one hotel and another; promotions,
degradations; soft answers; the iron hand; encouragement of the larger harmony
through transient violent discords; flittings from city to city; rapid and
frequent returns to London to maintain the peace of the Imperial Palace, and to
galvanise and electrify the Majestic and the Duncannon into a more and more
active reforming energy.
There was the language difficulty. Absurd! He was
inventing difficulties. The entire hotel-world was polyglot. And he could speak
French admirably. He had learned French as he had learned conversation, and for
the same reason. And if he felt any apprehensions about Madrid, which he had
seen only once, he could take with him once or twice Adolphe, the chef de
reception of the Palace, and the supreme linguist of all the Palace staff.
The projected enterprise of modernising hotels
made a fascinating panorama in his mind. It was an enterprise perfectly suited
to his faculties. Had he not already conducted two similar enterprises to
triumph, in his beloved first-born, the Wey, and then in the Imperial Palace?
In both cases had he not performed the miracle of raising the dead; and to what
glorious life? In the privacy of his self-esteem he doubted whether there
existed on earth another man as fortunately qualified as himself for the
realisation of Savott's dream. By the way, it was Savott's dream; not his own.
And Savott might well be an excellent man to work with. Savott would understand
without too much argument, because he had imagination.
Nevertheless Evelyn hated the visionary project.
He shrank from the sight of it, averting his eyes. Why shoulder the weight of
ten thousand new anxieties? Why wander homeless? Why leave the adorable
habitual comfort of his everlasting home? He feared, tremblingly hesitant. Ha!
The groove! Dramatic proof, this hesitation, that he was indeed already sunk in
a groove, that in his shelter he shivered at the mere thought of the winds of
the world. But supposing that he declined Savott's offer--how would he feel
afterwards for the rest of his life? Shamed, remorseful, disappointed,
stultified, lethargised? Would he not. know in his heart that he was a coward?
Then he perceived a flaw in Savott's grandiose scheme. It was not sufficiently
grandiose. The fellow did not know enough. He was missing the finest, the most
glaring opportunity in Europe. Deauville! There were only two authentic luxury
hotels in Deauville. Savott should have bought options on both of them. The
trouble in Deauville was the shortness of the season. But the season ought to
be lengthened, could be lengthened. That bright young man Immerson, author and
controller of the unique indirect publicity of the Imperial Palace, had once in
Evelyn's presence sighed for the chance to do in Deauville what he had done in
London and Weybridge. The Deauville people had amazingly succeeded with their
hotels, but they had not succeeded in stretching their season. Their
imagination lacked breadth and sweep.
A quiet knock. Evelyn got up and walked to the
right-hand window. Oldham entered.
"Morning, Oldham," Evelyn greeted him,
but without turning round.
"Morning, sir."
These two understood each other perfectly--not
almost perfectly, but perfectly. Evelyn's attitude towards Oldham was one of
affection and appreciation. Oldham's to Evelyn one of affection and devotion.
Because of his aversion for physical exercise and his inexhaustible interest in
eating, Oldham, who was five years younger than Evelyn, looked five years
older, and Evelyn always thought of him as older.
Once, a long time since, they had had a skirmish
which might have developed into a calamitous shindy if Evelyn had not the
presence of mind to shut his own mouth. Oldham valued that forbearance. It had
been reported to Evelyn through the floor-housekeeper, that in a quarrel with a
chambermaid about their respective duties Oldham had remarked: "If you
think I'm a bloody chambermaid--" Evelyn had been infuriated at such
behaviour; less at the language used to a girl by a respectable man of an age
to be her father, than at the respectable man's evident unfairness in presuming
on the immense advantage of his position as Evelyn's private and confidential
servant. Evelyn was very seldom infuriated; one might say never. But he
happened to be himself extreme punctilious in his demeanour to all his employees;
he had a special detestation of masters who were rude to their servants and
Oldham's iniquity had taken him by surprise. Also, Evelyn's fury had taken
Oldham by surprise; and Oldham had retorted too soon, before he had recovered
from the surprise. The next day Oldham had briefly expressed contrition, and
the quarrel was over. They had never had another. The first and last quarrel
had seemed to draw them more closely together; both had realised that a rupture
would be desolating.
Evelyn had tried for years to put sense into
Oldham about eating, outdoor exercise, and personal tidiness. He had failed and
had abandoned the efforts. He might have succeeded as regards personal
tidiness, if Oldham's gourmandise had not made him too stout to get into
Evelyn's cast-off suits. Instead of wearing these perquisites Oldham sold them.
As in all other matters Oldham was meticulously tidy, Evelyn had accepted the
situation.
"Striped," said Evelyn, still not
turning round. (Each of Evelyn's suits was christened with a short epithet.)
"Black-and-white shirt, black tie, black French shoes." He said
nothing about socks because socks had to match the tie.
"Yes, sir...Excuse me, sir," said
Oldham. "Mrs. O'Riordan is unwell and thinks she ought to stay in bed. She
would very much obliged if you could go and see her after breakfast. That was
the message, sir." His shocked tone said: "Yes, that's the message,
and I give it you, but it's the biggest piece of cheek I ever heard of in this
hotel, and I beg to take no responsibility for it. You going to see the
housekeeper because she's 'unwell,' as she calls it!"
"All right," said Evelyn, absently.
"Remind me."
"Yes, sir."
Evelyn himself perceived not the enormity of the
message, but at the back of his brain, behind the circling thoughts concerning
his presence and his future, he was somewhat disturbed. He guessed: "It
must be about the new floor-housekeeper. She wants to settle that business at
once, and I may have some trouble with the old girl." At last he turned to
go into the bathroom. Oldham had switched on the light in the huge
wardrobe-cubicle which gave on to the bedroom and which held the whole of
Evelyn's attire. The man was handling a pair of trousers.
"Here! Steady!" Evelyn enjoined him.
"I told you the striped, not the broad stripe." When Evelyn had
bought a second striped suit the new one had been dubbed 'broad-stripe' to
distinguish it from the old one.
"Sorry, sir," Oldham apologised, after a
brief pause for cerebration, in the thick, obscure tone which always indicated
that he was secretly worried. Indeed the audacity of Mrs. O'Riordan was still
abrading his sensitive nerves so loyal to Evelyn.
Evelyn passed into the bathroom, where Oldham had
already made every minute customary preparation for the morning rites. The
spectacle of the sacred traditional disposition of the bathroom appealed
pleasurably every day to Evelyn's passionate sense of order. Razor,
razor-towel, chair, bath-towels, mat, mirror, soaps, height and temperature of
water in the bath--each item was arranged strictly in accordance with the
changeless daily formula. And he enjoyed the spectacle this morning, but
absently.
He was not thinking of Mrs. O'Riordan. He was
thinking: "What am I alive for? What is my justification for being alive
and working? I cannot keep on creating the Palace. I have created it. The thing
is done. I can't do it again."
For the first time he was addressing to his soul
the terrible comprehensive question, which corrodes the very root of content in
the existence of millions of less fortunate people, but which had never even
presented itself to Evelyn until the previous night:
"Why?"
If Henry Savott's proposition could not furnish
the answer to the question, what could? As late as within the last twenty four
hours--nay, twelve hours--he had been condemning Savott's scheme as a dastardly
and hateful conspiracy to be countered at any cost. Only a minute ago he had
been hating it. But now the visionary project was changing its appearance: and
in spite of himself he saw in it the chance of salvation--he who but a little
earlier would have derided any hypothesis that he needed salvation.
He shaved with cautious tranquillity. He lay long
in the warm water; and as he lay a lamp seemed to be ignited in his brain, and
it burned up slowly into a steady flame which illuminated the whole of his
brain. And it was the figure and symbol of Savott's scheme, and the one
veritable answer to that dread conundrum: why was he alive, and why should he
go on living? And though he tried to pretend that his brain was dark, he could
not, because of the convincing brightness of the lamp. And even when,
reluctantly, he withdrew himself from the warm water and with a towel violently
rubbed his skin as if he would rub out the flame itself, it still burned unwaveringly.
And Evelyn had to carry the lamp into the bedroom. In the bedroom he beheld all
his clothes laid out according to formula and with the zealous accuracy of a
man who knew why he was alive and had found the reason completely satisfactory.
Then, while he was seated at the mirror tying his
cravat, there was a tap on the door and the door opened, and Oldham entered,
consternation on his pale, flabby face.
"Mrs. O'Riordan is in the sitting-room,
sir," said Oldham, ashamed, shocked by his own tidings.
"What?"
With admirable presence of mind Evelyn neither
turned his gaze from the mirror nor ceased to tie the cravat.
"She wants to see you at once, sir."
"Who let her into the room?"
"She came in, sir."
"But I thought she was ill."
"Yes, sir."
"What time is it?"
"Twenty minutes to eight, sir."
"Now, look here, Oldham." Evelyn swung
round on the chair. "Get her out. Use your famous tact. Say I'm late. Say
I'm not dressed. Tell her I'll come along and see her in her own room as
quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir," Oldham agreed, doubtfully,
and departed.
Evelyn had not been able to extinguish the lamp,
but this unparalleled occurrence extinguished it. Scarcely could he believe
what he had heard. What! A member of the staff invade his sacred castle, and
before breakfast! Such an act was unheard of in all the history of Evelyn's
panjandrumship. Nobody dared to come into his castle, save upon special request
and as a favour--and never on hotel business. Mrs. O'Riordan must have had one
of her rare nerve-storms. But even so--! He was all spruce and ready to leave
the bedroom before Oldham returned.
"Well?" he asked, showing anxiety
despite an effort to hide it.
"She's gone, sir."
"Was she dressed?"
"Well, sir, she was dressed, as you
might call it."
"What do you mean?"
"A negleejay, sir." Oldham
departed once more.
Evelyn passed through the now disordered and
sloppy-floored bathroom into the sitting-room, which was as clean and bright as
a new pin. He rang the bell, sat down to the breakfast table, and opened
"The Times." First he looked at the City page and noted that Imperial
Palace shares had risen one-eighth. Good! Then he turned to the obituaries and
to the announcements of betrothals, weddings, births, deaths, dinner-parties,
receptions; for it was part of his work, as of Cousin's and Adolphe's and
Cappone's and Ruffo's, to maintain close familiarity with the daily annals of
the great self-advertising world. Then on the sports page his eye caught a
paragraph about Woolwich Arsenal Football Club. Then Oldham brought in
breakfast.
"I say, Oldham," he enquired with
seeming vivacious interest, "what's this about the Arsenal this
season?"
He hoped to get one up on Oldham in the matter of
football news, but as usual his hope was disappointed. Oldham had seen the news
in another paper, his own, where it was a front-page item. The man's sole
distraction was Association Football. As a slim youth he had played
centre-half. He seldom attended a match; in fact he attended a match no oftener
than he attended his wife, who lived in a Berkshire village. But he always knew
all about all teams, players, matches. The desire of his life was to win a
£1,000 prize offered by a Sunday paper for twenty-two correct results. He had
never got beyond eighteen; and Evelyn prayed that he would stick eternally at
eighteen, lest £1,000 in cash might ruin him both as a man and as a valet.
Evelyn had no curiosity whatever about Association Football or about Rugby
either; he kept a careless attention on Association news solely in order to be
able to discuss it intelligently with Oldham, who loved to display his vast
knowledge. This morning they talked at some length. But the conversation was a
piece of bravado, a horrible and unconvincing make-believe. Both were
humiliatingly aware of its false character. Each knew that the other was
obsessed, worried, appalled, overset by Mrs. O'Riordan's shocking, incredible
invasion in a negligé. Both had been unmanned thereby. But each
nevertheless was nobly determined to play the intrepid man in face of insu1ting
behaviour and oncoming trouble.
Oldham left. In five minutes he came back,
freighted with still worse news.
"Mr. Plimsing is outside, sir," said he,
having carefully shut the doors. "Wishes to see you, sir."
"What next?" cried Evelyn, pushing away
his plate with a gesture betraying serious agitation. Oldham intensified the
woe in his visage. "What did you tell him?"
"Nothing, sir."
Evelyn raised his voice slightly: "Well, tell
him this. Tell him I can't see him here. Tell him I'll see him in my office at
nine o'clock. No. I'll see him here at nine o'clock. And not before. I don't
care how urgent his business is. I wonder what's come over the place this
morning!"
Mr. Plimsing was the hotel detective; formerly in
the C.I.D. department of Scotland Yard.
NERVE-STORM
"How sweet of you to come!" murmured
Mrs. O'Riordan sweetly, as Evelyn entered her sitting-room.
She reclined on a sofa which had been drawn up
near the hearth, where a small fire burned. Her slim body was enveloped in a
rosy negligé, a magnificent garment. Her head rested on a small white
embroidered pillow, under which were three variegated and ribboned cushions.
She smiled with a coquettish consciousness of grace, of the exceeding neatness
of her grey-white coiffure, of the rouged and powdered finish of her lips and
complexion, and of the elegance of her wrists and manicured hands emerging from
the lacy sleeves. But the most elegant thing on the sofa was a black cat,
curled up on the eiderdown covering her feet. Mrs. O'Riordan's attitude and
demeanour combined those of a Madame Récamier and an Olympia, inviting,
refusing, teasing, voluptuous, intelligent.
The room was over-full of furniture and
knickknacks and flowers. Portraits of men, women and mansions thronged the
walls. The room was a boudoir. But in one hand Mrs. O'Riordan held some
letters, and at her side, on a pouf, sat a young, pink-faced, short-frocked
secretary, notebook open on knees. The Récamier, the Olympia, the odalisque,
had been dictating answers to correspondence.
Evelyn's apprehensions momentarily vanished at the
warm spectacle of the domestic interior. He thought: "I can deal with this
all right." And he thought what a shame it was that such a woman, such a
cunning piece of femininity, should be compelled by fate to knit her brows over
business when she ought to be occupied solely with her ageless charm, the
attractions of her boudoir, and the responsiveness of men to her fine arts.
Monstrous it was that she, whose function in life was obviously to scatter
money, should have to earn it, and in order to earn it should be dictating
letters at
He said nothing, waved his hand vaguely as though
it held his stick, waited.
"Shoo! Run!" said Mrs. O'Riordan to the
little secretary, frowning, rather crossly. In an instant her face had assumed
its smile.
"She's wound up; all nerves; a bit
hysterical," thought Evelyn.
The little secretary jumped to her feet, and, with
a shy, pleasant glance at Evelyn, obediently hurried out of the room.
"You don't look ill," said Evelyn.
"What's this I hear about you being ill?"
"Pleurisy," said Mrs. O'Riordan
"Pleurisy?" he exclaimed.
"Oh! If you don't believe me, just
look." She raised her head and shoulders, and with one hand pulled down
the negligé at the back, exposing one shoulder-blade and the edge of a
white undergarment. "Come nearer and look." It was a command that she
uttered. Evelyn saw the ends of a series of strips of plaster.
"You see how he's plastered me all up."
"Who?"
"Dr. Constam of course." Dr. Constam was
the young hotel-doctor. "So that when I move, the pleura won't rub. I sent
for him before seven o'clock. I had such a sharp pain. It's only a very slight
attack, but it is pleurisy." She lowered her head on to the pillow.
"And that's not all. He says there's something funny about my liver. Well,
I always knew there was. The gallbladder isn't working properly. But otherwise
I feel very well. Only he's told me I must keep as quiet as I can. As if I
could!"
"And your idea of keeping quiet is to come
down to see me before I'm dressed!" said Evelyn, with a gentle, sardonic
smile
"You aren't very sympathetic. Pleurisy's
pleurisy, you know. It's nothing yet; but it might be very serious if it wasn't
taken in hand at once. I've had it before."
"Well, you ought to be in bed, then."
"I am in bed, practically. I'm only lying
here while my bed's being made. He says I mustn't eat any fats--that's because
of the gall-bladder, or drink any alcohol--or as little as I can. I shall
certainly drink some. I came down to see you because I just couldn't
wait. I know it was very naughty of me. I know you're God. Mr. Cousin thinks
he's God too, but he isn't. Do sit down. I want to talk to you."
"Very well. But oughtn't you to leave
everything till you're better?"
"No, I oughtn't," said Mrs. O'Riordan.
Evelyn was moving about the room, carelessly examining the portraits. "And
please do sit down. You fidget me. Please!"
Evelyn sat, at some distance from the sofa, on a
chair by the sideboard. Yes, he thought, Mrs. O'Riordan was in a strange,
sensitive mood, a mood surprising to him. She had ceased to be an employee. He
had ceased to be the Director of the Imperial Palace. He was a man, and she was
a woman, and she knew her power and was using it, with a grand impetuous
disregard of their relative positions. Despite her alleged maladies, she seemed
to be uplifted, and responsive; Evelyn felt uplifted also. He enjoyed his
plight. The cat stood up on Mrs. O'Riordan's hidden ankles, yawned, arched its
back, and gazed at Evelyn with real contempt.
"Well?" Evelyn calmly encouraged the
invalid, folding his hands and crossing one knee over the other. He said to
himself that Mrs. O'Riordan would have to look much more like a sick woman than
she did before he could behave to her as one. He had, however, quite forgiven
her scandalous and untimely invasion of his castle.
"It's about Miss Brury," said Mrs.
O'Riordan, stroking the cat, which had strolled up to her shoulders.
"Darling!" (This to the cat.) "She came to see me last night.
She wants to be taken back. She cried and I cried, and any woman with any heart
would have cried. This notion that men have that women are hard on one another
is ridiculous. It's men that are hard on women, and don't we know it! Alice
says she hasn't got a penny--gives all she has to her married sister, who has
about a thousand children--what a husband!--and she simply daren't ask for
another place because everyone will know what happened here. And why shouldn't
she come back? Tired to death, and she has to deal with a drunken thief in the
cloak-room--"
"Drunken?"
"Yes."
"You never said that before."
"Because I didn't think of it. And Miss Brury
didn't either. Good-natured women don't think these horrid things of one
another. But it occurred to me all of a sudden. And so I sent down to Cappone
to find out what that precious party had had to drink. Hock. A bottle and a
half of champagne. Three ports, and three Armagnacs. She must have been
drunk--or halfdrunk. But some of them hide it so cleverly. So I went to see
Cousin immediately. This was last night. He was just leaving, and I kept him
over three-quarters of an hour, and glad I am I did too! What annoys me in Mr.
Cousin is he's always so calm. It's unnatural--especially in a Frenchman. A
Frenchman ought to know that a woman with something on her mind hardly likes
talking to a stone wall. Well, Mr. Cousin doesn't seem to know that. He just
said Alice couldn't be taken back, and she couldn't and she couldn't and she
couldn't. The pain I had got worse and worse. I told him I was very unwell, but
do you suppose he cared? No more than you do, Mr. Orcham!"
"I'm very sorry," said Evelyn.
"Yes. You look as if you are! You wouldn't
see me before because you were in your braces, and now you're twiddling
yourthumbs and you're 'very sorry.'" Mrs. O'Riordan laughed with a
surprising attractiveness which her remarks belied.
Evelyn, fearing that her gaiety might at any
moment turn to hysterical sobbing, smiled with prudence. But he remained in a
conditionsecretly uplifted.
"I'm afraid we can't have Miss Brury back at
the Palace," he said.
"Of course you men always agree."
"But I'll find her another place, if you
really want me to."
"Where?"
"Well, at the Laundry."
"At the Laundry!"
"Why not?"
"Oh, nothing! Only it's an insult. I haven't trained
Alice to iron shirts and pants."
"She might be staff-manageress. It's an
excellent job."
"Glad to hear it!" said Mrs. O'Riordan,
with charming scorn. But in spite of herself she was a little bit dashed by the
splendour of the offer. She went on: "Of course when a girl's in a hole,
through no fault of her own, and hasn't a penny, you can safely humiliate her,
and she's obliged to thank you for humiliating her. Don't I know! I daresay you
think I'm being impudent."
"Not at all," Evelyn replied blandly.
"I like you when you're very ill--like this."
And he did. Instead of resenting her present lack
of self-control, he admired, as never before, the extraordinary self-control
which almost continuously for years and years she had managed to maintain in
the past. He appreciated, now, the tremendous effort which it must have
entailed for her: keeping the peace among a pack of women and girls; mollifying
and kowtowing to a pack of hypercritical visitors; trying to prevent the
unscrupulous visitors from stealing coat-hangers and ashtrays and even
electroplate--for the Palace, like all hotels, was no better than a den of
well-dressed thieves; watching over the sewing-repairs; placating the Works
Department, especially when trouble arose between the Works carpenters and her
own private carpenters who carpentered exclusively within the hotel; pestering
and being pestered by the electricians, dictating her wordy letters; passing on
complaints about room meals to the grill-room chef; clashing herself against
the insensate rock which was Mr. Cousin; getting up early and going to bed
late; always, always, being sweetly diplomatic with the panjandrum; and always,
always pretending that she allowed nothing to worry her or ever would! She, the
Olympia-Récamier on the couch! She was marvellous. Let her break out. Let her
be impudent. Let her be as womanish as she chose. She had earned the right to
be so. The truth indeed was that brief intercourse with Gracie Savott had
somehow given Evelyn a new insight into women and quickened his sympathy for
them. Strange, considering the way Gracie had behaved! But it was so.
"Oh! So you like impudence!" She raised
her eyebrows seductively, and her clear voice was seductive.
"Yes, when it's yours, mother."
"Please don't call me mother," she
snapped, in quite another voice, frowning suddenly.
"You darling!" he nearly said as he
cajolingly smiled, as to a petulant young beauty. What was wrong with her? Was
it merely liver and a touch of pleurisy? Everyone referred to her as mother.
She frequently, with pride in her tone, referred to herself as mother. He
himself, and several others in the hierarchy, often addressed her as mother.
"Sister," he corrected aloud, while sustaining the smile.
"I hate to be called mother, and if you're so
hard on poor Alice Brury I can't understand why you should make such a fuss
about chambermaids having to open their bags and things to that brute Maxon.
Yes, I got your note. I didn't answer it because I was so angry. Of course it's
not nice for girls to have to open their bags. Did you imagine we hadn't
thought of it? As a matter of fact I long since started a system of them
showing their bags to their housekeeper. But housekeepers can't always be on
the spot to O.K. the bags with a bit of chalk. And even if they are, what's to
prevent the girls from getting a friend to hand them something on the stairs as
they go down? It all seems easy and simple to you; but you're a man and you
don't know. Any chambermaid could get the better of you. Chambermaids are
awful. They'd leave as soon as look at you. And you have to be after them the
whole damn time. Just ask Miss Maclaren. She could tell you a few things.
Chambermaids, oh yes! But when it comes to Alice Brury, who's been perfect,
you're absolutely flinty, you and your Mr. Cousin!"
Evelyn said:
"But it mustn't be forgotten that the unhappy
Alice left us at a moment's notice. I mean without any notice at all."
"Yes," cried Mrs. O'Riordan. "And
that's what I'm going to do! I'm too young for this place. That's what's the
matter with me!"
Her voice had risen sharply. She had been lying on
her back. Now she twisted her body a little, laid one cheek on the embroidered
pillow, and threw her right arm over her face. The letters slipped from her
right hand and floated down to the carpet. The cat jumped after them and they
rustled beneath its paws. A strange sound was heard--Mrs. O'Riordan sobbing.
Evelyn, in accordance with his habit when he could not decide what to do, did
nothing. He was startled.
"She'll get over this," he thought.
"It's the beginning of the end of the nerve-storm. She'll be through in
about a minute now. Then she'll be sorry. They're always like that."
He had never conceived the Imperial Palace without
its mother. Probably nobody had. But to his own surprise the conception of the
Imperial Palace without its mother at once attracted him. She was charming,
efficient, conscientious. Still, she was undeniably sixty-two; and who could go
on for ever? Already several times it had occurred to Evelyn that 'if anything
happened'--and who could go on for ever?--there was always Miss
Maclaren, who was Scottish--better than being English, Welsh or Irish!--had
worked on every floor of the hotel in turn, and had carried on quite smoothly
in the stead of Mrs. O'Riordan during the mother's last summer holiday. If
mother had died, the Imperial Palace would have survived, and if mother chose
to retire the Imperial Palace would survive. Emile Cousin at any rate would
support the blow with fortitude. The slowly developing antipathy between those
two had been causing some mild concern to Evelyn. Nevertheless the retirement
of mother, if indeed she really meant to retire, would be a mighty and
reverberating event in the domestic life and politics of the Palace.
Mrs. O'Riordan, having ceased to sob, was softly
weeping, but she had presence of mind enough to draw a handkerchief from a
pocket inside her negligé and dab her eyes. Evelyn saw her gazing at him
from under her arm. The eyes were glinting and gleaming at him.
"You might rescue those letters from the
cat," Mrs. O'Riordan murmured.
Evelyn obeyed.
"You're better now, aren't you?" he
said, bending over her. "Perhaps you could sleep a little."
"Better!" she said, with amazing swift
brightness and lightness. "I couldn't be better. I was only crying because
I'm so happy. I'm much too happy to sleep. Sleep! I wouldn't sleep for
anything! I'm going to be married. That was really why I came down to
see you this morning--to tell you! I wanted you to be the first to hear about
it. But when you walked in here I didn't know just how to begin. You frighten
me. You frighten everybody."
Evelyn moved away, laughing.
"Well, I don't see anything to laugh
at," the mother protested.
"I was only laughing because I'm so happy--in
your happiness," Evelyn retorted. "May one ask who is the favourite
of fortune?"
Mrs. O'Riordan sat up and faced her employer.
"Colonel Sir Brian Milligan, Bart.--age
sixty-eight, if you don't mind." She gazed at Evelyn in splendid triumph.
"Look at me," her gaze seemed to say to him. "I'm the future
Lady Milligan. And I am too young to be the mother of this hotel. I'm
young enough to catch a man and hold him even if I am only a hotel-housekeeper.
Any man, except cold-blooded fishes like you and your Frenchman!"
Evelyn's eyes glistened with pleasure. He was
proud of mother, enraptured with her conquest. He knew something about
Milligan, who was an irregular diner and luncher in the grill-room and had once
spent a few nights in the hotel. How clever of her to entrance and enchant this
not-unknown figure of a Colonel! And the future Lady Milligan would
conscientiously and brilliantly play her part in the affair. She had presided
in drawing-rooms before, and she would preside in drawing-rooms again. No more
early mornings for her, no business correspondence, organisings, diplomacies,
repressions, unnatural deprivations! She would be able to be fully her natural
self. She would be petted, spoilt--she would see to that! She would lead the
fine old fellow a dance; but so delicately, so deliciously! Do him good too!
She who was 'too young' at sixty-two, she who would never be old, would
rejuvenate him in spite of himself. Had she not been young enough to invade
even Evelyn's castle in her girlish anxiety to announce the tidings? And Evelyn
was the first to know!
He secretly chuckled at the thought of the
liveliness of the married life of those two, and of the surprises that awaited
Sir Brian. Some of the surprises would be exquisite, some not. No! They would
all be exquisite, but some would be disturbing. Her nerve-storms would test his
masculine calm and authority. She would never go too far. She would always win,
while often appearing to lose. She was infernally clever. Had she not been
clever enough to hide the growth of the extraordinary idyll from all the world?
How she had managed that, Evelyn neither knew nor cared. She had managed it.
"He's rich, isn't he?" he asked.
Mrs. O'Riordan's demure reply was:
"We are very fond of one another. Very fond.
I adore him--but don't tell him that when you meet him--and I shall try my
hardest to make him happy."
Evelyn accepted the rebuke.
"You'll succeed," he said. "It's a
certainty."
"Of course," she said. "At my age I
don't want to be silly and talk about passion. And yet--" She stopped, and
smiled innumerable implications. "You know, his father lived to be
ninety-eight, and got himself into frightful trouble with a housemaid three
years before he died. And Brian's exactly like a boy. D'you know, he writes
poetry! Nobody sees it but me and he makes me tear it up. At least he thinks he
does. Naturally I keep it. I wouldn't destroy it for anything. I mean of course
I do tear up the paper, but I learn it off first. He'd be furious if he knew.
He's very passionate, by temperament. I've told you his age. But what's that?
Sixty-eight--and a boy!"
"And you're twenty-two," said Evelyn.
"The six is a misprint for a two."
"You are nice," she said, with sudden
tenderness.
"I feel nice," said Evelyn. He did. He
thought he had never been so happy, never beheld a spectacle so ravishing as
the spectacle of the feminine half of this idyll. "When are you going to
get married?"
"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Riordan, mother and
head-housekeeper of the Imperial Palace Hotel. "That will depend on you. I
won't leave you in the lurch."
Evelyn had an impulse to say:
"You can leave now. You can get married
to-morrow. You can begin your honeymoon to-morrow night." But he checked
himself. He would not wound her by implying that a personage so important could
be dispensed with as easily as an Alice Brury, could depart and leave no trace
of difficulty behind.
He said:
"Now listen to me, bride. This hotel will not
be allowed to interfere with your happiness. You make your plans, and this
hotel will fit in with them. I know you're the impatient sort."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are. You do all you can to hide it,
but if you imagine you've hidden it from me you're wrong."
"But what shall you do?"
"Oh! Never mind. Something."
"But I do mind," she objected
plaintively, touchily. "I'm very interested."
"Of course you are...Well, what about raising
Miss Maclaren to the throne?"
"She's rather Scotch and stolid."
"She may be. But she's a rock."
"Yes. But she's rather young for the
post."
Evelyn laughed.
"I like that," said he. "I like
that from you, of all people. Here I've been entrusting the entire place to a
girl of twenty-two for years and years, and now I'm told Miss Maclaren's too
young!" Mrs. O'Riordan gave a pouting, delighted smile. "However,
we'll talk it over." He decided that he would not ask her approval of
Violet Powler. Why should he? New appointments were no longer any concern of
hers. He would only formally submit the girl to her. "I must go now.
Remember what I said, please. The hotel shall fit into your plans. By the way,
I suppose I can tell the staff?"
"About me? I wish you would. I'm rather
nervous about telling them myself."
"I'll tell them. And I'll come in and see you
later in the day when I'm somewhat calmer, and wish you every happiness. And
you do as you're ordered and go to bed." He went to the door; then paused.
"We shall give you a dinner. I mean the heads of departments. Not more
than thirty. Quite informal. I shall ask Mr. Dover too."
"My dear sir," said Mrs. O'Riordan.
"You mustn't. I couldn't bear it. I should feel so--"
"We shall give you a dinner," Evelyn
repeated. "And you'll bear it magnificently. Of course you'll cry. But
they'll all love to see you cry. I expect I'm the only person who has
seen you cry--and me only this once...I must run."
Mrs. O'Riordan shook her head.
"Not a dinner," she weakly murmured.
"Yes, a dinner. I suppose you expect a
wedding-present. What would Sir Brian think if we let you go without giving you
a wedding-present? Well, there'll be a dinner. No dinner, no present."
He kissed his hand to her and left. The next
instant he returned, into the room, mischievous.
"I say," he smiled, "it seems you
can't keep off your Irish Colonels. Getting quite a habit with you."
She was fondling the cat, whose purring was
clearly audible. She said, with dignity:
"Not at all. Sir Brian was a friend of both
my husbands."
"And no doubt he has a house in County
Meath," Evelyn pursued, not to be dashed.
"And what if he has?" She laughed
self-consciously, frowning as well as laughing.
"I knew it," said Evelyn.
He walked back to his room with the studied
sedateness proper to a panjandrum. But he was in the highest spirits.
CRIME
"Good morning, sir," said Plimsing, who
was waiting outside the gates of Evelyn's castle.
"Morning, Plimsing," said Evelyn,
looking at his watch. "One minute late. Sorry to keep you. Come in. What
is it?"
Plimsing raised his left arm. He never lost a fair
chance to consult his wrist-watch, which was ornamented with diamonds and the
Spanish royal insignia.
"If the trains on the Southern Railway were
only a minute late, sir, life would be much simpler for some of us," said
Plimsing, with a courtly Foreign Office air. He lived beyond the Crystal
Palace.
Evelyn smiled almost ingratiatingly. Like all
respectable people, he was conscious of a desire to stand well with policemen,
and when he met them would instinctively suit his demeanour to the occasion.
Not that the hotel-detective was a policeman; nor
ever had been. Tall, burly and fair, rosy-cheeked, with a large fair moustache,
he had the appearance of a beef-fed British farmer, except that his black suit,
including a morning coat, and his gleaming tie-pin showed a little more
smartness of style than the agricultural. But he did also resemble a policeman,
and in mackintosh overalls and white armlet he would not have seemed out of
place conducting the orchestral traffic of Piccadilly Circus on a wet day.
He was still appreciably under fifty. As an
officer (detective inspector) of the Criminal Investigation Department at
Scotland Yard he had been allowed, thanks to his fluency in a language which he
imagined to be French, to specialise in the protective surveillance of
distinguished foreign official visitors to London. Also on similar duty he had
accompanied British princes abroad. It was soon after the vicissitudes of the
war that Evelyn had put a spell upon him, to the detriment of Scotland Yard,
with which, however, Plimsing's relations had remained intimate and very
cordial. Outside the hotel Plimsing usually referred to the Imperial Palace as
'my hotel.' He used in professional conversation such words and phrases as
'police-circles,' 'we' (meaning 'we police'), 'subtle individual,' 'one of your
super-prostitutes,' 'energetic action,' and 'H.R.H.' How his vigilance for
potentates, politicians and princes specially fitted him for the preservation
of order and common honesty in a large hotel neither he nor anybody else could
have said: certainly not Evelyn; but it gave him a tremendous prestige with
visitors, and a lot of prestige even with Evelyn, who had chosen him partly on
that account, but more because of his quiet, composed manner and voice, and his
twinkling, rather naïve expression. Despite his expression he talked of the
worst turpitudes and immoralities of hotel-thieves, men and women, with the
bland casualness of a clergyman discussing the weather. Apparently no infamous
vagary of human nature could surprise him or in the least degree trouble his
calm of a virtuous householder residing in an impeccable suburb somewhere
beyond the Crystal Palace. In short, he was as entirely benign as a policeman
holding up a hundred motor-cars for the passage of a perambulator.
"What is it?" Evelyn repeated, within
the room. They both stood. -
"Rather a busy morning, sir," Plimsing
began, fingering his tie-pin, which carried the British royal insignia. "I
happened to be here early on another matter when I received information to the
effect that the second-floor valet being called to roomwent in and left his
pass-key in the door. This procedure was of course quite contrary to
regulations, and I have told him so. When he came out the pass-key was gone. As
I said to him, I take a very serious view of this culpable negligence; for, as
I need not point out to you, sir, even if the pass-key came back a duplicate of
it could have been made in the meantime. I regarded it as so serious that I
took the liberty of calling here to tell you at once, as Mr. Cousin was not yet
on duty. However, it's all right, sir. Since I saw Oldham I made enquiries, and
on the strength of certain information received I telephoned to Scotland Yard,
having two individuals in my mind's eye, and they sent an officer in an express
car to the Majestic, where both individuals were arrested, and on being
searched one man was found to have the pass-key in his left-hand hip-pocket.
Smart work, sir, if I may say so, having taken no part in the
identification."
"Very. Most satisfactory," said Evelyn.
"I may add that I should have gone to the
Majestic myself, sir, to take observations; but I was prevented by an Amsterdam
diamond merchant, also fifth floor, who was just leaving and could not find a
pair of trousers, which he alleged must have been stolen during the night.
After some search and a little cross-examination I convinced him that he was
wearing them. He was so apologetic that I ventured to ask him if he would let me
drive with him to Victoria, as he was going to Paris by the 8.20
Newhaven-Dieppe. He did so, and gave me valuable information about diamonds, of
which he had a large quantity on his person, in a receptacle stitched to the
back of his necktie, sir. I was glad to know this. He invited me to feel them,
which I did."
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn,
somewhat impatiently. "I'm rather pressed for time. Mrs. O'Riordan is
leaving us, and I have to make arrangements." He gave the enormous news
with an intonation as casual as he could assume. He could no longer keep it to
himself.
"Ah!" said Plimsing, twinkling.
"Going to marry Sir Brian Milligan at last, I presume, sir."
"Yes," said Evelyn shortly, with a
casualness which did even greater credit to his histrionic powers than his
statement of the news. For he was astounded and ashamed by this demonstration
of recondite knowledge on the part of the detective. How came it that Plimsing
had known so much and he, Evelyn, nothing at all? He wanted to question Plimsing,
but from pride he would not. Also Plimsing had completely taken the wind out of
his sails.
"I will not detain you, sir," the
detective smoothly proceeded with a diplomatic movement towards the door.
"But you will be relieved to know that the matter of the so-called Mrs. de
Rassiter is now settled. I shall submit a formal report in due course."
"Mrs. de Rassiter?"
"The mink-fur lady, sir. She has been
identified as a female who was fined for being drunk and disorderly in Soho in
the early hours of the day before yesterday morning. I called on Messrs.
Murkett and Co., formerly Murkett and Mostlethwaite, the solicitors who sent
you that lawyer's letter by messenger about the alleged missing fur. They had
also sent in a claim to an insurance company, as I ascertained by enquiry,
acting on a hint from my friends at the Yard. Must have got the drink at a
night-club in Greek Street, but she probably had had a good deal before leaving
here. So I surmised from what I heard of her behaviour before she left. A very shady
firm, Murketts, sir. Mostlethwaite's already inside, and Murkett will soon be
there too if he isn't careful."
"'Inside'?"
"Yes, sir. In prison. No one can understand
why Murkett hasn't been struck off the rolls. I insisted on seeing Mr. Murkett.
I said to him, I said: 'Perhaps you aren't aware that your client's real name
is Ebag.' I said no more. Mrs. Ebag left by the 8.20Newhaven-Dieppe this
morning, sir. That was why I was so anxious to be there. I wanted to be quite
sure. Sorry I couldn't have her arrested, but there had been no time to
assemble my evidence. She will come back to London. They always do. They can't
keep off, no more than rooks off a cornfield. I didn't want to tell you
anything until I could tell you everything. I know how busy you are. But as I
was here...Good morning, sir. And I hope I've not detained you."
"Not at all, Plimsing. You've done
excellently."
"Thank you, sir." Plimsing raised his
left wrist again.
"Then you think the woman was a bit 'on' when
she made the row m the cloakroom."
"I should say so, sir. If she hadn't been
she'd never have begun the thing. I soon made up my mind that the coup had not
been prepared. Good morning, sir. You won't hear another word from
Murketts."
Plimsing departed, with thoughts of asking for an
increase of salary.
COUSIN
After a minute Evelyn left his castle. On the surface
of his mind floated light thoughts about the efficient and stately detective.
Had he a wife? Evelyn had learnt less about him than about any of the other
principal members of the upper-staff, Plimsing being somehow in a class by
himself. If he had a wife, did he address formal speeches to her in the style
of his speeches to Evelyn? "Having written and duly delivered my report
for the day to Mr. Cousin, Maria, I proceeded, by motor-bus, to Victoria and
caught the 6.5., in which I occupied a compartment with three gentlemen, one of
whom I knew slightly and exchanged with him a few words about the financial
situation in the City," etc. Or was he a different kind of man at home,
who fondled and tousled his fat wife, who told him not to be a silly old fool,
and upon request gave him a glass of beer as a preliminary to supper? And was
his brain aware that his eyes were humorous and his professional deportment
enough to make a cat laugh?
Beneath the light thoughts, graver thoughts.
Mystery of an immortal soul! Evelyn was environed by mysteries. Friendly with
all his colleagues and subordinates, he knew none of them, except Dennis
Dover. He was more like a man on a desert island than the vitalising centre of
a vast organisation. Something ought to be done about it. Yes, since the
encounters with Gracie Savott, and the great encounter with her father, new
perceptions had awakened in him. And beneath these graver thoughts, a thought,
one thought, one burning mass of a thought: the thought of Fate's injustice to
Miss Alice Brury. He pictured to himself the young woman, full-bosomed, with
full lips and large eyes that belied her trained, stiff, formal demeanour and
her excellent, earnest, conscientious intentions. There were two Miss Brurys,
as there were two Mrs. O'Riordans. Of the latter he had seen both. Of the
former he had seen only one, but now he was divining the other.
From sheer devotion to duty Alice Brury had taken
a very delicate social situation out of the hands of her inferior, the
cloak-room attendant. Why should she be blamed for not guessing that her
opponent was semi-intoxicated? To distinguish between the half-drunk and the
sober was notoriously a matter of excessive difficulty; experts continually
came to quite opposite conclusions in it. Miss Brury had failed in the affair.
She had lost her head under the strain, shown signs of hysteria, and--worst sin
of all against the steely code of the hotel--raised her voice! Then she had run
away, deserted her post, in desperation and despair. In other words, from an
inhuman housekeeper she had descended--or was it ascended?--to be a human
woman. She was certainly somebody's daughter; she might be somebody's
sweetheart. Five minutes' lack of self-control, and her career was in the way
to be ruined! Cousin had been adamantine against her readmission into the
cosmos of inhumanity. And Cousin was right. Rules were rules. He, Evelyn, could
not possibly gainsay Cousin in Cousin's own kingdom. Nevertheless the thing was
monstrous, utterly and absolutely monstrous. Evelyn uneasily wondered how many
similar affairs, less spectacular, had happened unknown to his almightiness in
the secret annals of the hotel...And yet, for personal reasons, he would prefer
that Miss Brury should not come back. He had discovered Miss Powler. Miss
Powler was his invention, his pet aspirant. He saw in her unlimited
potentialities. If Miss Brury came back, Miss Powler could not be admitted; and
therefore the problem at the Laundry would remain unsolved. He must talk to
Cousin, and, to be fair to Cousin, he must take heed not to have any air of
authority in the discussion.
He went downstairs, nodding absently here and
there to employees of various grades, and opened the withdrawn door over which
gleamed in light the formidable words: "Manager's Office." An alert,
bright, smiling secretary was at her desk in the ante-room, doing something with the mouth of one of
the pneumatic tubes through which repair-slips and other notifications were
despatched to subterranean dens.
"Good morning, Mr. Orcham." The
secretarial face mystically beamed the tidings that 'mother' was engaged to be
married.
With an answering smile, but silently, Evelyn
passed her and walked straight into Cousin's private room--an apartment worthy
of Cousin's high position. A startled young man sprang up from the managerial
chair at the managerial desk, like a jack-in-the-box.
This was Monsieur Pozzi, the assistant-manager of
the hotel, a Frenchman, a protégé of Cousin's, with both continental and London
experience, and a perfect command of the English language. He had been in the
service of the Imperial Palace for about six months, but Evelyn had had little
or nothing to do with him. It was understood that he gave plenary satisfaction
to his immediate chief. Some notion of his importance was conveyed by the fact
that he had received permission to send out his own Christmas cards to the
clientele. At that moment he was making a rough sketch of the greeting. Not
more than seven or eight of the upper staff had the right to distribute their
personal good wishes to the clientele. Pozzi was more than French; he was
Parisian, though with some admixture of Italian blood. He was indeed startled
by Evelyn's abrupt and unexpected entry, but not a bit perturbed. He smiled; he
bowed gracefully; he was grace itself--slim, sinuous, elegant, correct,
charming, easy without sauciness, self-respecting without rigidity.
"Mr. Cousin will be here in one minute, sir.
He's just having a word with Ruffo."
"Oh!" said Evelyn, sitting down on the
sofa. "What about? Ruffo's here early this morning."
"Yes, sir. There was no big banquet last
night. It's about some little difficulty over extra waiters for to-night."
"I see," said Evelyn, rather drily, as
one who was aware of occasional slight frictions between Ruffo and the
Restaurant-manager over the transfer of first-flight head-waiters from the
restaurant to Ruffo's department for very special banquets.
"I wonder, sir," said Pozzi, at his most
attractive, standing dutifully in front of Evelyn on the sofa, "whether I
might ask you a great favour."
"You can ask, my boy," Evelyn
answered, with a sardonic benignity.
"It's this, sir. You probably know that a few
of us, Adolphe, Dr. Constam, Major Linklater, and myself, have a little
lunch-mess of our own in 156. Rocco has taken to golf, and we are giving him a
club, or a set of clubs. There will be a lunch. Mr. Cousin has promised to
come, and if youwould kindly come and preside, we should all be very
delighted. And I needn't say how flattered Rocco would be."
"But it would mean that I should have to
subscribe towards the clubs."
"Oh no, sir! We shouldn't dream of such a
thing. Mr. Cousin is not subscribing."
"No," said Evelyn. "But I am.
Here!" He pulled a ten shilling note from his waistcoat pocket.
"Really, sir?"
"Take it," Evelyn commanded.
Young Pozzi obeyed, blushing. Yes, a blush clearly
visible on his olive skin!
"You are a sport, sir," he exclaimed,
almost dancing, with the effusiveness of youth--for he was a mere thirty-one,
and young at that. "Thank you ever so much."
No formalism. No constraint. But freshness,
naturalness, youthful vivacity. Evelyn suddenly realised that he lived in a
world of constraint. Only sometimes at the daily conference, when a serious
question was on the carpet, did even the foreigners drop their subdued
formalism--among themselves, never to Evelyn nor to Cousin. The handling of
visitors, every one of whom had to be treated as a sultan, had made hushed
formalism a habit with them. Evelyn longed for oaths, wild words, exorbitant
gestures, even impudence to himself, such as he had had that morning from the
future Lady Milligan. He thought:
"This boy is alive. I am not. He is a breath
of air in all the stuffiness."
"What's the date of this orgy?" he
asked.
"The eighteenth, sir. Twelve forty-five.
Rocco will make a special effort with the menu."
"Write it down for me, will you?"
Pozzi jumped to the desk, wrote, and handed the
slip to the panjandrum, who crushed it into a trouser-pocket, where he could
not possibly overlook it.
"That's agreed then," said Evelyn.
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Pozzi.
Mr. Cousin walked in, sedate, smiling, reserved.
The secretary had warned him of Evelyn's arrival. Pozzi, bowing, walked
mercurially out, but not before snatching up his Christmas card sketch from the
desk.
"Shall we have the pleasure of seeing you at
the Conference this morning?" Cousin asked, with his matchless but
implacable courtesy.
"Not unless there's anything urgent."
"Nothing urgent for the Conference, but I did
want to get your instructions about Miss Brury. Mrs. O'Riordan had a long talk
with me here last night."
"Of course," said Evelyn, "the
whole situation is altered now that she's leaving."
"Leaving? Who?"
"Mrs. O'Riordan. Haven't you heard about
her?"
"No," said Cousin, sitting down on the
sofa by Evelyn's side. "She was very amiable last night."
Inspirited by the discovery of at any rate one
person who knew less than himself, Evelyn communicated the news of the
engagement. Naïvely he expected signs of commotion in the manager's demeanour,
but in an instant be realised his own naïveté.
"Tiens! Tiens!" Cousin murmured calmly, and continued in French:
"Well, since six months I have had a little idea that something bizarre
was going on in that dear lady. She has had a little air...of another world...I
don't know what. Indescribable. Certainly she has temperament...At her age! It
is not natural. But what would you? Englishwomen are always incomprehensible. A
mixture so curious." He half closed his eyes. "It is bizarre. But
nothing could surprise me. For Sir Brian Milligan--there are men to whom it is
necessary that they should complicate their lives. The excellent baronet is
perhaps offering himself in this case a complication more serious than he
imagines. But what do I know? Between ourselves, my dear director, I avow
frankly that I comprehend nothing, but nothing, of the affairs of the heart in
this city of London otherwise so sympathetic to me. That is to say, I
comprehend as an observer detached, with the brain, but I feel--nothing, but
nothing. All that says nothing to me. Madame O'Riordan has indubitably had some
luck, and I felicitate her."
Evelyn was aware of the birth of a sense of
intimacy with Mr. Cousin. Nevertheless he was somewhat dashed, in spite of
himself.
"As regards her successor, what do you think
of Maclaren--as a provisional appointment?" he suggested, abruptly turning
the conversation.
"Ah! The Maclaren! Yes. That is quite another
thing. She is not English. The Maclaren--one can come to an understanding with
her. Yes, yes. It is an idea, that. Happily she is not a femme du monde.
Madame O'Riordan has lately had a rage for femmes du monde. True, she is
one of them herself. But I do not share her views in the matter. To me it is
unnatural that a femme du monde should hold a servile situation. It is
against nature. It demands that she should play a role. Artificial. She must
think more about her role than about her work. Perhaps among the numerous
Russian princesses that one sees now in Paris there are a few capable of
persuading themselves to be born again into a state of servitude. But Russians
are Russians. An Englishwoman can never be born again. It is the aristocratic
race, above all. Madame O'Riordan brought to me a candidate for the position of
the poor Brury. Very femme du monde. Oh, very! Niece of a knight who
blew his brains out. I did not encourage her."
"I agree with you," said Evelyn warmly,
changing all his views on the subject in a moment. Not with his brain, but with
his heart.
He saw daylight. Everything would be easy. Cousin
would begin with a prejudice favourable to Violet Powler because she was not a
gentlewoman. There could be no friction. He at once told Cousin about Miss
Powler, emphasising her origin, about the delicate position at the Laundry, and
about his plans for making an exchange between Miss Brury and Miss Powler.
Cousin nodded several times.
"I am glad," said Cousin, in English,
"that you support me against this extraordinary proposal for taking Miss
Brury back again. It must happen sometimes that someone must suffer. And Miss
Brury has been unfortunate. But to take her back would be impossible unless we
were to ignore the interests of the hotel. And your ingenious suggestion would
solve the problem. Of course I accept it, without reserve. If you are
satisfied--"
"You had better have a look at Miss Powler
for yourself."
"Of course. If you wish it. But I am
sure--"
"I will send for her."
Cousin then seemed to resume his habitual mood of
taciturnity, after the astonishing exhibition of communicativeness.
Evelyn hurried away to his office and to Miss
Cass. He was uplifted anew, but differently now. He felt that be was somehow
climbing out of his groove. Dangerous to put an inexperienced woman into a post
so important as that relinquished under stress of emotion by Miss Brury. But
danger now attracted him. And Violet. Powler had all the talents. She would
succeed. Miss Brury would be saved. Miss Maclaren was acceptable to the
Frenchman. Mrs. O'Riordan could not interfere. All things were working together
for good. Of course he must see Cyril Purkin and explain. Everything must be
done quickly, instantly. Miss Cass had a busy time telephoning to the
Laundry-manager to come at one hour, and to Miss Powler to come at another, and
telegraphing to Miss Brury to come at still another hour. She reported that all
was in order, and that she had so reported to Mr. Cousin. The new heaven and
the new earth were in train.
VIOLET'S
ARRIVAL
Another lamp was burning in another brain, Violet
Powler's: which with Evelyn's lamp in Evelyn's brain, made two. Violet, all
unconscious of what she was doing, had brought her bright but materially
invisible lamp into the hotel one morning at five minutes to ten. According to
instructions she reported at Mr. Cousin's office. But she saw only the
manager's secretary, Mr. Cousin being engaged at a conference. The secretary,
name unknown, was an agreeable and vivacious young woman. She shook hands with
Violet, seemed to know all about her, and sharply ordered a page-boy, who had
come with a cablegram, to escort Violet to her quarters on the eighth floor.
Violet, she explained, was first to install herself and then to report for orders
to Mrs. O'Riordan, also an inhabitant of the eighth floor.
Violet, despite her common sense, thought that the
secretarial demeanour was somewhat casual, having regard to the importance (for
Violet) of the occasion. Surely the arrival of a new floor-housekeeper could
not be a daily event in the life even of a great hotel!
The secretary, on the other hand, thought that
Violet's demeanour was astounding casual, though cordial enough, having regard
to the importance of the occasion. Surely it could not be a daily event in any
girl's life to walk out of a South London laundry straight to a fine situation
in the greatest hotel on earth! But the secretary could not see Violet's lamp.
Violet and the tiny page-boy went up in the lift;
the lift-man was very respectful to Violet; the page-boy found her room and
having opened the door made as if to leave.
"One moment," said she. "Which is
Mrs. O'Riordan's room?"
The page-boy gave the indication and pointed a
white-gloved hand.
"And what's your name?" she
asked.
"John Croom, miss." And he added,
grinning, "Jack."
She smiled, patted his shoulder; he left; and
Violet shut and bolted the door of her new home.
It was a smallish room, looking on a courtyard.
And the courtyard was a deep well (of which Violet could not see the bottom)
whose sides were white tiles inset with tiers of windows. Still, the room was
larger than the one she had that morning quitted in her father's little house
in Battersea, and it was more elegantly furnished: a sort of bed-sitting-room,
with a sofa and a desk and a business-like nest of drawers in the sitting
portion of it.
Her simple and recently fretful and pessimistic
mother would have deemed it a magnificent apartment. Mrs. Powler had cried at
parting, and amid her tears had deplored Violet's facial make-up and expressed
the hope that Violet would not be allotted to an attic whose only window was a
skylight. Her father, having a rendezvous in Vauxhall, had accompanied Violet a
certain distance in a tram. They had said good-bye in the tram, and shabby
passengers in the huge squalid vehicle had beheld with inquisitive wonder the
kissing of the shabby old man by the rouged and powdered young lady whose
smartness cast doubt upon her virtue. But when moisture showed in Violet's eyes
the judgment of the passengers was softened and Violet received the benefit of
the doubt.
Now she dropped her bag and her gloves and her hat
and her thin cloak on the bed. Her luggage had been despatched in advance by
the simple device of sticking a card bearing famous initials in the protruding
square window of the front room in Renshaw Street. Because she apprehended that
the luggage might be delayed, Violet had decided to leave home in what she
informed a suspicious mother was to be her working dress and face. But the luggage
had reached its destination. It lay in a pile at the foot of the bed.
First she examined critically the interior of the
wardrobe, giving it ninety marks out of a possible hundred. Then she examined
herself critically in the wardrobe mirror, and gave herself ninety marks out of
a hundred. Yes, she would pass. Brown hair, permanently waved. Finger-nails
curved in a crescent. Black dress bought ready made at a mighty store in
Clapham and altered to fit by Violet herself. Quite stylish. A thin girdle (for
keys). New shoes; new stockings. As for her make-up, it made her feel as if she
was in the wings waiting to "go on" in Gilbert and Sullivan comic
opera--except that the skin under the eyes had not been darkened. She hoped,
she was convinced, that her face would successfully stand the scrutiny of seven
floor-housekeepers and a head-housekeeper. She was hardly at ease, yet, in her
new face; but at any rate it had so far provoked no slightest sign of
astonishment or dismay on the faces of the members of the hotel staff. She
unfastened the bag and retouched her features here and there. Then she examined
the room more closely. Well, it was good in her sight. Wash-basin, h. and c.
She turned a tap. The h. was tremendously hot. She sat on the bed, springing up
and down. Soft. On the desk was quite a large vase of fresh flowers.
Instantly, as she patted the flowers, the Imperial
Palace rose in her esteem to the full height of its reputation. Somebody with
imagination had thought of those flowers and of their effect on the arriving,
intimidated stranger. Vast as the organisation was, it had not been too vast to
think of a trifle of flowers for her comfort. She said to herself that she
would be happy in the Imperial Palace.
She had an impulse to unpack her possessions. No!
That would not be right. Her duty was to report for duty at once. At the
Laundry she would already have done two hours' work. Still, she dawdled
hesitant about the room. She would hardly admit to herself that she was afraid,
positively afraid, to go forth into the corridor. But she was. The corridor was
the corridor to the new life. She went forth into the corridor, and as she did
so the lamp in her head suddenly burned with a brighter flame. From the end of
the corridor, where her room was, she saw the apparently endless vista of a
kingdom. She saw herself the vicereine of the kingdom. And in five seconds she
was seeing herself as the head-housekeeper of the Imperial Palace Hotel. Why
not? There would be no Cyril Purkin in the Imperial Palace to disquiet and
harass her.
Nevertheless she felt really frightened. It seemed
impossible to her that she, she, straight out of a laundry, could manage a
floor of the Imperial Palace. Pooh! Why not? The job might well be easier than
that of managing a couple of hundred or more girls all in one way or another
temperamental. And she firmly believed in herself: which fact did nothing to
mitigate her fright--stage-fright.
She walked steadily down the deserted corridor,
passing number after number until she reached Mrs. O'Riordan's room
(unnumbered). The door was ajar. She knocked. No answer. Cautiously she stepped
in.
The spectacle of the sitting-room made a most
sinister impression upon Violet. The walls were bare. A large number of nails,
and a large number of small rectangular patches, showed where pictures had
been. The mantelpiece was empty. There were no cushions and no knickknacks
anywhere. There was the carpet, the rather plentiful furniture, and nothing
else, not even a book. Feeling like a trespasser, she passed into the bedroom,
the door to which was wide open. Similar phenomena. The bed had been slept in,
but she could see no nightgown nor slippers. The interior of the large wardrobe
was exposed, and quite empty. Three trunks of various sorts and sizes, and a wooden
packing-case and a shapeless bundle, encumbered the floor. They were labelled:
"Mrs. O'Riordan, Cloak-room, Euston Station." The melancholy of an
abandoned home, of a semi-spiritual death, of something that was and is not,
pervaded the rooms deprived of their individuality.
Mrs. O'Riordan had gone, and she would not return.
Violet had been told that the head-housekeeper would remain for at least
another week, during which she was personally to instruct the newcomer in her work.
At the beginning of the negotiations for Violet's entry into the Imperial
Palace, she had understood that a period of six months, soon afterwards
diminished to three months, would be necessary for proper tuition in her
duties. Then it had been intimated to her that a young woman with experience
such as hers would easily learn the duties in a week of intensive training
under Mrs. O'Riordan herself. She had successfully survived the ordeals of a
personal catechism by Mrs. O'Riordan and another by Mr. Cousin. Salary and
conditions of notice had been arranged, and the contract signed. Everything had
marched smoothly according to plan. And now--this! She returned to the
sitting-room and sat down on the sofa, uneasy, desolated! Then, as there was a
bell handy, she rang it. A plump chambermaid, in early middle-age, appeared.
"Good morning."
"Good morning, miss." The chambermaid's
attitude, while reserved, was not at all unfriendly. The woman had a fat,
good-natured face. Her blue print morning dress showed a stain, and one
shoulder-strap of the apron was twisted.
"Do you look after this room--these
rooms?"
"Yes, miss."
"I'm the new floor-housekeeper. My name's
Powler, Violet Powler. Will you tell me what yours is?"
"Beatrice, miss."
"Beatrice what?"
"Mrs. Beatrice Noakes."
"Been here long?"
"Oh yes, miss. Ever since me poor husband
died, 1917."
"In the war?" Beatrice nodded. "I'm
sorry to hear that--I mean about your husband."
"Yes, miss," Beatrice said casually. The
fact was that her husband had long ceased to have any reality in her memory.
Not even his shade haunted it.
"Any children, Mrs. Noakes?"
"Oh no, miss. If I had I shouldn't be
here, should I, seeing we sleep in. I've worked on every floor of this hotel,
miss," she went on more vivaciously. "Same as Miss Maclaren. Miss
Maclaren used to take me with her whenever she moved."
"Well that shows she trusted you."
"Yes, miss. My word! And now she's going to
be head-housekeeper--"
"Yes, yes. And you'll still be on this
floor."
"Yes, miss."
"I think we shall get on."
"You and Miss Maclaren, miss?"
"Miss Maclaren of course. But I meant you and
me. I'm sure you'll be able to tell me all sorts of things I've got to
know."
"Well, miss, I always like to help--when I'm
asked. I never put myself forward, if you know what I mean. But when I'm asked,
I'm there." Beatrice smiled helpfully.
"Do you know where Miss Maclaren is?"
"No, miss. She ain't been up here this
morning."
"Is Mrs. O'Riordan coming back?"
"That I couldn't say, miss," said Beatrice,
caution in her voice.
"You've seen her this morning?"
"Mrs. O'Riordan? Oh yes, miss."
"She didn't say?"
"No, miss." Still caution.
"Has she asked you to her wedding?"
"Well, miss, no. But I do believe she would
have done--just to the church. Just to come in and see her go off like. But
it's a great secret, I hear. Nobody knows anything. They want a quiet
wedding. I hope it won't be at a Registry Office. But it won't. Because Mrs.
O'Riordan's a Roman Catholic. Every Sunday morning she went to Mass, as they
call it."
"I see her luggage is all packed."
"Yes, miss. Some of it's gone. And I did hear
the rest is being sent for to-day some time. You could have knocked me down
with a feather when she told me this morning when I brought her tea she had to
leave at once. How she packed them trunks between last night and to-day I
don't know. I'm quite free to tell you, miss. She only said to me I wasn't to
say a word till she'd gone. Well, as she has gone--well, I didn't say a
word."
"Everyone seems to trust you, Beatrice."
Beatrice smiled happily. "I'm very much obliged." Violet rose from
the sofa.
"Anything I can do, miss--"
"Thank you, Beatrice."
The room was less desolate, its melancholy
diminished. As soon as Beatrice had shut the door, Violet took up the telephone
and, composing her voice, asked to be put on to Mr. Cousin's secretary. She
heard an answering enquiry within ten seconds, and said:
"I thought I ought to report that Mrs.
O'Riordan had left before I got up here. Violet Powler speaking, in Mrs. Riordan's
room. She's gone away."
"Gone?" Serious astonishment in her
tone. "But she can't have gone. She must have just gone out for something.
She'll be back again soon."
"I don't think so," said Violet, and
described in detail the state of Mrs. O'Riordan's late home. She finished:
"There's nobody up here for me to refer to. Miss Maclaren isn't anywhere
about. Will you please tell Mr. Cousin?"
"It's all frightfully queer," said the
thin secretarial voice. "I can't disturb Mr. Cousin just now. Listen. If
you'll wait where you are I'll give you a ring in a minute or two." A note
of sympathetic intimacy in the voice.
"Thanks very much. I say. Do you mind telling
me your name? I shan't feel so strange when I've got to know a few names."
An amiable comprehending laugh in the telephone.
"Yes, of course. Tilton." The voice spelt the name. "Christian
name same as yours."
"What? Violet? Really!" Violet's tone
seemed to indicate a pleased surprise that there should be another Violet in
the whole world.
"No!" The voice laughed. "I knew I
should catch you, Miss Powler. Marian."
And Violet laughed saying: "How nice!"
Violet's full name was Violet Marian Powler. Miss Marian Tilton had seen it in
the formal contract.
"When you have a moment, come down here and
see me. Any time. And I'll show you the upper-staff file and go over some of
the names with you. Au revoir, Miss Powler."
Violet thought that she might be making a friend.
Already she was beginning to relish her social environment. But with caution.
At their previous brief encounters she had suspected that the second Marian
might conceivably be a little too dashing and worldly for her personal taste.
Still, she felt capable of being dashing and worldly too, if necessary. She was
absorbing, as through the pores of her skin, the atoms of the Imperial Palace
atmosphere. Every moment she learnt something, and every moment she grew more
at ease. Marian Tilton. Beatrice Noakes. Beings that belonged to two different
orders; but both friendly and both ready to be helpful and to assume that she
Violet, was all right. And there was no more Cyril Purkin, who couldn't keep
away from her and couldn't bear her. Intense relief in that thought! Cyril's
one kiss had cured her of him for ever and ever; though it had been a kiss
sober and respectful enough.
The mysterious vanishing of Mrs. O'Riordan was
shaping into a first-class sensation. And she was the discoverer of the
vanishing. And what of it? Mrs. O'Riordan was leaving, anyhow. Well, she had
left. And Violet was glad that she had left. Why? Because there must be
something rather queer about a lady who in such a high position could play such
a trick in such a place as the Imperial Palace. Mrs. O'Riordan gone, they could
all as it were make a fresh start on a clean page. And further, Mrs.
O'Riordan's flight seemed somehow to humanise the formidable, frightening,
inhuman organism of the Imperial Palace. Funny, human things happened there, as
they happened in laundries. One touch of nature...etc. Trite! But how true!
She glanced round the room. And the room had now
almost entirely lost its melancholy of a home deserted by a mistress whom it
would never see again. She wondered what Miss Maclaren would make of it, and
what Miss Maclaren was like; for she had not yet met Miss Maclaren. The tinkle
of the telephone bell gave her a shock.
"That Miss Powler? Miss Cass speaking."
A voice drier than that of Marian. Voice of one higher than Marian Tilton in
the company of cherubim and seraphim. "Mr. Orcham says please will you
come down and see him immediately." Authority in the voice.
So Marian had telephoned to Miss Cass. And Miss
Cass had imparted the strange news to her master, and her master had deemed it
stupendous enough to justify him in sending for Violet to come to him
immediately!
"Thank you, Miss Cass. I'll come at
once."
And now, as she quitted the room, Violet was
really all in a flutter. She had not seen Mr. Orcham since the interview at
which he had so oddly hinted about rouge and powder. She remembered her blush
at that interview. She felt as though she would never forget it. Everything had
moved very harmoniously, step by step, since the interview. Cyril Purkin had
quietly and urbanely told her that Mr. Orcham wanted her at the Palace, and
that therefore he, Mr. Purkin, could of course offer no objection to her
leaving the Laundry. For one week she had given instruction in the management
of laundry-girls to her successor, Miss Brury, who had begun with condescension
and ended with gratitude almost meek. And no sign from Mr. Orcham. But she
surmised, felt, knew, was absolutely sure, that the unseen hand of Mr. Orcham
had guided events. And now she had arrived in her new situation, and within
half an hour the great invisible Mr. Orcham had summoned her, because of her
astounding discovery! A very different place, this, from the homely Laundry!
She walked along the corridor and saw the lift.
Ought she, now a member of the staff, to dare to use the lift? Or was there a
staff-lift? She had heard of such things. Yes, she chid herself for being all
in a flutter. She rang the lift-bell and waited, and up came the lift out of
immeasurable depth, as promptly as though she were the Marchioness of Renshaw
and staying in the hotel. The bony-faced, sallow lift-man gave her a decorous
smile of recognition as he slid back the grille; He knew who she was and what
she was.
"Ground-floor, please."
"Yes, miss," the man compliantly
answered, feeling in his heart, so acutely sensitised to the varying influences
of individualities, that here was a polite, self-possessed, firm young lady who
would certainly stand no kind of familiarity.
OFFICIAL
INTERVIEW
"Good morning, Miss Powler. Welcome to the
Imperial Palace."
This was Evelyn's greeting to Violet when she
entered Evelyn's outer office, where apparently he was just finishing a
conversation with the authoritative Miss Cass, who sat at her desk and beheld
the incomer with a firm impartial glance. He offered his hand, not to a
floor-housekeeper, but merely to a new and possibly nervous member of the great
Palace commonwealth of which he was president.
"Good morning, sir. Thank you, I'm sure. You
sent for me, sir." Violet had expected to be nervous, but she was nervous
beyond her fears; so much so that quite involuntarily she averted her face as
she shook hands. "Good morning, Miss Cass," she murmured, as quite
involuntarily she caught Miss Cass's glance.
"Good morning, Miss Powler," Miss Cass
responded, in a strong, almost peremptory voice, but nevertheless with a
cheerful and not unfriendly smile, and bent at once over her desk, as one who
had in train mighty matters which must not suffer delay. Violet had encountered
Miss Cass only once before.
"Come in, will you," said Evelyn, and
when they were in his room and the door shut, and he was pulling a cigarette
out of his case, he said curtly: "Sit down," and smiled at her.
Curious that she should feel more diffident now
than at any of their previous meetings. She was ashamed of herself. Evelyn, his
back turned to Violet for a moment, dropped a match into an ash-tray on his
desk and puffed smoke, as it were meditatively. By all his movements Violet
realised afresh and more clearly that he was a gentleman. So different from
Cyril Purkin, whose every gesture and tone demonstrated continuously a total
lack of distinction. And she thought: "And I'm not a lady, either, and
could I ever be?" Distinction could not be acquired.
"Funny about Mrs. O'Riordan," he said,
suddenly facing Violet, and laughing easily. "You don't know the
explanation, but I do. And I may as well tell you. We were going to give her a
staff-dinner to-morrow night. She always said she could never go through with a
dinner and hear her health proposed, and wedded happiness--you know she's going
to be married. I didn't believe her, and I insisted on the dinner. Well, I was
wrong. She left a note for me this morning. Here it is." He touched a
letter which lay on the desk. "She's run away from the dinner. That's all.
I'm sorry. But these brides--! It doesn't matter of course in the least, dinner
or no dinner. Still, I'm sorry. Miss Maclaren gets her job--Mrs.
O'Riordan's--and she'll take over at once, anyhow this afternoon. I've
telephoned her and I've told her something about you, and I think you'll like
her. And of course she'll be on your floor. You'll pick up your work in a
couple of days. Miss Brury was doing ground-floor when she left us, but Mr.
Cousin is starting you on Eighth--easier for you to learn there. But of course
we do move our housekeepers up and down. You'll know how to handle customers--I
think I told you--and you know all about linen and how to deal with maids. It's
all much simpler than it sounds. Some sense is all that's required. You trust
yourself to Miss Maclaren, and if she isn't about, just act on your own. You're
bound to be all right. Only don't worry Mr. Cousin. Ever heard of the chain of
responsibility? Well, we're all links in the chain. Miss Maclaren is the next
link above you, and Mr. Cousin's above her, and I'm above Mr. Cousin, and the
Board's above me. But remember, you can't skip links. Mr. Cousin can go to the
Board only through me, and you can go to Mr. Cousin only through Miss Maclaren.
It's a necessary arrangement in a big place like this. Is that clear?"
"Quite, sir."
"How do you feel--on your first
morning?"
"Well, sir, I'm rather nervous."
"You don't look it a bit, and so long as you
don't look it, it doesn't matter. In fact it's rather a good thing to be nervous."
Violet thought that there was wisdom in this last
remark. But otherwise she was somewhat critical of the panjandrum. He seemed to
her to be taking things very lightly. How could she learn her job--the job of
housekeeping for an entire floor of the immense Imperial Palace--in a couple of
days? The notion was frivolous. (And yet simultaneously, as she criticised, she
had a conviction that she indeed could learn the job in a couple of days. All
housekeeping was in essence alike. And of luxurious housekeeping she had had
some experience at Sir Henry Savott's, where the figures of the
housekeeping-books had so startled her in the first week that she could never
forget them.)
The panjandrum seemed, too, to assume that his
domestic machine worked and would work by itself. He probably knew nothing
about the detail of housekeeping. In fine, he was a man, and a man inclined to
be prematurely airy and gay. Perhaps superficial! Her nervousness did not in
the least hamper her strongly developed critical faculty, which faculty however
she always hid away from view, like a possession semi-sacred, occult, too
precious for any exposure to the public gaze. Few of her equals or her
superiors had even guessed the existence of that sharp, acid faculty.
"Is there anything you want to ask me?"
Evelyn suggested. Violet reflected. "No, sir...No, sir. I only hope
I--er--my dress and so on--I hope it will do." She looked younger,
girlish, confused, quite charming in her sudden constraint. There was a hardly
perceptible change of bodily pose, nothing more than the disclosure of an
impulse towards a change of pose, to the end that he might see her more
completely. .
It was naught. Evelyn glanced at her anew.
"I'll tell you more about that when you stand
up," he said.
She faintly smiled, dropped her eyes, maidenly,
modest; hating herself for her attitude, her feelings. Staff-manageress of a
laundry, floor-housekeeper in a large fashionable hotel--and lacked the wit not
to be girlish and silly! She scorned herself ferociously. Where was her
self-reliance, to say nothing of her self-esteem? Weak as water: that was what
she was. She would have given a lot to be back at the Laundry, nicely firm with
the girls there, nicely untouchable to Mr. Purkin.
"I hope you'll succeed here," Evelyn
went on. "Because I'm responsible for your coming here. I think you will
succeed. I'm sure you will. Not my business to engage floor-housekeepers, you
know. I never interfere. But when I was down at the Laundry that day, you remember,
we were rather in a quandary, and it occurred to me you might be the very
person we needed. Yes, and I think you are."
"I shall try to be, sir," she answered
conventionally, uncertainly, searing herself with invisible, inaudible
criticism.
He must be taking her for a ninny. How could he
take her for the same girl who had favourably impressed him at the Laundry? He
couldn't.
Evelyn said:
"There's a woman up on your floor who might
be rather useful to you if you get on the right side of her. Bertha--Bertha
something. Noakes, is it? I'll find out. Quite a friend of mine. Used to be on
my floor. We shift her about whenever we're in difficulties. She's up there now
because Mrs. O'Riordan was doing head-housekeeper and floor-housekeeper as
well; and not in the best health either."
"Do you mean Beatrice Noakes, sir?"
"Beatrice. Beatrice. Of course. I simply
can't remember names. So you've come across her already?"
Violet related the Beatrice episode, and in doing
so scraped together some self-confidence.
"I can see that Heaven is watching over
you," said Evelyn. "You won't let me down."
"Let you down, sir?"
"Nothing, nothing. Mrs. O'Riordan told me she
wouldn't leave me in the lurch. Only she did. However, all things work together
for good."
"It's absolutely certain that I shan't leave
you in the lurch, sir," said a new Violet Powler.
"No, you won't. I say, I should be glad if
you'd just see this afternoon to Miss Maclaren being fixed up nice and cosy in
her rooms. She'll never do it for herself, anyhow until there's nothing else
wants doing anywhere on the floor. And she'll object to you bothering about it.
Say it's an instruction from me. That'll settle it. Have some flowers put in
the room, in both rooms."
"Yes, sir," said Violet eagerly, warmly.
A pause. Violet stood up.
"Yes," said Evelyn, examining her
appearance as though she was a mannequin. "I should think you'd do very
well. But ask Miss Maclaren. I shall be surprised if, before you're much older,
one of 'em doesn't ask you what lipstick you use." He was sardonic, teasing.
"Thank you, sir." Violet moved to leave
him.
"Here. One moment." He stopped her.
"I have to go down into the engine-room. You'd better come with me. You
ought to see the real part of the place. Besides, it makes conversation
with customers. It's an idea I had only yesterday. For the floor-housekeepers.
What can they know of Floors who only the Floors know? There's a great deal
more in this hotel than meets the eye. And it ought to meet the eye of
important young women like you."
BOWELS
OF THE HOTEL
Violet went down with Evelyn into the unknown,
first through a door to a staircase of bare stone, then along a narrow corridor,
then down a slope which was ridged to prevent slipping, then by turns and
twists until she had quite lost the sense of direction. The two walked side by
side when space permitted; sometimes Evelyn without hesitation stepped in front
of her, sometimes he pressed himself against a wall courteously to let her
precede him as a woman should precede a man. Once or twice a graceless menial
employee passed them unrecognised and unrecognising.
They were in the Imperial Palace, but it was
another Imperial Palace: no bright paint, no gilt, no decorations, no attempt
to please the eye, little or no daylight, electric lamps but no lamp-shades;
another world in which appearances had no importance and were indeed neglected.
She glimpsed a large open space, a room lacking a
fourth wall, in which a number of girls in overalls were bending over big
wicker-baskets of soiled linen, separating, transferring, sorting. In
semi-obscurity they had something of an air of dimly-tinted phantoms; they were
absorbed; they did not look up or away. The spectacle vaguely recalled the
Laundry; but the Laundry had no basement; everything was light in the Laundry.
Here she had the sensation of being underground, though in fact she was hardly
yet underground. Of course she had a feeling for the romantic; the word itself,
however, was hardly in her vocabulary--at any rate for use.
She was still rather awed by the strangeness of
her sudden magic removal from the environment of the lowly, commonplace Laundry
to the enormous and majestic environment of the Imperial Palace. Here she was,
walking with the supreme ruler of the bewildering hotel, almost as an
equal--did he not make way for her?--the man who was above everybody, the man
who could say even to Mr. Cousin "Come," and he would come. Hardly
credible! And the change had arisen out of the supreme ruler happening to
overhear her talking to a colourblind girl! She was awed, yes, but she was
proud.
"I can't be quite ordinary," she
thought, with that false humility which people assume even to themselves. For
she knew very well that she was far from ordinary. She had a fairly accurate
idea of her unusual worth, being as free from conceit as from any form of
inferiority complex.
"Here!" said Evelyn, stopping. "We
may as well look in here." She saw, painted in black on a brownish yellow
wall the words, "Audit Department. Mr. Exshaw," and a pointing arrow.
They entered a very large low room divided by glass partitions into various
enclosures, with a long passage and doors into each enclosure. Numbers of male
clerks at desks strewn with prodigious account-books. All the clerks absorbed,
bent, like the linen-girls.
"Mr. Exshaw in?" Evelyn called out loud.
"Yes, sir," said someone.
They walked to the end of the corridor. Violet
thought that she would have been frightened to death to venture alone into this
new world. She needed protection. And she had it, the mightiest possible
protection. She was as safe as a child in its cot. A transient, pleasant
surmise: was it Mr. Orcham who had ordered flowers for her bedroom? Absurd. And
yet--had he not told her to put flowers in Miss Maclaren's rooms? He might--he
just might have.
Evelyn strode into the final enclosure--more
spacious than the others. A big, high desk, at which stood a short, spectacled,
grey-haired man, a pen behind his ear, the biggest account-book she had ever
seen in front of him, minutely ruled horizontally and vertically.
"Morning, Exshaw."
The man seemed to wake out of a trance (pretence,
thought Violet critically), and as he gazed at the visitors his eyes hardened
"Ah! Good morning, Mr. Orcham." It was
as if the man had said: "On careful inspection I realise that you are a
gentleman named Orcham and my chief."
"Got a moment?"
"As many as you wish, sir." With a
dignity that threw doubt on the statement.
"This is Miss Powler, one of our
housekeepers," said Evelyn lightly.
Violet bowed. Mr. Exshaw gave a start, then curtly
nodded. "I've come to the conclusion that it will be a good thing for the
floor-housekeepers to get some kind of a notion of the more or less secret works
of this place." Evelyn went on. "Miss Powler is the first to come.
You may expect a few more visits. Don't you think it's rather a scheme? Widen
their horizons, eh?" Evelyn laughed; more correctly, he sniggered.
"Well, sir," Mr. Exshaw answered, having
judicially pondered, "we do think now and then that if the Floors knew
about the way we straighten things out for them down here it might be good for
their souls. Which floor?" he demanded of Violet.
"Eighth," said Violet, low.
Mr. Exshaw peered at her through his spectacles,
apparently saying to himself: "So this specimen is a floor-housekeeper.
Interesting to see. What next I wonder!" And the Floors seemed to be a
very long way off--phenomena heard of, written about, checked, reprimanded, but
invisible and materially non-existent.
"Ah! Eighth!" said Mr. Exshaw at length,
aloud. "Eighth is a wonderful floor for breakages. There must be somebody
up there who plays hockey with tumblers. Breakages in the restaurant cost us a
hundred pounds a week, but the percentage on Eighth I should say is higher. I
don't mean they cost the hotel a hundred a week, because we only pay a quarter,
but the waste's there. You got the special memo day before yesterday,
Miss--er?"
"This is Miss Powler's first day here,"
Evelyn put in, before Violet could speak.
"Ah!" said Mr. Exshaw, more
benevolently, for he was a just man. He rapped on the glass behind him, and a
youth rushed in. "Bring me N here," said Mr. Exshaw to the youth.
N proved to be a heavy, red-bound book of account.
"You might like to see, Miss--er. Restaurant.
Grill." He turned pages over. "Floors. First. Sixth. Eighth, yes.
Here you are. Here's the analysis of breakages on Eighth, week by week. Here's
last week."
Violet obediently looked, but she could see
nothing save a dance of numerals. She had a ridiculous sense of shame on behalf
of the eighth floor. Her wandering gaze saw that the window offered a fine view
of a white-tiled blank wall about six feet off, and that Mr. Exshaw's spectacles
were steel-rimmed.
"Yes," said the ninny in her. Yet she
was not unused to vast statistical volumes at the Laundry, nor to male clerks
bending over the same. But at the Imperial Palace the scale of things was more
grandiose.
"You'd be very clever if you grasped all this
in a month of Sundays, Miss--er," said Mr. Exshaw kindly.
She thought he was perhaps a nice man, if a trifle
self-important in the presence of the panjandrum whom he ignored. The next
minute he shut the book with a slam.
"I suppose she can see everything, sir?"
he surprisingly addressed the panjandrum.
"Certainly," said Evelyn, "so far
as I'm concerned. It's up to you."
"She might like to see how the floor
order-slips are analysed."
"Oh, I should!" said the ninny.
Thereafter, as the accountancy mechanism not only
of order-slips, but bills, of estimates (estimate of £41,000 for next year's
linen renewals), wages (Mr. Exshaw skimmed rapidly over the wages),
staff-meals, graphs, and forty other categories, passed before her, Violet felt
herself in a daze, a maze and a nightmare. And she marvelled at the brain of
Mr. Exshaw, head-demon of the unparalleled cave.
"I think you can't carry any more, young
lady," he said triumphantly.
Violet, weak, smiled. "Thank you very much,
Mr. Exshaw," she said, beholden.
"Not at all," said Mr. Exshaw brightly.
Violet and her protector were hardly out of the
room before Mr. Exshaw resumed the huge book on which be was engaged when they
had disturbed him. Evelyn stuck his head back into the enclosure.
"Mrs. O'Riordan has left us," said he,
delivering a tit-bit of hotel news.
"So I hear, sir," said Mr. Exshaw
casually, without looking up.
When they were safely out of the cave, Violet
said:
"It is wonderful. I should call it
exciting."
"It is, isn't it?" said Evelyn.
She thought he liked her nervous animation. He
glanced at her quite appreciatively, humanly. Very different from Cyril Purkin!
She felt happy, if agitated.
"I'd no idea--" she softly exclaimed.
"No, you hadn't,' he said, quite ruthlessly.
"But you'll soon be getting an idea. That's what you're down here for.
Exshaw was in this place before I came on the scene. Nobody in the hotel knows
his job better."
Some hardness in his voice. One moment he was
smiling at her appreciatively; the next moment his tone seemed to be warning
her: "We may as well look the fact in the face--you are an ignorant
simpleton here. You'll learn, but you don't realise how much you have to learn,
and I don't expect you to realise it."
Where now was the admired shepherdess of
laundry-hoydens; and where the composed, quietly imperative daughter of Renshaw
Street from whom two parents drew solace, harmony and moral strength? Still,
Mr. Orcham was protecting her. There was more beneath his lightness than she
had imagined. And yet had she not always, since the career-turning interview,
divined everything of force that there was beneath his lightness? She said to
herself that she would not mind being admonished, corrected by him, because he
was a just man. She could look up to him.
She could never have looked up to Cyril Purkin,
though she admitted Cyril's excellence--his conscientiousness, his devotion to
duty, his industry, his clear head. If she had married Cyril, what a secret
disaster! A narrow man. Never laughed, or, if he did, always at something
silly. He exhibited more self-confidence than he felt. Married to her, he would
have appeared to rule her, whereas in reality she would have ruled him, and
they would both have known it, and Cyril would have resented it as though the
fault was hers, and she would always have had the sensation of not being
supported. For many years at home she had been the supporter, and she desired
relief. With Cyril she would have had no relief.
Now Mr. Orcham, on the contrary, exhibited less
self-confidence than he felt. In thought she was beginning to make a hero of
Mr. Orcham. She needed a hero, had never had one. Probably she would not run
across him once a month, if at all. But that would not interfere with the
gradual process of hero-creation. His image would be set within her brain in
the full light of the lamp of passionate ardour, assiduity and endeavour which
burned there.
"Might look in at the printing-shop,"
Evelyn suggested as they resumed the pilgrimage together. It was close by. More
males, but of the artisan type, not the clerkly. All absorbed. Several
machines, worked by hand. Piles of cards and sheets. Evelyn took off a card as
it emerged from a machine.
"Breakfast menu for the grill to-morrow
morning. For the Floors too."
"Oh yes," Violet said. She could think
of nothing else to say. She was tremendously anxious to seem intelligent. But
how could she seem intelligent?
"Here's a notice to the floor-waiters,"
said Evelyn, picking up a sheet from a small pile. "It will be stuck on
the walls of the service rooms to-night. Isn't striking enough, perhaps."
Only one old man, a compositor setting up a
special programme for a banquet, saluted Evelyn, who spoke to nobody. Violet
surprised one or two male glances at herself. She would have preferred that Mr.
Orcham should explain her in the printing-shop as he had done in the
audit-office. But Mr. Orcham didn't. They left the printing-shop.
"Does the hotel do all its own
printing?" Violet questioned "Rather!" said Evelyn. "And it
manufactures its own beds; and its own silversmiths repair its own silver and
electroplate and so on. Here! You'd better just glance at the Stocks
Department."
Much of the Stocks Department had no daylight, but
the darker chambers were illuminated, irradiated, by the energy of the
enthusiasm and loquacity of the manager, Mr. Stairforth, to whom Evelyn
carefully presented his eighth-floor housekeeper. Mr. Stairforth, like Mr.
Exshaw, was grey in the service of the Palace. Withal he had remained a boy. So
intense was his pride in Stocks that he delighted to receive callers. And he
delighted to send subordinates to and fro to fetch things for the practical
illustration of his remarks to callers. He talked incessantly, and with extreme
clarity and rapidity. He could not stand still. He could not refrain from
imparting knowledge. He was eager with Violet, seeing in her a virgin subject.
He drew the pair urgently from room to room, pouring out statistics in a
quenchless stream. He never hesitated for a figure.
"Here's the stationery. £3,250's worth.
Specially made paper. Our own water mark. Look! Here's a time-sheet." He
held it up against an electric lamp. "See? Time-sheets are the most
indispensable things in the hotel. Every five minutes has to be accounted for
here. Now fancy goods. We give away twenty thousand fans a year. That's only
one item. So on and so on. Now the glass."
He was leading them into a huge and horrid cavern.
He administered to Violet colossal figures about glass. Also he explained in detail
how glass was transported. Cocktail glasses Yes. Cocktails were the most
profitable trade in the hotel. Mr. Orcham would agree. Nineteen bars in the
hotel, but of course mainly service-bars. Still, bars. Mr. Stairforth knew
everything, everything. He had a million compartments in his head, and could
open any one of them and expose its contents in the tenth of a second. On! On!
China, now. The Palace carried that day £21,150's worth of china and glass.
Electroplate. Countless shelves of it. Innumerable repetitions of one article.
Cruets, for instance. Coffee spoons, for instance. 297 coffee spoons missing in
four months. £161's worth of silver lost in four months.
On! On Yes, here was the silversmiths' repair
shop. You saw how they bent them back into shape. Very ingenious. And the
re-plating. Yes, yes. Now the linen. 40,000 serviettes, 24,000 chamber-towels.
24,000 table-cloths. 5,730 sheets. Varied from week to week of course. Pity she
couldn't see the wine stocks; but they were chiefly at Craven Street.
£322,000's worth of wines, including £50,000's worth reserves in France.
£5,000's worth of cigars. Curious that cigars matured best in a room with a
south-east aspect. A big cigar took eighteen months to mature, a little one
only six months. On! On!
Evelyn looked at his watch.
"You must go. You must go. I quite
understand, Mr. Orcham. Quite. You haven't begun to see things, Miss
Powler. But any time you can come down, I shall be at your disposal. I think
that all housekeepers, and others, ought to visit the Stocks Department.
Valuable knowledge. Yes. Valuable. Good-bye. So glad you came. Not at all. Not
at all. Delighted. I love people to be interested as you've been."
"That man," said Evelyn in the corridor,
"that man has seventeen children and seventeen grandchildren. At least
seventeen was the last I heard. It may be eighteen by this time. He must be
getting on."
He conducted her through more corridors and then
down a very steep, narrow, steel staircase. Increasing warmth. An odour of warm
oil. Rumblings of machinery in motion. Violet saw from above an interior that
recalled a glimpse which she had once had of the engine-room of a Margate
steamer; but this interior was very much larger. A broad man came to meet the
visitors at the foot of the steel staircase.
"Good morning, sir. I was beginning to think
something had turned up to stop you from coming."
"No!" said Evelyn. "I should have
telephoned you in that case. This is Miss Powler." He explained Violet and
her presence there. "Mr. Ickeringway," he said to Violet. "Our
chief engineer. We robbed the Navy of him."
Mr. Ickeringway cordially pressed Violet's hand in
a hand broad to match his body. A man of fifty, neat in navy blue, with grey
hair, a loud voice, a calm pale face, and an expression on it of authoritative
and slightly humorous fortitude.
"If you could see the new well now, sir. It's
just the moment." He turned to Violet: "Yes, miss, I'm a naval man.
We've a staff down here of sixty-eight, and all but three of 'em are naval men
too."
He led them across the great engine-hall to an
enclosure where were three frightening steel-rimmed and brick-lined holes, with
thin shafts running down them into Australia.
"Five hundred feet deep, miss," said Mr.
Ickeringway, and then suddenly began a discussion with the panjandrum, who bent
his head towards the chief engineer's. Violet gazed around, and saw clumps of
machinery here and there, some moveless, some whizzing, clicking, sizzling;
also a few of the sixty-eight visibly wandering around on inspections, or
stationary at some job.
By this time the ex-staff-manageress of the
Laundry (whose small engine-room Cyril Purkin had never encouraged her to see)
was incapable of receiving any but vague impressions of semi-stupefied
amazement. She had ceased to try to follow intelligently the procession of
wonders, or even to try to seem intelligent. She did not listen to the
conversation between the two men. She heard Mr. Orcham finish it with the
words:
"That's understood then. You can go right
ahead."
"Better look at this, miss," Mr.
Ickeringway woke her. "It's the new artesian well. Electric pump. It blows
the water from the bottom straight up on to the roof. You wouldn't think we use
"Of course," said Evelyn. "We
couldn't have had all this--" he waved an imaginary cane in the direction
of the open hall--"if we hadn't built our new wings. All this is under the
new last wing. Wouldn't have been room for it under the old part of the
building." .
"Now you'd better begin with the boilers,
miss," said the chief engineer, and drew the party out towards the mammoth
row of boilers, from which ran a series of thick serpentine hosepipes. "If
anything happened to these, miss--well! Nine fires. Oil-fed. Twenty-five tons
of oil a day. Equal to fifty of coal. Yes. And here's the turbine. 4,500 revs.,
miss, and you can hardly hear it. It's bedded in springs so it won't vibrate
the hotel down."
Suddenly there was a terrific roar. Violet started
violently. She thought that the entire hall was about to blow up and blow the
hotel into the air. Evelyn's hand was strongly on her arm.
"It's all right. It's all right!" he
protectively soothed
And she was in fact tranquillised instantly. So
that she felt safe amid mysterious perils and called herself a baby and an
idiot.
"They're only testing the new
semi-Diesel," said the chief engineer casually, and pointed to where two
pigmy men in beige overalls were perched on a huge dark active mass of a
machine. The roar died away. Violet was led on from machine to machine,
comprehending the purpose of none.
She heard the chief engineer say:
"There isn't much of a load on now. There'll
be more at one o'clock, and a lot more in the evening. We get through a lot of
current. Well, there are twenty-nine electric lifts. And a thousand horse-power
of electric motors. And about six thousand light-units a day we get through.
Come and see where we wash all the air for the public rooms and corridors, and
ozonise it, and warm it in winter and cool it in summer."
On, on! The brine-bath, twenty-eight tons of
brine. The icemaking apparatus (reached by a slope upwards). Seven tons of ice
a day. Violet gazed.
"You'd better not stay in here," Evelyn
cautioned her. He was benevolently protecting her again. "So liable to
catch cold in these sudden changes of temperature. I shouldn't like you to be
laid up the first day." He smiled. She smiled weakly, unintelligently.
Back into the engine-hall.
"And you do all your own repairs here, don't
you, Ickeringway?" said Evelyn, as if prompting the chief engineer in the
recital of the catalogue of marvels.
"We do, miss. All. I think we may say that
this is a se1f-containing unit, same as a ship, but a bit more." Violet
addressed another glance of flabbergasted admiration to Mr. Orcham and Mr.
Ickeringway. She saw that Mr. Orcham was passionately proud of his establishment,
and she thought it was nice of him, and so man-like and so child-like, to be so
innocent in his glorious pride.
A few minutes later Evelyn looked at his watch.
The chief engineer, in common with all the other heads of departments, knew the
proper response to that gesture.
"A wonderful fellow, that," said Evelyn,
at the top of the steel staircase. "I've never seen him excited. Never.
And his men would do anything for him. They simply worship him. I don't quite
know why."
"Yes," thought Violet. "And you
simply worship all your heads of departments. You're so proud of them you can't
keep it to yourself. And of course they wouldn't do anything for you! Oh no!
Naturally they wouldn't!"
Silence in the long, narrow, squalid corridor. No
rumour or vibration of any machinery. A workman passed, halting close against
the wall to leave room for the two visitors from the luxury world. Then
another. In the silence Violet soon regained her poise. She was touched as much
by Mr. Orcham's simple pride in his heads of departments as by his calm
protectiveness over her. There were tears of emotional sympathy in the eyes of
her soul, if not a trace of feeling in the eyes of her serene face.
"It makes you think," she murmured.
"What? All that? You haven't seen half. Not
half...yes. You could understand anyone wanting to buy this place," he
said.
"Oh yes!" she agreed eagerly. "I
suppose you get lots of offers."
"I don't get lots, but I get one now and
then." He spoke carelessly, as if such matters had no importance.
"I remember somebody thinking of trying to
buy it a long time ago."
"Oh!" Evelyn's tone sharpened into
astonishment and curiosity. "Who was that?"
"Sir Henry Savott. He told my sister once,
and she told me. She said to me: 'He hasn't finished with his department-stores
business, but he's thinking about something else--hotels. Imperial Palace and
so on.' I remember the very words." Instantly Violet had an idea that she
might be breaking a confidence. But she did not care. She exulted in her
wrongdoing, if wrongdoing it was. She wanted to interest him, and he would
certainly be interested. The information might even in some unguessable way be
useful to him. And her sister was dead.
"Oh!" said Evelyn very lightly. "Indeed!"
As if he considered that Sir Henry had a nerve to think of buying the Imperial
Palace.
"But I expect he gave up the idea,"
Violet added.
"And when was this?" Evelyn asked.
"I couldn't say, sir, now. Years since."
Evelyn said no more.
When by the swinging-door marked
"Private" they had re-entered the decorated and gaudy world of
mirrors and gilt and luxury and uniformed attendants, Violet stopped resolutely
at the lift, which she recognised as her lift by the features of the attendant.
"Thank you very much, sir. About those
flowers for Miss Maclaren's rooms, sir, that you said I was to see to. Can you
tell me how I get them? Where? I oughtn't to ask Miss Maclaren, ought I?"
She half smiled.
"No," Evelyn replied, with an almost
snubbing frigidity. "You'd better not ask me things like that. You go
upstairs and find out. You'll have far more important things than that to find
out. I count on you to fall on your feet. The Floors are in a bit of a mess, I
mean as regards supervising. So I count on you."
"Sorry, sir," said Violet, meekly
accepting the rebuke.
She pressed the rebuke to her bosom, like a saint
an arrow. He was right. She had been wrong. Imagine a floor-housekeeper
worrying the Director with a silly question about flowers! Obviously it was her
business to fall on her feet--part of her duty. She had been presuming
upon his benevolence towards her. He waved a hand negligently.
"Good-morning, sir. Thank you again."
As the lift ascended she reflected: "I'd
better keep as quiet as possible about all this sightseeing this morning. I
don't want to start with a lot of jealousies. I'd better pretend it was
nothing, but he just told me to come and I went, and they'll all have to go.
It's a pity I was the first to go. That'll make them jealous--without anything
else."
Still, at the bottom of her soul she was not
displeased that her yet unknown colleagues should be jealous of her relations
with Mr. Orcham. Relations! The thought recurred: Would she ever see him again?
What about the chain of authority? Now she had to learn her job in a couple of
days or so. She decided that she could. She resolved that she would. The lamp
blazed up in her brain with fresh ardour. And she felt joyously inspired to
terrific deeds.
INITIATION
On the eighth floor, her own, Violet saw a fairly
young woman in black talking to Beatrice Noakes in the doorway of the
head-housekeeper's room. The fairly young woman in black, catching sight of
Violet, immediately stepped out into the corridor, at the same time dismissing
Beatrice.
"You're Miss Powler?" she called, while
Violet was still twenty feet away.
"Yes."
"My name's Maclaren, and I suppose I'm
head-housekeeper now. I've been asking for you everywhere." The accent was
Scottish, the voice bright, but obviously that of a woman both fatigued and
harassed.
"Sorry," said Violet. "Mr. Orcham
sent for me."
"Just come in here a moment, will you? I've
only got five minutes. I must go back to Fourth." Miss Maclaren shut the
door, and the two stood close together in the half-dismantled room.
"What did Mr. Orcham want?"
Violet explained that she was the discoverer of
Mrs. O'Riordan's flight, and related the circumstances preceding the telephonic
summons to the Director's office. She finished: "He said as I was down
there he'd show me some things in the basement, so I should know."
"Oh!" murmured Miss Maclaren
negligently.
Looking at her closely, Violet at once put eight
or ten years on to her first estimate of Miss Maclaren's age; the new
head-housekeeper had wrinkles and a rather worn expression. Her powder was not
very well distributed.
She seems inclined to be decent," thought
Violet. "But she's disturbed. As she's my boss I'd better be a bit
careful.' And aloud, with pleasant animation: "I should be so glad if
you'd just tell me what I have to do."
"You have to inspect all the rooms that are
unoccupied or empty for the time being. First of all you turn on all the
lights, whether it's daylight or not, to see they're in order. Try the
curtains. See all the taps are right and don't drip. And the locks right
everywhere, and everything clean. Bed-linen has to be changed every two days.
But some visitors want it changed every day. And you have to watch the
chambermaids and--"
"I've talked to one, as I said."
"Beatrice, I expect. She's good. But she
thinks she's Mr. Cousin." Miss Maclaren's tone hardened. "She'll want
to run you, instead of you running her."
"I think I can see to that," Violet put
in with a smile.
"Never give them an inch--I mean the maids.
Not an inch. And don't give them half a minute in the mornings. They have to
sign on at half-past six. And every second morning you have to be on duty at half-past
six to see them sign on, on both Eighth and Seventh. Miss Prentiss--she's
Seventh--does it on the other morning. In turns, you see. I may as well tell
you the hours now. You have half a day a week off, and every second
week-end--from Saturday at three, about, till Monday morning. You have four
hours off every day--if you're lucky. When you have early morning duty, 6.30,
you finish at nine at night. On the other days you begin at nine in the morning
and finish at midnight. Of course they're long hours."
"Oh! That's all right," Violet
responded, with an enthusiasm which she did not quite feel.
She had not known the hours. Mr. Cousin had said
nothing about them. Nor had Mrs. O'Riordan. Miss Brury might have given her
information during the week they had spent together at the Laundry; but Miss
Brury had plainly indicated an unwillingness to talk about the Imperial Palace.
She even affected not to know that Violet had been engaged for the hotel.
Violet now calculated that her hours would be between sixty and seventy a week,
whereas at the Laundry they had been fifty-five a week. Also at the hotel she
would have only three clear evenings off in a fortnight. No more evening
rehearsals of the Dramatic Society, and other fun! She feared for the future of
the Dramatic Society, whose members she had left in a state of forlorn
depression. In spite of this, the lamp still burned brightly in her brain.
"And then," Miss Maclaren proceeded,
"you have to be ready to go into any room instantly, if any visitor asks
for the housekeeper, to settle any trouble."
"Yes," said Violet. "I remember Mr.
Orcham telling me about that when he first sent for me. I daresay I can manage
it. I've had to do it before." She related her sojourn as temporary
housekeeper at a large place in the country. "Do I have any keys?"
she enquired.
"You have a pass-key to the rooms and
duplicate keys of the linen-closets. That's all. Now you'd better begin now
with--let me see--my head's all in a whirl." Miss Maclaren put her hands
over her eyes. "Mrs. O'Riordan leaving like this. I'd no idea of it, Miss
Powler. Not a notion."
"It must be frightfully trying. Mr. Orcham
told me that I must first of all see to your rooms here."
"Oh! That doesn't matter," snapped Miss
Maclaren. "There's lots of things more important than that."
"But if he finds out I haven't done it,"
Violet smiled. "I might be in trouble--right at the start. He seemed very
anxious for it to be done. But of course I know I take my orders from
you."
"Oh! Very well!" Miss Maclaren
impatiently yielded. "But I do wish Mr. Orcham wouldn't try to run
everything himself. He always does." She smiled with a sort of dismal
comic resignation. "Let him have his own way. I'm on Fourth now. I'll give
instructions for all my things to be sent up immediately. And you do what you
like with them. I've no time. There's been an oak and wicker bedstead simply
broken to bits on Fifth. Some actress. She must have done it herself in one of
her tantrums. But of course nobody's done it! Mr. Cousin's secretary just tells
me in her casual way Mrs. O'Riordan's gone, and Mr. Orcham telephones me
himself and says I'm to take charge as quick as I can, and the first thing I
have is this bedstead affair. It's worth £40at least. If I was Mr. Cousin I
should ask her royal highness to leave to-day, but he won't, I know he won't,
because she's supposed to be a great actress and good publicity. You'd hardly
believe it, but she's making a fuss because a new bedstead hasn't been brought
in at once! That'll just show you the kind of thing a housekeeper has to face.
Has your luggage come?"
"Yes. It's here."
"Have you unpacked?"
"Not yet."
"Well, while you're waiting for my things you
go and get straight yourself."
Violet gave three little nods of obedient assent.
The two had not even shaken hands, but Violet was already feeling sympathetic
towards her superior. She thought: "I'll let her see she can depend on
me." She had the sensation of having been in the hotel for days.
Miss Maclaren hurried off. Not a word about her
return. Not a word about meals. Not a word as to whether that night Violet
would be on duty till nine o'clock or till midnight. As soon as she was gone
Violet went to her own room and rang the bell, and then, having pulled open all
the drawers and cupboard-doors, instantly began to unpack; she had found in the
top middle drawer of the desk a lot of empty forms for hotel linen and for
laundry.
"Oh! Can I help you to unpack, miss?"
said an eager voice, Beatrice's.
Violet was bending over a trunk on the bed.
Beatrice seemed fatter than before. Plump was a slightly inadequate description
of her. And she was certainly more eager. The tidings of the definite departure
of the head-housekeeper had spread through the entire hotel, exciting its life,
and giving to everybody a quite unaccustomed zest.
"No thank you, Beatrice. But I'll tell you
what you can do."
"Yes, miss."
"And at once. Go and do out Miss Maclaren's
rooms, as quick as you can."
"Miss Maclaren is on Fourth, miss."
"She's coming up here. I meant Mrs.
O'Riordan's rooms. What's the number of them?"
"Oh, I see, miss. They've no number."
"Well, go and do them out now. And put Mrs.
O'Riordan's trunks and things out into the corridor."
"I misdoubt if I can move the big one by
myself, miss. And chambermaids aren't supposed--"
"Well, then, get someone to help you. Get a
waiter."
"Oh, miss, not a waiter. I daren't. Us and
the valets are about equal as you may say. But a waiter. If I got giving
order-messages to the waiters I should have old Mr. Perosi down on me like
half-a-ton of coal."
"Who's Mr. Perosi?"
"He's the head-waiter for all the Floors,
miss. And he's terrible particular. Mrs. O'Riordan and him once had some words,
an' it was just like the hotel being on fire. Mr. Orcham had to settle that, he
had. Of course
"Then get a valet to help you."
''Well, miss--"
"How many valets are there on this
floor?"
"Two, miss. What I was going to say, miss,
one's pressing a suit urgent at this very moment, and the other's off."
"And the other maids? How many are there of
you up here?"
"Four, miss. And forty rooms. Besides all the
bits of sewing we have to do for visitors. Of course there's more rooms on the
other floors. But here you see there's more store-rooms and the carpenter's
shop, besides the head-housekeeper's rooms, and the lampshade room. There's
more maids on the lower floor, but forty bedrooms among three of us!..And
things are a bit messed up to-day. Miss Prentiss didn't see us sign on this
morning, and you know what young girls is, miss. I've been telling 'em. They
were fearful late this morning. But of course, miss, if you--"
"Come along, Beatrice. Come along," said
Violet, stopping the spate once more, and preceded her down the corridor to
Mrs. O'Riordan's late home, and into the bedroom thereof.
She thought, reflecting on what Miss Maclaren had
said:
'This Beatrice just isn't going to run me,
anyway." And aloud, gaily: "Now take that outside, and take that
outside. And I'll take this." Three of the lighter articles of baggage
were thus deposited in the corridor. "Now come back. Take that end of this
trunk. I'll take the other."
"Yes, miss."
When all the baggage was in the corridor Violet
said, a little breathless, but very happy:
"Now you get your brushes and things and do
these rooms out, and come and tell me as soon as they're finished."
"Yes, miss."
"You'll easily do them before your dinner.
When is your dinner-time?"
"Twelve o'clock, miss. And if we're
late--"
"But you won't be late."
"No, miss. I was only saying if we are late
we're likely to lose on it. There's two relays. I'm in the first this week.
When I first came here the food--well, you couldn't eat it. But it's better
now. Though they do say it only costs the management one-and-six a day a head
of us. You see our dining-room's down in the upper basement. Same as yours,
miss. The floor-housekeepers have a table in the room next to ours. The
page-boys eat in there too. It's just been redecorated. It ain't very easy to
find, miss. But they'll tell you at the lift."
"I daresay they will," Violet agreed,
departing, and Beatrice waddled away in search of utensils.
To Violet, the woman was now rather a different
creature from the relatively cautious, reconnoitring Beatrice whom she had
talked to at their previous interview. Decent still, and inclined to be
obliging, and assuredly cheerful; but too desirous of imposing herself. Violet
knew the type well. No means of silencing that type. It would chatter even if
it was drowning at sea in a gale of wind. Violet leaned now to Miss Maclaren's
general estimate of chambermaids. Give them an inch...Still, there was an
expression on the florid face of Beatrice that pleased her. She divined that
the key to the handling of Beatrice was a resolute and unfluctuating
cheerfulness. In regard to Miss Maclaren, she hesitated as to method. She
suspected that Miss Maclaren was a worrier, whose bright voice was intended to
indicate that she was for ever bearing up in great and unfair ordeals; a fixed
believer in the injustice of destiny towards herself. Here Miss Maclaren had
been promoted to the sublime situation of head-housekeeper at the Imperial
Palace Hotel, and yet she was finding sorrow and grievance in good fortune!
Violet surmised that the plant of Miss Maclaren's existence would best flourish
in an atmosphere of brave gloom, watered occasionally with tears. But Violet
could seldom weep. Arid she despised tearfulness in others. Her instinct was
nearly always to be bland and smiling. Withal she decided that Miss Maclaren
was able, conscientious, industrious, and to be relied upon, which was
something, if not everything.
"I've got to be damn careful," said
Violet to herself in warning. Nobody had ever heard her use an improper word,
except the late Susan. (The sisters would now and then luxuriate in frightful
swearing matches, for fun, to give colour to grey life.) Now Violet had no one
to swear with; so, infrequently, she indulged in solitary, silent swearing, to
the same end.
As, with rapid judgment of the suitability of
particular drawers and cupboards for particular articles, she made continual
dashes from the bedside to the wardrobe, dressing-table or desk, distributing
her attire and possessions, none could have guessed that her mind was dwelling
upon the imagined figure of Mr. Orcham. It was. Sometimes she could see his
face quite plainly. She liked his funny teeth, and his warm eyes, and the way
he held his head up and walked more on his toes than on his heels. (A bit
stealthy, somehow.) But his chin puzzled her, and his nose stuck out too much.
He was always changing. Now stiff and curt, now flexible and acquiescent. There
were moments when you'd think he was going to be positively intimate; and then
no, he was as straight as a poker again. Fearfully well dressed, but quietly.
She was sure that he preferred girls to look smart. He must be mildly
interested in women. She knew nothing about him, in that department, save that
he was a widower. He was one of your mysterious bland persons. (She liked
blandness, and practised it naturally, without effort.) Something of the child
in him. And something of the woman in him. Not what you'd call so frightfully
masculine. Yet he was.
And you couldn't guess from the way he behaved
that he was a terrific swell. Yet you could. Of course she didn't know very
much about terrific swells. Perhaps they were all like that. No, it couldn't be
so. Because Sir Henry Savott wasn't like that, and he was a terrific swell, and
some of his friends who came to Claygate were swells too, and they weren't like
Mr. Orcham, either. Well, perhaps one or two of them might have been. But not
like Mr. Orcham after all. She'd never met anyone like Mr. Orcham. Yes, she
judged for the second time that day, he was a gentleman. Here was the thought
that brightened her lamp. She would never see him, because you couldn't miss
links in the chain of responsibility. But a large part of her inspiration to
work was the desire to be worthy of his choice. He had chosen her--he said so. He
had chosen her; he, the head of the whole hotel. Difficult not to forget that
he was as high up as he certainly was--there was something equal about
him. He might be stiff, but he never looked down on you. The way he would stand
aside for you, and open doors for you--not always, but sometimes--it made you
almost think you were a lady. Of course she was a lady, but she knew
what she meant.
She had purposely left her door open. She heard a
trundling, squeaking sound in the corridor, and peeped out. A valet in sleeves
of shiny black pushing a luggage-carrier.
"These Miss Maclaren's things?"
"Yes, miss."
"All right. You know the rooms?"
"Yes, miss."
"You're from Fourth?" She enjoyed saying
'Fourth.'
"Yes, miss."
Little more than three-quarters of an hour had
passed. Evidently Miss Maclaren had the gift of getting things done with speed.
Violet continued her unpacking until she heard the trundling sound again. Then
she hurried to the head-housekeeper's rooms. They were finished. Praise was
due, thought Violet.
"You've been pretty quick, Beatrice."
"Thank you, miss. I think you'll find
everything's clean. Of course when we--"
"What are these keys?"
Four keys, one large and three small, lay
prominent on an arm of the sofa.
"Miss Maclaren's sent them up, miss. They're
your pass-key and the keys of the linen-closets."
"Good." Violet at once attached them to
the key-chain on her girdle.
"I suppose I'd better undo some of these
things, miss. It doesn't matter about my dinner." Beatrice pointed to a
couple of trunks and some small bags and an umbrella and a lot of cloaks and
oddments reposing right in the middle of the doorway leading towards the
bedroom.
Violet looked at the clock near the ceiling over
the fireplace. "It does matter about your dinner, Beatrice. I shan't be
late for mine and I won't have you being late for yours. Off you go! You'll
just be in time."
"Oh! If it's like that, miss!" Beatrice
smiled richly. "I was only going to tell you--"
"Tell me afterwards, when you come up."
"But you won't be up, miss."
"Well, when I do come up then."
Beatrice went out, smiling still against rebuff.
And the moment Beatrice was gone Violet seized on the cloaks. Poor garments. No
style. A shabby pinkish transparent mackintosh. A shabby umbrella. A good,
warm, heavy rug, which Violet immediately laid on the sofa. Two large
photographs of two serried bands of young men--one band in football kit--with
wide white margins in black frames. Two smaller photographs, an old man and an
old woman, similarly framed. And another photograph of a tiny country cottage
with low hills behind, framed in straw with bows. Miss Maclaren's relatives?
Miss Maclaren's birthplace? One cushion. Two vases. Ten books. Violet hung the
two large photographs on either side of the hearth, and the portraits on either
side of the door; and she put the vases and the cottage with hills on the
mantelpiece, and the cushion on the easy-chair. The room became inhabited, took
on some faint similitude of a home.
Then she dragged the trunks and the bags into the
bedroom. She opened the smallest of the bags. Toilet. Brushes, toothbrush,
sponge in a bag, pin-cushion, etc. She disposed the articles on the
dressing-table and the lavatory basin. One of the trunks was not completely
shut. She opened it--and closed it. No! Sacrilege! She would have been glad to
empty the trunks and the other bags; but she dared not. Prying! She must be
damn careful. However, she hung up the cloaks and the mackintosh in the
enormous wardrobe, and propped up the umbrella in a corner. Well, Miss Maclaren
probably wouldn't mind her things being unpacked for her. She wasn't that sort.
But Miss Maclaren just might mind. You never knew!
"My God! The flowers!"
She had forgotten them. She had meant to enquire
from Beatrice about the machinery for getting flowers. "It slipped my
memory, miss": a phrase familiar to her in the Laundry. She hated it. How
did you get flowers? She might telephone down to the other Marian. No. That
would be a sign of weakness. Stocks Department? She might telephone down to Mr.
Stairforth, the breathless talker. No. She daren't. Besides, though there must
be a stock of flowers somewhere, she had noticed no stock of flowers in Mr.
Stairforth's dark realm. She felt helpless. She felt alone on the floor. She
looked around. There were two glass vases of flowers, one on the window-sill:
but the blossoms were obviously faded and forlorn beyond revival. She ran into
her own room and returned thence with the large vase of flowers. Quite enough
in it for two vases. She threw the dead flowers into the waste-paper basket,
emptied the vases at the lavatory-basin, refilled them, and divided the flowers
and arranged them in the vases, one in each room. They made a most respectable
display. She ran back towards her own room with the empty vases, her keys
swinging and rattling very cheerfully, and was accosted by a pale waiter
emerging from one of the rooms.
"You are asked for here, miss," said the
waiter briefly, in a foreign accent, without enquiring who or what she was.
"Me? I'm the new floor-housekeeper."
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"I do not know quite. I have been three days
away ill."
"Is it a lady?"
"No. A gentleman."
"Very well. I'm coming."
She went on to her bedroom with the vase. She was
rather frightened. Her major duties were commencing. She fingered her pass-key.
Supposing she couldn't fit it into the door...An angry or a dissatisfied
customer? Tact, tact!
A
FRIEND
The door, she saw as soon as she stood close to
it, bore three numbers, and she assumed therefore that it opened into a suite
of three rooms and that the single occupant was a person of wealth. One of her
unformulated definitions of a person of wealth was a traveller who could afford
a private sitting-room in a hotel--any hotel, not merely an expensive hotel
such as the Imperial Palace. A hotel private sitting-room seemed to her to be
the very symbol and illustration of fabulous luxury. As for three rooms, what
could a visitor want with three rooms. "How silly of me!" she thought
suddenly. "Of course! The bathroom is one of the rooms!"
Happily the key fitted itself without any fuss
into the lock. She was extremely nervous as she turned the key, pushed open the
door, and withdrew the key. Never in her life had she seen a visitor's bedroom
in any hotel. Her summit of luxury had been a bedroom in a rather good
boarding-house at Ramsgate. She had witnessed various wonders of the Imperial
Palace, but its guest-rooms were absolutely unknown to her. And yet she was
floor-housekeeper on Eighth. Uncanny situation! 'Uncanny' was the only word for
it. The visitor might expose her ignorance by his first question, his first
demand. And the customer might be a very strange type of man, might even be a
foreigner. She guessed that these big cosmopolitan luxury hotels were inhabited
by all sorts of strange, haughty individuals. For a moment again she almost
wished herself back in the homely vaporous security of the Laundry, ordering
girls about and keeping an invisible wall between herself and Mr. Cyril Purkin.
In front of her was a tiny lobby or hall. Hats and
coats clustered on a hatstand--sufficient of them for several men. A half
-opened door ahead showed a bathroom. There were doors on either side, both
shut. She tapped on one. No answer. She opened it. Bedroom. Then she tapped on
the other one.
"Come in!" An authoritative male voice,
muffled by the thickness of the door.
Her heart announced an increased activity. Yes,
she was frightened. As she opened the door she might have been a soldier going
over the top in the Great War. A gentleman was standing expectant in the middle
of the room, hands in pockets. For one second, in her perturbation, Violet did
not recognise him. Then the figure and the rather wizened face with its small
eyes resolved themselves for her into those of Sir Henry Savott. She had a
feeling of thankfulness. At any rate this was no overbearing stranger. She knew
Sir Henry and a lot about him and his idiosyncrasies. Had she not served him
for a month and seen him both bland and stern? Also he had been remarkably
polite to her in the entrance-hall of the Imperial Palace not long since. She
was indeed relieved.
Sir Henry's features relaxed into a smile
astonished and welcoming. He had ceased to be the consciously great man which
he had always been in the big house at Claygate during her stay there. He moved
towards her with hand outstretched; the hand clasped hers with warmth; and at
the same time he exclaimed:
"Now what--what in the name of coincidence is
the meaning of this? How are you? I'm delighted to see a familiar face."
All in one breath.
Violet explained what she was.
"This is my first day here," she said.
Somewhat excited by the encounter, she had an impulse to add: "And this is
the first room I've seen, and you're the first visitor who has sent for me, and
I hardly know where I am yet." But a natural prudence silenced her.
Instead, she added: "What can I do for you, Sir Henry?" in a rather
formal tone. An instinctive sense of propriety always prompted her to keep
herplace and to encourage other people to keep theirs. Sir Henry, however, in
his cordiality, apparently desired not to be formal. He sat down.
"Do sit down," he said.
"I'm all right, thank you, Sir Henry,"
Violet answered firmly, but very nicely. She was not going to be caught by any
waiter or other chance entrant sitting down in the room of a male visitor, and
especially on her first day. No! Moreover, if such a freedom was not forbidden
by the hotel code, well, it ought to be!
She had never been aware of much sympathy with Sir
Henry. He had characteristics which she disliked. His quick, sharp gestures and
movements, designed--she often thought--to deceive people as to his age. His
bristly moustache, which in her opinion ought either to be allowed to grow a
little more or to be completely suppressed. His chin, which was ugly and
sinister. His teeth, which seemed always hungry. And his glance, inquisitive
and suspicious. If she trusted him, it was not without reluctance.
Still, her sister Susan, while reserved about
him--even to Violet--had certainly both trusted and liked him. He had meant a
deal to Susan; and he had invariably treated Susan well. As indeed he had
treated Violet herself. Violet had nothing definable against him; and, further,
she had followed Susan in sympathising with him in his conjugal difficulties.
And now, as she stood primly before him, she felt sorry for him. And neither he
nor anybody else could have guessed why.
It was because the sitting-room was so small. (The
bedroom too was small.) After the immense spacious interiors of the house at
Claygate, it seemed a perfect shame to Violet that the great opulent man should
have to content himself, or should content himself, with rooms relatively so
tiny. As a fact, neither of his rooms here was much larger than her own. She
was disappointed in the size of the rooms at the amazing Imperial Palace.
"Well, Miss Powler," said Sir Henry.
"I'm genuinely glad to see you here. I seem to remember Mr. Orcham
mentioning to me that there was some idea of your coming here. I'm glad because
I'm quite sure you were thrown away at that Laundry. This is just the place for
you."
('Miss Powler.' At Claygate he had always called
Susan 'Susan' and Violet 'Violet,' except in the presence of the servants.)
"You're very kind, Sir Henry," Violet
responded. "But I've a great deal to learn."
"Not you. You were first-rate at my house.
You know all about maids and valets and so on. And you know exactly how to
treat guests. You've got nothing to learn, really, except--what shall I
say?--the geography of the hotel. And a few tuppenny-halfpenny rules."
"It's understood it takes six months or more
to train a housekeeper here, Sir Henry," said Violet. But she was
impressed by his instant grasp of essentials, and, flattered, she felt inclined
to agree with his estimate of the situation.
"Not for a woman like you," said he,
positive and slightly impatient. "A fool couldn't be trained in six months
or six years. But you have intelligence, and you know it. You're bound to have
a successful career. Of course"--he raised a finger--"accidents do
happen. I don't think for a moment they will, but you can't be sure. I'm
convinced you'll rise high in this place. But if anything should happen, I want
you to know that in some other hotels, anyhow one--and there may be more--what
I say goes. And if ever you want a change, you just send me one line, one line,
and I'll fix it. Oh yes! I'll do it for my own sake, and glad to!"
"It's very kind of you, Sir Henry. Very kind.
But I hope I shan't--I don't think--"
"Neither do I. I'm only saying 'if.' And
there's something else--you don't mind me giving you a tip, do you?"
Violet shook her head and smiled. Assuredly Sir
Henry was strengthening her belief in herself. And he was indeed kind.
Assuredly she felt uplifted once more.
"I suppose you don't know any French?"
Sir Henry resumed. "No. I know you don't, because I remember once when I
had Monsieur Messein down at Claygate and there was some mix-up in his bedroom,
Miss Gracie had to interpret."
"No, Sir Henry. I did begin to learn French at
the South-West London Polytechnic, but I forgot it all as soon as I left
there."
"Well, take my tip and learn French. In this
new business of yours here it'll be of the greatest use to you. Wouldn't be
much good in an ordinary English hotel, of course. But this is a cosmopolitan
show where you get all sorts of clients. It would give you a sort of a
standing, you see. In France and so on housekeepers and cashiers and
reception-clerks--they're often women--can speak English, have to; but in
England, even in London, how often do you see a housekeeper who can talk
anything but English? Scarcely ever. I undertake to say there isn't one
housekeeper in the I.P. can speak French. Of course you always hear that
English is the international language. It may be. It is. But not in the luxury
world, and the luxury world's your world, you know. Think it over, will
you?"
"Oh, I will, Sir Henry," Violet replied,
enthusiastic, but--as it were--dreamily enthusiastic.
She was dreamy in the suddenly induced marvellous
vision of herself as a young woman able to gabble away in French to foreigners
who could not speak English. "Give her a sort of standing!" It would.
In her vision she could hear Miss Maclaren saying on other floors in her
lowland-Scottish accent: "Better send for Miss Powler. Where's Miss
Powler? Miss Powler can talk French. Miss Powler will see the lady--or the
gentleman." It would be wonderful. Too wonderful to be true! She wanted to
begin to learn French the next minute. The lamp burned still brighter in her
brain. Mr. Orcham could talk French, she was sure. He would be impressed if he
knew that she could talk French too. Mr. Cousin was French. What fun it
would be if, one day when she had to go down and, see Mr. Cousin, she started
the interview right off in French! What a difference between the old Violet in
the Laundry, and the new French-chattering Violet in Sir Henry's luxury world!
But she was a practical girl, and she emerged from
her dream into realisation.
"It might be rather hard for me to do it
here, Sir Henry,"she said. "The hours are pretty long, and perhaps I
couldn't get out."
"Hard? Here? Couldn't get out? What do you
want to get out for? Why, there must be scores of people in this place who talk
French better than they talk English! And some of them would be glad to teach
you. You could easily come to an arrangement. Simplest thing in the world. A
little enterprise needed; that's all."
"I shall," said Violet positively, her
brown eyes lighted up. "I'm very much obliged, Sir Henry."
He had spoken benevolently, persuasively, even
coaxingly. She felt more sympathetic towards him than she had ever felt. Why
was he so good-natured? Possibly because she happened to be Susan's sister.
Surely he would not have shown the same interest in any other housekeeper! He
couldn't. Of course she had served in his house, run his house. But ages ago,
and not for long. The reason for his interest must be Susan. Anyhow he was full
of common sense. And he certainly did grasp a situation. Violet admired common
sense and grasp more than anything else. He had opened her eyes, that he had!
In her admiration she grew nearly at ease with
him. Her association with him in the past helped her to forget now that he was
a millionaire, a big public figure, whose name and whose photograph were
constantly in the newspapers. She saw in front of her not a legend but a human
being, who wanted a floor-housekeeper to look after some ordinary matter for
him in his rooms. It might be the starching of his shirts. (Though it was the
effect of life in the Laundry that turned her thoughts first to shirts, she did
recall that he used to be a bit particular about his shirts.) And in advising
her he had not tried to come the bigwig over her. Not a trace of 'side.' No
indication whatever of the difference in class which separated them. He was
just friendly and decent, in a nice kind of fatherly style. And yet not quite
fatherly. No. Just as a friendly decent man to a decent self-respecting woman
much younger than himself.
In her heart she apologised to him for her
reservations concerning him. The small, intimate sitting-room had a very
agreeable, reassuring atmosphere. Her simple father and mother would have been
proud to overhear that interview. And Mr. Orcham would have admitted that she
was falling on her feet.
"I'd like something done about this
desk," said Sir Henry, suddenly rising and going to the window, beneath
which was a small knee-hole desk, painted green to match the general tint of
the room.
"Yes, Sir Henry." Violet braced herself
to receive orders. Even her voice was braced.
"It's too small for me."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"I want a larger one."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"And I want it changed as quick as you
can."
"Yes, Sir Henry."
The benevolent paternal human being was transformed
into the millionaire autocrat; but there was still some benevolence in his
tone, abrupt and commanding as it had become.
He continued:
"I was down on the third floor. I had
a larger desk there. I've been out of London for a bit since I met you in the
hall that day. I got back yesterday, and I moved up here yesterday
evening...Pretty view from here, isn't there?" He stared out of the window
across St. James's Park and the Green Park towards Piccadilly, all lying under
a mist-veiled autumn sun. "It was really because of the view I decided to
come up to this floor. You see, on the third floor you're just level with the
tops of the trees, and you can't see a thing. I like a view. Space. I can't do
with being shut in. See the new Devonshire House there? Then there's another
thing. Say what you like about sound-proof rooms, it's always quietest on the
top floor. Now about this desk. You see, my secretary, or one of 'em, has to be
able to work at it sometimes. There were two desks in my room downstairs."
"I expect it was a larger room, Sir
Henry."
"It certainly was. These rooms are too narrow
for their length. Still, I prefer this room of the two. Only I want a larger
desk. Understand?"
"Yes, Sir Henry. I'll get it as quickly as I
can. But the head-housekeeper's had some trouble downstairs, and as I told you,
I don't know a thing here yet. This is a question of geography." She
faintly smiled.
"Quite, quite," Sir Henry amiably
concurred. "But I want a larger desk and the sooner the better." His
voice hardened. It was as if he took away with one hand what he had given with
the other; as if he had said: "I don't care about your head-housekeeper
and her troubles, and it's no affair of mine that you don't know a thing. I
want my desk."
"I'll go right now."
"That's a good girl."
This appellation startled Violet ever so little.
She moved towards the door.
"Just a minute. You remember Jim?"
"Jim, Sir Henry? I'm afraid I don't."
"Yes, you do. He was second footman at
Claygate."
"Oh yes!" But she did not remember Jim.
Even in her one month at Claygate she had witnessed several changes of footmen.
"Well, I made him my valet. He's here with me
now. He was taken ill in the night on the journey, and I've sent him to bed. I
wish you'd go and see for yourself what's the matter with him. And then report
to me. If he's going to be really ill I must get a temporary. I only want to
know how I stand."
"Yes, Sir Henry." She was somewhat
cooled, critical. At first she had thought that the great man was anxious for
his valet. Then she thought that the great man was concerned only for himself.
"I'll stay here and wait," said the
great man, warningly.
"Yes, Sir Henry."
Violet hurried out. How to procure the larger
desk? Having procured it, how to get the change effected? How to discover where
this Jim was lodged? She would not ask. Sir Henry would not know. He would
probably retort: "Oh! Don't ask me." Yet on the whole, for a first
encounter with a visitor in her capacity of floor-housekeeper, the meeting had
passed off very well. And Violet was happy, and still uplifted, and still held
a higher opinion than before of Sir Henry Savott. What a world was this
Imperial Palace world of rich, bewildering novelty and romantic surprises! And
she was on her mettle.
VIOLET
AND MAC
"What's this?" Miss Maclaren demanded,
with chill civility, of the waiter who brought into her newly acquired sitting-room
a small tray containing a pot of tea, a jug of hot water, milk, sugar, and two
cups and saucers.
"Two teas," answered the waiter. It was
the same man who had given to Violet the message from Sir Henry Savott.
"I didn't say two 'dry' teas," said Miss
Maclaren in a hard, uncompromising tone, drier than the driest tea could be.
"Please take this away, and let me have it all on a larger tray, the one
Mrs. O'Riordan always had, and her tea-pot, and plenty of bread-and-butter, and
cakes, and some black-currant jam. And I'm in a hurry, please."
In silence the waiter withdrew with the tray.
"That's just like them," Miss Maclaren
explained her grievance to Violet, whom she had invited to take tea with her.
"However, I believe in beginning as you mean to go on. He knew perfectly
well. The floor-housekeepers have their tea downstairs where they have their
other meals. Only if they want tea upstairs they can have it in their bedrooms.
But it's what we call a 'dry' tea. Nothing to eat with it, you know. But the
head-housekeeper is at liberty to have whatever she wants, and she's served by
a floor-waiter, same as a visitor. Mrs. O'Riordan always had that, and I shall.
He was only trying it on. He hasn't been here very long, and he's ill half the
time, or pretends to be. Still, he ought surely to have seen enough of me to
know I'm not the sort of person to try things on with. He soon will know--I'll
attend to that! Don't you think I'm right?"
"Rather!" Violet agreed.
She saw in Miss Maclaren a person who loved authority,
who was very jealous of her authority, newly acquired with the room, but who
felt the need at first of a little moral support in the exercise of the same.
As one who had until the previous day exercised a great deal of authority over
more than two hundred women and girls, Violet regarded herself as nearly the
moral equal of Miss Maclaren, and she felt that Miss Maclaren so regarded her.
But she was privately critical of Miss Maclaren's method. Stony was the word to
apply to it. No allowances made. Violet usually managed to put herself in the
place of a wrong-doer; which enabled her often to read the wrong-doer's
thoughts and thus gave her a considerable advantage in handing the wrong-doer.
It was because she was reading Miss Maclaren's thoughts that she had replied
with such sympathy, "Rather!"
"You must have had some lively times down at
the Laundry now and then," said Miss Maclaren.
"You may depend I had!" said Violet,
with a troubled expression feigning dark memories of the lively times. She
added:
"But of course it must be much more difficult
here--especially for you, with eight floors to keep an eye on and so many
different sorts of people too. We'd no foreigners at the Laundry anyhow."
The benevolent, deceitful little piece had here said exactly the right thing to
the brave martyr of the Floors. Miss Maclaren despised and mistrusted all the
foreigners on the staff, except perhaps Mr. Cousin, whose impregnable blandness
appealed much more to her than to the somewhat temperamental Mrs. O'Riordan.
The sun was low in the sky. Not a ray of it came
through the window. The flame of the small autumn fire showed brighter in the
first onset of the dusk. The sofa was drawn close at an angle across the
hearth. Miss Maclaren sat in a corner of it, without leaning back. Violet sat
on the pouf. The two black-robed creatures, prim with office, soon lost some of
their primness in a chiefly physical sensation of nascent intimacy. Violet
opened her bag and boldly employed her lipstick.
"What lipstick do you fancy, dear?"
asked Miss Maclaren.
(Mr. Orcham was uncanny.)
"Michel," said Violet, pausing in her
work. "It's a kind of an imitation of Tanger, you know. But I think it's
better. Not what you'd call cheap, but it lasts for ages. If you ask me, I
think the most expensive is the cheapest."
"Yes?" said Miss Maclaren doubtfully.
"I don't know what mine is, really. But I know it's about finished. Mrs.
O'Riordan always had Chanel."
"Yes. That's one that lasts for ages,
too."
Then the waiter arrived with another and a superior
tray, laden apparently with the whole contents of a Bond Street tea-shop and a
superior tea-service and superior china. He hesitated.
"Shall he put it on here?" Violet
suggested, rising from the pouf.
"Yes."
Violet sat down by Miss Maclaren's side. Intimacy
was increasing.
"Thank you," said Miss Maclaren, less
harshly, to the waiter, who stood expectant with a pad of order-slips in his
hand.
"Will you sign, please, miss?" The
waiter spoke with marked deference.
"Oh!" Miss Maclaren exclaimed, caught. She
had forgotten that only 'dry' teas required no signature. She signed the check,
having first scrutinised it. Glancing over the tray, she added to the waiter in
the most friendly manner, "Yes, this will be all I want. Thank you very
much."
"Thank you, miss." The waiter left.
"He's learnt his lesson," said Miss
Maclaren, but with no bitterness; rather with a smile. The magnificent
spectacle of the tray had mollified her. She picked up a petit four and
ate it at once. Then another. Her mouth half-full, she mumbled to Violet:
"Milk? Sugar?"
Violet had one lump, Miss Maclaren three. Miss
Maclaren was of those who enjoy their tea. Further, she had a sweet tooth--when
sweets were gratis. This immense and crushing weight of the Imperial Palace
seemed to slip from her responsible shoulders The look on her worn, well-shaped
face gradually changed; the wrinkles were smoothed out; even Violet's demeanour
changed in sympathy with Miss Maclaren's.
"It must be rather fun, being
head-housekeeper," she ventured.
"Well, I suppose it is, dear," said Miss
Maclaren, who at that moment was defining a head-housekeeper as a personage who
could have what she chose for tea. "I mean--it is and it isn't. Now Mr.
Cousin asked me down for lunch to-day, and Mr. Orcham was there too. Naturally,
I couldn't refuse, though really I hadn't a minute and they must have known it.
Wasn't as if they had much to tell me that was useful. No. Just talk. It's
extraordinary the amount of time men waste. I could have had my lunch in five
minutes. Do you know, I was there over an hour. It was in Mr. Cousin's room. I
suppose they just wanted to be friendly."
"And so they ought!" Violet put in.
"But it was nice of them." She wondered if she would ever be invited
to lunch with the swells. Never.
"Oh, it was," said Miss Maclaren, who
scarcely tried to conceal a justifiable pride in the event. "And my word
they do have meals, those two." The greedy woman was speaking. "Mr.
Cousin didn't say a lot, but Mr. Orcham did, and they were both full of Mrs.
O'Riordan. Mr. Orcham's made up his mind she shan't have her wedding-present.
He said he told her if she didn't come to the dinner she wouldn't get any
present. And she did say she would come. So he's sending the plate back to the
silversmith's, and he says he's going to return all the subscriptions. That
means ten shillings I never expected to see again. Oh! He was very light and
jolly about it. But he meant it. You could see that. And when he means a thing
he does mean it, Mr. Orcham does. She oughtn't to have run off like that. No! I
must say I was very surprised. I should never I have thought it of her."
"I should think not indeed!" said
Violet. "But I think just before weddings women do get into a state. I've
noticed it."
"Really?" Miss Maclaren casually murmured.
"Still, she shouldn't have done it." She lifted her shoulders
censoriously, poured out more tea, ate bread-and-butter, ate jam, ate more
cakes.
There was a tap on the door. Mrs. O'Riordan's
fluffy little school-gir1ish secretary entered, notebook in hand.
"In half an hour, Agatha," said Miss
Maclaren, turning her head, grandly. The secretary nodded and vanished.
"Have another of these little cakes--petty
fours as they call them," Miss Maclaren hospitably suggested.
"No, thanks. I can't eat any more."
"You haven't had any jam. Do have some."
Violet smiled and moved her head slowly from side
to side.
"Another cup of tea?"
Violet nodded her head.
Having poured out two more cups, Miss Maclaren
took for herself more bread-and-butter, more jam, and more little cakes. She
ate very quickly.
"No use leaving anything for them,"
said she, seizing as it were sadly the last bit of food on the tray. "The
cakes that are no more!" her glance at the empty plates seemed to say. But
her demeanour had become quite animated, even gay. She was a completely changed
woman: happy in the satiating of her passion. She liked eating; she had
authority to order what she wanted; she had got it; and she had consumed it.
She leaned back.
"Very nice of you to arrange these rooms for
me, Violet," she said; and added: "They christened me 'Mac' in this
place. But I'm not going to have any 'Macs' now--except of course when I'm
alone with someone, like this."
"No," said Violet. "It wouldn't do,
would it? I should have unpacked your trunks too; but I thought perhaps I'd
better not. People prefer to do that themselves."
"I've done it," said Miss Maclaren.
'You are quick," said Violet, who was
really impressed by this despatch.
"Oh! That doesn't take me long!" said
Miss Maclaren. "I've done it too often. But hanging pictures and so on.
No. I never seem to have a moment for that. Downstairs my pictures never were
hung. And if you hadn't hung them here, I don't know when they would have been
done." Her gaze was apparently set on one of the vases of flowers. But she
said no word about Violet's flowers. Evidently she was a woman, rare, who could
look at flowers without seeing them.
"And what have you been doing on your first
day? I've had to leave you to yourself." Miss Maclaren laughed.
Violet answered:
"I'd better make my report, hadn't I?"
She told about Sir Henry Savott's urgent demand
for a new desk.
"Savott? What number?" Violet gave the
number of the suite. "But that was occupied by a Mr.--I forget his name,
only it wasn't Savott; a Canadian."
"Sir Henry came in last night, he told
me."
"I'm sure he isn't on the floor-list,"
said Miss Maclaren.
"That must be her ladyship again. She must
have had the slip from the Reception Office--and forgotten it. Other things
tooccupy her mind!" Miss Maclaren both sardonically enjoyed and severely
disapproved Mrs. O'Riordan's negligence. "You see, she was doing
floor-housekeeper up here as well as head-housekeeper. You'd have thought she
could manage it, wouldn't you? Well, what about the desk?" Violet related
that a valet had advised her to go to the carpenter's shop.
"And did you go?"
"No, I sent for the head-carpenter. The valet
said there was some spare furniture in his shop."
"Now that's right," said Miss Maclaren.
"Send for them. Never go to them unless you can't possibly help it."
"Well, there wasn't a desk--at least not one
large enough. And Sir Henry wanted it green. I went to the shop myself to
see."
"So you didn't get one?"
"Yes, I did. I don't know whether I did right
or not, but I looked in all the empty rooms and I found a large desk in 847. So
I exchanged that one for the one in Sir Henry's room. Was that right?"
"Yes, it was," said Miss Maclaren.
"But the desk in 847 isn't green."
"It has some green lines picked out on
it."
"So it has," Miss Maclaren agreed, after
reflection. "How did you get the desks shifted?"
"I just asked the valet if he'd get it done
for me, and he did."
"Which valet was it?"
"Don't know his name. Red hair."
"Oh! He did?"
"Yes. I think the carpenters helped. I left
them to do it and went away. When I came up from lunch it was done. I was very
late for lunch. It took me about ten minutes to find where the place was. The
housekeepers' table was empty. But there were two page-boys eating in the same
room."
"Well, dear, that wasn't so bad for a first
day. I don't believe in page-boys having their meals in the same room as the
floor-housekeepers. I've often thought of it. It's not nice. And I mean to get
that altered if I can. What else? Anything?"
The conversation, vivacious enough, and deeply
interesting to both women, burrowed down into recondite details of
administration. Violet absorbed new knowledge through her pores. She mentioned
the illness of Sir Henry's servant, Jim.
"I went to see him. He said he knew he'd got
bronchitis, and I thought he had too. So I sent for Dr. Constam."
"Who told you about Dr. Constam?"
"Marian Tilton. That's her name, isn't it?
Mr. Cousin's secretary. I telephoned down to her. She's very obliging."
"Yes. I suppose she is," Miss Maclaren concurred.
"But don't you go and say too much to her. She's the worst gossip in the
hotel. I'm always very careful with her. What did the doctor say?"
"Oh! It was bronchitis. But only a
touch."
"He wouldn't have said it was only a touch if
it had been a visitor on any of the floors," observed Miss Maclaren.
"Wouldn't he? But I really think it was
only a touch this time. I've been to see the man since. I knew him, you see,
before. I knew Sir Henry Savott too."
Violet hesitated for a moment, but the hesitation
ended by her telling pretty fully the story of her brief connection with the
Savott household at Claygate. Miss Maclaren listened with both ears, and did
not cease to question until she had learnt more of Susan Powler's illness and
death than anybody outside the Powler family. Intimacy was still further
increased. The very room was warm with intimacy. Tones of voice sank lower.
Inflections and glances and gestures acquired a new freedom and variety.
"Then you must know a lot about our
business," said Miss Maclaren, at the close of the talk. "I wish I'd
known this morning. I shouldn't have been so nervous for you. Mr. Cousin or Mr.
Orcham might have told me, I think." The head-housekeeper's respect for
her subordinate had increased as much as the intimacy. After all there was a
glamour about managing a large country mansion for a celebrity that even the
Imperial Palace could not offer. Silence fell for a moment.
Violet was thinking:
"I'm glad I told her. She might have heard one
day and it wouldn't have done for her to think I hadn't been open with her.
She's a nice old sort. No trouble about keeping in with her if you go about it
right. She's fussy, but she's a great worker, and she knows her job and she'll
see that I do mine."
Then the telephone-bell tinkled in the room. Miss
Maclaren jumped with a nervous start to answer it.
"Oh, dear!" she murmured, with
resignation. "Can't people leave me alone while I'm having my tea?"
In the telephone dialogue, Miss Maclaren said little,
listening much more than she talked. Violet heard only such phrases as:
"Oh! Quite satisfactory, sir. She's...Very
well, sir...To-night? Yes, to-morrow morning would be better. Certainly,
sir. I'll arrange it...Oh yes, sir. I can manage." Miss Maclaren hung up
the receiver, sighed, and returned to the sofa.
"I'm sorry, Violet, but the orders are that
you are to go down to Third to-morrow morning, and take over there. It was Mr.
Cousin speaking. I do think it would have been better for you to stay up here
with me for a bit, while you're getting into it. But that's the order. He
didn't give any reason. But I should like to know whether I'm head-housekeeper
or not. It ought to be my business to decide what housekeeper is to be on what
door. Miss Venables is doing Third and Fourth at present, and she might just as
well go on doing them both, until you're settled down. I thought we'd settled
it all at that lunch of theirs. I told them there was no need to have eight
housekeepers. Waste of money, I told them. I can easily do Eighth myself, same
as Mrs. O'Riordan had to do for a week and more. But I do wish you could have
stayed with me. I'm so sorry, dear."
"So am I--Mac," Violet replied, using
the diminutive with a certain constraint for the first time.
And she was rather more than sorry. She was upset.
These mysterious powers downstairs! They said go, and you went. No reason
given. They ordered, and you obeyed, blindly. You weren't a human being. You
were a robot. You had to exercise judgment, tact, take responsibilities, be
smart, powder your face. But you were a robot. Supposing she'd been doing wrong
over the desk, as she might have been doing! What trouble! Taking on herself to
change furniture without authority! But she was a robot nevertheless. Nothing like
this could have happened at the Laundry. Cyril Purkin had been above her,
technically, but he was always a bit timid, apologetic, and full of
explanations whenever he encroached on her territory. Third floor! It was a
foreign land to her. It was like Canada. Fancy having to emigrate to Canada at
less than a day's notice. And she was unpacked and fixed on Eighth! And she
felt at home there. To her, Eighth was the nicest and the cosiest floor in the
hotel. No other floor could be half as nice.
She felt helplessly involved in a terrific and
ruthless machine. And why was she being moved? Why? Miss Maclaren thought there
was no sense in it, and so there couldn't be any sense in it.With Miss Maclaren
the interests of the hotel would have come first. She would have sacrificed
herself and Violet and anybody to the interests of the hotel. That was certain.
You could feel in Miss Maclaren a tremendous loyalty and devotion to the hotel.
Well, if Miss Maclaren couldn't see the point of the move there just wasn't a
point. Surely Mr. Orcham had had nothing to do with the order. No, it was just
a whim of that strange Frenchman. Already Violet was beginning to catch the
head-housekeeper's prejudice against foreigners.
"Agatha will be here in a minute," said
Miss Maclaren, glancing at the clock. "I must dictate some letters. I'm
not very good at it. Did you have to do any dictating at the Laundry,
dear?"
"Oh no! Mr. Purkin did all that."
"He was a bit curt in his letters to Mrs.
O'Riordan," said Miss Maclaren.
"Yes, I daresay," said Violet. "But
I don't think he means to be," she smiled.
And Mac smiled quite suddenly.
"No. I'm sure he doesn't," said she, as
if suddenly persuaded to revise her opinion of Mr. Purkin as a business
correspondent. "And talking of the Laundry," she went on, "the
linen will be coming in about seven--you know when it leaves the Laundry--I
wish you'd see that it's checked carefully, and I want you to look right
through the linen-closets, and see if everything's arranged for the best and
report to me, will you?"
"I will," said Violet, with
enthusiastic, consciously comforting willingness, conveying the idea that her
special delight would be to do what was asked of her.
"Let me see now," said Miss Maclaren.
"This will be your late night. Midnight, you go off. Have you had any time
off to-day?"
"I've had plenty of time when there wasn't
anything to do."
"You ought to have gone out," said Miss
Maclaren, who seldom took the trouble to go out herself. "I'd like us to
have another quiet chat to-night. Come along here about half-past eleven. I'll
expect you. But be sure to tell the night-waiter and the valet and the maid
where you're to be found. In case. You never know."
Agatha tapped and entered. Miss Maclaren frowned
instinctively, preparing herself to shoulder again the full burden of the
Imperial Palace.
"You've brought that correspondence I asked
you for with the Works Department?"
"Yes, Miss Maclaren."
Violet dined in the society of Miss Prentiss and
Miss Venables. There were no page-boys. Later she went through the
linen-closets. She was humorously surprised to discover herself highly critical
of the laundry work. She admitted defects which, if they had been brought to
her notice by the hotel staff, she would never have admitted in the Laundry. By
eleven-thirty she was almost reconciled to the emigration order. Mac and she
gossiped till nearly one o'clock in the morning, hedonistically heedless of the
clock. At parting they kissed: a prim kiss. Mac said that Violet must come up
for tea again the next day--not for mere pleasure, certainly not, but to
receive any advice or information which she might need for the proper conduct
of Third.
"Have you packed at all, you poor dear?"
Mac enquired.
"No. I shan't think of it till morning."
"That's right. And don't you go down a minute
before nine o'clock. That's your time on Third."
Violet walked slowly through the long narrow
corridor, in which all the lights save three had been extinguished. No sound.
No sign of human existence, except a pair of shoes on doormats here and there.
Ghostly. Weird. Light showed through the half-open door of the waiters'
service-room. A man in a dressing-gown emerged from a room nearly opposite
Violet's, dropped a letter into the letter-shoot, and disappeared back into his
room. And in the strange solitude of her home-for-one-night, Violet undressed
slowly and meditatively. She smiled to herself. On the whole she was very well
pleased with her debut.
"What a hell of an exciting day!" she
remarked aloud.
RETURN
TO EIGHTH
The next morning Violet, already installed and at
work on Third, went into one of the principal suites there. It was empty, and
her business was to inspect. Third was a territory very different from Eighth.
Its main corridor was broader, more deeply carpeted, more richly decorated, its
ceiling loftier. The corridor alone sufficed to establish in every heart the
conviction that wealth abounded and that no price could be too high for
tranquillity and the perfection of silent and luxurious service. Even a
vacuum-cleaner, at work on the crimson carpet, seem to purr like a tiger tamed
and domesticated to the uses of the lords of the earth. And the menials of the
staff moving upon humble tasks seemed to apologise to the invisible lords for
their own miserable existence.
The suite was planned similarly to that of Sir
Henry Savott on Eighth, but on a vaster scale: a large entrance-hall, a large
bathroom full of gadgets unknown on Eighth, a huge bedroom on one side and a
huge sitting-room on the other. Brocaded upholstery everywhere, multiplicity of
lamps, multiplicity of cushions, multiplicity of occasional tables; everywhere
a yielding, acquiescent softness.
Everything that the caprice of infinite power
might demand, and yet emptiness, a total absence of individuality, of humanity.
A feeling in the rooms of expectancy, awaiting with everlasting patience the
arrival of life-giving, imperious, exacting lords of the earth. In the bedroom,
twin-beds covered with silk till the lords should come, destined to receive
upon their resilient springs and their pillows the delicate sensitive bodies of
lord and lady fresh perfumed from the bath. Thereon they would deign to
recline, repose, slumber, perhaps snore. Strange thought!
The blinds were up, the heavy double curtains
drawn apart. Violet looked out of the windows, opened them, saw the trees which
obstructed Sir Henry Savott's view, tested every lamp--there were
thirty-seven--tested every tap, every gadget, pulled down the blinds, pulled
the curtains together, opened every drawer and every cupboard, tried every key
and knob and bolt, passed a hand along ledges to discover dust, bending down in
order to descry dust on glass-tops of tables. And made notes.
A tap in the bathroom which obstinately dripped.
In the sitting-room a lamp whose filament had 'gone.' A curtain-hook which had
escaped from its ring. Flowers required. Small stain on a white linen cover of
one of the pedestals in the bedroom. And a large dark stain on the bedroom
carpet, very noticeable and ugly. Also a drawer unlined with paper in the chief
wardrobe, and only eight coat-hangers in the wardrobe--not enough. Quite a
list! She knew the machinery for remedying every defect except the stain on the
immense carpet in the bedroom. Neither lord nor lady could hope to be able to
sleep peacefully in a bedroom with a stained carpet. The physical side of the
complex enterprise of living which these lords and ladies had invented was
indeed extremely difficult for themselves and extremely arduous for their
attendants. From the bedroom Violet heard voices in the entrance-hall. An
arriving visitor. She saw through the open door a dapper and diplomatic
reception clerk, and Sir Henry Savott.
"Yes," Sir Henry was saying. "I'll
come back at once to my old rooms. I've nothing to complain of upstairs, and
the outlook is much finer there; but it's all too small. I find I can't manage.
So if you don't mind I'll come back here this afternoon. About five. Not
before."
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Certainly."
"I shall have to leave all the moving to your
people, without superintendence. My man's ill." The two went into the
sitting-room, and Violet heard further the voice of Sir Henry: "Now as
regards this desk. There's a desk in my sitting-room upstairs that I should
prefer to this one. Can it be brought down?"
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Certainly."
Then the two came to the bedroom. Violet was a
little nervous. She prepared a discreet smile for Sir Henry. But Sir Henry did
not smile. He merely nodded perfunctorily.
"I want one of these beds taken out. It's
only in the way. I had it removed before, but of course it's been brought back
again"
"Certainly, Sir Henry. Naturally."
"Thank you."
The two retreated.
"That will do, thanks. I'll just look
round," Violet heard Sir Henry say to the clerk. After which the
entrance-door closed and Sir Henry reappeared in the bedroom, smiling and
friendly.
"So you're down here now, Violet," he
said, offering no explanation of his previous stiff formality.
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"Well, I'm glad I've seen you. I didn't come
across you again yesterday, and I did want to thank you for looking after Jim so
well. He's better. And he was very pleased to see you, very pleased. I went
along to have a look at him this morning."
"Oh yes!" Violet murmured.
"And there was another thing. You succeeded
brilliantly in the affair of the desk, and I was much obliged. Have you got
charge here to-day?"
"Yes, Sir Henry."
"Well, that relieves my mind. I know I shall
be safe. Goodbye for the present." And off he hurried.
To Violet it was all very odd. And the stained
carpet troubled her. She went to the corridor service-telephone and was lucky
to get Miss Maclaren in her own room. She wanted counsel from Mac, who at once
reassured her as to the carpet.
"It's a really bad stain?" asked Mac.
"Frightful."
"People are careless. How big is
it?"
"About a foot square at least."
"All right. Don't bother. I'll see to
it."
"But can it be done before five?"
"Of course. Look under one of the corners of
the carpet. Doesn't matter which. You'll see a tab with a number on it. Give me
the number."
Whereupon the neophyte of the Imperial Palace
learnt that every carpet in the Palace had its exact duplicate, in size and
shape, at the Works Department in Craven Street, and that an exchange could be
effected in a couple of hours at most. Violet was impressed by the reckless
grandeur of the domestic machine.
"And I say, Violet," continued Mac.
"There's just come up another order. You are to come back to Eighth this
afternoon. I don't know why. But I expect it's struck them at last that what I
said to them about your being up here with me for a bit was only common sense.
I'm so glad."
"So am I," Violet replied, too
astonished and disturbed to respond adequately to Mac's gladness. Those
mysterious powers down below were more mysterious than ever. To them you were
no better than chessmen on a chessboard. And you had no better right to
question them than the chessmen the chess-players.
The tone of sincerity which Miss Maclaren had used
in the phrase "I'm so glad" remained warmly in Violet's mind. It was
clear that the head-housekeeper really did want to make a friend of her.
Apparently Mac had few friends or none on the staff. Miss Venables and Miss
Prentiss had shown reserve in their references to her at lunch on the previous
day. Violet guessed that while they neither liked nor disliked their new superior
they were perhaps preparing themselves to be restive under what they feared
might prove to be a too strict and exacting régime. Why has she taken to
me?" Violet thought. "There's no contrast between us. We're much the
same." Yet she well knew that they differed in at least one important
aspect. Both of them conscientious and industrious, Mac was victimised by a
tendency to harassed gloom, but Violet was animated by a tendency to
cheerfulness. Violet had a desire always to lift Mac out of a pit of depression,
and she was aware that the satisfaction of the desire would demand a slightly
wearisome continuous moral effort on her part. She felt sorry for Mac, more
sorry for her than fond of her. And in some strange way she felt sorry also for
Sir Henry Savott; felt as though she ought to remain on Third until he was
entirely comfortable there, until she had assured herself that all his
requirements, whatever they might be, had been fulfilled. She had a personal
relation to Sir Henry, and nobody on the staff could understand his temperament
as she understood it. At bottom, beneath all his imperious demeanour, he was a
bit helpless, was Sir Henry.
Coming out of Sir Henry's suite, she met Mr.
Perosi, the head of all the floor-waiters, the jealous commander of twenty-five
or thirty men. A tall, broad, heavy, grey-haired fellow (French despite his
name), whose weight pressed too hard on his feet, which were generally tired
and sore.
"Excuse me, Mr. Perosi--you are Mr. Perosi,
aren't you?" The middle-aged functionary, stopping, slowly nodded his head
and gave Violet the faintest fatigued sardonic smile. "I don't know a
thing yet about flowers here. And I want some for this suite. What do I
do?"
"You telephone down to the flower-shop. You
know the flower-shop?"
"Never heard of it."
"It's on the right in the corridor between
the hall and the grill-room. They always have carnations and roses. And if you
want any special flowers for a visitor at any time, you can always get them. A
visitor orders a bouquet of orchids at midnight--well any time after eight
o'clock you telephone to the manager's office. They have a key of the shop
there when it's closed, and whoever is on duty opens the shop and sends you up
orchids--or anything else. Of course in the ordinary way all flowers are taken
out of the sitting-rooms at seven in the morning every morning, and the vases
put into the corridor and they go down to the flower-shop to be examined.
They're back again before nine, changed or freshened, you see. Bedroom flowers
are changed when the visitors have left their rooms. It is very simple, Miss
Powler."
"Oh!" Violet exclaimed eagerly.
"You are kind. I was wondering how it was all arranged. Thanks very much.
Sorry to trouble you." She thought, pleased: "He knows my name."
Mr. Perosi's glance became benevolent, paternal.
"If you want to know anything else, come and
ask me. Fourth is the floor to find me. End of the corridor." He pointed.
"There was something else, but I
oughtn't--"
"What?" Perosi was suddenly harsh.
"I hardly like to ask you. But I've decided
to try to learn French. I suppose there are plenty of Frenchmen on your staff,
Mr. Perosi. I only thought--"
"I'm French," said Perosi in his perfect
colloquial English. "My father was born in Milan, but I'm French. So you
wish to learn French? That is good. I will see. Come to me to-night. I will
see."
"You are kind. But I'm returning to
Eighth this afternoon."
"And then? What does that matter? Telephone
to me." He passed on his way.
"Why don't they like him?" Violet
thought, meaning the other housekeepers. "He's a dear."
A sensation of happiness flowed into her, but it
did not quite destroy the vague unease which had been set up by the
incomprehensible order to go back to Eighth.
MESS
LUNCH
A very small room, so small that the telephone had
to be precariously perched on the window-sill. Photographs of seductive,
acquiescent, provocative and lightly clad girls on the walls; also two
photographs in a different style, on either side of the long, low
window--portraits respectively of Maître Planquet, chef of the restaurant
kitchens, and of Commendatore Rocco, chef of the grill kitchens. The latter was
a new addition to the walls. An oval table, relatively large, occupied most of
the room. Indeed there was no other furniture except chairs and a small
sideboard well stocked with bottles.
Seated at the table were Adolphe, the rosy-cheeked
Reception-manager; Major Linklater, a tall, thin, retired army-officer whose
business it was to fly about in aeroplanes and meet customers on liners at
Southampton, Cherbourg and Plymouth, and know them and all concerning them;
Immerson, the young, slim publicity-manager, whose dandyism of attire rivalled
even that of Mr. Dacker and Mr. Smiss (the youthful members of the Board);
Pozzi, the assistant-manager; and Commendatore Rocco.
The Commendatore, sole member of the staff with an
honorific title, dominated the table. A big man and a grim man, he was dressed
professionally in gleaming stainless white, and had a white cap on his mighty
head. The Commendatore, chief guest of the mess on this great occasion, spoke
little or not at all. When he did speak he used Italian to Adolphe (who could
chatter colloquially in most civilised languages) and French to the others. His
voice was deep, nearly a growl; and his soul was deeper. Perhaps even he
himself had never plumbed his soul quite to the bottom. He had a sardonic,
observant eye. He noticed his portrait hung on an equality with Maître
Planquet's, and made no remark thereon. But he thought: "And not too
soon!" Not that the Commendatore was jealous of the wider reputation of
Maître Planquet! No. He merely desired due recognition of the fact that Maître
Planquet was not the only chef in the Imperial Palace. The Commendatore was
much older than the Maître. He was a relative of the once-famous Rocco of the
Grand Babylon Hotel, but never mentioned the fact. His career had included
several of the supreme restaurants, and the kitchen of a deceased Rothschild.
He had refused a startlingly munificent offer from New York, with a memorable
aside to a friend: "Ce sont des barbares, les New-Yorkais." He
had been a known chef when Maître Planquet was an infant, and in the privacy of
his mind he regarded the Maître as a promising youngster to whom he could teach
a thing or two if he chose and if the youngster would learn. He had never done
anything save cook or superintend cooking and play "manila," called
by the Commendatore "maniglia," a card-game which he preferred
because it could be played by any number of gamblers from two to five; his
principal subordinates took care to learn it. But now he had yielded to golf
while the world wondered. A new and very special club in a pliant case was
propped against the wall in a corner of the room, ready for presentation to the
Commendatore.
Such was the mess (a mess without a name) and its
guest. Two other guests had yet to arrive. Mr. Orcham and Mr. Cousin, and two
empty chairs seemed to be growing impatient for their arrival. A couple of
waiters circled restlessly around the table, showing their expertise by not
getting in each other's way. From time to time the Commendatore growled to them
an imperious enquiry, which they respectfully answered. The Commendatore,
beneath his sardonic calm, was somewhat nervous for the plenary success of the
repast which he had composed and supervised with the nicest captious attention
down below. Cocktails were being sipped.
At half-past twelve Evelyn entered, smiling.
Everybody stood.
"I'm not late," said he. "But I'm
not used to these early hours."
The mess lunch was always at twelve-thirty, partly
because that was the continental hour for lunch, and partly because it fitted
in with the duties of the staff better than the English hour. Evelyn took his
seat at the head of the table, and the others resumed their chairs.
"Where's my friend Cousin?" he asked.
"Coming, sir--we hope," said Major
Linklater.
"Damn that hammering," said Evelyn.
"I must stop it." He rose.
"That's what we all say," said the
Major.
The Imperial Palace was in a continuous state of
structural improvement, and a band of workmen were busy on a roof just below
the level of the window. But before Evelyn could reach the window, the noise
ceased as by magic. Workmen's dinner hour.
"You have only to rise, sir," laughed
Adolphe.
"I'm sure Mr. Cousin won't mind if we
start--will he, Pozzi?"
"Certainly not, sir."
The meal began at once.
"Ah!" said Evelyn. "Hot hors d'œuvre!
So you're going on with that idea of yours, Commendatore. I've not had this one
before."
The Commendatore replied:
"My director, no one has had this before. I
invent six new ones every day. Another two days, and it will be a month since I
began. That will make one hundred and eighty-six new combinations. That is
work, if I may dare to say so. I have been reserving this one expressly for
to-day." He ate reflectively, critically, appreciatively, as though
listening with attention to a new poem or piece of concerted music. "Yes,
truly it is not bad. The mushrooms, prepared like this...It is necessary to
drink sherry with it. As for me, I never touch sherry; but sherry should go
with it."
All the lunchers eagerly lauded the novel dish.
Sherry was served. Evelyn forbade the wine-waiter with a gesture.
"Vittel," he murmured. And aloud to the
Commendatore:
'We don't get these in the restaurant."
The glance of the Commendatore signified: "Of
course you do not. The restaurant is only the restaurant, but the grill is the
grill." His growling tongue said: "My director, if once you would
come to the grill--"
"I will. Demain, sans faute,"
Evelyn answered.
"I shall be too honoured, my director.
Lunch?"
"Lunch."
"I shall give myself the pleasure of
occupying myself with it specially."
On the rare occasions when he did not lunch
privately, Evelyn lunched in a corner of the restaurant. He realised that he
would be well advised to divide his patronage less unequally.
The Commendatore had the same thought, and his tone,
though formally submissive, did not hide the thought and was not meant to hide
it. He glanced as it were stealthily about him. Publicity men, managerial men,
reception men, even the Director himself: what were they? Naught! He, Rocco,
was the sole artist and creator in the room. He alone really understood. The
others, kindly, and clever enough in their way, were savages. La haute
cuisine. He dreamed. Golf--not serious, a game, a diversion. La haute
cuisine. Not fifty people in the world were equipped by education and
natural taste to comprehend it. Planquet might comprehend that hors d'œuvre.
Yes, possibly the youngster would comprehend it. Yes, he must admit that the
youngster would. The Director comprehended wines, cigars. That he knew, though
it was almost incredible that an Englishman should comprehend any wine but
champagne. And even champagne...With their mania for extra sec! It was
time the Director patronised the grill. Not to do so amounted to an insult. But
he, Rocco, was truly too benevolent. He might retire, for in Italy he would be
a rich man. Or he could choose between a dozen high situations. But after all,
the Imperial Palace--there were not two of them! And Rocco was extremely
flattered that day. The artist despised, but the man admired, the chic
of his hosts; he in white, they in black. And golf! Very smart, golf. The entry
into society, into the beau monde. He, son of a small rice-grower!
The telephone-bell rang. Pozzi jumped to it and
listened; then sat down.
"Mr. Cousin is detained," said he, and
after a moment added: "Sir Henry Savott."
"What about Savott?" Evelyn questioned.
"It is he who is detaining Mr. Cousin."
Evelyn rose and stepped across to the telephone
himself.
"Manager's office, please...that you, Cousin?
Orcham speaking. You have Sir Henry Savott with you. I only wanted to tell you
this. There is no accommodation on Eighth. You understand?...Yes. Right."
Nobody understood what the instruction implied. It
made them all think, uneasily, but agreeably too; the suggestion of a skirmish
between the Director and an important visitor was always exciting. Even
Adolphe, who knew everything about visitors, was at a loss to understand the
instruction. Evelyn sat down again, and in a gay tone immediately addressed
Adolphe:
"Well, Adolphe, how are you getting on with
that novel I lent you?" Evelyn read a large number of books--nobody knew
when--and he talked of what he read. The novel was the latest example of the
fashionable, brilliant, daring variety, which had been recommended for suppression
by the godly and which not to have read amounted to a social solecism.
"I finished it last night, sir," said
Adolphe. "I should call it mild. The chapter in the underground bakehouse
between the girl and the baker nude down to the waist is not bad, but I'm
afraid they wouldn't think much of its realism in Czecho-Slovakia."
Everybody laughed, for Czecho-Slovakia was one of Adolphe's weaknesses.
"Now don't boast, Adolphe," said Major
Linklater. "You aren't a Czecho-Slovakian. You wish to heaven you were."
"I very nearly was," Adolphe innocently
retorted.
"Yes, we've heard that story about a million
times," said Major Linklater. "So spare us, my beamish boy."
"I wish somebody would tell me the meaning of
that word 'beamish'," Adolphe retorted. "It isn't in the
dictionary."
"And it never will be," said the Major.
"It would set any dictionary on fire, and there'd be a smell of sulphur.
You have to be English and you have to have your name put down for it when
you're eight years old, and then perhaps the high-priest will vouchsafe to you
its meaning when you're eighteen. Otherwise you haven't an earthly. Tell us
about the bakehouse scene."
After Adolphe had picturesquely and boldly
described the bakehouse scene, which had been discussed at hundreds of
dinner-tables, in and out of the Imperial Palace, Major Linklater went on, to
Evelyn:
"May I have that book, sir, after Adolphe? I
should love to know what Adolphe thinks would be thought mild in
Czecho-Slovakia."
"I'll make a present of it to the mess,"
said Evelyn. "Then you can talk bawdy and everyone can join in."
"Dr. Johnson," murmured young Dr.
Constam.
"Noble sir!" exclaimed Major Linklater.
"Gentlemen! The health of the noble Director."
There was some applause, actual clapping of hands,
amid which the next dish was introduced into the room--a John Dory fish, cooked
and sauced from an absolutely original recipe of the only creative artist
present.
"Serve me first," the Commendatore
gruffly told the waiter.
"I am not very sure of this dish." He
tasted.
"That goes," he growled with relief, and
glanced at the Director, who tasted.
"This is quite new to me," said the
Director.
"Yes, my director," said the
Commendatore, grimly triumphant. "And to the world."
"First time on any stage!" said Major
Linklater. "Gentlemen, we drink to the success of the Commendatore's
novelty."
Suddenly, after a lot more benevolent badinage,
young Dr. Constam said in his quiet, cheerful, modest voice:
"I have a piece of really stupendous
news."
"Don't hesitate," Evelyn encouraged him.
"Perosi has at last fallen."
"Down the lift-well?" Adolphe surmised.
"For a woman." Dr. Constam looked round
as if to say:
"Beat that if you can!"
"What! Old flatfoot?"
"The same. I think his relations with our
glittering bevy of housekeepers have always been very correct. But distant. Oh
yes, distant. Well, I happened to meet him this morning, and it's a positive
fact that he began all on his own talking about the new housekeeper--I forget
her name."
"Didn't know there was a new
housekeeper," Major Linklater said.
"No. You're always a month or so behind the
times," said Adolphe. "If the Palace was burnt down you wouldn't hear
of it till it'd been rebuilt. Well, who is she?"
"Her name is Powler," said Evelyn.
"Well," Dr. Constam continued. "As
I say, he began talking about her. Said she was very agreeable and serious. And
she wants to learn French, and he's going to give her lessons himself."
"No bakehouse scenes, I hope." Adolphe
laughed.
Young Immerson, sitting next to him, pressed his foot
hard on Adolphe's toe.
"He used to be a schoolmaster," said
Evelyn calmly. "Commendatore, tell me something about this most
distinguished sauce, will you?"
All were subtly aware of a certain constraint. And
the conversation faltered and lost its gaiety until after the fish had been
removed. Not a word more as to Perosi, or as to Violet Powler. Then young Pozzi
looked at his watch.
"Your chief doesn't seem to be coming,"
said Evelyn.
"Doesn't look like it...Will you make the
presentation, sir?"
"Most assuredly not," said Evelyn.
"This is a hotel-staff affair. If Mr. Cousin isn't here, you're his
second-in-command, and you must perform the ceremony."
At which Pozzi, with a graceful timidity which
delighted Evelyn, went to the corner, seized the golf-club and handed it in its
case to the Commendatore with ten halting words in Italian. The Commendatore
had to pretend to be surprised, and the company had to pretend that the great
golfer of the immediate future would be Commendatore Rocco and that the sequel
would play hell with the grill-kitchens and ruin the whole hotel.
"I think I may add one thing," said
Evelyn. "Rocco has the ideal temperament for a good golfer. It's like a
rock. Gentlemen, fill your glasses." They all stood. Even Rocco,
disproving Evelyn's statement as to the rockiness of his temperament, stood,
from sheer nervousness.
The ceremony was finished, and the meal finished
very quietly afterwards. Mr. Cousin had failed to appear. Men looked at their
watches. Staff-lunches had to be rapid at the Imperial Palace. Soon all, except
Evelyn and Immerson, had gone--Rocco first, with his magnificent club, his
pride as a creative artist, and his dream of triumph over eighteen holes.
The two laggards were standing, while Immerson
held a gold lighter to Evelyn's cigarette.
"Can you spare me a minute, sir?"
Immerson suggested with his customary deference.
Evelyn nodded. The senior of the waiters had
already departed; the other was in the tiny service-room which adjoined the
mess-room. Immerson happened to be one of Evelyn's young pets, perhaps the
chief among them. He was a quiet fellow who spoke, when he did speak, in a low,
restrained voice. At the luncheon he had said hardly a word. He had been at the
Imperial Palace only three years, and was still a few months under thirty. He
had come out of the blue to see Evelyn. When Evelyn had enquired what had
decided him to leave general advertising in order to specialise in hotel
advertising, he had answered: "My Christian names, sir. An omen. A
signpost." His Christian names by chance were "Frederick
Gordon"--name of one of the pioneers of the modern British hotel world.
When Evelyn had asked him what were his leading ideas about the hotel business
from his point of view he had answered: "It's no use waiting for business
to come in You have to go out and get it. And you won't get it by display-ads
of the kind you're putting now in London dailies. Londoners don't use London
hotels, except their restaurants, and even if your restaurant is full your
hotel won't pay if your bedrooms are empty."
Immerson was engaged, on salary plus commission.
He stopped all the Palace's newspaper advertising in London, and was running
campaigns in the provinces and abroad for the inculcation of a theory that
London, the world's centre, was a jolly and bright city, and for depreciating
the attractions of the Riviera and other resorts. He ran also columns of gossip
in many provincial papers, and in these columns the words "Imperial
Palace" constantly appeared, as though by accident. He never paid for
space in a newspaper.
He had seized with enthusiasm upon Evelyn's scheme
for establishing an "Imperial Palace" bureau in New York, and had
improved on it by persuading non-competing luxury hotels throughout Europe and
in Egypt to co-operate in sharing the advantages and the expense thereof. His
recent visit to the United States had been a very brilliant success.
Incidentally, one of its results was to multiply the functions of Major
Linklater, the hotel's official welcomer to England's shores. Evelyn's final
verdict on Immerson was that the young man had more, and more original and more
audacious, imagination than any other person on the staff. "This
boy," Evelyn had said to himself, "must be co-opted to the Board as
soon as Lingmell has the grace to retire--if not sooner."
"Forgive me," Immerson began, leaning
against the mess-table. "No doubt you have noticed the drop in North
Atlantic shares these last few days."
North Atlantic was the illustrious company which
owned the fleet of liners all of whose names ended in "us."
"I have not," Evelyn answered. "Why
should I? Because transatlantic liners are called 'floating hotels'?"
"They fell several shillings yesterday, and
they're falling still more to-day. And to-morrow they'll probably go down with
a bump."
"Why?"
"The 'Daily Mercury' is coming out to-morrow
with a terrific stunt about that splitting of one of the decks on the
'Caractacus'. They've been collecting all the details, and they've found a
woman who had her thigh broken in a lurch of the ship during the voyage. The
Company has paid her handsomely to hold her tongue, but some women can't rely
on themselves to do that." Immerson gave a faint smile. "The 'Daily
Mercury' is bound to lose some steamer advertising, but it doesn't carry much,
and it reckons that what it loses on the swings it will make on the
roundabouts. Anyhow the story'll be a great story. It's quite possible that
traffic will be affected."
"Not for long."
"No. But even a month is too long for us. If
traffic's affected we shall be affected. You see--forgive me for reminding you,
sir--the 'Caractacus' is German built, and there are several other German-built
ships on the New York services. They'll all be affected, especially as the
'Caractacus' is laid up for what's called reconditioning. The 'Mercury' will go
on the anti-German lay. I've been to the North Atlantic people this morning and
offered them a few hints on how to react. And I'm going again this afternoon,
if you approve, sir. I think I can get something in one of to-morrow's papers,
the 'Echo'--it has a bigger circulation than even the 'Mercury'."
"You go right on," said Evelyn. "I
leave it to you."
"Thank you, sir. But I haven't come to the
point yet."
"Oh?"
"No, sir. From what I hear, our friend Sir Henry
Savott is at the bottom of all this. He's a very large shareholder in North
Atlantic, and my private information is that one reason for the fall in the
shares is that he's been unloading heavily. He'll buy in again when the fall
has reached its limit, and he might make a couple of hundred thousand over the
thing in the end...No, not that much; but quite a lot."
"Is he a director of North Atlantic?"
"Oh no, sir. If he had been he daren't have
done it. No! He's far too clever to be a director. But I daresay he has a
director or two in his pocket."
"Well," said Evelyn, masking an
excusable agitation. "It's all very interesting--very interesting indeed.
When you say that Savott is at the bottom of it, do you mean he's at the bottom
of the 'Mercury' stunt as well?"
"Nothing would surprise me less, sir,"
Immerson replied with characteristic caution.
"I must go now," said Evelyn, not
because he was due for another appointment, but because he wanted to be alone.
"Pardon me for detaining you, sir,"
Immerson deferentially apologised.
The other waiter returned, and the next moment the
two waiters, busy clearing the table in the room now deserted by their betters,
were freely discussing in French the alluring details of the bakehouse chapter.
THE
NEW MILLIONAIRE
The next night Evelyn, with time to spare after a
busy forenoon and afternoon of varied diplomatic and administrative toil, was putting
on a dinner-jacket at leisure in his bedroom. He had in his mind a surfeit of
matter for meditation.
Having returned to the Imperial Palace from an
excursion as to which Evelyn knew nothing except that it had included Paris,
Sir Henry Savott had suggested a second interview and had invited him to
dinner. Evelyn had found an excuse for insisting that the meeting should occur
in the same place as the first one, his own dunghill or castle. He would not
give up the advantage of the ground which he had chosen.
Sir Henry's proposal had occupied his thoughts for
days. He had pretended to himself that he had come to no decision, even a
tentative decision, about it. But the pretence was a failure. He had tried, in
vain, to discover good reasons for declining the proposal without any further
discussion. He had talked it over with Dennis Dover, and the throaty old man
had obviously felt the attraction of the offer. It was an offer which appealed
to his imagination, as to Evelyn's. It was a grandiose, glittering offer. It
might have drawbacks, pitfalls, snares; acceptance of it would necessarily be
preceded by a terrific battle of terms and conditions; but father Dennis had
made plain his view that it ought not to be turned down out of hand. Evelyn
agreed; impossible for him to disagree. The temptations of the offer, to
Evelyn, were tremendous, and the more he reflected upon them, the more
tremendous they seemed and were. Evelyn was like a man who hesitates and fears
to admit that he is in love with a beautiful, dangerous woman; yet well knows
that he is in her power.
Also father Dennis had said: "I can't live
for ever. What will happen to my shares if I die? My grand-nephew will happen
to them, because nobody else can happen to them."
Of course, by the Resolution passed at the Special
Meeting and very soon to be formally ratified, the Board of Directors would
still have control of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company, and could in theory
ride over any shareholder, however large. But in practice it might be difficult
to do so. The moral factor in the situation would count. At best, that
notorious grand-nephew, old Dennis being dead, could not be refused a seat on
the Board; and a director who is the largest shareholder in a concern can
hardly be ignored. Anything might occur; trouble would assuredly occur. Whereas
if the Imperial Palace became merely the leading item in a vast merger, the
incalculable grand-nephew would be deprived of his paramount importance. There
were other pointers to an acceptance of Sir Henry's proposal, and not the least
of them was Evelyn's secret instinct and inclination growing daily within him.
And then had come young Immerson's tidings,
followed by the highly sensational stunt article in the "Daily
Mercury," which had reverberated throughout London, and was a chief topic
of conversation; and North Atlantic shares had had a fall as sensational as the
article, though later in the day they had risen again somewhat. Could Evelyn
bring himself to have dealings with the man who, he was convinced, was primarily
responsible for the stunt and the fall? The notion revolted him. Accustomed to
rapid and definitive judgments, he was for once embarrassed by genuine
irresolution. In twenty minutes he would be face to face with Sir Henry, and he
had not decided what attitude to adopt. His mental discomfort was extreme.
And there was something else, more strange. The
affair of Violet Powler. He had heard--and not by chance--that Savott had moved
from the Third to the Eighth floor. Cousin had told him of the change as a
phenomenon quite extraordinary, inexplicable. Why should a millionaire leave
the rich spaciousness of Third for the small rooms of Eighth? Savott's
specified reasons--the better view and the greater tranquility--had appeared to
Cousin remarkably insufficient. Evelyn had feigned to regard them as sufficient
and had dismissed the caprice as trifling. But in fact he had been perturbed by
it. Savott had spoken with appreciation of Violet. Violet had the excellences
of her sister. Savott had nearly married the sister, on his own admission. He
knew that Violet was entering the service of the Imperial Palace. Evelyn had
the absurd suspicion that Savott, having somehow learnt on his arrival that
Violet was to be stationed on Eighth, had gone up there with the intention of
renewing relations with her, of reconsidering her. Yes, an absurd suspicion.
But, entertaining it, Evelyn had deviously arranged that Violet should descend
to Third. Then Savott had returned to Third. The suspicion ceased to be absurd,
and grew into a positive certainty...And why should not Savott seek to renew
relations with Violet? Violet was well able to take care of herself. Beyond any
doubt she was not at all the sort of young woman to be deceived by even the
cleverest speciousness. As old Perosi had said, she was 'serious.' But Evelyn
did not like the look of the thing. Violet was safe. Savott might be perfectly
honest. He, Evelyn, had no interest in Violet except as, in a sense, a
protégée. He simply did not like the look of the thing. It annoyed him. It
outraged him. He would not allow Savott to play any games in his hotel. Never!
He had control of the situation, and he would exercise his control.
So he had restored Violet to Eighth, and had
instructed Cousin to inform Savott that there was now no accommodation on
Eighth. Not that he knew that Savott had been suggesting to Cousin a return to
Eighth. Cousin had volunteered nothing about the nature of the interview with
Savott. And Evelyn had not questioned Cousin. Either he was too proud to
question his manager, or he feared to receive an answer which might entirely
demolish his theory of the inwardness of Savott's odd peregrinations. He would
not have Violet on the same floor as her former employer, and he had no wish to
argue the point. The point was decided. Funny! It was all extremely funny, a
lark, a regular game. Evelyn laughed aloud: a harsh, sinister laugh. He had had
an impulse to ask Oldham whether Oldham was acquainted with Savott's valet.
But, again, pride had stopped him.
At this very moment Oldham entered the bedroom.
The flabby face of the stoutish, unkempt man was transfigured by some mighty
emotion. Evelyn noticed this, but he ignored it in a sudden determination to
let pride go and question Oldham.
"Do you know Sir Henry Savott's valet?"
he demanded at once.
Oldham was dashed, as by an unexpected obstacle.
"Well, sir, I know him. He's been
ill."
"Yes, so I heard."
"I don't really know him. As you may see, sir,
when I tell you he's never told me his surname. But we've had one or two chats.
He being a valet, and me too."
"Ever talked to him about our
housekeepers?"
"Well, sir, we may have mentioned it."
"He asked you?"
"Now I come to think of it, I believe he did
speak about the new one--Miss Powler. Just in the way of talk."
"Did you tell him anything?"
"No, sir. I couldn't. I didn't know anything,
except she'd come from the Laundry. Seems she used to be with Sir Henry, sir. He
told me that. Else I doubt if I should have remembered it. Yes, and he asked me
what floor she was on, and I told him. Then when I saw him day before
yesterday--was it?--and he was up and about, and Miss Powler had been moved to
Third, he happened to ask me what floor she'd been moved to."
"And you told him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well," said Evelyn stiffly, in a tone
somewhat censorious. "I wish you wouldn't gossip about hotel affairs to
visitors' servants." He knew that the reproach was unfair, but he would
not admit to himself that it was unfair.
"Sorry, sir," Oldham apologised, but
with a strange, surprising, defiant stiffness far surpassing Evelyn's
stiffness.
"That's all. What do you want? I didn't
ring."
"No, sir. The fact is I've just heard
something, and I thought you might like to know. Sorry if it's
inconvenient." Oldham was wounded. He made a move to retire.
"What is it?"
"Well, sir. It's like this. I've won that
thousand pounds. I've had a letter this minute."
"What thousand pounds?"
"Football Results Competition, sir. It'll be
in next Sunday's paper. I have to call and see them myself to get the cheque.
And they want me to be photographed."
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn with a
charming sympathetic smile. "It's the best piece of news I've heard for a
long time."
"Thank you, sir," said Oldham, quickly
mollified, but still sturdily--man to man, not as valet to master.
Evelyn had lied. It was not the best piece of news
he had heard for a long time; it was the worst. He divined instantly that he
would lose Oldham. He was overset by a feeling that Oldham was necessary to
him, that existence without Oldham would be impossible. A marvellous, an
incredible thing had happened in the life of Oldham. The man was vibrating with
heavenly joy. Evelyn, as his friend, ought to have shared the joy. He did not.
He hardly made an attempt to enter into Oldham's unique sensations. He even
resented Oldham's astounding luck, simply because one consequence of the luck
meant that he, Evelyn, would be for a period incommoded.
"So I expect you'll be leaving?" he
said, and waited for the reply as for the death-sentence from a judge.
"I won't leave you till it suits you,
sir," Oldham replied. "Certainly not. You've always been very kind to
me, sir, and I'd like to be--" He stopped, realising that for a valet,
even a wealthy valet, to offer to be very kind to his employer would be a too
daring sin against established convention.
Yes, the fellow would leave. He had evidently
decided to leave. It would be nothing to him to break the lien that had bound
him and his master together in daily, intimate habit and intercourse. Servants
were all alike, incapable of gratitude. And they were all children. Now you
would have taken Oldham for a sensible man. But was he? How could he be, if a
thousand pounds was enough to induce him to abandon a secure livelihood? The
truth was that when a sum of money passed a certain figure servants ceased to
be able to estimate its value. As Central African natives could not count
beyond ten, so 'they' could not count beyond, say, a hundred or a couple of
hundred. To Oldham a thousand pounds was as good as a million, as good as ten
millions; it was infinity--and therefore inexhaustible. And Oldham was drunk
with bliss.
"That's very good of you, Oldham," said
Evelyn. "But of course you must tell me when. Got any plans?"
"Well, sir, I was thinking I might do worse
than buy a little tobacconist's business. You see them advertised. I saw one
the other day on sale for two hundred pounds cash. Camberwell. Camberwell's a
very nice part, don't you think so, sir?"
"Yes, I think it is."
The usual thing. Tobacconist's business! Why a
tobacconist's business? Did Oldham know anything about tobacco, and buying and
selling, and dealing with customers, and so on and so on? He did not. He just pictured
himself standing behind a counter and smoking a cigarette or a pipe or even a
cigar, and handing out packets of cigarettes and matches and pipes and an
occasional cigar, and raking in money all the time and chatting in a worldly,
benevolent, easy fashion with customers. The ideal life for the Oldhams of the
earth! Simpletons! Fools! Blasted fools! Within a year the man's capital would
be halved. Within two years he wouldn't have a cent. He would be on the
streets, seeking a situation in the cushiony sort of job that he was now so
idiotically preparing to quit! Could you believe it of a man such as Oldham?
Well, you could. It was exactly what you ought to expect.
"Excellent!" said Evelyn, amiably and
without conviction. "But be careful how you buy. You'd better consult me
before you do anything. Or better still, talk to someone down in the audit
office. You'd need an expert to go into the figures. I've heard some funny
tales about this business-buying business. There are swindlers who make a
regular trade of it."
"Oh!" said Oldham, magnificently
self-confident in his opulence. "I shall be careful. I think I may say you
know me, sir. But I'm much obliged to you, sir, and when the time comes I shall
ask your advice."
Nincompoop! Noodle! Folie des grandeurs!
Then Evelyn softened, little by little. The man
was entitled to his own life. He was entitled to leave if it suited him to
leave. And as for the gratitude which masters are continually expecting, and
not receiving, from their servants--what about Evelyn's gratitude due to Oldham
for efficient and faithful service during years and years? Did Evelyn feel it?
He did not. He felt resentment. He strove to conquer his resentment, and to
some small extent he succeeded. After all, Oldham was not a thief, nor a slacker,
nor incompetent. He was a fortunate man, thanks to his encyclopædic knowledge
of form in Association Football. Evelyn dismissed him with a gentle pat on the
shoulder, which delighted Oldham and confirmed him in his new creed that all
men are equal. Evelyn smiled, but far down beneath the smile he was extremely
perturbed and pessimistic. He cursed these newspapers which would increase
their already vast circulations by appealing to the gambling instincts of the
populace.
FALSE
REPRIEVE
"You taught me something that honestly I
didn't know about cigars," said Sir Henry at a quarter to ten that
evening, as he lit one of Evelyn's cigars after the second dinner in Evelyn's
fortress. He added, looking meditatively at the bright end of the cigar:
"But I'm certain to forget. I always light a cigar about five times. It's
a habit, and I shall never get over it." He laughed carelessly.
"You didn't forget last time, once I'd made
my protest," said Evelyn.
"Didn't I?" Sir Henry's tone indicated
that really he couldn't recall what he had done or not done, and that anyhow
the matter, to him, had no importance.
Gracie had remarked to Evelyn that while her father
was a great man, he had the weakness of acting the great man. But during the
dinner the great man had indulged in no histrionics. He had talked simply,
unaffectedly, about the lighter side of his short stay in Paris, spoken of
Gracie, and of the two Cheddar brothers, one of whom was also in Paris, of the
big spectacular revues there specialising in naked women, and of his own
inability to 'follow' a French play.
But now Evelyn's critical faculty pounced upon Sir
Henry's demeanour in the cigar incident as probably a proof that Gracie had
been right. He decided that what Sir Henry had really said was: "I am a
great man, a unique man, and if I choose to relight a cigar, it's correct
because I do it. I can afford to treat a cigar as I please, and I shan't risk
any prestige by my oddness. I'm Sir Henry Savott, I am." And Evelyn in his
heart rather condescended towards the conscious performer in Sir Henry.
Still, the millionaire had again proved himself an
agreeable and diverting companion, sometimes charmingly ingenuous, and rarely
coarse. He had said not a single word as to the proposed hotel-merger: to
Evelyn's relief. For until the end of the meal the coveted panjandrum of the
coveted Imperial Palace had not fully regained his self-possession. But now the
would-be retail tobacconist had quitted the sitting-room for the last time, and
with such a perfect affectionate deference in his final murmur to the master
that Evelyn had reinstated him in esteem and liking, and the waking nightmare
was dissolved, its obsession vanished away, and Evelyn's sense of proportion
restored. He was in a proper condition to face the great man with assurance,
and use wile against wile. As before, the great man would have to begin.
The great man did begin, on a topic which both he and
his host had so far avoided. The first phenomenon was a smile, followed by a
hardly audible laugh. Evelyn glanced at him interrogatively.
"I was just thinking about the 'Caractacus'
fireworks in the 'Mercury' this morning. I suppose you saw it?"
"Yes," said Evelyn drily. "It was
what they call 'brought to my notice.' I also saw the North Atlantic reply this
afternoon in the 'Echo.' What they said about the split being caused by
structural alterations of their own to make room for extra lifts was rather effective,
I thought. It gives their architect away, but it sounds true, and if it's true
it does save the reputation of the ship as originally built."
"The reply was very clever," said Sir
Henry.
"Yes," thought Evelyn, "and if I
told you it had been put together by one of the fellows on my staff here you
might be a bit startled."
"Only," Sir Henry went on, "it came
out about two hours too late. The North Atlantic market had gone to pieces
before noon. The shares recovered a trifle this afternoon, but not much.
They've had a tousling."
He rose, and walked slowly to and fro in the warm,
curtained room; then stood with his back against the damask draperies of the
window, and at that distance from Evelyn grew confidential:
"The 'Mercury' people came to see me about
the thing last week. They wanted my evidence. I refused to tell them anything,
naturally. But of course I had to be careful. If I'd shut my mouth absolutely
they'd have used that to support their story, me being a very large holder of
North Atlantics. So I pretended to be very open--and didn't give away anything
that isn't known to at least five hundred people. You know, the comfort of
those crack hell-for-leather liners is one of the most ridiculous legends ever
invented by our reptile press. When I say 'reptile' I'm saying it in a
Parliamentary sense. The papers aren't bribed. They don't keep the legend alive
for money. The biggest steamer advertisement is nothing to a big daily. No.
They keep it alive because it sounds so nice. Good copy. Symbol of luxury, and
everybody wants to read about luxury. But even in good weather those rushers
positively shake half the time. It isn't a mere vibration. It's like
having electric massage all day, including at meals. And in bad weather they're
no better than 12,000 tonners. Not as good. Some of 'em roll till sometimes the
only way to keep yourself upright is to lie flat on the deck. They're liable to
throw piles of plates across the dining-saloon, and chuck you all over your
cabin. They drop from under you until you think your stomach's above your head.
I mean in bad weather. The food isn't too awful, considering they have to serve
five or six hundred people at once. But nobody can feed five or six hundred at
once on really good food. It can't be done. And the prices are insane. I
paid £1,000 for my suite last time I came over. And there was a bigger ass than
me on board. He paid thirteen hundred. And the tips! All for 27knots! Well, I
prefer 18 or 19 knots. I'll never do it again."
A pause. Evelyn said:
"On New Year's Eve here I shall serve a
thousand people at once, and the food will not be too awful. It'll be the best
there is."
"Ah!" murmured Sir Henry. "But you
are you."
"You try it--on New Year's Eve."
"I will," said Sir Henry. "I'll
make a pointof trying it."
He returned to his chair, smoking his cigar with
conscious restraint.
"I don't mind telling you," he continued
in a lower tone, dreamy, "as soon as the 'Mercury' people had been to see
me I began to sell my North Atlantics. I sold a big packet, and I kept on
selling 'em."
"And now you'll buy back," said Evelyn
sardonically.
"And now I shall buy back," Sir Henry
agreed. "I bought a lot this morning at rock bottom, and a lot more this
afternoon a bit higher, and I'm ready for more to-morrow. I shall clear quite a
lump of money on the 'Mercury' stunt. Well, one must live...And why not?"
Evelyn repeated in his mind: "And why
not?"
The fact was that Savott had 'dropped from under'
Evelyn's feet. The great man had been perfectly open. He had frankly confessed.
No! 'Confess' was the wrong word. There had been nothing to confess. Confession
implied sin. The great man had not sinned. He had behaved as any speculative
investor would behave. He had not broken the code. The code was intact. It
might be, as Immerson had suggested, that he was at the bottom of the 'Mercury'
stunt. But that was a supposition and could never be proved. And even if he had
been at the bottom of it, what then? He had not departed from the truth. The
details were indisputable. The deck had split. Indeed, by smashing the age-long
Fleet Street sentimental conspiracy of hush-hush about Atlantic liners, the
great man, assuming what might be termed his guilt, had done good. Evelyn hated
any policy of hush-hush in anything. And yet he was of pure English blood: that
is to say, he had in him, so far as he knew, no tincture of Scottish, Irish,
Welsh, French, German, Italian, American nor Jewish.
"By the way," said Sir Henry. "I
had a long talk with your man Cousin yesterday. In the end I asked him to
lunch."
"What's he going to say now?" Evelyn
thought. Having been twice down to Weybridge and once to the Laundry and
attended a long Board meeting, he had not seen Cousin for more than a couple of
minutes in the two days, and he knew nothing of the nature of the interview
which had prevented Cousin from attending the luncheon given to the
Commendatore.
Sir Henry proceeded:
"I heard by accident that Cousin had been
connected with the Concorde in Paris and the Minerva at Cannes--"
"Yes, he was manager of the Minerva for a
time," Evelyn interjected.
"So he said. Well, as both the Concorde and
the Minerva are included in my proposed team, it struck me it might be useful
to get some independent views about them. So I did."
"I hope you were satisfied," said
Evelyn, and thought:
"Here I go again! Wrong again! I imagined he
was manœuvring with Cousin to get back to Eighth. And he wasn't at all. This
suspiciousness is growing on me. If I let it, I shall soon be as suspicious as
a millionaire."
"On the whole," Sir Henry replied,
"I was very well satisfied with the look of things. You don't mind me
talking to him, do you?"
"Certainly not," said Evelyn. "Why
shouldn't you?"
"I needn't tell you I didn't ask him anything
about this place. No."
Evelyn thought: "It would have been just the
same if you had." He said nothing.
Sir Henry was restless. He sat back; then demanded
suddenly:
"Well, what's your decision about my
proposal, Orcham?" There it was at last! The question, unexpected at that
moment, hit him like a stone.
"Decision?" He repeated the word
hesitatingly. "Why! I don't even know what the proposal is yet. You don't
expect me to say Yes or No to a mere idea, do you?" He gazed fairly at the
father of Gracie classing him as a wild, impulsive creature, for all his
astuteness. Was that the way the princes of finance allowed their minds to skip
from hilltop to hilltop across the landscape? Something the matter with him! He
peered more boldly into Sir Henry's little, shrewd eyes, striving as it were to
pierce through them into the crafty brain behind; but striving vainly. He could
not even define the general expression on the man's face. It seemed a candid
expression. But was it? The ruthless teeth were hidden as Sir Henry pursed his
lips.
"You misunderstand me," said the
financier with a smile quite gentle. "All I meant was: Have you decided to
examine my proposition? Or not. If not, I won't trouble you any further. If
yes, I'll put the entire scheme before you within the next day or two. All the
figures and calculations. And a definite offer as to price for Imperial Palace
shares, and also of course as to the terms of the contract with you
personally."
Having said this, he faintly hummed a fragment of
Auld Lang Syne, evidently inspired by Evelyn's reference to the New Year's Eve
banquet, and inspected the burning stump of his cigar.
Evelyn had the sensation of having been reprieved;
from a sentence passed not by the financier but by himself. But he knew that
the sensation was false. There was no real reprieve. He knew that a decision to
examine the proposition was the equivalent of a decision to sell the Imperial
Palace to Savott's merger. Once the two parties began to bargain, an agreement
would be ultimately certain. Nothing could stop it. Savott had a powerful supporter;
that supporter was Evelyn himself. Evelyn could not seriously resist the
glittering temptation which Savott dangled in front of him. One Evelyn did
indeed resist, but another Evelyn was entranced by the resplendency of the
promise of the future, and the first Evelyn could not for long resist unaided.
It seemed to the composite Evelyn that he shut his eyes and jumped from a great
height.
"Of course," he said, in an even tone.
"Of course we shall be charmed to examine the proposal. Let us know
when you're ready." He felt relieved now: a man who knows the worst.
"Good! I will," said Sir Henry
cheerfully, showing his perfect teeth.
And Evelyn was whispering to himself: "My
God! My God! If anyone had foretold this to me a month ago I should have--My
God! My God!" A fuse had been lighted before dinner and it had gone on
slowly and silently burning during dinner and after dinner, and now--the sudden
explosion!
"I say," said Sir Henry. "There was
one thing I wanted to mention to you. Nothing to do with this. About that girl
Violet Powler."
"Yes?" Evelyn muttered, alert and
hostile.
"You've only got to say no, and you can
forget I've spoken. I'll forget too. I'm buying a new house. I shall want a
housekeeper. Don't shoot me, I know she's in your employ, and to lose her might
be rather inconvenient for you. I admit she's one in a thousand. But I knew her
first. And she knows me. Now would you mind if I made her an offer of the job
of housekeeper at my new house? I won't breathe it if you object. And in any
case I wouldn't try to over-persuade her. No! I'd say: 'There it is, miss. Take
it or leave it.' You see I'm being quite open. Perhaps I'm asking too much.
Perhaps it isn't fair. I just mention it--that's all." Savott's face was
the very mirror of candour and goodwill. This Savott could surely not be the
cunning coarse Savott with whom and his daughter Evelyn had dined one night in
the restaurant.
"My dear fellow," Evelyn exclaimed.
"Naturally you must ask her. I wouldn't dream of standing in the girl's
way."
A little later the two men parted, all smiles and
handclasps and cordial friendliness. They might have been sworn brothers.
"Delightful castle!" said Sir Henry,
quietly enthusiastic, glancing round the room. "I love it. And once
more--you're really very kind. I appreciate it. Good night."
Evelyn put out the lamps in the castle; and in the
light of the low fire and of the corridor lamp through the wide-open doors two
glasses on the table glinted mysteriously. He shut the inner door on the hot
interior wherein as it seemed to him a decisive and intimidating event had
occurred. This event filled his mind, but the ether of the thought of it was
suffused with the ether of the thought of Savott's intentions towards Violet
Powler. Evelyn had to descend to his office, and in doing so he made one of his
periodical peregrinations of the hotel, walking slowly along corridors and down
flights of stairs, eschewing lifts.
He saw his hotel now with a different vision, as
though he had left it and come back and found it a strange land and himself a
stranger in it. If he had not laughed at his own feeling he might have fallen
from sentiment into sentimentality.
He had covered about a quarter of a mile of
carpet, and glanced at scores of baffling numbered doors, and seen no sign of
life in the nocturnal coma of the place except the swift ascent of an
illuminated lift behind a steel grille, and had reached the fourth floor, when
a trifling event happened such as can happen only in the multiple existence of
a large hotel. He heard a door open behind him and a low shriek. He turned and
saw a young, dark woman, a white bath-towel wrapped round her body, which was
dripping with water.
"Fire!" she breathed, scarcely audible,
hoarse in her terror. He stepped very quickly in front of her through the
doorway. Instantly he had passed from out of the vast, vague anonymity of the
hotel into an inhabited, circumscribed home. Garments flung and hung on a
hat-stand; a short umbrella on the floor. Before him, the open door of a
bathroom full of steam, and bright in the steam a great blaze arising from the
glass-topped table which stood in the same spot in every bathroom. The flame, a
couple of feet high, waved in a draught set up between the open window of the
bathroom and the open door of the suite. The origin of the conflagration was a
spirit-lamp, and its fuel a newspaper or several newspapers.
He seized the spirit-lamp, very hot to the touch,
and flung itwith a single movement into the bath, which was half full of
steaming soapy water. It sizzled for a fraction of a second and sank into the
depths. Then he snatched at a face-towel and crushed the burning newspaper to
extinction. A moment, and the danger was over. There never had been any danger,
for the paper would have burnt itself out harmlessly on the glass of the table.
"All right now," he said with the calm
of a consciously superior being, to the young woman who was cowering in the
lobby as if to hide her bodily shame.
But Evelyn had no mercy on her bodily shame. Young
women careless enough to let spirit-lamps ignite newspapers must accept all the
consequences of their silly acts. This one was a beautiful thing, scarcely
emerged from girlhood. (He must find out about her.) The ample bath-towel hung
precariously on her, reminding him of the tantalising cover-designs of certain
French, German and American illustrated weeklies in which the pose of a woman
in an entirely inadequate garment has been caught at the very instant when the
flimsy attire is giving way under strain to reveal that which ought not to be
revealed. An instant later, and the last poor remnant of decency would be gone.
In a few seconds this very young woman had
somewhat accustomed herself to the immodesty of her predicament.
"I was having a hot bath," she weakly
murmured.
"So I see."
"And I got out to open the window because I
was afraid I might faint--"
"You aren't all alone in here?" Evelyn
questioned.
"No. My husband is there. But he's asleep and
nothing would ever waken him."
Her husband! What was she doing with a husband at
her age? Something shocking about it. Some fat man old enough to be her father,
no doubt. Always in the Imperial Palace there were such couples, respectable
and disgusting.
"Well, don't take cold," Evelyn advised the
wife curtly, and quitted the excessive intimacy of the lobby for the somnolent
desert of the corridor, shutting the door behind him She had offered no thanks.
He had given her no chance to express gratitude.
Perosi was padding as fast as he could towards
him.
"I thought I heard a scream, sir," said
the ageing big man, alarmed and rather breathless.
"You did. But you've got very good ears. It's
all over. Spirit-lamp in the bathroom in 415. I've put it right. Hysterical
woman. The usual thing. Who are they?"
"I can't remember the name exactly. It's a
queer name. The lady seems to be English. But the gentleman is a
Roumanian."
"He would be," thought Evelyn, and said
aloud: "Well, you needn't trouble any more. I've seen to it."
"Thank you, sir." Perosi, tranquillised,
faced about to return to his cubicle-office at the end of the corridor. Then
Evelyn saw Violet Powler standing hesitant at the door of Perosi's cubicle. She
saw Evelyn, but did not move. Perosi faced about again.
"I wish to tell you, sir," said he to
Evelyn. "I'm giving lessons in French to Miss Powler. She is very anxious
to learn. I told Dr. Constam yesterday morning and Mr. Pozzi this afternoon.
There's no secret about it. I hope you approve, sir."
"Of course, Perosi. By the way, I want a word
with Miss Powler. Miss Powler!"...He called aloud. And to Perosi:
"Thank you, Perosi."
The old stickler for propriety, the upholder of
the full strictness of the hotel code, the watcher of reputations and
prerogatives, especially his own, having put himself right with the panjandrum,
bowed and shuffled away towards his little room, while Violet Powler obediently
came forward, and Evelyn waited for her in the deep silence of the long
corridor bordered on both sides by withdrawn homes of a night.
In the light falling on her from above Evelyn
noticed for the first time that her cheek-bones were set just a trifle higher
than the average. Her head was certainly broader than the average. Her eyes,
far apart, almost exactly matched her hair in colour. True, her lips were
rather thin, but then her mouth was wide--a sign of benevolence. She walked
well; no trace of anxiety, diffidence, self-consciousness in her gait. Was she
distinguished, or did he imagine it? He had once by chance seen her mother, an
ordinary, somewhat plaintive woman of the lower middle-class. Could the
daughter of such a woman have distinction? Improbable. She was a puzzle to
him...She showed no curiosity as to the cause of Perosi's alarm. For her
evidently, that affair was finished and therefore had no further interest.
Confident, yet modest. Reserved, yet curiously candid. Anyhow, though she was a
newcomer in the world of the Imperial Palace, two important men were already
competing for her, fighting for her: Savott and himself. He realised that, and
in one part of his mind was amused at the thought.
"Yes, sir?"
An expression on her face of impartial but
benevolent consideration--ready to deal with whatever question he might
confront her with.
"I hear you're learning French," he
said. "It's a very good idea. And you haven't lost time over
beginning."
If she was taking her lesson, this must be her
evening off--from nine o'clock. Therefore she must have been on duty at
6.30a.m. The hour was now getting late, but she seemed quite fresh, and her
make-up could not have been more than an hour old. He observed the nice finish
of her finger-nails, for she had clasped her hands in front of her at the level
of her waist.
She smiled faintly, and said nothing, only lifting
her head half an inch or so.
"This will save me the trouble of sending for
you. I had something I wanted to tell you." The benevolence of his tone
equalled the benevolence of her look.
"Yes, sir?"
"I've been seeing Sir Henry Savott to-night.
Sir Henry has bought or is just buying a new house, and he asked me whether I
should object if he offered you the post of housekeeper. He said of course
you'd worked for him already--before you worked for us. I said I shouldn't
dream of standing in your way. You're absolutely free. Under your contract we can
give you notice and you can give us notice. A month, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes. A month. Well, that's how it stands. I
thought I would let you know--in fact ought to let you know--what you
may expect, and that you're under no sort of obligation to me, to us, beyond
the terms of your contract. If we thought we ought to dismiss you, naturally we
should dismiss you. Not that we've the least notion of doing that. Far from it.
But we should feel ourselves at liberty to do it. And just the same you're at
liberty to dismiss us." He smiled broadly at the last words, and Violet
smiled too.
She answered:
"Thank you, sir. It's a thing that will need
a lot of thinking over.
"Yes. Good night." Evelyn turned briskly
to go back along the corridor the way he had come.
"Good night, sir."
"And no doubt now she'll proceed with her
French lesson, as if nothing had happened!" he thought.
He was shocked. He was hurt. Had he not been
behaving to her in a style marvelously magnanimous? Had he not been exhibiting the
very ideal and perfection of human justice? Had he not been pluming himself on
a superfine and needless generosity? Most employers, if not all other
employers, though some of them might have accorded the formal permission to
Savott to approach the employee, would have sung a different tune to the
employee herself. They would have said: "We don't expect you to leave us
like this. You've just come. We've taken you into the first hotel in the world.
You ought to regard yourself as extremely fortunate. We can't have our staff
playing fast and loose. Sir Henry Savott ought never to have made such an
extraordinary suggestion. Now he has made it we look to you to realise that you
have a moral duty to us, and we hope--" etc., etc. But he, Evelyn, had
been incredibly benign. And what does the girl say in reply to his benignity?
"It's a thing that will need a lot of thinking over." And walks off.
Yes, he was hurt. He was very disappointed in his pet housekeeper, his
discovery, his protégée.
But there was the other man in Evelyn, the man who
gloried in the godlike judicial quality of his mind. This man said: "I
must be fair. She had something to hire out, and I hired it. In hiring her I
didn't confer a favour on her. I hired her, not for her advantage, but for the
advantage of the Palace. If I hadn't thought she would be a splendid asset to
the Palace I should have left her where she was at the Laundry. The change may
be a grand thing for her, but that wasn't why I engaged her. The notion of a
moral duty on her part is simply preposterous. It makes me think of the
sickening attitude people take up to their servants in private houses. The
girl's absolutely entitled to give the question 'a lot of thinking over,' and
to decide solely in her own interests, and to ignore my interests. Savott could
certainly pay her a much better salary than we could, and in his house she
wouldn't have anybody over her--except him. And he wouldn't worry her. No chain
of responsibility there. The truth is she'd be an idiot not to jump at Savott's
offer."
Nevertheless, he was hurt. And would the affair
end with housekeepership? Might it not...She was Susan's sister.
Well, and why should it end with housekeepership?
Evelyn descended to his office depressed. He lit a
cigar and tried to find his whereabouts in the confusing darkness of
circumstance. If the hotel-merger came to fruition, he would be in the plight
of a man with one darling child who marries into a numerous family of very
miscellaneous children. He was about to lose his domestic prop, Oldham. And
probably he was about to lose the pearl of housekeepers. Of course it didn't
matter, really. Yet it mattered, somehow. Still, there was one gleam: she had
refused Savott once when she was at the Laundry.
HOUSEKEEPERS
When Violet returned to her room on Eighth she
found an unstamped letter conspicuously placed on the desk. The envelope bore
at the back the words "Imperial Palace." Hence the missive must be
from somebody within the hotel. The handwriting of the address seemed not
unfamiliar. Thus she reflected before opening the letter. It was quite a long
letter: both sides of a large single sheet of notepaper. Of course she looked
first at the signature: "Hy. Savott." The letter began:
"Dear Miss Powler," and contained an
offer of a situation as housekeeper of a shortly-to-be-acquired house in
Mayfair. The salary suggested was large. The writer said that he had obtained
the permission of Mr. Evelyn Orcham to approach her about the matter. The tone
of the letter was urbane, friendly, faultless: tone of an equal, not of a
superior.
She felt flattered. Mr. Orcham's original
statement had extremely surprised her, and the letter intensified her surprise.
Yet within her was a sensation of calm self-confidence which diminished her
surprise. After all was she not, with her proved and admitted efficiency (which
no false modesty inclined her to doubt), a fine proposition for any wealthy
householder? She had done the job satisfactorily years ago, and she knew
herself capable of doing it again satisfactorily.
As for leaving the Imperial Palace so soon after
entering it, Mr. Orcham's own fair words had reassured her on that point. The
hotel had the right to safeguard its interests, and similarly she had the right
to safeguard hers. Moreover, she was hardly satisfied with the post of
floor-housekeeper. Though the hours were very long, and Violet missed the old
freedom of her evenings, there was not enough work to do, and the work lacked
responsibility, made insufficient demands on her powers. And she had been
somewhat offended by the apparently causeless shifting from floor to floor. She
could not take exception to it; nevertheless it had offended her. On the whole
Sir Henry's offer tempted her. And how quiet he had been in making it! Just
like him! Deliberately she withheld herself from coming to a decision, even to
a provisional decision. She glanced at her watch, slipped the letter into a
drawer and locked the drawer, and left the room. She had a rendezvous with Mac.
The moment she put her head into Mac's room she
became aware of some disturbance in the social atmosphere--unseen lightning
which played under the ceiling, unheard thunder in the distance of the corners.
Three prim, tense, constrained black-frocked figures were there: Miss Maclaren
sitting on the sofa; Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss standing, one on the
hearthrug, the other near the desk.
"Oh, sorry! I didn't--" Violet murmured,
and was withdrawing when Miss Maclaren stopped her.
"Come in, dear. Come in, please!"
Mac implored her, and Mac's Scotch accent was much more marked than usual.
Violet obeyed that and shut the door. Now there
were four black-frocked figures in the room, figures of women who seemed to be
up and about at all hours of the late night and of the early morning, who
existed in and solely for the Imperial Palace, breathed the Palace, ate and
drank the Palace, and who had learnt the art of dispensing with sleep. Violet
thought she was different from the other three, but already she was less
different from them than she thought.
"Venables thinks she's overworked here,"
said Mac.
"Yes, I do," said Miss Venables.
She was a woman of thirty-six or seven, dark,
plump, of average height; neat enough, but a bit careless about her complexion.
She had a thin gold chain round her thick neck. Her hair was plastered down,
rather like a young man's. Her body, while not actually trembling, appeared to
be mysteriously moving beneath her dress. Her large hands were clasped in front
of her, her head was slightly raised, thrown back, and turned to one side: a
characteristic attitude with her when in a state of emotion. Violet had a habit
of clasping her hands. They were clasped now; but as soon as she noticed Miss
Venables' hands she unclasped her own, saying to herself that she must lose
that housekeeper's trick.
"What do you think, Violet?" asked Mac.
"What's your opinion?"
But before Violet could reply Miss Venables went
on in her carefully cultivated voice:
"At least I don't say I'm overworked--so long
as I'm left alone to do my work as I've always done it. I don't even mind doing
both Third and Fourth for a time, to oblige the management. I always
gave satisfaction to Mrs. O'Riordan, and she wasn't easy to please
either."
Violet kept quiet. She had come to a conclusion
about Miss Venables in the first three days. Miss Venables hid a fundamental
commonness beneath that tone of fine manners which she had deliberately acquired
and which ruffled Violet by its pretence. She was a worker; she was
conscientious; but she happened to be afflicted by a sense of her perfection so
strong that any criticism, even an implied criticism, offended her. And she was
continuously on the watch for the slightest implication of the slightest
criticism.
"Well," said Miss Prentiss. "I
think we're overworked, and I don't care who knows it."
Older than her companion in revolt, Miss Prentiss,
tall, erect, gaunt as a telegraph-pole, and with as much human juice in her as
a telegraph-pole, was capable of being very sweet in response to sweetness, but
she was never more than aridly sweet. Violet had come to a conclusion about
Miss Prentiss also. Miss Prentiss, not a bad worker if in the vein, was a secretive
woman with a taste for scandal arising from suppressed sex-instinct. An
accomplished mistress of the dark hint, she could talk faster than any woman in
Violet's experience (which was considerable). On the other hand she had a
sustained power of taciturnity when silence suited her. Violet thought that
both she and Miss Venables were quite decent creatures. Of the two Miss
Prentiss had the better style, a style better also than Mac's.
"Well, what do you say, Violet?"
"I think our hours are long," Violet at
last answered. "But I shouldn't say we were overworked."
"Oh! Wouldn't you!" Miss Venables
exclaimed. "Well, wait till you've been here a bit longer. You forget that
we've all been trying to help you, Miss Powler--Mac particularly. You're such great
friends. But you wait till you've been here a bit longer."
"Yes." Miss Prentiss turned on Violet.
"You've got friends here. Mr. Orcham brought you. Don't think we don't
know all about it."
"Mr. Orcham isn't a friend of mine,"
said Violet warmly. "I scarcely know him. He asked me to come here and I
came."
"Yes," said Miss Prentiss. "And I
suppose he didn't take you down to the basement and show you everything there
himself."
"But I told you that," said
Violet.
"It doesn't matter who told us."
"But he's going to take all of you down to
the basement."
"Well, he hasn't begun yet, anyhow. And I
suppose you weren't hobnobbing with him in the corridor down on Fourth ten
minutes ago either."
Violet was certainly shocked by this revelation of
the speed at which interesting news could travel from floor to floor in the
vastness of the Palace. And she was very much more severely shocked as Miss
Prentiss proceeded:
"And then Sir Henry Savott. Who was it who
was carrying on with him up here on Eighth? They sent you down to Third
to stop it. And he follows you down to Third! And they have to send you back to
Eighth, to stop it again."
Violet was angry, as well as astounded. At first
she could not speak. Then she began to speak, but controlling herself, ceased
on the first syllable.
"Miss Prentiss," said Mac with
protesting dignity, "you ought to be ashamed!"
"Well, I'm not then," said Miss
Prentiss, facing Mac. "It's the talk of the hotel...And I wish to say
again that I shall give in my notice to-morrow morning." She spoke with a
soft, fierce, mincing disdain.
"And so shall I," added Miss Venables,
in her loftiest Mayfair accents. "That's what we came to tell you. We told
you when we came in. And we tell you again. There's plenty of places waiting
for girls like us. So you needn't think, Miss Maclaren! Good night."
"Good night," said Miss Prentiss.
The farewells were directed solely to Miss
Maclaren. Miss Prentiss closed the door in the same manner as--Violet had
noticed--she deposited her knife and fork on her plate in the restaurant,
soundlessly.
Violet was being very brave, when she saw that Mac
had begun to cry, whereupon she began to cry herself, at first against her will
and sparingly, then plenteously and with abandonment. It was that phrase
'carrying on with him' that had perturbed Violet. Monstrous, utterly
unfounded slur! And then the odious insinuation that she had been sent down to
Third by a watchful all-knowing management in order to separate her from Sir
Henry, and sent back to Eighth with the same intent! She was revolted. She felt
as though a pail of slops had been thrown at her, as though she could never be
clean again. Mac's sobbing sympathy for her in the frightful slander was very
touching, and it alone would have sufficed to undo her self-control.
She sat down on the sofa close by Mac. There were
two sleepless black-frocked creatures in the room now, and they were united in
a close embrace, Mac's arms flung passionately round Violet's neck. No longer
were they key-rattling housekeepers, sternly devoted to duty, but weak girls
martyrised by hard destiny and the injustice of fate.
"What am I to do? Tell me what I am to
do?" Mac sniffed uncertainly. "Here I'm appointed head-housekeeper,
and the first thing is two of my staff give notice! What will Mr. Cousin
say?"
Violet stopped crying, almost with a jerk, as she
realised that Mac's grief was not for her, Violet, but for herself. She gently
freed her neck from the encircling arms, and stood up.
"Where are the tea-things?" she asked.
"In the bedroom?"
Mac nodded, being unable now to articulate.
"I'll make some."
Violet went straight into the bedroom, switched on
the electricity, and lit the spirit-lamp which was on the glass shelf above the
lavatory-basin. After a moment Mac appeared all wet in the doorway.
"I've got that indigestion again," said
she.
"Nerves," said Violet soothingly.
"Some tea will put it right. You don't have to do anything, my dear."
She filled the flat saucepan and ledged it over the blue flame. "Where's
the tea-canister? They're only jealous of you. Mr. Cousin will understand. And
I'm quite sure Mr. Orcham will."
"I only told those women about some things
they hadn't done, this afternoon. I was very careful with them, but I had to
tell them off a bit, hadn't I? They've been against me ever since I was
appointed. Dead against me. I've felt it all the time."
"Well of course! They're jealous!"
"Have they said anything to you about their
being jealous, either of them?"
"Not they!" Violet exclaimed. "They
knew what they'd get if they did."
"D'ye mean they thought one of them ought to
have been given the post, instead of me?"
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Violet.
"And if one of 'em had got the job, wouldn't the other one have been
jealous all the same! Wouldn't she just! I think Prentiss was the worst. Do you
remember what you said to me the other day?" Violet had now covered the
saucepan and put the teapot on the lid to get warm.
"What?"
"You said there were too many housekeepers in
this hotel. So there are. If you tell Mr. Cousin you think one housekeeper
ought to be enough for every two floors, and that anyhow you'd like to try it,
and you don't want any fresh ones to take the place of that pair--if you tell
him that he'll see the point quick enough. And so will Mr. Orcham. You take it
from me, Mac."
"D'ye really think so?"
"Of course I do. They know how jealous
girls are! Blast the canister! Why the hell won't it open?"
Never before had Mac heard bad language from the
lips of her Violet. But she did not flinch.
"And how nasty they were to you!" said
Mac, at last perceiving, in her relief at the suggested policy, that Violet too
had something of a grievance against Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss.
"Such nonsense! Disgusting, that's what it is! Makes you feel perfectly
sick! At least it does me--I don't know how you feel."
"Oh! That's nothing, all that," said
Violet with a stiff smile. "But I should like to know what put the
idea into their heads."
"They just made it up. I mean Prentiss
did."
Violet, however, surmised that Prentiss had indeed
heard some murmur descended from on high, and that she had given the true,
humiliating explanation of the tactics of the management in jumping her from
floor to floor. And she was staggered. The real explanation she did not suspect
for one moment. She acquitted Mr. Orcham of any share in the shifting, and
attributed it entirely to the foreignness of Mr. Cousin. But on what
conceivable ground could even Mr. Cousin have accused her in his French mind of
'carrying on'?
"Of course I shall leave," she said calmly.
"What else is there to do?"
And then Mac, losing the last fragment of her
Lowland phlegm, dropped on her knees at the feet of Violet and convulsively
clasped her legs.
"Don't leave me!" she implored, pressing
her face against Violet's skirt "That would be three. And where should I
be then? I never liked anyone as much as I like you. You simply can't leave me.
I'll see you through all right. Violet! Violet!"
The appeal was irresistible. Strange that, as
Violet yielded emotionally to its power, in the same instant she saw clearly
that for her own sake she must not leave, could not leave. If she left and went
to Sir Henry Savott as his housekeeper--sinister word--the Imperial Palace
would hum from top to bottom with the scandal of her shame. Everybody would say
that the correctness of the suspicion against her of 'carrying on' had been
only too horribly proved. She would not herself hear those mischievous tongues,
but she would know that they were at work. And she could not tolerate the
knowledge. Whereas if she stayed, the scandal would die away. She resolved to
write a refusal to Sir Henry.
"Very well, dear," she said quietly to
Mac, and lifted Mac up.
The water boiled. The tea was borne into the
sitting-room. They drank side by side, and were tranquillised.
"That's a clever idea of yours about what I
ought to say to Mr. Cousin, dear," said Mac. "You're awfully clever.
You are a dear." Her Scotch accent had somewhat subsided.
The clock showed past midnight.
NEGOTIATION
The scene of the supreme encounter concerning the
merger had been laid by Evelyn in his private office. Old Dennis Dover and
Evelyn himself sat side by side at the large desk, their backs to the window.
Sir Henry Savott, also at the desk, faced them. There was nobody else in the
room. These three alone were fighting over the terms upon which the Imperial
Palace (with the satellite Wey Hotel) should add its indispensable prestige and
power to Sir Henry's projected group. The desk was littered with
papers--statistics, balance-sheets, valuations, estimates, reports, and mere
jottings, scribbled by one or other of the three as the discussion proceeded.
Ashtrays were laden with cigarette and cigar ends; the air was full of smoke.
The conference had begun at eleven-thirty, and now
the small clock on the mantelpiece apologetically showed three minutes to two.
In the two hours and a half nobody had entered, no telephone bell had rung;
Evelyn had taken his precautions for absolute tranquillity. At intervals each
of the three men had glanced covertly at the relentless clock. It never
stopped, and sometimes it had seemed to move its hands with a most unnatural
speed. The three, especially Dennis Dover, had hoped that agreement on the main
point at issue would surely be reached by half-past one; then surely at twenty
to two; then surely at ten to two. Disappointment followed disappointment. But
every instant of the grand altercation appeared to be crucial. No one,
therefore, dared to suggest a break for lunch. All three feared that to adjourn
might be to lose valuable ground won at such expenditure of finesse, cunning
diplomacy, and sheer brainwork.
Savott was tirelessly energetic, vivacious,
good-humoured. Evelyn was tirelessly wary, watchful and bland. But in the old
man fatigue had engendered both taciturnity and obstinacy. Father Dennis,
exhausted, would die rather than be the first to propose a dangerous armistice.
Not much more than a decade between him and Savott, and yet they seemed to
belong to different generations, not only physically, but in outlook and in
mental methods.
"Listen!" said Savott brightly, in a new
tone, as though he were starting the third and last movement, the allegro, of a
sonata. He lit a new cigarette. "Listen! I quite admit you're trying to
meet me on minor but not unimportant points. I'll make it £2 10s a share, to be
paid in either cash, Orcham shares, or Orcham debentures convertible into
Orcham shares."
The altercation was as to the price at which the
Merger was to buy or otherwise take over the ordinary shares of the Imperial
Palace Hotel Company. Savott had already christened the Merger the "Orcham
Company," and he insistently repeated the magical word so flattering to
Evelyn. One of his subtle devices in negotiation.
Father Dennis shook his grim head.
"No! Not quite good enough!" Father
Dennis murmured hoarsely in his invalid throat.
"I'm afraid not," said Evelyn blandly in
support of his Chairman.
Savott raised his arms, not in surrender, but as a
sign that futile stalemate had been achieved in the great game. Then the door
slowly opened, with no warning knock. Two waiters entered, one after the other,
each pushing a wheeled table loaded with food and drink and the apparatus of a
meal.
"Aha!" Savott exclaimed, jumping up.
The aged eyes of Dennis Dover gleamed hungrily and
thirstily. Evelyn smiled the smile of a master of tactics. Foreseeing the
possibility of a protracted sitting, he had ordained that, if the secret
conference was still in session at two o'clock, at two o'clock precisely
refreshments should be brought in without any preliminaries of permission asked
and granted. He had chosen in detail the food and the drink, including Dennis
Dover's favourite cocktail, caviare, Derby Round, and Russian salad. There the
refreshments were, alluring, irresistible; a magnificent fact to be faced, and
faced immediately.
"Fall to!" said Evelyn.
"Fall to!" said father Dennis.
"You are unique, Orcham!" said Savott,
candidly admiring.
"He is unique!" growled and squeaked
father Dennis.
"Open one of those windows--wide," said
Evelyn to a waiter. And when the window was wide open he said to the waiters:
"You can both go. We will help ourselves."
The trio were alone again together.
"Aha!" Savott repeated himself, drinking
a cocktail after he had passed one deferentially to father Dennis, who,
grumbling as often before at the discomfort of the Palace chairs, rose to take
the glass.
All three men were now standing up, stretching
their arms and legs, walking to and fro in the freshness of the new air from
the window, glancing at Miss Cass's horticultural window-boxes, pecking here
and pecking there with forks, offering plates to one another, drinking,
munching not without noise. Documents were hidden under plates and glasses. In
three minutes father Dennis was beginning to be rejuvenated and also mellowed.
With his immense, unwieldy and yet noble bulk, his age, his experience of the
world, he unconsciously assumed dominion over his companions. Evelyn saw Savott
transformed swiftly from the canny, astute negotiator into the avid gourmand of
the dinner-table in the restaurant weeks earlier. As for Evelyn himself, he
could not hide his satisfaction, and he made no effort to do so.
"If you think I can stand that hurricane in
the small of my back, you've been misinformed," croaked father Dennis, his
mouth full, after a few minutes.
Evelyn closed the window.
"Now let's see how far we've got?" said
Savott, dropping into an easy-chair, crossing his legs, and lighting a cigar
before he had quite finished with a peach.
"Yes," Evelyn agreed. "Let's see
how far we've got."
"Yes," said father Dennis, "let's
look on the bright side for a change."
The will to reach agreement by compromise was
stirring.
"Your salary as Managing Director is
settled," Savott addressed Evelyn.
"My salary is settled," said Evelyn.
"I think you have reason to be satisfied with
it," said Savott, smiling.
"Quite," said Evelyn.
The salary was indeed very high. Evelyn's earnings
would be nearly doubled.
"And the term? You still insist on a twelve
years' contract? Ten is more usual, you know. I should prefer ten, as a matter
of form. Of course I expect your contract to run for twenty years, thirty. But
as a--"
Evelyn interrupted the sentence with a shake of
the bead and a lifting of the broad shoulders.
"Twelve," said he, smiling very amiably.
"All right. All right!" Savott laughed.
Evelyn's private reason for demanding a
twelve-year contract was that it would carry him in security past the age of
sixty. He had an idea of retiring at sixty; or, if his vitality forbade such a
step, then of buying a smallish hotel in an English seaside resort and proving
to the world that the existence of a truly first-class hotel in an English
seaside resort was not an impossibility.
"And the constitution of the first Orcham
Board of Directors is agreed?" Savott proceeded.
"It is," said father Dennis. "But
it's understood that after serving as Chairman of this fabulous Merger for one
year I shall step down and leave the throne to be fought for by rival
pretenders."
"That's a detail, Mr. Dover," said
Savott.
"It isn't a detail at all," said father
Dennis. "For me it's the most important point in the whole damned
conspiracy to bleed innocent travellers. Even now, instead of presiding over
mergers, I ought to be in bed surrounded by my devoted grandchildren." He
added with a squeak: "Only I haven't any grandchildren."
The other two laughed.
"Next," Savott went on, "I agree
that my valuations of the Majestic and the Duncannon and the continental hotels
are to be approved by your valuers. Orcham agrees to make a tour at once of all
the hotels, and the entire arrangement is to be subject to his being satisfied.
I've shown you my scheme for raising capital and underwriting it, and I agree
to produce to you as soon as possible my contracts for this purpose with the
three City houses I've told you of."
Savott continued from item to item. Father Dennis
and Evelyn listened and nodded when necessary. There was no discord.
"I fancy that's all," Savott finished,
content with the orderly clearness of his résumé of the plan, with his strong
grasp of all the statistics, and with his accomplishment as a negotiator and
deviser.
Mind alone is creative. Sir Henry Savott had now
all but thought his Merger into existence. One more touch, and the vast design
would magically appear, visible, concrete, complete, the wonder of the world.
"It isn't all," growled father Dennis.
"No. It isn't all," said Savott.
"Naturally. Let's come back to the price of Imperial Palace shares. I've
quoted you £2 10s. Now seriously, what about it?"
Father Dennis shook his ancient head, and glanced
at Evelyn, who also gave a negative sign.
"You really mustn't make it too difficult for
the Orcham Company to pay a dividend," smiled Henry Savott.
"We have to think of our shareholders,"
said father Dennis. "And we haven't got to think of anything else. If you
consider our price too high--"
"I do," said Savott.
"Then it's for you to say so plainly and
definitely, and the scheme's on the scrap-heap."
"But your own valuations of your own property
don't justify--"
"Valuations! Valuations! And our reserves, in
cash and gilt-edged?"
"I'm not forgetting them."
"But you're forgetting that we're selling you
something that can't be valued," father Dennis squeakily continued.
"If you weren't forgetting that you surely wouldn't talk about valuations.
We're selling you the very sine qua non of your scheme. What is the
scheme without the Imperial Palace and Orcham? You'd never have thought of it
without them. What the Merger must have is our prestige. Take that away and
it's worth exactly elevenpence three farthings."
"I quite agree," said Savott lightly,
even submissively. "And wasn't I the first to say so? But I should like
you to remember this. If I'd got hold of a majority or anywhere near a majority
of Palace shares, as I meant to do, only you scotched me by altering the voting
power of your shares while my head was turned the other way--what would have
happened? I should have been able to name my own price for your shares, and
what I'd lost on the shares I should have made on the Merger, and more."
"Certainly," father Dennis hoarsely
whispered. "There's no argument about that. But we did alter the voting
power, thereby putting you gently into the soup, my friend. If this and if
that, you would have been able to name your own price. But as there don't
happen to be any ifs, we can name our price. And it's a price the Merger can
well afford to pay. It isn't as if we hadn't come down a bit. Our price is £2
15s."
"That's your lowest?"
"Our lowest."
"Well, I'm sorry. My last word is £2
10s." said Sir Henry genially, and as he spoke he began to collect his
papers together on the desk. A deciding gesture.
Evelyn gazed at him, met his hard, steely eyes.
There was no compromise in them; nor in his teeth. The gourmand had quitted the
body of Sir Henry Savott. His tiny eyes were two brass tacks, and the Imperial
Palace had at last come down to those brass tacks. The battle was finished. The
opposing armies would both have to retire.
"I'm sorry," Sir Henry repeated
meditatively. "Yes, I'm very sorry. I'm more disappointed than I can say.
I must apologise to you for putting you to so much trouble for nothing. I don't
complain, mind you. Not in the least. You know your own business best. Only
I've got a sort of a notion of my business too. We differ, and there's no more
to be said. But you'll find yourselves wrong about one thing. I shall go on
with my Merger. Nothing is indispensable, not even the Imperial Palace. I've
set my heart on a merger. I've never set my heart on anything and failed to get
it. I'll carry the Merger through, and I'll give you the fight of your life,
whatever it costs me. There must be another Orcham lying about somewhere in the
world. I'll find him."
"Bravo!" Evelyn exclaimed, touched to
admiration for the man's passionate, exalted demeanour. Savott was once more
the poet who had divulged himself at the opening dinner in Evelyn's castle.
But Evelyn was very deeply depressed, realising
now fully for the first time how powerfully the great scheme of the Merger had
appealed to his instincts. And in his disappointment he felt that he had
nothing to live for. And he was desolated by the thought that all their work,
all Savott's creative faculty, all father Dennis's broadminded caution, all his
own watchful mastery of detail, had come to naught. Naught! He sympathised with
Savott as much as with father Dennis and himself. And he questioned the wisdom
of father Dennis's rather abrupt handling of the climax of the fray. Still, he
was rigidly loyal to father Dennis. They were intimate friends. They understood
one another. They trusted one another absolutely. And after all the Merger
would have been at best a dangerous and chancy enterprise!
Sir Henry Savott at this depressing juncture
behaved with an infinite discreet propriety. Many men would have dawdled, would
have exasperated affliction by futile remarks. Sir Henry, having pulled his
papers from beneath plates, stowed them all into a despatch-case, said
"Good afternoon" very simply and amicably, and moved briskly to the
door. He was indeed a man, thought Evelyn. And the rumours of his precarious
position as a high financier were indeed silly. Somehow Evelyn felt ashamed,
for all three of them.
Having opened the door, Sir Henry startlingly
halted and faced the enemy.
"Split the difference," he snapped
harshly.
Evelyn's heart jumped. Father Dennis looked at
Evelyn, and Evelyn at father Dennis. Evelyn saw a look of persistent obstinacy
in the old man's furrowed face. He withstood the look and smiled. A mighty
demon had rushingly entered into him and assumed control of all his faculties.
"It's a deal," said the demon, with
quiet assurance.
"Oh, very well!" father Dennis whispered
pleasantly, having yielded to Evelyn's astonishing sudden domination.
The Imperial Palace was sold.
Evelyn and father Dennis were the masters of the
Imperial Palace Board, and the Board was the autocrat of the Company; and all
minor outstanding difficulties between the Company and the Merger were easily
capable of settlement. In six words the Imperial Palace had been sold.
Dropping his despatch-case conveniently near the door,
Sir Henry Savott returned to the desk. The three shook hands, not
unsentimentally. Conscious of the sentimentality, and determined to correct it,
father Dennis stood up and growled, "Damn it all!" and went to one of
the wheeled tables and poured out three liqueur brandies with his infirm hand,
spilling some priceless liquid. And Evelyn, who never in any circumstances took
either spirits or liqueurs, said, "Damn it all!" and gazed at the
brandy and slowly drank. They all three drank together. Having committed this
sublime folly, Evelyn smacked his lips. Old Dover and he were more occupied
with one another than with Sir Henry Savott. Had they been attentive they would
have noticed moisture in his little eyes. Sir Henry had not staked millions,
but millions somehow had been staked. He had staked the value of years of
mole-tunnelling, and of a week of the delicatest diplomacy and bargaining. He
had staged a rupture, and acted it with convincing realism. He had acted to the
last second. He knew that if he had not gone to the door and given his
opponents time for regret, he would not have managed to squeeze out of them the
concession of half the difference; and he had decided that beyond half the
difference he would not and could not yield. Further, he had staked his belief
in himself. Still further, he had secured the five hundred thousand pounds
which was the least personal profit that he expected to make out of the whole
transaction. Sir Henry had lived through intolerable years in a quarter of an
hour. Old Dover was indifferent to the scheme's success or failure. Evelyn
would very quickly have reconciled himself to its failure. But to Sir Henry the
fruition of the scheme was necessary, both morally and financially. None save
himself knew, and few genuinely suspected, that his career had arrived at a
point when a failure might ruin it--at any rate temporarily. Well, he had
succeeded. Multitudinous risks and perils yet lay before him. But he had
triumphed so far, and for the future he had an equal confidence in himself and
in Evelyn Orcham. He had won, and he would win. Hence the emotional moisture in
his tiny eyes: phenomenon which his late opponents, now his allies, had been
too self-absorbed to observe. The moisture quickly vanished.
"My car's been waiting two hours, and even
chauffeurs have to eat," squeaked father Dennis. "Good-bye. Seems to
me I look like being the biggest shareholder even in your new Company,
Savott." He gave a sardonic, masterful grin as he strode cumbrously from
the scene of battle.
"By the way," said Sir Henry to Evelyn,
with an affectation of nonchalance concerning the upshot of the mighty
encounter. "That Powler girl declined my offer."
"Oh yes!" Evelyn answered. "So I
heard."
"Did she tell you then?"
"No. But she told my head-housekeeper she
should stay here, and the thing got about. Things do, you know. This place is a
regular whispering-gallery." He laughed easily. But he was uneasily
thinking of a phrase used by Savott at the height of the battle: "I've
never set my heart on anything and failed to get it."
A little later Sir Henry quietly departed, and
Evelyn was alone in his office amid a disorder of dirty crockery, electroplate
and glass. After a crisis he always liked solitude. He walked slowly about the
room, smoking one of the non-nicotine cigarettes which he kept specially for
use when he had indulged unduly in cigars. He smiled to himself. The deed was
done. Nothing but some incredible mischance of destiny could prevent him from
becoming in a few months the absolute autocrat of the most grandiose chain of
luxury hotels in the world. The Imperial Palace Company would be wound up.
Hence the Board of Directors of the Imperial Palace would cease to be. Either
the youthful Dacker or the youthful Smiss would be elected to the Board of the
new big Company.
There would not be room for both of them:
continental interests must be considered. But which of them: Dacker or Smiss?
He was inclined to nominate Dacker, with whom he was in closer personal
relations. Smiss, however, would be invaluable on the Board when it had to deal
with the works' departments of its hotels: and he spoke more foreign languages
than Dacker. What did it matter? These young men must take the rough with the
smooth; and anyhow the one who lost a directorship could be compensated in
forty ways. He, Evelyn, would henceforth have the distribution of an enormous
patronage!
Suddenly he thought, with a qualm:
"Am I equal to the job? I wonder. Everybody
believes in me. But do I believe in myself?" Yes, a qualm; a momentary sensation
of all-gone-ness beneath the heart!
Suddenly he thought:
"That fellow Savott's been a bit obscure
about his underwriting after all. I suppose it'll be all right. I bet anything
Harry Matcham Lord Watlington's really at the back of it. Those City houses
don't often stand by themselves."
Suddenly he thought:
"Why did the fellow choose that moment to
tell me he'd missed fire with the Powler woman? I expect it was just a
subconscious nervous reaction from the strain. He's been working hard, the
fellow has, these days. So have I."
As a fact Evelyn, absorbed in the complex
skirmishing preliminary to the great battle over the price to be paid for
Imperial Palace shares, had almost forgotten the existence of his protégée from
the Laundry. He had heard that she was not going to desert the hotel, but he
had heard as in a dream. And for him Violet was a shade. What difference could
it make to the huge "Orcham" Company whether a mere floor-housekeeper
of one of its hotels, be she never so admirable, stayed or departed? A
detail! A trifling detail! The entire perspective of life was altered now.
Evelyn dropped the cigarette-end, and impulsively left the room, passing
through Miss Cass's secretarial office.
"Anything urgent for me?" he demanded.
"No, sir. There's only the--"
"Is it urgent?"
"No, sir."
"Then we'll let it simmer."
Did she look at him in a strange way, or was he
imagining the strangeness? In either case she knew. She was necessarily
aware of the negotiations, and she would have guessed the result from Savott's
demeanour as be went out, if not from father Dennis's, if not from his own.
Astonishing, the faculty of that brisk, self-possessed woman for divination!
Often her knowledge of secrets had surprised him. In displaying her knowledge
she always skilfully assumed that he must know that she knew. But he trusted
her. She was a tomb for secrets. But was she a tomb? Was he justified in
trusting her?
Why had he grown suspicious? Beyond the outer door
a waiter was waiting.
"May I take away the things, sir?"
"You may."
He would stroll round his hotel--one of his
hotels! He always enjoyed these strolls, and sometimes they were rather useful.
But a few yards down the side-corridor he met Ceria, the Grill-room-manager,
emerging from Cousin's managerial office.
"Well, Ceria," he greeted the young man.
"What are you doing here at this hour? I always understood you spent the
afternoon in the bosom of your family at Hampstead."
Ceria smiled. He was a little younger than Cappone,
the Restaurant-manager, and his smile, wistful, innocent, appealing, was judged
to be more enchanting than even that of Cappone. Ceria counted among Evelyn's
finest selections. He had made the grill-room the regular resort of the
newspaper-magnates, the film-kings and the theatrical stars of London. At lunch
the place was now crowded. At dinner it was fairly full. At supper it was very
full. No self-respecting actress could dispense with two or three appearances a
week for supper in the Palace Grill. To be seen frequently there, to be on
terms of intimacy with Ceria, was the final proof of success. The one trouble
about Ceria was the pronunciation of his name. The film-kings unanimously
pronounced it "Seeria." The more learned and cosmopolitan pronounced
it "Cheeria," save a few daring wags among them who called him
"Cheerio." Only the highest highbrows pronounced it in the Italian
way. Ceria had the same wonder-working smile for all of them: the smile of
perfect health and almost perfect happiness. Ignoring Evelyn's question, Ceria
said, excited:
"My Feras have arrived, sir."
"Your what?"
"The fish from the Lake of Geneva. By
aeroplane. Caught this morning. On my dinner menu to-night."
Evelyn remembered hearing of the Fera enterprise.
"Have you told Immerson?"
"Oh yes, sir."
Immerson would make something of the Feras in his
weekly gossip paragraphs.
"I congratulate you," said Evelyn.
"It's a great stunt."
"Mr. Immerson calls them my 'flying fish,'
sir."
Ceria laughed with joy. He would have talked at length
on the piquant subject of the day; but Evelyn left him with a nod. What the
devil did fish matter? One dish, one night, in one restaurant, in one of his
hotels. Still, he had his eye on Ceria. The grill-room was very firmly
established in renown, and under Ceria was an older man, a Frenchman, who could
well carry on the great work. Whereas Ceria, shifted to the Majestic, might
marvellously vitalise the semi-comatose Majestic restaurant.
Evelyn strolled on into the great entrance-hall.
There were the mirrored columns, the ceiling lights, the coloured prints of old
steamships and the photographs of modern steamships underneath them, the sofas,
the easy-chairs, the little tables, an underling at the Reception counter,
another at the Enquiries counter, with their eternally illuminated signs,
pageboy entering in a book the times of the tell-tale signal board which told
the story of every ring of every visitor's bell on the Floors above, the
newspaper-stand deserted, large old Mowlem, the hall-porter, splendid and
dignified in his cubicle between the revolving doors! Odd: the Palace existed
exactly as usual, not witting that it had been sold, that the old order had
changed into the new!
He turned to the right, down into the foyer, which
was empty. The last of the dilatory lunchers had gone. The bands-men were
carrying away from the restaurant their lighter instruments and their music.
Waiters were setting the tables for the afternoon thé dansant. The
gentlemen's cloak-room was empty and had only one attendant. The glass-walled
reading-room was quite empty. The hotel was at its deadest. Evelyn stayed a few
moments, humming to himself the extraordinary fact that nobody guessed at the
tremendous revolution. He strolled back to the entrance-hall. And there was Sir
Henry Savott conversing earnestly with the portly Mowlem! Evelyn watched the
interview. What chicane now? It was curious that on the very slightest evidence
he would instantly begin to suspect Savott of chicane, plots, manœuvres. Yet he
liked and sincerely admired the man. He had learnt to like him, and had been
compelled to admire him. Never had Evelyn been presented with so clear a
statement of involved facts and figures as Savott had laid before him and old
Dover concerning the proposed merger. And Savott had prepared the array of
statistics himself. Savott said that he had done it with his own brain and
hand, and Evelyn believed him.
Evelyn thought:
"Supposing in a year or two's time the fellow
starts hankypankying with the 'Orcham' shares, in the vein of his performance
with North Atlantic!"
And then he thought with affection and pleasure of
Dennis Dover, who had so "decently" followed his perhaps too
arbitrary lead in closing the share bargain. Moreover, father Dennis might have
got cash or debentures for his huge holding of shares in the Imperial Palace
Company. But, because he loved Evelyn, he had decided from the first to stand
by Evelyn, and to exchange his Palace shares for shares in the new Merger
Company, the Orcham Company. Loyalty! Evelyn was touched. Evelyn would make the
new Company a success, if only for the sake of father Dennis.
He saw Sir Henry nod to old Mowlem and then push
his way, with the aid of a janissary outside, through the revolving doors.
Evelyn strolled to the hall-porter's cubicle.
"Sir Henry in any difficulty, Mowlem?"
he enquired.
"No, sir. Mr. Adolphe didn't happen to be at
the Reception, so Sir Henry came to me. He's leaving us later in the
afternoon."
Evelyn saw Sir Henry's automobile curve away into
Birdcage Walk.
"Oh! Where is he going to?" Evelyn
asked. And said to himself: "What's the meaning of this? He didn't tell me
anything about leaving."
"Sir Henry didn't say, sir. Only told me to
have his luggage down at five.'
"Well, Mowlem, I shall be leaving myself for
a while in a day or two."
"For long, sir?"
"No, not for long. It depends."
"Continent, sir?"
"Yes."
"When you come back, sir, I should like a
chat with you, if you can spare me a moment."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir. Of course you know I always said I
should retire at sixty. And I'm sixty next month."
"Now, Mowlem, Mowlem!" Evelyn protested,
with a sadness which he really felt. "You may have said you were
going to retire. But I never said you were. What does Mr. Cousin
say?"
"To tell you the truth, sir, I haven't
mentioned the matter to Mr. Cousin." Evelyn heard in the important
functionary's patriarchal, stately tone a reminder that he, Mowlem, had been in
the service of the Palace years and years before Mr. Cousin had ever been heard
of, that compared to himself Mr. Cousin was a mushroom, and that Mowlem judged
himself entitled to deal direct with Mr. Cousin's superior.
"Mr. Cousin won't let you go. He thinks too
highly of you," said Evelyn benevolently.
"Well, sir," Mowlem replied with
dignity, "we shall see. Sixty is sixty. Times change." He gazed at
Evelyn steadily.
Then Jim Savott's valet, pale after his illness,
appeared in the hall, questing for the hall-porter. Evelyn walked away.
"Mowlem knows," thought Evelyn.
Somehow he felt guilty. And he still felt guilty,
self-conscious, when, half a minute afterwards, he entered Cousin's office and
said, with a painful effort to be casual:
"Well, Cousin. C'est fait"
AN
ATTACK
One night, a week or two later, Violet was taking
her French lesson from old Perosi, but in the waiters' service-room on Eighth.
Miss Maclaren had gone downstairs to talk direct with Ceria, the
Grill-room-manager, about certain questions which had arisen concerning the
Floors night-menus. Violet was on late duty that evening. Miss Maclaren seemed
to dislike giving permission even to her dear friend and prop, Vi, to leave
Eighth during her own absence; and Miss Maclaren being again dyspeptically
indisposed, was hardly in a condition to be argued with. Hence Perosi, who now
treated Violet very paternally and benevolently indeed, had with unique and
august condescension offered to desert Fourth, his proper home, and come up to
Eighth for the purpose of the lesson. He knew that the lesson might at any
moment be interrupted by some trifling emergency on Sixth, Seventh or Eighth;
but he was majestically ready to accept the risk; the fact was that the
ponderous man enjoyed his role of tutor.
In the still warmth of the little service-room,
from which the floor-waiter had been ejected before his evening spell of duty
was over, both Perosi and Violet--but Violet first--heard an unusual stir at
the steel gates of the neighbouring lift. The door of the service-room was kept
always ajar. They both went into the corridor. An excited page-boy had stepped
out of the lift. Within the lift were Ted, the liftman, who had just 'come on,'
and Ceria himself. Also Miss Maclaren. Pale, perspiring, agonised, Miss
Maclaren sat on the cushioned bench of the lift, and Ceria was supporting her
in his arms.
"Qu'est-ce qu'elle a? Qu'est-ce qu'elle a?" Perosi demanded.
"Elle a eu une attaque," Ceria replied, in his Italian accent.
Despite her tuition, Violet understood only the
last word.
"She must be carried to her bedroom,"
said Violet quickly. It was obvious that Miss Maclaren suffered acute pain.
The bell in the lift rang several times
impatiently, and a tiny light glowed yellow on the signal-box: 'Ground-floor.'
The bell continued to ring. At a gesture from Ceria, Ted took the moaning woman
round her knees, and Ceria took her under the arms, and between them they moved
her out of the lift. Ceria was already somewhat breathless, for alone without
aid he had carried her from his little office to the lift.
"Keep her head lower, Mr. Ceria," Violet
suggested.
"Take the lift down, kid," said Ted to
the page-boy, glancing back. Thrilled by his responsibility, the white-gloved
dwarf obeyed.
The procession of Mac's body passed along the
corridor, Violet in front, Perosi muttering behind. Violet ran into Mac's room,
left the entrance-door open, left the bedroom-door open, turned down the
bed-clothes with two rapid movements. In half a minute Mac lay panting and
writhing in pain on the bed; the liftman had reluctantly departed.
"I'll telephone for Dr. Constam," said
Violet. "Where does he live? I suppose he doesn't happen to be in the
hotel?"
"The doctor is coming," Ceria answered
with a sad, sympathetic and yet proud smile. "I said to them to telephone
for him before I came up. He is in the hotel. Santa Maria!" His wistful
eyes said: "I had forgotten nothing. This is Imperial Palace
staffwork." He added aloud: "I think it was the doctor who was ringing
for the lift."
It was. Going to the door, Violet met Dr. Constam
entering. The young man nodded.
"In here?" he asked quietly, and strode
into the bedroom. He nodded to Ceria.
"Right, Ceria."
Ceria left, also reluctantly. Violet and Dr.
Constam were alone together in the bedroom. The doctor was now the expert in
charge. He bent over the bed to examine.
"Shall I sponge her face for her?"
Violet asked.
"No. Wait a minute."
Violet discreetly moved away from the bedside, and
thoughts scurried through her mind. Miss Maclaren was very ill. Climax of her
dyspepsia. Why were dyspeptics always greedy? The hotel had ceased to exist.
Hotel duties had lost all their importance. The martyr to hotel duties was very
ill. How startlingly rapid were changes! Mrs. O'Riordan was married--Lady Milligan.
She had forfeited her wedding-present. She was gone, without trace, and for
ever. Alice Brury was at the Laundry. Violet had left the Laundry. Venables and
Prentiss were soon to leave the Palace. Violet felt as though she had lived in
the hotel for many months, instead of merely a few weeks. She was learning
French. The interrupted French lesson had passed clean out of her head. Mr.
Orcham was away on the Continent. The hotel was functioning as smoothly as
usual. Nevertheless his absence was mysteriously felt. Mac herself had remarked
that very morning on the strange effect produced upon the mind by Mr. Orcham's
absence. Violet had felt it, though she had not been accustomed to seeing him.
Mac was very ill. Violet wanted to do something for the sufferer, but she was
helpless. Where was Perosi? He had vanished.
"Get me some water, only a sip, will
you?" said Dr. Constam.
Violet was quick. He poured the sip down Mac's
throat.
"Where's the telephone?"
"In the sitting-room. Can I 'phone for you,
doctor?"
"No." The doctor was brusque but quite
courteous.
Violet, gently caressing Mac's brow, heard him
telephoning. She gathered that he was calling up a hospital. His tone at the
telephone was authoritative. He seemed to hold the hospital, all the hospitals
in London, under his sway.
"It's extremely urgent," she heard him
say. "You'd better send an ambulance. No. The motor-ambulance. Yes, at
once. I'll be ready." He came back into the bedroom, and said to Violet:
"There's a nurse in 538. She can't be very busy. Go and fetch
her--yourself. Tell her I sent you. And bring her along."
"Yes, doctor. Is this something
serious?" she whispered from the door.
"It's serious. But exactly what it is I'm not
sure yet. Colon anyhow. Run. And then get a stretcher." He spoke in a scarcely
audible murmur.
Violet ran. Perosi was standing outside.
"Mr. Perosi," she threw at him.
"The doctor wants a stretcher." No more than that. She left him to
procure the stretcher.
When she returned with the nurse, who was much too
deliberate and detached for Violet's taste, Perosi was manœuvring a stretcher
through the door into the sitting-room.
"Come on, nurse," said Dr. Constam, in
the doorway between the rooms. "We've got to get this young woman here
downstairs. An ambulance is coming. You," he addressed Violet, "go
and ring for the lift. And keep it. Don't bring the stretcher in," he
addressed Perosi. "We should never get it out again with the patient in
it."
Violet hurried to the lift-well, and rang, rang.
She waited, waited. At last she heard the lift crawling upward. Then a new
procession. The laden stretcher, its burden well covered, Dr. Constam at the
foot, Perosi at the head, the nurse by the side. At the lift, Ted took a hand.
The lift had just space for the stretcher. Ted closed the steel gates. Doctor
and nurse were within. The lift sank away. With it, Mac sank away out of the
life of the hotel. The swiftness of the transformation of the service life of
Eighth was positively frightening. Mac had disappeared. It was almost as if she
had been erased, deleted. Violet and old Perosi exchanged a long, solemn look.
More than once, Violet, who had returned to Miss
Maclaren's rooms--for no purpose that she could define, was rung up by various
departments of the hotel for definite, authentic information as to the sick
woman. Clearly Mac had anxious friends in the organism of the Palace. Clearly
news of the disaster had spread through the vast building with the usual
extreme rapidity of evil tidings. Violet answered every enquiry with a quiet
reassurance. She never did and never could luxuriate in a calamity. Her
instinct was invariably to minimise trouble. Nevertheless she was very
troubled. The telephone calls in themselves had the effect of making her think
that she had under-estimated the gravity of the event.
She was not aware that the spectacular passage of
the stretcher through the great hall had created a tremendous impression. In
the Imperial Palace, as in all hotels, cases of serious illness or death were
whenever possible smothered up. Visitors in hotels object strongly to any
reminder that disease exists and that death happens. Therefore sick bodies and
dead bodies are removed surreptitiously, by secret exits. But the urgency of
that night's case had permitted no compliance with the customary etiquette. At
the revolving doors the stretcher with its bearers, compelled to wait for the
dilatory ambulance, had even got itself entangled with departing and arriving
revellers from and to the restaurant and grill-room. Nothing to wonder at,
then, in the enormity of the sensation.
Violet was deeply disturbed in two ways: in her
grief for Mac's perilous misfortune, and in her anxieties about the
housekeeping of the hotel. Mac would at best be absent for weeks; she might
never return; at any moment during the night or next day or the day after the
telephone might announce the decease of poor old Mac. In the meantime, who
would temporarily be charged with the control of the housekeeping? Assuredly
Venables or Prentiss; for the other floor-housekeepers had neither the
experience nor the moral weight necessary to sustain them in the arduous job.
And Violet was alarmed at the prospect of being subjected to the rule of either
of these ladies who were now her foes and whom no ideal of magnanimity would
prevent from being tyrannical and absurd. She longed for the soft, masterful
presence of Mr. Orcham, who was equal to every occasion.
Quite apart from Mac's tragic disappearance, the
vanishing of Mr. Orcham had disquieted Violet; it had disquieted all the staff except
the lowest menials. Official information as to its cause had not been
vouchsafed, or at any rate had not percolated down to the stratum of
floor-housekeepers. But the newspapers had given immense front-page prominence
to rumours of a great hotel-merger; so much so that the foundations of the
Palace seemed to tremble under the feet of the staff, and even
floor-housekeepers had taken to scanning the financial columns of their
favourite dailies. Mr. Orcham's name had suddenly become familiar to citizens,
astonished by the abrupt revelation of the importance of someone whom they had
never heard of. But not his photograph, for despite pressing demands from
journalists nobody in the hotel could furnish a portrait of the panjandrum--the
reason being that no portrait existed. Then one morning the staff had been
thrilled by the appearance of a lifelike photograph in a picture-paper. It had
been obtained in Cannes, by a long-distance lens, unknown to the victim, and it
had been transmitted by telegraph: proof enough of the news-value of the
panjandrum's face. And surely the rumour that the august and unique Imperial
Palace might deign to merge into anything whatever was sufficient to give an
inestimable news-value to the likeness of its Director.
Violet had a desire to talk to somebody. She was
arguing with herself whether she might seek out old Perosi, when there was a
tap at Mac's door. Instantaneously the door opened, and Mr. Cousin
imperturbably entered. Violet jumped up from her chair. And well she might, for
not once hitherto had she seen Mr. Cousin on Eighth, or heard of him being
there! The truth was that, unlike Evelyn, Cousin was not fond of perambulating
the Floors. He preferred to exercise the function of management from his
office, to be the Mahomet to whom mountains came. Even when he did visit the
Floors he would not ascend higher than Seventh. The former Mrs. O'Riordan had
been subtly antipathetic to him, and because of this he had lost the habit of
Eighth, habit which he had not yet resumed.
Mr. Cousin smiled blandly.
"I am glad you are here, Miss Powler,"
he said. "I wanted to see you."
"Yes, sir."
He sat down. The hour was close on midnight, but
Mr. Cousin's perfect dress-suit, shirt, collar and cravat were as fresh as
though he had just put them on. In the daytime he had sartorial equals, perhaps
superiors; but at night he was unrivalled.
"Please sit down," said he. Violet
obeyed. "It is very sad, this. I hear that you were present."
"When Miss Maclaren was brought up? Yes,
sir."
"Tell me about it."
Violet told. She thought that he listened with
negligence.
"Everything is in order on the Floors?"
"So far as I know, sir," Violet replied.
"But of course I don't know about all the Floors."
"For the future, at least until Miss Maclaren
has recovered, it will be your business to know everything about all the
Floors. I must have someone in control, someone who is responsible. And you
will be good enough to take Miss Maclaren's place for the present. Provisional,
of course." Violet was extremely surprised, and yet the realistic core of
her mind was not surprised. She knew her capacity, but would admit it with
reluctance, and only in a crisis.
"But surely," she said, excited.
"Miss Venables or Miss Prentiss. They...I...All of them have been here
longer than I have, much longer."
"That is possible," said Mr. Cousin with
tranquillity. "But Miss Venables and Miss Prentiss are leaving. And having
regard to their conduct, I do not wish to add to their responsibilities. As for
the others...No." He waved a hand and benevolently smiled. "It is you
alone who are indicated."
He did not say that from several visitors he had
heard praise of Miss Powler's cheerfulness, obligingness, tactfulness,
helpfulness, efficiency.
"Very well. Thank you, sir," said Violet
quietly. What else was there to say? If you refused the responsibility you said
"No" at once. If you accepted it you said "Very well" and
"Thank you," and the matter was ended. Certainly you did not indulge
in any silly, insincere self-depreciation.
"In case you need help or advice, come to me.
Naturally you will have difficulties, but--" He waved his hand again.
"But about allotting the Floors, sir? I
expect that Miss Maclaren has spoken to you about her new plan--"
"That will be as you decide," Mr. Cousin
interrupted her.
He rose. She rose. Then he amazed her by holding
out his hand. She took it. They both smiled.
"What hospital is Miss Maclaren in,
sir?"
"St. James's," said Mr. Cousin.
"You see, we have endowed more than one bed there with the surplus from
our Breakages Fund. They were very crowded, but of course they wished to oblige
us. Good night, Miss Powler."
He bowed, just perceptibly. Gallic chivalry! Then
he said, leaving: "It may interest you to know that Mr. Orcham has just
been telephoning to me from Cannes. So I told him about Miss Maclaren, and that
I had decided to put you in temporary charge. He approved. Good night
again."
Violet wondered what might be the tremendously
important business which could draw these two great personages together on the
telephone wire so late in the evening. She was not aware that every evening
Evelyn enquired by telephone after the health of the Palace, as a man enquires
nightly after the health of a mistress from whom he has been compelled to
absent himself.
For some minutes the fact that Miss Maclaren was
very ill was entirely submerged in her mind by the fact of her incredible,
frightening, almost stupefying appointment as temporary head-housekeeper in the
finest luxury hotel in the world. The post had been Lady Milligan's. It was now
hers. Her parents would be amazed and delighted. No! They would be delighted,
but not amazed. They would say: "Of course! Quite natural. Just what was
to be expected!" Because their belief in her gifts and her character was a
religion with them. It was utterly complete, so complete that it seemed silly,
touching. Poor things!
Then the light wastefully burning in Mac's bedroom
caught her attention. She passed into the bedroom. The bed lay in disorder The eiderdown
had slid to the floor. She tidied the bed, shook the pillow into shape, and
covered everything, including the eiderdown, with the counterpane. And having
arranged the bed, she arranged the room. Mac, though a fanatic for tidiness in
the rooms of visitors, was strangely negligent of her own room. She would even
leave her flowers to wither up in their vases.
Melancholy martyr, the victim of fate. She had
occupied the highest post of its kind over the whole earth, and probably the
best paid in Europe. She had climbed till she could climb no further. And had
her happiness been thereby increased? It had been diminished, considerably. The
change had destroyed her peace of mind, her sleep, her self-confidence; and
intensified her already exaggerated conscientiousness. Nature had not meant her
for supreme authority. And now in a moment she had been swept away. And
doubtless in the hospital ward her last thoughts before submitting to the
anæsthetic, and her first thoughts on awaking from it, would take the form of
foolish worrying anxiety as to the housekeeping of the Palace. Violet felt
heavy with sympathetic woe.
She heard movements in the sitting-room. Venables
appeared in the doorway between the rooms, and Venables too was charged with
woe.
"I did knock," said Venables, as usual
defending herself before she had been attacked, "but nobody answered.
Mac's gone?"
Violet reflected: "As if she didn't know
perfectly well Mac's gone!" She said: "Oh! An hour ago at
least."
"I thought I'd better come up and see. I
didn't really know what had happened. I suppose it's appendicitis?"
"Can't say."
"But it must be."
"Perhaps it is. Only Dr. Constam told me he
didn't know. He's gone with her to the hospital."
"You were here all the time?"
"Yes."
The colloquy showed constraint on both sides; for
these words were the first to be exchanged between the two floor-housekeepers
since the fearsome scene in Mac's sitting-room days and days earlier.
"Gwen and I have been wondering how this
place is to be carried on."
Violet reflected: "Yes; and that's what
you've come up to find out." She said: "I think you had better take
over Sixth and Fifth. I'll see to this floor and Seventh. I'll speak to
Prentiss tomorrow."
"Oh, indeed!" Venables sniffed, and her
dark head began to tremble.
"Yes."
"But who'll be in charge?"
"Mr. Cousin says I am to be."
"So you've been down to see him
already?" Fierce but restrained resentment in Venables' tone.
"No, I haven't. He came up here to see me
about it."
A long pause.
Venables said, with a ferocious sarcasm, but
carefully ladylike:
"May I use the telephone, please?"
"Of course. Why do you ask such a
question?" Violet managed to smile.
Venables stepped back into the sitting-room.
Violet heard her say:
"I want you to get up then, dear. Slip
something on. I want you to come here at once, as quick as you can, dear."
Her voice trembled, as her head had been trembling, with terrible emotion.
Violet sat down at the foot of the bed; and the waves
of Venables' excitement seemed to rush in a continuous torrential, invisible
stream through the door and break against Violet's resisting temper. An awful
silence. Violet felt as if she were awaiting the explosive thunder of the crack
of doom.
Then, after an immeasurable period, Prentiss
appeared.
"I thought you were never coming, dear!"
Violet heard Venables say. The exalted, trustful, vibrating emphasis that
Venables laid on that word "dear"! The two housekeepers came just
within the bedroom and stood together, allies defensive and offensive. Prentiss
wore a purple dressing-gown pinned at the neck, and bedroom slippers on her
bare feet. Her greying thin hair was in disarray. By contrast with the other
two in their primly correct housekeeper frocks she had an abandoned, indecent
air.
"Do sit down," suggested the alert,
watchful Violet.
They did not sit down.
"Now, Powler," said Venables, "will
you please tell Prentiss what you've told me." Then turning to Prentiss:
"I want you to hear from her what she told me, dear."
"About Mr. Cousin?"
"If you don't mind."
Violet complied.
"Well!" the tall, telegraph-pole woman
murmured horrified, outraged, under her breath.
"I can't help it," Violet mildly
protested. "Mr. Cousin came up himself and gave me my orders. I don't give
orders. I take them."
"You soon started giving orders to me!"
Venables exclaimed. She clasped her hands and, lifting her head, turned it to
one side, shaking.
"But I didn't give you any order,"
Violet pleaded, as pleasantly and persuasively as she could. "I only said
I thought you'd better take over Fifth and Sixth. If you've anything against
that, let me hear it for goodness' sake!"
"Is it an order or isn't it?" Venables
persisted, apparently determined to drink the bitterness of her cup to the last
drop.
"Have you got any other suggestion?"
"Is it an order or isn't it?" Venables
demanded a second time.
"I don't call it an order," said Violet.
"But of course if you prefer to call it an order I can't stop you, can
I?"
"Well!" Prentiss muttered.
"Venables has been here six years and I've been here seven, and have you
been here seven weeks?" Her voice rose a little, but only a little.
In all the annals of the Imperial Palace, and of
the Royal Palace before it, there had never been a conflict so acute as this
one. The conflicts between Sir Henry Savott on one side and father Dennis and
Evelyn on the other, conflicts involving immense sums of money, were social
trifles to it. The mortally injured pair had lost the freshness of their youth
in the service of the Palace; and Miss Prentiss had seen the oncoming of
middle-age declare itself in that service. The Imperial Palace was their home,
their landscape, their climate, their atmosphere, their habit. They knew the
Palace through and through, though they had never seen its deep foundations as
Violet had disgracefully been privileged to see them. On Mrs. O'Riordan's
desertion each of them had expected to be raised to her throne. Why not? Had
they not the seniority of years, if not of service? Were they not efficient?
Had a black mark ever been notched against them, until their defence of dignity
under the monstrous assault of Maclaren? Maclaren was not a lady, couldn't be
if she tried. Whereas Prentiss was admittedly a lady, and Venables, by the mere
power of thought, had created herself a lady.
And who was Powler? A laundry-woman! Introduced
into the hotel by Mr. Orcham, and soon caught trying to captivate Sir Henry
Savott! And the laundry-woman, an inexperienced neophyte, ignorant of the A B C
of hotels, was raised over their heads by the foreigner Mr. Cousin! And there
on the bed sat the laundry-woman triumphant, with her energetic youth, with her
unwrinkled complexion, with her damnable complacency! The situation was
intolerably unfair. It was more than human nature could stand. Justice had
ceased from the earth. God was no more in heaven. If holy hatred could have
killed, Violet would have died on the spot.
As for Violet, she did worse than hate; she
disdained. She could have informed the rebels why they had been passed over. It
was because, with all their experience and their efficiency, they lacked charm
in the handling of visitors and in their relations with the staff. Mrs.
O'Riordan could assume charm like a new frock. And because they lacked tact. And
because they were for ever conveying to others their sense of their own
importance and breeding and sinless perfection. And because, in the end, in the
encounter with Mac, they had tried to break the chain of authority, than which,
to Mr. Orcham, nothing was more sacred. They had committed the supreme crime.
Violet had an obscure feeling that she ought to sympathise with them, to be
sorry for them. But she could not be sorry for them. No! She disdained them.
And she didn't care. She was in no way to blame. In her inexperience she had
imagined that in the sublime and august Imperial Palace, synonym of Paradise,
the horrors of warfare were impossible, inconceivable. Innocent! She now
comprehended that there was as much human nature in the Imperial Palace as anywhere
else, even more than in the Laundry. She saw in the flesh before her the great
fact that human nature will out. She was intimidated, but no one should guess
that she was intimidated. "I won't speak. I won't give them a
chance," she said to herself.
"I should like to know what Mr. Orcham would
say to this," Prentiss remarked coldly.
Violet explained that Mr. Orcham had approved by
telephone.
Suddenly Prentiss flared:
"Then it isn't Mr. Cousin! It isn't Mr.
Cousin after all. Mr. Orcham brought you here and you're his pet. Yes, he
brings you here and he pushes you up all the time. And why? Why, I should like
to know." Prentiss nearly forgot that she was a lady and had had a
governess all to herself once.
"I shan't speak," Violet repeated
privately, feeling as if she were holding back a tiger by a bit of thin string.
Prentiss had started, and Prentiss continued, and
in five minutes of destructive, eloquent diatribe, she had torn Violet's
character to pieces and thrown the pieces on the floor by the bedside.
"I shan't speak," Violet still said to
herself. She pitied Prentiss and Venables; but her pity was contemptuous.
"I don't know what you mean to do, my
dear," said Prentiss lovingly to Venables. "But tomorrow morning I
shall walk out of this place."
"So shall I, dear," Venables responded
in her society tone; and took the thin, veined hand of her companion.
"Well," said Violet with detachment.
"You can settle that with Mr. Cousin."
The outraged pair, exemplars of dignity both of
them, drew away. The entrance-door closed on them. They deserved what Violet
was incapable of bestowing--compassion. In an ideal world Violet would have
cast herself down at their feet, kissed Prentiss's bedroom slippers. But she
only smiled. She only said to herself, pleased with her self-control: "I
didn't speak. I didn't give them a chance." But a moment later she began
to use the most dreadful language, and in the sitting-room she lit one of Mac's
cigarettes.
CERIA
AND SIR HENRY
"Who is he, that one?" murmured the
boyish-faced Ceria, in French, to his second-in-command. He had been chatting
with two regular guests who always sat at a table in a far corner of the Imperial
Palace grill-room; and when he returned towards the middle of his kingdom he
saw that table No. 33 was occupied by three men, only two of whom he
recognised. One of the two was chairman of a British film company, the other an
owner of eight or ten minor but large cinema theatres in the suburbs. Ceria was
aware that 33 had been booked for the film chairman. The second-in-command was
aware that Ceria, though the scarcely perceptible indicative jerk of his head
had been very vague, could be directing attention to nobody but the stranger
who sat between the pair of habitués at 33. The second-in-command, shrugging
his shoulders to signify that he could not answer the question, beckoned to a
headwaiter and repeated to him Ceria's enquiry.
"That one? He ought to be Sir Henry
Savott," said the head-waiter, proud of his knowledge, and pretending to
be astonished at such ignorance on the part of his superiors.
Ceria lifted his eyebrows. He knew everything
about Sir Henry Savott except the gentleman's physical appearance. Everybody on
the upper staff had learnt the surpassing importance of Sir Henry in the recent
secret history of the Imperial Palace.
In the restaurant of course he was a fairly
familiar if infrequent figure, and received sedulous personal service from
Cappone himself. But herein was no reason why he should be famous in the
grill-room. The grill-room and the restaurant were two different worlds. Just
as there were patrons of the restaurant to whom it never occurred to enter the
grill-room, so there were patrons of the grill-room who would not dream of
entering the restaurant--partly because of the band, which in artistically
performing high-class music interfered with conversation, partly because the
general atmosphere of the grill-room was less prim than that of the restaurant,
and partly because they met their friends in the grill-room and would not be
likely to meet them in the restaurant.
The restaurant catered for a few truly smart
people and a crowd of well-dressed and well-behaved nonentities to whom
smartness was an ideal. The grill-room catered for active leaders of
commercial, industrial, theatrical, cinematographic and journalistic society.
In the clientèle of the grill-room there was a much larger proportion of names
and faces known to newspaper-readers than in the clientèle of the restaurant.
And quite probably the wealth in the grill-room, per man, exceeded the wealth
in the restaurant. (One regular luncher in the former was reputed to have made
twenty millions in thirty years of ordering the labours of other individuals.)
The restaurant was the haunt of persons who existed as beautifully as they knew
how. The grill-room was the haunt of persons accustomed to command, who did
things or got them done, who specialised in neither manners nor attire (except
a star-actress and a fashionable chorus-girl or so), who dared the Atlantic six
or seven times a year, who greeted one another with broad gestures across
half-a-dozen tables, and who began to look at their watches about a
quarter-past two.
Ceria moved towards
The hour was 1.30 and the grill-room, which Ceria
conducted as well as an orchestra consisting mainly of soloists can be
conducted, had scarcely one empty table. The company had arrived from various
parts of London, in many cases at some cost of time and convenience, for the
site of the Imperial Palace was better suited to butterflies than to bees; but
fashion and Ceria had made it popular with bees, who have their own
snobbishness, who will pay for it, and who had persuaded themselves that they
could not afford to lunch elsewhere than under Ceria. The noise of chatter was
at least as loud as might have been the sound of music; but happily it was
chatter and not music, it was evenly distributed, and as it proceeded from the
lunchers it did not dominate them. A strange and exciting spectacle, the
grill-room. The restaurant was a mile off, the Floors ten miles off.
At length Ceria reached 33. Youthful, with a
modest smile and a most misleading air of diffidence (like others on the staff
he had formed his deportment on that of Mr. Orcham), he gave the greeting of
welcome to his two acquaintances, and bowed deferentially to Sir Henry Savott.
"If you don't know Sir Henry Savott, Ceria,
you soon will do," said the chairman of the film company, with a Scotch
accent. He laughed significantly, as one who had nothing to learn about the
intimate connection between Sir Henry and the Imperial Palace.
"Glad to know you, Ceria," said Sir
Henry, and benevolently offered his hand.
"I've never had the pleasure of seeing you
here before, Sir Henry. But I know you well by sight." Thus spoke the
charming and diplomatic liar. "I hope you like your new house. One hears
that it is very wonderful."
While he felt flattered, Sir Henry reflected:
"This fellow knows his job." He said aloud that his new house might
be worse. Then, in the ensuing pause, he added: "How are the New Year's
Eve arrangements getting on? We shall be in next year before we know where we
are."
Ceria replied, with a show of proud enthusiasm:
"I believe that nearly every table in the
restaurant has been booked already. Mr. Cousin told me yesterday that before
Christmas comes he will be refusing very many applications. Mr. Cappone said
several hundreds. It will be a record New Year's Eve for the Imperial Palace.
Last year was a record too."
"That's fine. I haven't reserved a table yet,
but I shall do. You might tell Cappone, if you don't mind," said Sir
Henry, who had not forgotten Evelyn's boast.
"Certainly, sir," agreed Ceria, with a
new kind of a smile which said to Sir Henry: "This will help you to
understand that there is only one Imperial Palace."
"But surely you aren't going to turn people
away," Sir Henry went on with bright, friendly astonishment and
deprecation.
"What are we to do, sir? There was some
suggestion of using the ball-room as another restaurant, and clearing the
tables at half-past twelve; but of course it could not be done. People will
want to eat and drink till two o'clock at least, and people will want to begin
to dance at midnight."
"But there is this room," said Sir Henry.
"Tables here for three hundred and more. But perhaps this room is
to be used."
"Good idea!" the Scottish chairman
interjected. "Have a separate function here, and I'll give you the first
showing of my new forty-minute film." The notion excited him. First film
ever exhibited in the Imperial Palace! Unique publicity! Etc.
Ceria shook his head sorrowfully, for he envied
Cappone on New Year's Eve and on no other night. "We must keep this room
for those who do not like New Year's Eve dinners and suppers. And then, our
visitors who are staying in the hotel! Impossible! Quite impossible!"
"Yes, yes," Sir Henry concurred.
The chairman was dashed, and began to fidget his
very solid body.
"My maxim," said the owner of cinemas,
"is the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. You could fill this
room with a special festivity. Could you fill it with your old fogeys, and if
you could, would they spend as much money?"
"No, sir, I hardly expect to fill it, and
they would not spend half as much. You," he glanced at Sir Henry,
with forlorn hopefulness, "you would perhaps speak to Mr. Cousin,
sir."
Sir Henry said nothing in reply.
A moment later Ceria left the table, somewhat
meditative. Always he felt himself an exile from the renowned Palace New Year's
Eve celebrations, during which the grill-room lived desolate hours enlivened by
merely sedate "souvenirs." He would have given a very great deal to
be the autocrat of a New Year festivity of his own, complete with orchestra,
cinema, balloons, streamers, missiles, caps, toy-instruments, incandescent
puddings and all.
SABBATH
Violet was occupying Miss Maclaren's sitting-room,
partly as a sign of authority, but much more because in her position of acting
head-housekeeper, she had frequent need of a room for interviews. That she did
not use the bedroom also was a tactful admission of the temporary nature of her
seat on the high throne of the former Mrs. O'Riordan. Her rule had so far been
marked by no untoward incident. Miss Prentiss and Miss Venables, while working
out their notice under Violet's general instruction, kept themselves to
themselves and as invisible as might be. Their desperate resolve to depart
instantly and leave the Palace in a fix had been abandoned without a word said
on the morning after Miss Maclaren's seizure and Violet's outrageous rise to
power.
Violet had refrained from any direct criticism of
their performances, preferring tranquillity to an ideal perfection. Agatha, the
head-housekeeper's pink-faced, fluffy little secretary, had acted as
go-between; Agatha had a very convenient faculty of being passionately loyal to
the occupant of the throne, no matter who the occupant was. Miss Cass, Evelyn's
grand secretary, had been fairly sympathetic to Violet, though the absence of
her master had given her too much freedom and a somewhat extravagant sense of
her own importance in the world of the hotel. Miss Tilton, Mr. Cousin's
secretary, had been very helpful, in her dashing way; the friendship between
her and Violet, based on identity of one Christian name, was progressing.
Beatrice Noakes, the fat chambermaid on Eighth, had been extremely helpful, if
extremely loquacious. Peace had been achieved and maintained.
It was Sunday. Sunday is more acutely Sabbatical
in fashionable hotel than anywhere else in London, save a few homes which still
keep their islet-heads bravely raised above a flowing tide of irreligion.
Visitors to the Imperial Palace considered it incorrect to be seen in London on
Sunday--at any rate until the evening. Many left on Saturday for the weekend,
but kept their rooms, with a noble disregard of expense. Many slipped
inconspicuously away early on Sunday morning for a day's golf or perilous
motoring. Some stayed in bed. Ceria's grill-room was a melancholy desert at the
lunch hour. The restaurant was scarcely a third full--of apologetic persons or
persons who had no shame. The entrance-hall and the foyer had a thick moral
atmosphere which seemed to deaden footfalls and reduce pace. The mere aspect of
the reading-room rendered it inviolate. The staff was more than decimated.
Apparently none of the visitors, and none of the staff except a few Latins who
attended early Mass, had any preoccupation concerning the infinite, the mystery
of the grave, the dread consequence of sin, the menace of a flouted deity.
Self-righteousness was notably diminished, almost swallowed up in tedium. The
afternoon was terrible. But in the evening, in the vast restaurant, with jazz,
Hungarian rhapsodies, jugglers, dancers, and caviare, bisque, and
multi-coloured alcohol, the Palace did appreciably recover its weekday
animation and geniality. Monday indeed began on Sunday night.
In the head-housekeeper's sitting-room sat Violet,
wearing not her raven duty-frock, but a frock of bright hues and a hat that
suited. She was less a head-housekeeper than a prosperous daughter about to go
forth and dazzle her simple parents' home. She might have gone earlier; but the
imponderable weight of housekeeping responsibility had hugged her down. And she
was also a student of conversational French. The lesson was just finished; the
benevolent and fatherly Perosi had stood up to leave. He was leaving with
regret. His pupil's progress flattered him, and he enjoyed her calm, sensible,
matter-of-fact and smiling society. The two were genuinely attached to one
another. Perosi had two satisfactions in his heart. Though in such condition of
health as might have excused him from the office, he had been to Mass at
"Come in," Violet called instantly in a
loud, clear voice. For, though Perosi was old and Violet young and both of them
were reputable beyond slur, it was well that the appearances of respectability
should fully corroborate the fact thereof, and a moment's delay might have
damaged the appearances.
Ceria came in, boyish, diffident, gentle. He
began:
"Bon jour, mademoiselle, comment
allez-vous?" (For he
had heard of the French lessons, and his brain worked very swiftly.)
And Violet, despite her amazement at seeing him,
answered in a sort of dream, very nervously, but correctly:
"Trés bien, monsieur, je vous remercie. Et
vous-même?"
Perosi was enchanted. It was nothing to him that
the lesson had happened to contain those very phrases. The girl had understood
French from an unexpected visitor (what a dreadful Italian accent the young man
had!), and, keeping her presence of mind admirably, had replied in French!
But Perosi concealed his enchantment, and easily.
He had a grievance against the innocent Ceria. His greeting of the Grill-room
manager was stiff, reserved and plainly inimical. The grievance had arisen
thus. Two visitors on Eighth had complained to Miss Maclaren about
breakfast-dishes theoretically hot being in practice cold. Miss Maclaren had
passed on the complaint to Perosi, perhaps rather clumsily. Perosi knew the
cause of the trouble: a defect in the electric hot-plate in the service-lift,
which defect an electrician had not contrived at once to cure. Ceria was known
to be ultimately responsible for the floor-meals, and one of the visitors had spoken
to Ceria. Perosi was convinced that, on the evening of her seizure, Ceria had
sent for Miss Maclaren in order to discuss the matter with her. Perosi could
not tolerate such a proceeding, which was a blow to his cherished prestige and
a sin against the cardinal principle of the chain of authority. The service of
meals on the Floors was his affair, and no other person's affair. His notorious
passive antipathy to all the housekeepers (with the sole exception of Violet)
sprang from, and was fed by, real or fancied interference by housekeepers in
his exclusive domain. He held that Ceria's going behind his back to criticise
him in private confabulation with Miss Maclaren was a monstrous act. Therefore
was his demeanour towards Ceria hostile. One result was that the gloomy air of
Sunday seemed to have penetrated into the room with the entrance of Ceria.
But no sooner had Perosi's face declared hostility
to Ceria than he saw a disturbed expression on Violet's face. He thought,
alarmed: "I have represented myself to this most sympathetic young woman
as a man full of general kindliness. I must on no account destroy the character
which I have created for myself in her eyes. More than anything I wish to stand
well with her." And he began with much Latin subtlety to change his
attitude. And as he changed it, so did his hidden feelings change towards
Ceria, and so was Violet reassured. The air of Sunday was gradually dissipated.
"I came to enquire the latest news about Miss
Maclaren," Ceria was saying.
"Do sit down," said Violet. "I
called yesterday at the hospital to leave some flowers, but I was not allowed
to see her. But Dr. Constam telephoned me this morning that if they could do
without a second operation she would very likely pull through. If they must
have another operation he wouldn't prophesy. Anyhow, the poor thing is holding
her own for the present."
"Did he tell you exactly what it is?"
Ceria asked.
"He didn't. They hardly ever do, you
know." Violet smiled sadly. "I think she will pull through. People
generally pull through, don't they? Do sit down, Mr. Ceria. Won't you sit down
again, Mr. Perosi?" She felt as if she was presiding at a reception.
"But you are going out," said Ceria,
sitting down.
"Not the slightest hurry."
Perosi looked at his watch.
"I must go down to Fourth," said he.
"Thank you." On his way to the door he stopped and addressed Ceria
very blandly. "You were the first to see Miss Maclaren. Comment ça
est-il arrivé? Personne n'en satl rien--à ce qu'il parait."
Ceria out of politeness to Violet answered in
English, shaking his head:
"She telephoned that she wanted to see me. I
asked her to come down to my office. She had the attack as she came in. Very
severe pain, I should say. I helped her to sit on a chair. She would have
fallen off if I had not held her. Then I carried her to the lift. That was all.
I know no more than anybody else."
"She didn't speak?"
"She could not."
"She did not say why she came to see
you?" Perosi daringly probed.
Ceria shook his head again: "Nothing. I
cannot guess what she wanted."
Impossible for even Perosi not to credit the young
man's sincerity. The old man was perfectly satisfied, and once more in the full
bloom of his benevolence. He said, in a new tone suddenly and quite
dramatically warm:
"Ceria, my friend, I hear you are thinking of
organising a New Year's Eve celebration in the grill-room to accommodate
visitors who have not succeeded in obtaining tables in the restaurant. It is a
fine idea, that! At New Year's Eve there is little to do on the Floors. If I can
help you in the service, dispose of me."
Violet was thrilled by this startling
announcement, which after the rather laboured and melancholy exchanges on the
subject of Miss Maclaren's illness sounded a sort of trumpet-note of inspiring
enthusiasm. Not often did the old man show enthusiasm concerning anything.
Violet had heard the widespread news of the unprecedented demand for tables in
the restaurant on the great night; but not a word had reached her of the scheme
for bringing the grill-room into the geography of the mighty feast. She knew
nothing of the grill-room, had never seen it.
As for Ceria, he was still more startled than his
hostess. He had not mentioned Sir Henry Savott's casual suggestion to any
member of the staff, nor at a daily conference, for the reason that he had
regarded it as too impossible to be worth discussion. Sir Henry Savott had
apparently not been ready to stand sponsor for it. And assuredly, Mr. Cousin
would not for a moment consider it. And now Ceria amazingly learnt that somehow
the scheme had got abroad in the hotel. And the scheme blossomed magnificently
afresh from the shrivelled seed in his mind. He pictured in a flash the entire
splendid fête in his grill-room, and himself in charge of it, and his very
friendly rival Cappone outshone, not in size, but by sheer force of chic
and inventive novelty; and paragraphs about it in Mr. Immerson's weekly gossip
columns. His eye shone; his cheeks flamed.
"Have you heard of it then?" he
hesitatingly asked.
"I heard," said Perosi.
"How?"
Perosi gave a shrug. "I seem to have
heard," he said vaguely.
He enjoyed being mysterious. The truth was that
the cinema-owner, present at the lunch two days earlier, had mentioned it, with
ornamental additions and exaggerations, to Perosi on the previous night during
the service of an intimate dinner in the suite which he was occupying in the
Palace for a week of some secret negotiation. Perosi had mistakenly understood
that the thing was as good as settled; whereas the fact was that Mr. Cousin
himself was in complete ignorance of Sir Henry Savott's fanciful notion. Sir
Henry, when in the creative mood, was capable of throwing off half-a-dozen such
coruscating sparks in half a day.
Now Ceria, the centre of the scheme, could not
possibly appear to be less well informed about it than Perosi, who had only
'heard' of it.
"It will be discussed at the conference
to-morrow morning," he said, as one who was at the heart of the matter,
deciding on the instant to introduce it at the conference himself. He took
Perosi's offer as a significant omen. Perosi, though a minor deity in the
pantheon of the Palace, had a prestige beyond his rank. He was accepted by his
superiors as a serious and sagacious person. Both Mr. Orcham and Mr. Cousin
listened with respect to his opinion, whether they had sought it or not. He had
had great experience of hotel work; and before Ceria had dawned on the Palace,
Perosi had been a valued head-waiter in the grill-room. But for lack of
ambition, lack of personal style, and a certain superficial surliness of
manner, he might have risen very high in the Palace.
What puzzled Ceria was that Mr. Cousin, the scheme
having as it seemed been on the carpet for two days, had not summoned him into
the managerial office. He guessed that it must be Sir Henry who had mentioned
the wonderful idea, his own, to Mr. Cousin. And an idea of Sir Henry's was not
one to be lightly cast aside.
Perosi departed, in full lustre.
Violet wondered why Ceria outstayed Perosi. He had
received the information about Mac which he had come for. And Mr. and Mrs.
Powler, at home in Renshaw Street on the south side of the Thames, would grow
impatient for the arrival of their marvellous daughter. Still, Violet, if she
had had a magic power to choose between sending Ceria away and keeping him,
would have kept him yet awhile. She liked him. She liked his presence, the
innocent, diffident, unworldly look on his face. She was attracted to him, not
as a male, but as a human being. So sensible, so ingenuous, so agreeable to
behold! Similarly she liked old Perosi. So grim, so benign. She liked people.
She liked to know about them and to understand them. This was only her second
meeting with Ceria. At the first, she had immediately appreciated his concern
for the stricken Mac (though there was something nonchalant in it), and the
discretion of his disappearance from Mac's room when he could no longer be
useful. She liked to hear him talk his very correct and fluent English, in
which every sound was subtly foreign: so that he could not have said even
'knife' without betraying his foreign birth.
Of course his foreignness was a vague barrier
dividing them. Foreign, full of mystery, he would always be. But she did not
object to the barrier, because she had no wish for intimacy with him. To enjoy
his acquaintance was sufficient for her. What did not present itself to her
mind was the fact that, just as Ceria was foreign to her, so was she foreign to
him. Exotic, elusive. They chatted about nothing, Sundayishly. Their talk was
simple, and it was cheerful. But for Violet, beneath the flow of the
conversation, there was an undercurrent of sadness for the tragic plight of
Mac. She fancied that she could detect the same sadness beneath the social tone
of Ceria's sentences.
She was wrong. Ceria was certainly preoccupied,
but not with the fate of Miss Maclaren. His mind was busy upon the dream of the
possibilities of a New Year's Eve fête in his grill-room. Violet had a very
imperfect conception of the importance of New Year's Eve in the corporate life
of the Imperial Palace. She had never seen a fashionable, luxurious New Year's
Eve fête, and never imagined one. She was perhaps aware, from rumours and
glimpses, that tremendous preparations were afoot, and that the entire hotel
was slowly gathering its energies together for a grand climacteric of display
designed orgiastically to receive the New Year into the infinite succession of
years. But as regards the esoteric spirit of the effort, she belonged to an
ignorant and uninitiated laity.
"You are going out," said Ceria
suddenly, without rising, and as though he had not made this surprising
discovery before.
"Not yet," she replied. "Are you
generally here on Sunday afternoons? I thought that--"
"I am never here on Sunday afternoons, and
not often on Sunday evenings. But my mother and my sisters went away this
morning to the Riviera. They would have gone to Italy, our home, but there
might have been complications for the return. They are not naturalised British
subjects like I am. My eldest sister has been unwell."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Not ill. Unwell. It is the damp climate.
They have gone for a month. My house is empty. You understand--the sadness of
an empty home. I could not tolerate it alone. After lunch I stayed here. Laisser
aller!" He smiled plaintively, as it were appealing for sympathetic
comprehension.
"What a pity you did not call earlier
then!" Violet smiled. "I might have given you some tea."
He thanked her deprecatingly. Mac's illness was
the pretext for his call; no more. He had called because he had lost three
women endeared to him by habit of life; he was accustomed to the companionship
of women, this deferential functionary of whom his patrons thought that the
grill-room was his sole and everlasting world; and in the arid desert of the
hotel on Sunday afternoon he had sought an oasis--a woman's room. He had liked
Violet for the calm efficiency of her reception of Miss Maclaren's tortured
body. He had liked her soothing presence. Her expression and her gestures had
remained in his memory. And now he liked a new expression on her face, an
expression--which he did not know was characteristic--of kindly alacrity to
observe and consider sympathetically any phenomenon that might offer itself to
her cognisance. He was offering himself to her cognisance. And her smile was
responsive.
"Do you live near here?" she asked.
"I suppose you do, because of getting home at nights."
He told her exactly where his home lay: a little
beyond Hampstead. With an increasing naïve eagerness he described his home, his
mother, his elder sister and his younger sister, his garden, the
tennis-court--with not enough space at the ends for truly scientific back-line
play. He was so graphic in his mild fervour that Violet saw his home and
the old lady and the two girls. Did the ladies feel exiled in North London? Did
they not long for Italy? Not a bit. They were devoted to London. They loved the
English and the English character and ways. There was no tedium in London. Both
Emilia and Daria spoke English better than himself, Ceria. The old lady spoke a
little English. But at home they spoke nothing but Italian. They had an Italian
maid-cook, and the cuisine was strictly Italian. The English were wonderful.
The English domestic cuisine, however...Well, they had experienced it in a boarding
house at Brixton for a few weeks. The stream of home-detail slackened,
trickled. Ceria rose.
"I must go. May I telephone you for news of
Miss Maclaren to-morrow?"
Violet nodded.
"I do hope your New Year's Eve dinner will be
arranged," she said politely, not quite realising how much the fête meant
to him.
"Ah yes!" he sighed, with Latin
pessimism. Then brightly:
"I was so glad that Perosi favoured it.
Perosi is listened to here in the Palace. He is a historical monument. If when
he sees Mr. Cousin he should chance to say a word--it would have
influence."
"Really?"
"Yes, yes. I have noticed before."
"I shall tell him he must. I shall tell
him." Violet's tone was confident, almost imperious, the tone of a woman who
knows her feminine power. She rose. She seemed to be suddenly inspired with
enthusiasm for Ceria's scheme. "I shall tell him to-night when I come
back."
"How nice of you!" Ceria's eyes shone.
So did Violet's.
A quarter of a minute after his departure she was
following him down the lighted corridor. She ran into her bedroom at the end,
switched on the electricity, put on her coat, snatched her bag, examined her
face, switched off the electricity. She was out of the hotel. She walked
quickly, past the dim groves and water of St. James's Park, past Queen Anne
houses, the Abbey, hospitals, grandiose Government offices, to the corner of
the Embankment and Westminster Bridge, and sprang on to a tram with the right
illuminated sign on its forehead. Buildings were smaller, roads wider and
straighter, motorcars fewer, costumes and suits less smart. The tram slid
roaring by the Laundry, and the Laundry touchingly recalled to her what seemed
like her distant youth. Cyril Purkin was no doubt in his little house there.
South London was another world, the world, again, of her far-distant youth.
Condescending to it, she yet loved it, because she knew every yard of it and it
was her home.
The tram stopped. She jumped down. Tiny houses on
the broad thoroughfare. She walked a little under the recurrent glare of the
street-lamps; then turned to the left, then to the right. Tiniest houses, some
lit, some dark, some with names, some without. She halted at a low wooden gate
opening into a front-garden as big as a counterpane. One projecting window;
slits of light at the edges of the three blinds. A light over the door. The
moon is not farther from the earth than Violet was then from the Imperial
Palace. She rang the tinkling old bell briskly. She tapped on the door. Her
father would as usual say something faintly sardonic about her artificial
complexion. Her mother would remark on her new gloves. How slow were these
parents! The door opened. Her mother! Her mother kissed her as she stood on the
doorstep, looking with strange enquiry at this new daughter. How narrow and
stuffy and old was the lobby! Her father in his old creased housejacket
appeared at the door of the sitting-room.
"I must positively be back at the old Pally
by ten o'clock, children," she exclaimed.
It was her father who had somewhat derisively
attached the diminutive "Pally" to the greatest luxury hotel in the
world. South London had to maintain its self-respect.
THE
VAMP
Violet found a mild and soothing satisfaction in
the short Sunday evening visit to her home; but as she waved a good night to
her parents standing side by side in the front doorway, her father puffing at
his pipe, the thought in her dutiful daughterly mind was:
"Well, that's done!"
Her father and mother were not really interested
in the Palace, and her father's comments on the things she told him showed no
comprehension of either their importance or their significance. Her mother was
inquisitive about the details of Miss Maclaren's seizure, but to Violet her
curiosity seemed morbid and her prejudice against hospitals almost childish.
Both parents had been much more interested in the life of the Laundry, probably
because they saw it from the street several times a week. What really did
interest them was the daily functioning of the little home: the enormities of
the charwoman who 'came in' for half a day on alternate days, the caprices of
the kitchen range, the inexplicable peeling of paint on the back-door, the new
wireless in the next house, the kittening of the cat. They assumed that Violet
would be eager for every tiniest morsel of house-gossip.
Her father had of course never been inside the
Palace, had never dreamed of going inside, could not conceive of any
circumstances which might lead to his going inside. Her mother had never even
seen the hotel, or, if she had long ago seen it, had not noticed it. She spoke
of making a trip to look at it, as she might have spoken of a trip to New York.
The hotel was far beyond their range. Violet was miraculously rising in the
hotel. The hotel, for them, was a place existing solely in order that Violet
might rise in it.
As for Violet, this excursion into South
London--she had made several before--was the first to awaken her fully to the
quick growth of her affection for the Palace. As she journeyed eastward in the
tram she was positively impatient to be back on the Floors with all their
endless small surprises and anxieties; quite ready to be immersed again in a
sea of trouble--what some people would call trouble but she wouldn't. And in
particular she was impatient to talk to Mr. Perosi. She had convinced herself
that by talking to Perosi she might help to help the Palace towards a greater
glory on New Year's Eve. Her sole reason for returning to the hotel not later
than ten o'clock was information received from Perosi himself that he would be
leaving the hotel at that hour on a visit to a friend at the Majestic.
Strictly, she had been entitled to a week-end off, but a truly earnest
temporary head-housekeeper could not think of absenting herself for so long a
period from the supervision of the huge organism--especially as she had had
word from Mr. Cousin that her salary would be raised during the term of her
high office. But for the desire to have an interview with Perosi, however, she
would not have returned till midnight.
Mr. Maxon, the Staff-manager's second-in-command,
was fussing about restlessly in the dark staff-entrance, though nobody was
clocking-in and nobody was clocking-out. Naturally Mr. Maxon did not expect a
head-housekeeper to clock-in. On the contrary he very amiably opened the wicket
for her and expressed his view that the night was fine, with which Violet very
amiably agreed. It occurred to her that her father would have made an excellent
assistant Staff-manager. She enquired of Mr. Maxon whether Mr. Perosi had left
the hotel. He had not. But she met Perosi, strangely clad in a fawn-coloured
lounge-suit and a brown overcoat and softhat to match, in the main
basement-corridor, he having descended in a service-lift. She stopped him. They
were alone in the stony corridor.
"I'm so glad I've caught you," she said,
with a calm, gentle smile. She had intended that smile to be captivating, but
at the moment of composing the smile she was too proud, or too honest, to use
the wile which she had contemplated. She was disappointed with herself. She
thought: "Why can't I do it? Why am I so stiff?"
For she had set her mind on 'vamping'--there was
no other word--the benevolent grim old gentleman, on demonstrating the
influence over him which she believed she possessed. According to Ceria,
Perosi's opinions about hotel-policy had weight. Ceria desired that the weight
of Perosi's opinions should turn the scale in favour of a special New Year's
Eve fête in the grill-room, and had she not said to Ceria, of Perosi:
"I shall tell him he must"? Her instinct
was to help Ceria. Ceria was a child, and she wanted to give him a toy. Ceria
was so charming, so innocent, so diffident, so pathetic, so bereft of his
womenkind. Ceria would have to
sleep through Christmas and the New Year in his desolate home. He deserved
compensation, and Violet was determined that if she could bring it about he
should have the dazzling compensation of a fête in his grill-room.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est? Vous me le direz en
français," said the
French master, quizzically, rather alarmingly. His experience of housekeepers
had endowed him with a sort of second-sight; and by nature he was suspicious.
Violet shook her head to the command to say her
say in French. Perosi knew that he was ordering the impossible of his pupil.
"You remember what you said to Mr. Ceria this
afternoon in my room about that scheme for a New Year's Eve dinner in the
grill-room?" Perosi nodded cautiously. "Well, after you left he
talked about it. He seems frightfully keen on it, but he's afraid they'll turn
it down. Now I was just thinking--everybody in this place knows what influence
you have here, and I was just thinking that if you did get a chance to put in a
word to Mr. Cousin, perhaps you might...You see what I mean. It's only an idea
that crossed my mind. And everybody does know your influence. I've often
heard of it."
Not a very clever speech, she thought. Lame! And
the last sentence was a gross and deliberate exaggeration. But she smiled
again, looking up at the man with an appeal in her eyes.
Perosi's gaunt face softened. She thought:
"After all I'm doing this fairly well."
Perosi had feared some request for a favour the
granting of which might upset the strictness of the ritual of his branch of the
Floors-service. You never knew with these women, even the most sensible of
them! Instead, Violet had flattered him. It was true that he had influence. He
was nobody. He was only the head-floors-waiter. But he had influence with the
mighty--and incidentally his post of head-floors-waiter was an exceedingly
important one, if you looked at it properly! Perhaps none more important under
Mr. Cousin!
"No!" he said gently, hardening his face
again. "I shall not speak to Mr. Cousin."
"Oh!" Violet exclaimed timidly. She
really did feel like a sweet young girl at the mercy of a stern and powerful
male.
"But," Perosi went on, relenting with
grim roguishness. "I shall speak to Mr. Orcham."
"Mr. Orcham! But--"
"Mr. Orcham has telegraphed from Boulogne
that he will be here to-night. Victoria 10.47. I've only heard this minute. If
they'd let me know early, I should not have changed my clothes. Now I must
change back again, because when Mr. Orcham returns after an absence I take his
orders myself. So I shall not go to the Majestic. I take just a little walk to
the river and back, to breathe. That is why I go out earlier than I said. I
shall see Mr. Orcham in his room, and if I can I shall say a word. He likes me
to take his orders myself--I mean for a meal, if he is hungry. I shall
certainly see him."
"That's splendid!" said Violet.
"And it's very nice of you." She smiled gratefully, admiringly: final
gesture of the vamp successful.
Perosi went off, buttoning his overcoat and
turning up the collar.
But Violet was vaguely disturbed by the news of
Mr. Orcham's imminent arrival. Mr. Orcham was great and terrible. He had been
terrible about Venables and Prentiss. Still, he had confirmed her astonishing
appointment as temporary head-housekeeper. He was a man about whom nothing
could be prophesied. Violet had a notion that the mice might have played more
harmoniously if the cat had not returned so soon.
THE
PANJANDRUM'S RETURN
Evelyn, at a quarter before midnight, had been in
his castle for thirty-five minutes. His mood was that of a returned traveller
for whom work and anxieties have been accumulating during his absence. He was
relieved and even glad to be back, but he shrank from the consequences of being
back; he shirked the burden awaiting his broad shoulders. Also he was
self-conscious as a supreme ruler re-entering a kingdom which has been left in
charge of inferior beings. He had desired to meet nobody of importance until
Monday morning. The prospect of effusive, deferential greetings from this
person and from that as he came through the revolving doors into the great
hall, answering enquiries about his health and his journey, responding suitably
to expressions of pleasure at the sight of him, listening to hints of urgent
matters which would immediately demand his notice, making polite enquiries
about the health and the doings and the happiness of other people--the prospect
of all this was more than he felt himself able to bear.
Call it weakness, cowardice, what you please, the
panjandrum had chosen to re-enter his kingdom by the staff-entrance, to the
intense astonishment of Mr. Maxon, who of course had attributed the caprice to
every motive except the right foolish one. He had driven to the hotel quite
alone, impatiently abandoning Oldham and baggage at Victoria. He had ascended
to Seventh partly by a service-lift and partly by walking.
But even so, sneaking into his own house like a
thief, he had not been able to avoid being somehow enveloped in the intangible
blanket-folds of the hotel atmosphere. On the way up he had caught two or three
bars of the orchestra far distant in the restaurant. Same old routine,
hackneyed, desolating: so it seemed to him. People would be dancing and
guzzling in the restaurant on the night of judgment and doom. But that must be
the new Paris-American band which Jones-Wyatt, the Bands-and-Cabaret-manager,
had engaged. Well, he did not very much like it. He could not possibly judge it
with fairness, but his inclination was not to approve it, not to approve
anything. He was in a hypercritical state of mind. Certain phenomena at the
staff-entrance and in the basement-corridor had ruffled him, though he had said
nothing about them to Maxon. He had passed unseen along the main corridor of
Seventh, opened his door, slipped inside his castle, shut the door. He was
safe. None would dare to disturb him. Yes, Perosi would dare to disturb. He
knew the ritual on these rare occasions. Perosi regarded himself as a
privileged person. And Perosi had dared to disturb him. He had to be pleasant
and chatty with Perosi. He would not eat. No, not even the least snack. He had
dined on the train from Folkestone. To placate Perosi, to save Perosi's gnarled
face, he had asked for a liqueur brandy and hot water.
Serving the beverage with marvellous quickness,
Perosi had shown an exasperating tendency to fall into hotel-gossip. Evelyn had
bravely and nobly smiled, while attempting to check the tendency. Perosi had
remarked that he had been very interested to hear of the project of a separate
New Year's Eve festivity in the grill-room. Then it was that Evelyn had
performed a miracle of self-control and deceitfulness. One of his fibs without
words. Neither by telephone nor by letter on his journeyings had he been
vouchsafed one single syllable about this astounding project of a separate New
Year's Eve festivity in the grill-room. Nevertheless he had replied mildly and
casually to Perosi:
"Yes, yes," as if he had been familiar
with the project for weeks, as if he himself had invented the project. And
Perosi, hoodwinked, and perceiving that the moment was inopportune for a
friendly discussion, had left the room. "I'm a bit tired, Perosi,"
Evelyn had said. "Good night. Thank you."
Then Evelyn had heard baggage being thudded into
his bedroom through the bedroom door. By now every member of the staff would be
apprised of his advent. There was Maxon. Before he had reached Seventh
everybody would have learnt that the panjandrum had come--and by what strange
entrance! He had sat awhile lounging in his soft travelling-suit, thinking of
all his hotel-inspections, on the whole satisfactory, in various cities, and of
the suddenly decided tiresome journey and the rough Channel voyage. He had
meant to sleep one night in Boulogne, a sympathetic port, just for change and
rest. But when the train stopped at the harbour station he had felt that after
all he could not tolerate a night in Boulogne, and his consequent
counter-orders and orders had considerably overset the exhausted Oldham. And it
was not true that he had dined in the Pullman crowded with peevish passengers.
He had only pretended to dine. The Channel, following many days of fatigue, had
somewhat seriously deranged him, and indeed was partly responsible for his
captious, sensitive temper.
Having finished the soothing brandy and water, he
bent down and unlaced his brown boots, which for hours had been slightly incommoding
him. Then, restless, he went into the bathroom. The bedroom door was open. He
stared at Oldham stooping, straightening himself, sorting clothes, handling
them gently, almost lovingly. Oldham knew well that there would be no respite
for a valet until every garment and belonging was in its proper place and the
trunk and the two suit-cases hidden away. A valet was not entitled to be
fatigued by journeys, deranged by the Channel. A valet had to be superhuman.
And Oldham really did seem to be superhuman in those moments. The truth was
that on the journey he had made a tranquillising decision, a decision not
uninfluenced by the loss of sixty pounds odd, all unknown to Evelyn, in a Paris
tripot.
"I suppose, sir," he said, as it were
dreamily, with his back to Evelyn. "I suppose you wouldn't care for me to
withdraw my notice?"
Suggestion startling to Evelyn, among whose chief
worries was the horrid thought of having to replace Oldham and train his
successor...Silence...Oldham secretly trembled at his own boldness. Evelyn
ought to have felt comforted. But he did not. Instead, he reflected bitterly:
"Inconstant ass! Coward! He's afraid. And he doesn't know his own mind.
Why the devil should I let him withdraw his notice? Fancies himself as a retail
tobacconist, and then funks it! But I might have guessed he'd give in when it
came to the point!"
When the silence had continued for a few minutes,
he said very drily:
"We'll talk about that to-morrow. I shall
have to think it over." He added, commandingly: "Be as quick as you
can. I want to go to bed."
"Yes, sir."
Evelyn returned to the sitting-room, wearing
pumps, and murmuring inaudibly to himself. A breath-taking sight confronted
him: two letters lying on the centre-table. He was outraged by the sight, which
strained to the snapping point his already exacerbated nerves. It was a rigid
rule of the Palace that no correspondence should in any circumstances be
delivered in his private rooms, which were held by him to be sacred. His office
was the only proper place for correspondence, and for any documents relating to
business. Also, he had determined not to touch business until the next day. He
desired, and would positively have, nothing but peace. He impulsively opened
the door and called out:
"Oldham!"
"Yes, sir." In response the man came as
far as the bathroom.
"Who has put these letters here?"
Evelyn's tone was very curt and imperious. Yet he admitted to himself that
obviously Oldham was not in a position to answer the question.
"I really couldn't say, sir," said
Oldham, placatory because he now wanted more and more to keep his situation.
"They have been put here since I went into
the bedroom to speak to you. Someone must have brought them here." Evelyn
knew even as he made it that this was a silly remark.
"Yes, sir."
"You don't know who did it?"
"No, sir."
"Well go, and find out--at once."
"Very good, sir," said Oldham, thinking
to himself: "He's just told me to hurry up with the unpacking and here he
pushes me off to do something else! What a life!" But he still wanted to
keep his situation.
Evelyn firmly decided that he would not read the
letters. No! He would send them downstairs to his office unopened and deal with
them in the ordinary course the next morning. Then, glancing at one of the
envelopes, he recognised the handwriting of Sir Henry Savott, and had a qualm.
What could be wrong? He rather violently tore at the envelope. "My dear
Orcham. This is to tell you that my friend Mr. Oliver Oxford, managing director
of the Carlyle Oxford British Films Company, has an idea to suggest to you for
the proposed New Year's Eve affair in your grill-room. Please listen to him. I
think it was I who first thought of a special affair in the grill-room for New
Year's Eve. Oxford is a friend of mine. Yours."
Curse the fellow! Trying to interfere with the
management of the Palace! And all because, the hotel-merger being practically
arranged, he was now turning to film-mergers. Evidently for reasons of his own
the fellow was anxious to oblige this Oxford person. Of all the impudence! He,
Evelyn, would show Savott what was what! The other envelope was large and of an
ornamental nature. It bore on its face the words:
"Carlyle Oxford British." Extraordinary,
despicable, how these English film companies would imitate American companies,
even in their titles! But Carlyle, Evelyn knew, was an American. He read the
second letter. What a signature of self-conscious flourishes! The letter
afforded to Evelyn the virginity of an absolutely new kind of silent film, of
which Carlyle Oxford British had the highest hopes, and in which they had an
unparalleled confidence, for use in the Palace Grillroom on New Year's Eve, if
Evelyn cared to avail himself of it. And would Evelyn come and see the film in
the private theatre of Carlyle Oxford British in Lisle Street, at any time
convenient to himself?
What was this grill-room scheme? It
appeared to be very much in the air. First old Perosi. Then Savott. Then this
Oxford--no doubt a Hebrew. Evelyn was clearly the only person in the world who
knew nothing about it. He lit a cigarette. Why did not Oldham come back? What
was the nincompoop up to? Surely it was a simple enough thing to find out who
had introduced correspondence into the sitting-room! Evelyn went to the
telephone, and demanded Mr. Cousin. He had no wish to speak to Mr. Cousin. He
wanted to know whether Mr. Cousin was on duty. Mr. Cousin was not supposed to
be on duty on Sunday nights; but Evelyn thought that the Manager, aware that
his Director was returning, might have had the grace to be available. The
telephone answer was that Mr. Cousin was away till Monday. Naturally! There was
always something subtly independent about Cousin. Evelyn had been in search of
a grievance. He found it. Then he telephoned to his secretary, Miss Cass. He knew
that Miss Cass was on holiday for the week-end, but still he thought that the
girl might by some magic have contrived to be present to welcome him. The reply
from the hotel-exchange was that the Director's office was closed. Another
grievance.
At last Oldham came back, flurried. He had failed
in his mission. Perosi, a waiter, a valet, the liftman, several pages, a
chambermaid: he had carried out a thorough investigation, and all these people
denied any complicity in the mysterious delivery of letters into the castle.
Evelyn had a gleam of light.
"Find out if a Mr. Oliver Oxford is staying
here."
"Very good, sir." In a quarter of a
minute Oldham conveyed the answer. Mr. Oliver Oxford was staying in the Palace.
Suite 743. Quite near to Evelyn's castle. He guessed the solution of the
enigma. Mr. O.O., having heard of Evelyn's arrival, had written the letter and
delivered both letters himself. No doubt he had knocked, received no answer,
and stepped impudently into the room. Evelyn noticed that Savott's letter was
dated several days earlier, and had probably been waiting to be used in the
presumptuous Hebrew's own good time.
The image of Violet Powler swam into his mind,
possibly drawn there by a subconscious yearning to be tranquillised. He was
accustomed to think of Miss Powler as a tranquillising creature; he had never
forgotten, and he never recalled without pleasure, the scene at the Laundry
when she had handled so gently the colour-blind woman. All the floors were now
in charge of the inexperienced Miss Powler, with his approval. An audacious
experiment. But during his absence had he received from Cousin any criticisms,
any complaints, of her performance? Not one. Had Cousin shown the least
misgiving as to her capacity? No. Cousin's letters and his nightly telephoning
had been salted with hints of the inadequacy of other members of the upper
staff; but Miss Powler's efficiency had not once been arraigned. He looked at
the clock. Three minutes to twelve. He picked up the telephone, then hesitated.
If this was an early night for her she would be gone to bed, but if not there
were still three minutes before, according to rules, she was entitled to leave
duty. He asked the Exchange for her. In a moment he heard her voice.
"Mr. Orcham?"
"Speaking. I've just returned, Miss Powler. I
didn't want to trouble you at this time of the night, but I was rather anxious
to have the latest news about Miss Maclaren. How is she to-day?"
"Not out of danger yet, sir."
"Oh! Sorry to hear that! I was hoping--"
He stopped.
"It's rather a long story, sir."
"I say," said Evelyn in a tone more
colloquial, "I wonder if you'd mind very much coming down now and telling
me. I'm in my room--not my office."
"Certainly, sir."
Why had he invited her to come down to him,
especially as he really had little to learn about Miss Maclaren's illness?
Well, her voice had soothed him. It was like a balm to his sore nerves. It was
the most soothing (yet firm) voice within his memory of women's voices. His
wife; Mrs. O'Riordan, a wonderful old girl, extremely capable, but no consoler
for a weary man; Miss Maclaren, always consciously bearing a weight of
responsibility; Miss Cass, devoted enough and pleasant enough, but steely;
Venables, Prentiss and others, nobodies who invariably by their prim voices
raised a barrier between themselves and him. Ah! Cousin might stick to his
lawful rights; Miss Cass might gad away for the week-end; but his favourite,
Miss Powler, his discovery, his candidate--she was at her post! He might have
known it. Miss Powler was not an employee to be fussy and exacting about hours.
Not she! A tap at the door.
She came into the room, quietly smiling. Her
appearance startled him; for instead of the regulation housekeeper's black, she
was wearing a bright-coloured frock. The psychological effect on Evelyn of this
simple frock was considerable. It pulled him from his chair, impelled him a few
steps across the room and thrust forward his right arm.
"Excuse my dress, please. I've just been home
to see mother and father," she said as they shook hands.
"It's a very nice dress," he said, and
pointed to a chair. "Do sit down. It's you who must excuse me,
sending for you like this. Now tell me the whole story."
She sat. He said to himself that she was
surprisingly changed--for the better. Her expression had the same placid
benevolence, but she had gained tremendously in ease of manner, in worldliness.
She must have been continuously learning from visitors. He had thought before
that she might be anybody's daughter. He thought now that she might be
anybody's daughter-except a small town-traveller's; she might be a peer's
daughter, or an artist's, or a stockbroker's. Of course she had not quite Lady
Milligan's style; but a quality was hers which the Yorkshire gentlewoman
lacked: poise. At a heavy expense of nervous energy, Lady Milligan gallantly
kept a semblance of poise--not the real thing; and at intervals she lost even
the semblance. Whereas Miss Powler could be genuinely calm for ever and ever at
no expense of spirit.
Violet related briefly the tragic tale of Mac from
beginning to end.
"Um!" was Evelyn's only comment, but he
put a lot of sympathy into it. He took a cigarette. Then it struck him that he
ought to offer Miss Powler a cigarette. But he offered the cigarette to the
bright frock. At any rate, if Violet had been in official black he would not
have dreamt of such an approach. He made it solely for the sake of his own good
opinion of himself as a polite man. He was sure that she would refuse the
cigarette, and that she did not smoke. She was not the sort of girl who smokes;
nor the sort of girl who, if she smokes, would care to smoke in the presence of
her employer.
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thank you," said Violet.
He was startled, for the second time. He had to
hold a match for her. The interview modulated into a new key.
"What's your idea about this scheme
for a special New Year's Eve dinner in the grill-room?" he asked, rather
impulsively: partly because the scheme was like a bluebottle in his mind, and
partly to cover a slight self-consciousness, concerning the cigarette. He
thought, and he was bound to think:
"Supposing anyone came in and saw her and me
smoking together, and her in that frock, and the time after midnight,
especially as I sneaked into the hotel. Of course no one will come in, but
supposing--"
Violet made no reply.
"You've heard of it?" he said.
"Yes, I have heard of it." She looked at
him through the smoke and gave a smile.
"Who told you?" he was on the point of
saying; but he did not utter the words. No decent employer ought to put such an
ambiguous question to an employee; it would have had the air of an invitation
to tell tales.
"I don't know anything about those
things," Violet went on cautiously. To her there seemed to be a faint note
of hostility to the scheme in Mr. Orcham's voice. "This scheme!"
Had his tone been different she might have hinted at Mr. Ceria's passionate
eagerness for the scheme, might have shown some sympathy for Mr. Ceria's cause.
"I'm quite a beginner here. I don't know half enough about the Floors yet,
and as for anything else--" She smiled again, lightly, as one who is
confident of being fully understood. Then she said: "I expect they're
waiting for you to settle it. I'm sure everybody's glad you've come back. We've
all been rather lost without you. Mr. Cousin was saying only the day before
yesterday he hoped you'd be back soon."
"You've been seeing Mr. Cousin pretty
often?"
"Not seeing him. On the telephone. I've had
to ask him about dozens of things. He's been very kind to me. No one could have
been nicer."
"Well," said Evelyn. "Mr. Cousin's
the man you have to deal with, not me, you know."
"Yes, I do know."
Evelyn reflected that never before had any
housekeeper spoken as Miss Powler spoke of Cousin. All the other house-keepers
had been wrong. Cousin was a good fellow, and he had been quite justified in
not upsetting his own arrangements for the sake of being available on the
chance of Evelyn wanting to see him. Evelyn was a fine judge of tact. His
opinion that Miss Powler had an unusual measure of tact was confirmed. So they
had all of them missed the presence of the panjandrum! The panjandrum was
soothed--either by the cigarette or by the tact.
He threw the cigarette into the fire, two-thirds
smoked. Violet was smoking hers very slowly. He was impatient for her to
finish. He had a desire to make some enquiries about her experiences as
head-housekeeper. But he thought that to talk professional shop with her when
he had invited her down to get news of Miss Maclaren would be taking an improper
advantage of the occasion. Still, conversation had to be maintained, and his
social duty was to maintain it.
"Heard anything about your old home?" he
asked.
"My old home? Oh! You mean the Laundry?"
She laughed outright. "No. Except that Miss Brury is getting on
splendidly. Mr. Purkin came up to see Mr. Cousin, and I happened to meet him.
He told me so himself."
"Excellent! Excellent! I had an idea she
would. That change we made is working out very well." A pleasant appreciative
innuendo in his voice that she, Violet, was giving satisfaction.
"I'm so glad you think so, sir."
The first time she had said 'sir' in the
interview.
There was another lull in the talk; he began to
feel agreeably sleepy; but he could not dismiss her until her cigarette was
consumed. Fortunately he happened to hit on a new topic.
"How is the French getting on?"
"Very slowly," she replied. "But
Mr. Perosi is a very good teacher."
"And does the very good teacher think that
progress is slow, or is that only your own idea?"
"He says it's pretty quick, considering. But
to me it does seem terribly slow. Really!"
"I know the trouble I had," Evelyn mused
aloud. "And even now, when I'm said to be mighty fluent, I often think
I've done no more than scratch the surface of the infernal language. If you ask
me, French is the most difficult language in the world--except English."
They went on talking. Evelyn reflected. Beneath
the current of conversation he had been thinking that whatever might occur on
the Floors he would keep this girl in her present post, for she was a born
lubricator, the enemy of all friction. He had a mazy dream, if the dangerously
sick woman ever came back, of allotting a pension to Miss Maclaren so that she
should not stand in the way of Miss Powler. But the mention of French started
another dream. He had found a lot of friction at the Minerva Hotel at Cannes,
even in the slack, wet pre-Christmas season. Why not transfer Miss Powler to
Cannes as soon as her French grew to be practically serviceable? She would go,
if asked. She was not one to jib at a new experience. Another hazardous
experiment; but wherein lay the advantage of being supreme autocrat of a luxury
hotel merger if you could not try hazardous experiments? He would be told that
nobody had ever heard of an English house-keeper in a French hotel, that she
could not possibly "shake down" with a French staff, etc. Nonsense!
And anyhow, she would shake down with the clientèle, which was ninety-five per
cent. British and American. To the clientèle she would be balm, a rock of
refuge, an oasis, an all-comprehending angel, everything that was sympathetic.
And yet--no! The Imperial Palace had first call,
and it could not spare her.
She rose, and carefully dropped the cigarette-end
into the fire. As she gave him an interrogative glance he rose too.
"Well," be said. "It's late. I
mustn't keep you."
"Well," she said, with urbanity but also
with sturdy affirmation of a hard fact. "Our hours are very long."
Her eyes met his. "Stomach that, my
boy!" he said to himself. He nodded, as it were casually, but he was
somewhat dashed by the direct blow. He said to himself: "I admire her for
that."
"Thank you so much," she said.
He took her hand nonchalantly, but with a fake
nonchalance.
"You're very kind and I do appreciate
it," she added.
There was such an undeferential sincerity of
goodwill and gratitude in her voice and smile that he was secretly overcome. No
housekeeper, no member of the female staff, had ever used that tone to him.
None, except Mrs. O'Riordan, had thrown down the barrier of status, of official
rank, as Violet did then. And though there had been no barrier between him and
Mrs. O'Riordan, though Mrs. O'Riordan could charm and blandish with the best,
there had always been something formidable, daunting, in her social demeanour
towards him, even at its sweetest and most alluring. He privately glowed with
pleasure at Violet's unstudied humanity. He felt that he could look happily and
confidently at the future. The manipulation of a chain of vast hotels seemed
easier than before. He was enheartened.
Oldham stepped into the sitting-room through the
bathroom door.
"I beg pardon, sir," said Oldham
clumsily, though he had done nothing which needed to be pardoned.
"Just in time," Evelyn reflected, thinking
of the cigarette. A near shave! His attitude to Oldham in the bedroom had been
unreasonable, if not unjust. Hence he felt a grudge against Oldham, and had an
impulse to continue in unreason and injustice. But the simple goodwill of
Violet had aroused and enlivened his own goodwill. Also he would not for worlds
have displayed himself to Violet as less than the perfect employer and man. The
truth was that he was affected precisely as old Perosi had been affected in the
afternoon.
"What is it, Oldham? Come in," he said
benevolently.
"I've finished all the unpacking, sir. Is
there anything else, sir?"
"No, thanks," said Evelyn. "Thanks
very much. Sorry to have kept you up."
"Thank you, sir. Good night, sir. Good night,
miss."
Oldham departed. Violet departed. Evelyn went to
bed joyous. Miss Powler must certainly have approved his demeanour to Oldham.
ANOTHER
CONFERENCE
The next morning Evelyn reigned afresh in the
directorial office; and Reggie Dacker, his dandiacal fellow-director (usually
referred to as the 'alter ego' of the panjandrum), and Miss Cass, his
authoritative secretary, were with him and under his law. Despite untimely
wintry weather, he was cheerful, brisk, and quite in the mood for reigning.
Before going to bed he had told the night floor-waiter not to call him. He had
had a very good night, and within two minutes of waking up he felt equal to
running a hundred luxury hotels.
Towards Oldham he had been benevolent, telling him
that of course he could withdraw his notice if he chose, and that indeed in the
panjandrum's opinion he would be wise to choose. The relation between the two
was at once restored to its former perfection, and both of them were relieved
and delighted, and both of them tried, without complete success, to hide their
feelings. He had breakfasted with deliberate sloth, dawdling, chatting to
Oldham, wasting time.
He had telephoned an amiable greeting to Cousin,
saying that he, Evelyn, must see to his own business first, but would put in an
appearance at the daily conference if possible. In his heart he had no
expectation of attending. Why should he attend? If he had not hastened his
arrival by three days the Conference would have proceeded that Monday morning
satisfactorily without him. Cousin had mentioned in his characteristically
aloof tone that the project for a special New Year's Eve fête in the grill-room
would be brought forward, as Ceria had asked for its discussion. To which
Evelyn had replied with detachment that he knew nothing about it. To which
Cousin had brightly retorted that he knew nothing about it either, but that it
seemed to be somehow in the air. Whereupon receivers were hung up.
There were two piles of documents and letters for
the panjandrum's august notice: Reggie Dacker's and Miss Cass's. Dacker's of
course had precedence. But Miss Cass had a robust notion of the importance of
her pile. In a pause due to Dacker's failure to find a paper, she pushed a
letter under Evelyn's eyes.
"This is urgent, sir," said she firmly,
in a low voice.
Evelyn did not read the letter. He glanced up at
her as she stood over him.
"It depends what you call urgent," said
he. "Seeing that I wasn't expected back till Wednesday night, nothing can
be urgent tillThursday morning. Supposing I hadn't been here to-day?" One
of his theories about women was that they lacked the sense of proportion and
were incapable of distinguishing between one urgency and another. One of Miss
Cass's theories about men was that they lacked the sense of actuality and were
incapable of seeing things as they were. What was the point (thought Miss Cass)
of supposing that he wasn't there? He wasthere. He might as usefully
have supposed that the hotel had been burnt down. She took back the paper, but
she had no resentment, because the panjandrum was in a heavenly temper after
all (not that his temper was ever bad--she admitted), and most men, even
panjandrums, were children and queer in the head.
Dacker discovered his document and passed it
across the desk. Evelyn studied it very attentively. It concerned a matter
which in Evelyn's opinion far transcended all other matters in urgency and
intrinsic importance. Compared to that matter, projects for fêtes, disturbing
graphs showing the curves of individual consumption by visitors, estimates for
alterations and decorations, even the merging of luxury hotels into one grand
homogeneous enterprise, were trifles. Evelyn had begun a very elaborate
fighting campaign for the reform of the licensing laws of his country. For
months he had been engaged on the preliminary organisation of the campaign. He
was just returned, now, from a continental tour of towns whose citizens bought
and drank in the way of alcohol what they pleased, when they pleased, where
they pleased. The contrast between the Continent and Britain was utterly
exasperating to a British publican. And Evelyn, if not a publican, but the
manager of the greatest luxury hotel on earth, was treated by the licensing
laws exactly as if he was the landlord of the lowest drinking den in Limehouse.
He could not allow to be served, in the public rooms, the most ordinary and
respectable beverages before a certain hour or after a certain hour, and both
hours were preposterous. Not five times in a year was there a case of offensive
inebriation at the Imperial Palace. And yet his head-waiters were forced to
walk round his restaurant and his grill-room at a given moment and submit
themselves and him to the indignity of telling visitors of irreproachable
manners and social standing that they must order their alcohol then or never.
The situation was monstrous, and would have been incredible did it not exist.
The wonder was that any high-class hotel could keep its doors open. The wonder
was that a revolution, with glass-breaking, arson, and the overthrow of
Governments, had not occurred. :
Why had Britain fought and won the war if the
sequel was to be the abolition of natural liberties which obtained in Britain
before the said war, and which still obtained throughout the Continent? Etc.,
etc. It was laughable. But it was also ruinous, humiliating and intolerable.
Admittedly the head of the hotel world, he held it to be his duty--and many
other hotel-keepers held it to be his duty--to lead the movement for reform.
And he was leading it, with all the subterranean, subtle ingenuities of which
he was capable.
Members of Parliament, journalists, publicists,
powers in the City were being regimented for the campaign. And he talked to
them! By God! He talked to them! Perhaps too vehemently, with an excessive
exaggeration. He loved to set side by side those two phrases, 'lowest drinking
den' and 'greatest luxury hotel.' He enjoyed the melodrama of their contrast. His
excuse was that he felt very deeply on the subject. Nobody had convincingly
answered his arguments, the arguments of the hotel world, and nobody could. On
all other subjects Evelyn could be as detached, as judicial, as Cousin himself.
But on the subject of the licensing laws--well, his business acquaintances and
his principal subordinates would say to one another that if you wanted to have
fun and witness a real firework display you had only to start Mr. Orcham on the
licensing laws. The movement which he was leading had had a lot to do with the
appointment of a Governmental Licensing Commission. The Commission marked a
forward step. Evelyn, however, was extremely dissatisfied with the choice of
its members.
On this Monday morning he was busy with Reggie Dacker
on some details of the campaign, and the document which Dacker had ultimately
produced related to it. And yet suddenly, worried by a teasing thought, and
possibly amazed by tiny pricks of his directorial conscience, he broke off the
discussion with Dacker and said:
"Excuse me for three minutes, will you, my
boy? I must just--" And, demanding a leaf of foolscap from the assiduous
Miss Cass, he wrote out in his clear hand a short memorandum.
"Put this in an envelope and take it to Mr.
Cousin yourself--at once, please," he said, as he folded the leaf in four.
"But the Conference won't be finished,"
Miss Cass demurred.
"I hope it won't," said Evelyn with a
genuinely cheerful laugh.
And so Miss Cass, bearing the foolscap envelope,
passed down the corridor, and opened the door (in a rather dark corner) over
which burned night and day the electric sign "Manager's Office," and
went in. Miss Tilton, Mr. Cousin's secretary, was not at her desk, at which sat
idly a page-boy ready to answer the telephone. He smiled timidly at Miss Cass,
who gave him a nod.
Even before she opened the inner door into Mr.
Cousin's private room she heard the sound of vivacious, argumentative
conversation The room was full of men and smoke. Mr. Cousin presided at his
desk, a desk large but not as large as Evelyn's; and by his side sat young
Pozzi, his second-in-command. At the end of the table was Marian Tilton, with
notebook, just as Miss Cass sat with notebook at the end of her
principal's desk. Indeed, in various ways the disposition of Mr. Cousin's room
showed the influence of Evelyn. A dozen or fifteen men, and Violet Powler
(serene and receptive), all heads of departments, constituted the Conference:
an attendance somewhat fuller than usual. Evidently the chief protagonists were
Ceria, Immerson, the publicity head, Ruffo, the Banqueting-manager, and
Jones-Wyatt, the Bands-and-Cabaret-manager. And evidently the topic was the
proposed special New Year's Eve fête in the grill-room.
Amadeo Ruffo had been arguing against it, and one of
his reasons was that Jones-Wyatt could probably not provide a first-rate band
for only one night. Jones-Wyatt, a fullbodied, youngish man well versed in the
musical, music-hall, theatrical and operatic worlds, had been half-heartedly
opposing the scheme. But Ruffo's sinister suggestion had in a moment changed
his attitude. Of course he could provide a band, and a first-rate band. They
might leave the band to him; he would answer for it. He did, however, object to
the cinema proposition, because the broad, square columns which supported the
ceiling of the grill-room would prevent a good twenty-five per cent. of the
revellers from seeing the screen in its entirety. (Nobody else had thought of
this snag.) His idea was that the entertainment should be exclusively musical,
and of the highest character, with a quartet of seasonable carollers and
perhaps a soprano: which artists would be fully audible if not visible.
Immerson, in his soft, earnest tones, had espoused
this idea. Immerson was strongly in favour of the general scheme, partly for
its exciting novelty, but more because it would spread out before him fresh
vistas of piquant publicity. Cappone, the Restaurant-manager, in the secrecy of
his mind, did not approve the grill-room scheme, which, he feared, might impair
the glory of his own fête in the restaurant, but loyalty to his colleague
deterred him from expressing himself.
Those two marvellous smilers, Cappone and Ceria,
smiled upon one another at intervals in touching amity. Several men were
talking at once as Miss Cass appeared. Even the disinterested burst out now and
then in loud, impulsive monosyllables. Keenness and animation were the note of
the polemic. All genuinely and fervently desired to increase the prestige of
the Imperial Palace, but some in one way and some in another. The scene had
heat without hostility. Sir Henry Savott would have been flattered and
delighted could he have witnessed the various liveliness of which a casual
sentence from his mouth so richly furnished with teeth was the origin.
On the whole, feeling supported the scheme. Again
and again the master-argument for it had been stated: namely, first, that about
two hundred would-be roysterers had received printed forms expressing regret
that every table in the restaurant had been booked; and, secondly, that it
would be a pity to waste these ladies and gentlemen if they could be utilised.
Mr. Cousin was calm and impartial. He certainly
was not averse to the scheme; nor was Pozzi. And Mr. Cousin considered that, as
the panjandrum on the telephone had vouchsafed no opinion, still less a
command, he was free to come to a decision on his own responsibility. During
Evelyn's absence, he had grown accustomed to making decisions without
reference, and at least twice when Mr. Dacker, whose telephoning to Evelyn
sometimes clashed with his--when Mr. Dacker had disagreed with him, the 'alter
ego' had yielded.
As for Miss Cass, she invaded the Conference with
perfect assurance. She and her notebook had attended many conferences. She came
now as a sort of papal envoy--slightly irritated because she did not know what
message on what subject she was carrying. She was on familiar terms with
everyone in the room, but as she walked briskly round the edges of the
Conference to the back of Mr. Cousin's desk, she ignored everyone except Marian
Tilton, to whom she gave the nod and feminine smile of superiority. She offered
the foolscap envelope to Mr. Cousin:
"Mr. Orcham asked me to give you this."
Mr. Cousin opened the envelope, and before reading
its contents murmured to Miss Cass, who was turning away:
"Better wait a moment."
Then he carefully perused the message.
"I think I will read this to you just as it
is--it's from Mr. Orcham," Mr. Cousin addressed the suddenly still
Conference.
And he read:
"I can think of a number of reasons both for
and against the very interesting proposal for arranging for a New Year's Eve
festivity in the grill-room. But there is one reason which in my opinion
outweighs all others and which ought to settle the point. The grill-room has
always been a place free from every rule except that of good manners. At any
time of day or evening anyone can enter it in any dress, and order any meal,
which will be charged either à la carteor at a prix fixe
according to the judgment of the manager. No formalities are observed. The
grill-room has a very large clientèle which is aware of this state of things
and counts on it. It is universally known as a restaurant of relaxation, where
food of the finest sort can be eaten at ease and in quietness. Thousands of
customers look on it as a retreat upon which they can rely. It is open every
night of the year. No holiday or fête has even been allowed to disturb its
normal course. What would its habitués think if one night its character were to
be altered, and a definite menu and hour imposed upon them, with various
unavoidable rules affecting dress, etc., and the introduction of music and a
formal entertainment? Any such alteration would be a blow to the particular
reputation of the grill-room. It would cause disappointment and possibly some
resentment. Confidence in the stability of the policy of the grill-room would
unquestionably be undermined. Which would be, I think, a rather serious
matter.--EVELYN ORCHAM."
Silence followed. The Director had spoken. He had
issued no ukase. He had not employed his authority like a hammer. But he had
uttered that formidable word: Policy. And he had advanced an argument which not
one of his subordinates had thought of--or at any rate spoken of. Nobody in the
Conference surmised in that dramatic moment that the panjandrum was as human as
any of themselves. None knew that the incursion of Sir Henry Savott into the
politics of the Palace had abraded Evelyn's most delicate susceptibilities, and
that he had been shocked to get the first word of a proposed terrific
innovation from a quite minor, if valued, person--old Perosi; and that these
two things together had affected the whole trend of his thinking. The
Conference could judge only of the final expression of the directorial
reflections, and the final expression was so phrased as to permit of no answer.
"Thank you," said Mr. Cousin, turning
for an instant to Miss Cass behind him. In the redoubtable hush Miss Cass,
diminished and yet very proud of her master's moral force, and taking some
share of it to herself, left the Conference chamber.
"Well, my friends--" said Mr. Cousin,
reserved, detached, apparently indifferent. But he offered nothing else to the
Conference save a faint bland and undecipherable smile.
The Conference saw Ceria rise from his seat and
slowly and silently walk out. The young man gave one glance at Miss Powler.
"If you will excuse me," said Miss
Powler to Mr. Cousin. And she too walked out. No other person in the room moved
or spoke. The hush produced by the panjandrum's communication was protracted by
the solemn, startling exit of Ceria; for all realised, with a sentiment akin to
awe, that tragedy had been nearer than they thought. All were intimidated-- and
especially the emotional Italians--by the lamentable ravaged figure of the
manager of the grill-room. Tears came into the eyes of the bright and worldly
Marian Tilton. Miss Cass had escaped in the nick of time.
Violet followed Ceria at a distance of twenty feet
or so, into the great entrance-hall, across it, down the broad corridor leading
to the empty grill-room, past the doors of the grill-room, into a narrow
transverse corridor beyond, at the end of which was Ceria's office.
Ceria vanished into the office, leaving the door
ajar. She knocked softly at the door. No answer. She went cautiously in. The
room was less than small; it was tiny; but it was an office, a piece of private
territory, and Ceria would now and then mention it with a certain complacency
of importance: "My office." Violet, however, had never heard of it,
did not know what the room was till she saw it. Ceria was seated at a tiny
table-desk, elbows on the blotting-pad, chin supported by the palms of the
hands, staring at a Milanese sheet-calendar hung on the wall. He heard a slight
cough, and sprang up, collecting himself in order to be manly, and summoning a
fairly deceptive counterfeit of his famous smile. He was pale.
"I beg your pardon. Please," he murmured
weakly.
Violet did not know how to begin. Her wish was to
soothe him and uplift him out of the despair which had been so alarmingly
apparent on his wistful face as he walked out of Mr. Cousin's room. She had
feared lest he might faint or do something silly--and no woman near to tend
him! You never knew with these delicate, impressible foreigners. (As a fact she
had formed an entirely wrong idea of the Latin temperament.) She could not
bluntly say: "You shouldn't take it too hard." Or something like
that. She said, in a tone as commonplace as she could produce:
"About the special Floors-menu for to-morrow,
Mr. Ceria. Could I have a copy of it to-day? It's useful to me to know
beforehand what it is...If I'm not disturbing you too much."
Ceria, with the approval of Mr. Cousin, had
recently introduced a special short menu for meals in the private rooms. Upon
request a special fixed price was made for it. The object of the device was to
tempt visitors away from the full menus which contained dishes not easy to
serve satisfactorily on the floors. Both menus were offered to the hungry, but
visitors were quickly learning to choose from the special one because it
simplified the plaguy task of choosing.
"Yes, certainly," Ceria answered with
forced animation "Please sit down. Have this chair. I'll find it. I'll
find it." He ferreted in a drawer in the table.
Violet did not sit down. Ceria failed to find the
menu. Obviously he was not searching with any method in the untidiness of the
drawer. After a moment he stopped, as if trying to reflect. His eye met
Violet's.
"You ought to go home as early as you can
this afternoon and do a bit of hard work in your beautiful garden," said
Violet impulsively.
In her expression and in her voice Ceria saw and
heard the benevolent purpose of her intrusion. He hesitated, fumbling for the
right course to take. His eyes moistened. Violet thought "How could I
suggest his going back to that empty house, with nobody but a servant
there?"
At length he said:
"At this season...one cannot work in the
garden. What can one do in the garden?"
"How stupid of me!" Violet exclaimed.
She really felt stupid. She knew nothing of gardens.
"And it is nearly dark at four o'clock,"
Ceria added.
Another detail that Violet had most stupidly
forgotten.
"But," said Ceria, "I will go for a
drive in my little car. I adore driving in the dark. I will go a long
distance." His smile became genuine, though it was forlorn, touching.
"How many days is it since you first thought
of the fête in your grill-room?" Violet asked gently. "Not
many."
Ceria raised his eyebrows in assent.
"No. Not many."
"Well, you are no worse off now than you were
then," said Violet.
"You are a very kind philosopher," Ceria
murmured. "Yes, you are very kind. I understand you. It is a lesson."
"No, no!" Violet protested. "Please
excuse me. I only thought of it."
Ceria timidly extended his hand. Violet's hand
advanced of its own accord. Ceria took it, and kissed it. To him the action was
quite natural. But it thrilled Violet. Nobody had ever kissed her hand before,
except in the make-believe of the amateur comic-opera stage.
Ceria relinquished her hand. And not a second too
soon. For the face of Miss Venables appeared, as it were furtively, in the
doorway. Instantly Ceria resumed control of himself.
"Come in, Miss Venables."
The older woman nodded indifferently to Violet,
then ignored her for Ceria.
"I'm leaving this afternoon, Mr. Ceria,"
said she. "And I could not go without saying good-bye." Her heavy,
prim voice was as usual charged with a martyr's melancholy; but the intense
glance of her dark eyes showed that Ceria's wistful smile could make its
victims anywhere and everywhere.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Ceria," Violet
broke prosaically in. "Perhaps you could send that menu up to me. Or I
will send down for it."
"You shall have it at once," said Ceria,
in a style as prosaic as Violet's. He had nothing to learn from her or anyone
about the use of vocal tone and facial muscles. None could have guessed, now,
that five minutes earlier he had felt as if he were Violet's weak, clinging,
passionately grateful child.
Violet left quickly, without further notice of
Miss Venables. Ceria took two steps to the door, and, behind Miss Venables'
back, re-established intimate communication with Violet by one transient look.
Violet crossed once more the entrance-hall with its ceaseless foot-traffic and
quiet stir of visitors and officials and murmured colloquys and down-sittings
and uprisings. And she ascended away out of all that wordliness in the lift,
happy, jingling some keys and talking to the lift-man about weather, which he
seldom or never had the opportunity to see in autumn and winter. And while
talking she thought of Ceria as her grateful child, talented, brilliant,
all-conquering--and pathetic.
Then she stepped from the lift into the withdrawn
world of Eighth, where thick carpet dulled every sound of the corridor and
shaded lamps gave a discreet mystery to hushed life. Afar off she saw the
figures of two chambermaids--Beatrice Noakes and another--and a valet and a
waiter gathered in a group. Eighth was their universe, of which each smallest
phenomenon was familiar. For them the entrance-hall and the public rooms had no
existence. The valet held in his hand a leaden weight attached to a long cord:
apparatus by which he had just been clearing an obstruction in the letter-shoot
caused by some too bulky envelope--a delicate operation more exciting to the
personnel of the floor than any event in managerial offices.
At sight of the temporary head-housekeeper the
group dissolved. The valet disappeared silently into his brushing-and-cleaning
room, the waiter into his kitchen-and-pantry, a chambermaid, using a pass-key,
into a bedroom. Only Beatrice Noakes was left. She moved towards the door of
the head-housekeeper's sitting-room and confidently awaited Violet.
"There's a lamp-stand broken in 06,
miss," she said earnestly.
"But you've told me about that once,
Beaty," Violet answered, laughing.
"Oh! Have I? So I have, miss. Better twice
than not at all, they do say. Yes, miss. I hear Miss Prentiss has gone, miss. And
I know her trunks is gone. They're labelled for Gleneagles, miss."
"I wonder how you hear of all these things,
Beaty," said Violet. "It's very clever of you." She smiled; but
she felt disappointed and a little grieved.
Prentiss had gone without a good-bye, even a
good-bye of mere ceremony. Since the scene on the night of Mac's seizure, the
well-bred Prentiss had spoken with her only in the way of work. Good breeding
might have prompted her to some formal alleviation of the feud. But no! She had
departed for the new northern post which, thanks to Palace prestige, she had
obtained without any difficulty. She would never again be seen in the Palace.
And how she would try to impose her unquestioned gentility upon Gleneagles, and
how, after a few days, she would tear the good name of the Palace management
into fragments!
"And what's the news to-day about Miss
Maclaren, miss? I suppose you'll have been hearing?"
"A bit better. She's eaten part of an
omelette."
"Well, that is wonderful news, miss.
An omelette! Do you think I might go and see her? Me and Daisy was saying last
night as perhaps I might. Just to show like, if you know what I mean."
"She'd be very pleased. But you oughtn't to
stay more than ten minutes."
"Oh no, miss! Such an idea wouldn't enter my
head. I've got a wrist-watch and I should wear it, and I should look at it when
I went in and...Miss Venables hasn't gone yet, miss
"I know," Violet interrupted the flow.
She realised now that Mrs. Noakes had mentioned the broken lamp-stand only in
order to start one of her grand miscellaneous gossipings, for which she lived.
"I've seen Miss Venables, downstairs."
"Oh! I'm so glad she's seen you,
miss," said Beatrice, with exaggerated relief in her voice, thereby
informing Violet that the female floor-staffs had been keeping careful watch on
the great housekeepers' feud, and lusciously speculating as to whether any of
the parties concerned would relent at the last moment either from human
kindliness or from a sense of social decency.
"Let me come past," said Violet quickly.
"I've got plenty to do, if you haven't."
Beatrice stood aside from the doorway and Violet
entered her sitting-room and shut the door and sat down, but not to any task.
She was pleased that Beatrice, misinterpreting her words, had assumed a reconciliation
between Venables and herself. But she felt disturbed. Would Venables come and
say goodbye, or would she not? The question filled her mind, so that she could
not settle to desk-work, nor even to a round of room inspections, nor even to
telephoning. She was entirely innocent, and yet she had a sensation of guilt.
Little secretary Agatha burst schoolgirlishly into
the room, a question on her lips: "Anything urgent you want me to
do?" Violet shook her head.
"Better go and get your lunch, if it isn't
too early," said Violet.
Agatha glanced at the clock.
"Five minutes," said she, and went away
again.
Violet rose and moved to the window, and stared at
the lofty roofs of the ugliest building in London. Why couldn't people be
friends? Why was the lovable Ceria lonely and sad? Why did Prentiss harden her
heart? Would Venables harden her heart? Why was the world what it was, when it
might so easily be different?...Violet looked at the clock. Nearly one hour had
amazingly slipped by since she had come into her room; and a score of jobs
remained undone. She must go down to lunch. She hoped that by this time
Venables would have lunched and left the housekeepers' refectory. She could not
have borne to meet Venables in the presence of others. She had been through
that experience too often.
There was a knock at the door. Venables primly
entered. Violet was both relieved and affrighted. Her heart asserted its beat.
She waited, cautious.
Venables said:
"I thought I'd tell you. They've just
telephoned up that Mrs. Oulsnam has come."
"Oh, thank you very much for letting me know,
Venables. I suppose she'll come to see me. I was just going down to
lunch."
Mrs. Oulsnam had left the Majestic in order to
come to the Palace, and Venables was replacing her at the Majestic. This was
another of Evelyn's ingenious changes. Through the intermediation of Mr. Dacker
the transaction had been carried out with the nicest regard for the pride of
Miss Venables, who had received a letter from the Majestic management to the
effect that it had heard that she was leaving the Imperial Palace, and that if
she cared to call, etc. Evelyn now of course in fact if not in theory
controlled the Majestic. But no one referred to the reality of the situation
existing between the two hotels. Everyone pretended--and Venables more
convincingly than anyone--that the Majestic had sought for Venables on her
notorious housekeeping merits. As for the interests of the Palace, Mrs. Oulsnam
produced an excellent reference. Miss Prentiss's post was not to be refilled;
for Violet had worked out Miss Maclaren's plan for the reduction of the Palace
Floors staff.
"Not at all," said Venables.
"I do hope you'll be happy at the
Majestic," Violet exclaimed, with a sudden outpouring of goodwill which
surprised even herself. Her features relaxed and her mood was lightened by the
mysterious lifting of an obscure oppression.
"Oh, thank you, Powler. I feel sure I shall.
You know the Majestic is going to be very much livened up. I heard yesterday
they are to make a new carpet for the restaurant there at our works. But I
expect you know all about that already."
"No, I don't," said Violet, fibbing in
order to flatter Venables' superior knowledge.
"And here's my keys," said Venables.
Violet accepted the bunch.
A pause.
"Well," said Venables, "I suppose I
must be saying goodbye."
She held out her hand. Violet gave it one little
squeeze. In doing so she squeezed some tears out of Venables' eyes.
"I know it wasn't your fault. You couldn't
help it," said Venables in a broken voice.
Violet might have replied: "Couldn't help
what?" But instead she replied: "I knew you knew. It's all
right."
Venables said:
"But I've never been treated like that
before. Never. And you must admit it was very humiliating, dear."
"I'm sure it was," Violet agreed.
"But it was for such a short time. It wasn't worth while appointing you
head-housekeeper for such a short time as that. And you haven't been humiliated
for long, have you?"
Not a word about Prentiss.
Venables brought her head forward and kissed Violet,
and Violet returned the kiss and saw Venables' face very close. What a ruin,
that complexion! Without doubt the old thing was feeling deeply her severance
from the Palace, where she had served for so many years. And the poor old thing
had now to face a new career in strange surroundings! "And," thought
Violet, "she'll go on being a hotel-housekeeper until she's old. And what
then? And so shall I go on being a hotel-housekeeper till I'm old. One of these
days I shall be as old as she is; and what then, for me too?" She could
hardly prevent herself from crying, though she did not really believe that she
would ever be as old and withered and desiccated as Venables. She was mournful.
But she was happy. Venables went off with the subdued self-contemplating smile
of one who has righteously performed his duty to society, recognising virtue in
a junior colleague, increasing the sum of kindness, and with resigned courage
fronting a hard world.
NEW
YEAR'S EVE
A quarter to nine on New Year's Eve. Although the
festive dinner in the restaurant of the Palace was scheduled to begin at 8.30,
a continuous procession of automobiles and taxi-cabs was entering the courtyard
of the hotel, hooting to stimulate the dilatory in front, curving under the
vast marquise, setting down bright women and sombre men, and curving away again
back into Birdcage Walk, whose breadth was narrowed by double lines of parked
cars. And high above the building, unseen from the region of the marquise, rose
the flood-lit tower of the Palace, informing the West End by an admixture of
red rays in its customary white that the occasion was special. Mowlem, the
head-day-hall-porter, was himself active on the steps outside the portals with
a corps of janissaries larger than usual, directing and speeding traffic,
bowing to his numerous acquaintances among the visitors, and disseminating
goodwill and good wishes in the keen air. The crowded scene in the
entrance-hall, viewed from without, was brilliantly appetising, and an
unanswerable proof that Britain was not yet quite the impecunious back-number
which newspapers of all political parties had got into the habit of proclaiming
her to be.
A car stopped, and Mowlem gave to the chauffeur a
special word of dignified intimacy. And when the occupant descended from the
car Mowlem saluted him with a special bow of courtly benevolence.
"A Happy New Year, sir, if not too
early."
"Thanks. Same to you."
The arrival was Evelyn. He had chosen the main
entrance, preferably to the Queen Anne entrance, because on grand occasions
such as the present he enjoyed seeing his organization in the full press of
work. He was still young enough in hotel management to be thrilled by the long
lines of automobiles and by the whizzing of the doors and by the restless
glitter of the thronged hall, down which he quickly passed, unrecognised,
towards his private office. He beheld the display and saw that it was good.
Now the Imperial Palace dinner was not the only
New Year's Eve hotel-banquet on that night. There were of course dozens,
hundreds, of others up and down the land. But for Evelyn there was only one
other: that of the Wey Hotel, Evelyn's first love and charge. Every year he saw
the soup served at the Wey banquet. The Wey being a residential hotel, and
almost in the provinces, its meals took place much earlier than those at the
Palace. Evelyn had duly seen the soup served, and even the fish; and he had
given to Mr. Plott, the Wey manager, the impression that really he would have
liked better to usher in the New Year at the Wey, but that the more complex
organism of the Palace was in urgent need of his watchful supervision, and so
he must regretfully leave the Wey celebration to Mr. Plott's very adequate sole
control. And the exigent Mr. Plott had been quite satisfied. Evelyn would say
to old Dennis Dover that it would have been more than his place was worth not
to make an appearance at the Wey on New Year's Eve.
Having titivated himself anew in his office, he
travelled by devious service-corridors to the service-door of the grill-room;
for he had a quarter of an hour in hand. He had received full reports of the
Conference at which his communication to Cousin had had the effect of causing a
stricken Ceria so dramatically to leave the room, and he felt therefore that he
owed a state visit to Ceria,
As for Ceria, his kingdom was a grand sight to him
that evening; for, surprisingly, every table was occupied or had been booked.
The clothes of the diners exhibited all varieties of taste, from pull-overs and
plus-fours to silken low-cuts, pearls, orchids and white ties. No sign of the
seasonal fête except crackers and bits of holly (no mistletoe). Plenty of
gaiety, plenty of champagne, and no music at all. A large number of celebrities
and notorieties who demonstrated by their presence that they preferred a
decent, simple Bohemianism to the elaborate formalities of the great affair in
Cappone's restaurant. Ceria felt very flattered, and happiness radiated from
his wistful, smiling face as he walked from table to table bowing and greeting.
Indeed Ceria would not have exchanged places with the more important Cappone.
He would have liked Cappone to see his array of the famous; for he was sure that
for every 'somebody' that Cappone could show, he could show half a dozen.
At a table laid for three persons, half-hidden by
a column, sat a young woman alone, in morning frock. She was reading a
newspaper as she drank soup. Ceria stopped in front of her.
"Is everything as you wish, Miss
Savott?" he earnestly enquired. The girl glanced up from the paper and
nodded, smiling; and Ceria bowed and withdrew. The next moment he descried the
panjandrum and went deferentially to meet him.
"Well, Ceria," Evelyn murmured with much
content and approval in his voice, "I congratulate you. You couldn't have
done better than this if you'd had a dozen bands and the whole New Year
rigmarole. You couldn't have done as well, because a band takes up a deuce of a
lot of valuable room. Now could you?"
"No, sir. You are quite right."
"You'll beat your record to-night."
"I shall, sir," agreed the delighted
Ceria.
Evelyn thought:
"He's just like a child."
The pair made a leisurely tour of the room,
talking together and ignoring guests. They passed close by the table where the
young woman sat so strangely alone. Her eyes did not leave the paper, and
Evelyn did not glance aside, and Ceria was too obsessed by the general glorious
aspect of his grill-room to give a thought to the interest which his chief
might be expected to feel in any individual customer, however eminent the name.
A minute later Evelyn left, by the service-door. Ceria then noticed a page-boy
in converse with the solitary girl. As he arrived again at the table the girl
was rising to go.
"You can have this table now," she said
to Ceria. "My friends evidently aren't coming." He did not know that
she had not been expecting friends, having naughtily secured a table for three
in order to get ample space for herself. She dropped a form on the table for
the waiter.
In the foyer, which was now steadily losing more
people to the restaurant than it was receiving from the entrance-hall, Evelyn
could see nothing of Sir Henry Savott, who (as it had been finally arranged) was
to be his guest for the evening. But the man could not yet be accused of
unpunctuality; it still wanted one minute to nine o'clock, the hour of their
rendezvous. What Evelyn did see was Cappone, the Restaurant-manager, talking
with a rather troubled expression to Lord Watlington, and Mrs. Penkethman
standing a foot or two away and carefully not listening. Evelyn divined at once
from Mrs. Penkethman's dissociation of herself from the masculine colloquy that
some difficulty had arisen, and he accordingly moved away, preferring to leave
the conduct of Cappone's business entirely to Cappone. But Lord Watlington,
still more familiarly known to his friends and the world as Harry
Matcham--though two years had passed since his 'public services' had lifted him
into the peerage--had caught sight of Evelyn, and totally ignoring both his
lovely partner and Cappone, walked up to him, followed at a little distance by
Mrs. Penkethman, while the astute Cappone descended abruptly into the
restaurant.
His lordship was a man of forty-eight, of average
height, but somewhat more than average girth, exceedingly dark, with coal-black
hair and eyes. He bore some resemblance to his friend Sir Henry Savott. Indeed
the imperfectly informed now and then confused the one with the other. Savott
was dark, but Lord Watlington was darker. Savott's face was very broad between
the ears, but Lord Watlington's was broader. Savott's gaze was piercing, but
Lord Watlington's was more piercing. And further, Savott was a triumphant
financier, but Lord Watlington was a man of wealth, wealth absolute, wealth
realisable, not potential wealth dependent upon the turn of markets or the
success of flotations.
Lord Watlington never touched enterprises which
gambled upon the capricious tastes of the public. Thus he had a few days
earlier rejected a wonderful offer from Savott to go into the cinema business.
He had refused many temptations to acquire controlling interests in newspapers
because (he argued) they were at the mercy of the big advertisers and the big
advertisers were at the mercy of the uncertainties of trade and international
politics. Instead of owning newspapers he owned mills which sold paper to
newspapers. Instead of buying or building architectural structures, he bought
ground-rents, that is, freeholds, and gave the risks of building to others. He
was the largest shareholder in a large insurance company; ditto in a British
subsidiary of a foreign bank; he was chairman of a very important Investment
Trust Company. He was nothing if not gilt-edged. He had made his fortune and
his position by the exercise of judgment, by his necromantic vision of the
future, which after all was not vision but only an accurate weighing of
probabilities, by his instinctive regard for essentials and his instinctive contempt
for inessentials; and by nothing else.
Among various gifts Lord Watlington had the gift
of creation. When a transatlantic liner was fully booked up he could create a
suite in it for himself. When a fashionable first-night was sold out, he could
create a box in it for himself within two hours of the rise of the curtain.
From pride and on principle he never asked for accommodation in advance
anywhere. Similarly he never carried money. Often he would borrow money for
munificent tips--it was always repaid by cheque with a secretarial letter of
thanks the next day.
In the previous week a slight coolness had
supervened between him and Savott, who had playfully said to him: "Now,
Harry, don't behave like a spoiled beauty." He did not like the remark,
which had enlightened him as to the secret attitude of his friends towards his
idiosyncrasies.
On the afternoon of this New Year's Eve, Mrs.
Penkethman had expressed a desire to attend the fête at the Palace. Harry had
shown unwillingness, but when Mrs. Penkethman had added darkly and with
resignation that no table could be had, Harry had immediately promised to take
her. He had telephoned on the instant to Cappone, who had replied hopefully
that, while no table was presently available, some table was almost sure to be
cancelled, and he would have the greatest pleasure in reserving it for his
lordship. His lordship had arrived with the beautiful Nancy, and lo! not a
table had been cancelled. He, Harry Matcham Lord Watlington, could not be
accommodated! He had not quite contrived to mask his sentiments. Incredulity
was succeeded by indignation, and indignation by anger. He saw himself publicly
humiliated in the eyes of Nancy. He was furious. To save his repute he would
willingly have burnt down the Imperial Palace (which was amply insured in his
own company, which had reinsured a large part of the huge risk in New York).
Nevertheless in his frightful and unique quandary Lord Watlington accosted
Evelyn with the airiest seductive nonchalance; for he was an actor of genius.
"Let me make you acquainted with the most
beautiful woman in London," he said, introducing Mrs. Penkethman. And then
he explained his trouble, and said that he and Mrs. Penkethman must go
elsewhere, and looked at Evelyn as though he confidently expected him to work a
miracle. Evelyn enjoyed the spectacle for a few moments; it was as exquisitely
agreeable to him as the flavour of a fine cigar. He knew by hearsay the fable
of Lord Watlington. He cared naught for the presumed financial relations
between Lord Watlington and Savott, author of the great hotel-merger. To
inflict a horrible suspense upon Lord Watlington delighted the unchristian, too
human panjandrum. Then he said:
"Nothing is simpler. I have a table, and if
Mrs. Penkethman and you will dine with me I shall be charmed."
Lord Watlington protested, and accepted. He had
won. He was still Lord Watlington. He could still support the glance of Mrs.
Penkethman.
Then Sir Henry Savott appeared on the stairs
leading down from the entrance-hall, and handed his hat and coat with studied
negligence to a powdered, silk-calved footman.
"Don't tell me," Savott exclaimed.
"I know I'm late. Three minutes. It's your traffic outside that did
it"
"You aren't late, my dear fellow," said
Evelyn. "Every clock in the hotel is wrong. Lord Watlington and Mrs.
Penkethman are joining us. Shall we go in?"
Both Harry Matcham and Henry Savott, behaving with
nobility, utterly forgot the coolness which had been somewhat marring their
business alliance.
Vast curtains had been drawn between the foyer and
the restaurant, leaving room for only two persons at a time to pass down the
six steps to the restaurant floor. An attendant was taking tickets from the
entrants, but of course no tickets were demanded from Evelyn and his guests,
who descended with sovereign freedom into the noisy, crowded, multi-coloured
arena of the banquet. Few noticed the appearance of the three celebrities and
of the panjandrum of the tremendous scene; for in the main the revellers were
merely the well-to-do, who could afford three guineas a head for dinner
(exclusive of wines). The exclusive smart were hardly represented on that night
at the Imperial Palace, and the merely well-to-do are not familiar with the
faces of celebrities; it needs the smart to recognise the smart.
Lord Watlington comprehended, as in the wake of
Evelyn the party wound its way to a table in a corner, why Cappone's attitude
to him had been so immovably non possumus. The tables were packed so
close together that not another could have been inserted among them. The
waiters performed marvels of self-insinuation, though with all their skill they
were continually kicking against chair-legs and thus annoying scores of diners,
who looked round offended at the falsely-unconscious disturbers. The whole of
the space usually reserved for dancing was filled with serried tables, and an
annex of the restaurant, usually separated by a glazed partition which had been
removed for this night only, was filled with serried tables.
On the site of part of the partition a gorgeous
bandstand had been upraised. The band was playing fortissimo, but its majestic
strains had to fight a battle against the din of shouted small-talk from one
thousand pairs of lips; neither the music nor the small-talk could be heard
sufficiently well to enable umpires to have reached a clear decision as to the
result of the contest. Moreover the sense of hearing was impaired by the appeal
to the eyes of flowers, silken decorations, Chinese lanterns, variegated
frocks, glinting jewels, coiffures, vermilion mouths, shining eyes, suspended
bunches of tinted balloons, and a huge clock with illuminated hands and roman
figures.
Disorder seemed to rule; but beneath disorder was
order, and the secret sign of it was the intent, absorbed faces of the industrious
waiters who grimly toiled on in the one sure hope that the moment of surcease
would come when the last course had been served, and the last bottle opened,
and the last tip collected. Some of them already saw in a prophetic vision the
restaurant dark and empty, the tables turned from white tops to green and the
chairs piled in a series of scraggy heaps.
And round and round, bowing, smiling, placating,
flattering, moved the young Cappone, apparently unaware of the heavy load of
supreme responsibility which lay on his shoulders.
At the directorial table, for which Evelyn had
ordered two extra covers before leaving the foyer, Mrs. Penkethman was put into
the best seat, with her back to the corner and a full view of the panorama of
the restaurant; Evelyn was on her left, Henry Savott on her right, while Lord
Watlington had to be content with a view of Nancy and the two converging walls
which framed her. The beautiful creature wore a very simple dark frock, to show
that she did not take the fête very seriously, was indeed condescending to it.
(On the popular night of New Year's Eve the world of the Imperial Palace was
not her world; the majority of her friends were away either in country-houses
or on the Continent.) But she carried a few trinkets, a bag, and a cigarette
case whose richness would have suited the smartest entertainment that any
expert (such as herself) in smartness could devise. She alone in the group was
completely at ease and happy, her appetite for pleasure being unappeasable. She
lived for pleasure; the pursuit of pleasure was her vocation, and the
diversions which she called pleasures never cloyed on that robust palate. Also
she had three men, and every important men, to herself.
Evelyn felt a little nervous; for the origin of
the dinner was his desire to justify his boast to Savott that the Palace could
and would serve a thousand absolutely first-rate meals simultaneously; his
ridiculous conscience had prevented him from giving special orders in regard to
his own table; and in spite of his Palatial confidence he was visited by qualms
of fear lest something, some detail, might fail in perfection. Withal, he would
accept the risk. Savott was slightly displeased because he had been
anticipating the thoroughly intimate tête-à-tête to which Evelyn had
invited him. Lord Watlington was disappointed partly because he had won a table
only by favour and not by force, and partly because he had been anticipating a
thoroughly intimate tête-à-tête with Nancy, who had remained in town to
solace Harry's compulsory loneliness. All these three males had to be soothed,
smoothed, enlivened, sweetened, guided into a mood of self-complacency, freed
from cares and corroding worm-preoccupations.
Nancy was the queen, and the queen knew her
business. Harry Matcham, who was not facile in sincere praise, though he would
fling insincere praise about in trowelfuls, always said that she was the
soothingest woman in London--he did not really believe that she was the most
beautiful woman in London. Nancy knew that a bad first quarter of an hour might
easily discompose a party for a whole evening; she knew that great and
successful men were apt to be conscienceless in the matter of social amenities,
and that in particular they chatted or kept glumly silent according to their
caprice of the moment: she knew that any conversation is better than muteness
or reluctant, sparse monosyllables; and she knew that in the game of small-talk
personalities are always trumps. Therefore, no sooner were the four chairs
occupied than she softly burst out in her soothing voice, to Sir Henry:
"And where is my darling Gracie to-night? Do
you know, she's very naughty. I haven't heard from her for weeks, and she
writes such amusing letters--when she does write."
"Do you think I've heard from her, any more
than you?" said Sir Henry, with an ironic smi1e. "I suppose she's in
Paris. On the other hand she may be somewhere all by herself in the country
near Paris. Last news I had she was writing a book."
"A novel of course," said Lord
Watlington, also with irony.
"No," said Evelyn, "I don't think
it's a novel. She did say 5ornething to me about it, but I forget what. Sort of
journal of impressions, I fancy."
"Yes, you're right," Savott agreed,
startled by this inside knowledge of Evelyn's.
"Well, anyway it won't be like anything
else," said Lord Watlington. "She has more brains than any other
woman I ever met--yes, my dear" (to Nancy) --"and you may rely on her
to write down absolutely anything that comes into her head. You'd better see
the proofs, Henry."
"I should have to bribe the printers then,
Harry. Gracie would die before she'd show them."
"I always see Nancy's," said Lord
Watlington. "I've kept her out of trouble more than once. I can't imagine
why she keeps on writing."
"Who? Me?" asked Mrs. Penkethman
plaintively.
"Yes, you!" Lord Watlington repeated
with emphasis.
"Yes, you!" repeated Savott with
emphasis.
Nancy divined that the two men were a little
jealous of one another in regard to her. Alone with her, each of them was
gentle enough as a rule. But both together, each seemed anxious to demonstrate
to the other that his status with her entitled him to be rough.
"But I must write. I have to," she said
still more plaintively, enveloping both of them in the same tender, appealing,
wistfully smiling glance. "You're my friend, aren't you, Mr. Orcham?"
"Count on me, Mrs. Penkethman."
Nancy contributed, and sometimes she actually
wrote, a weekly column of society gossip to the "Sunday Mercury." The
newspaper paid not for the column but for the signature, than which none could
be smarter. Nancy got nearly all her meals free and half her frocks and hats;
she had the run of at least a dozen country-houses; she had further an
allowance of five thousand a year (not from her divorced husband). So that,
being thus in a chronic condition of penury, she 'simply had' as she said, to
write. Moreover, it was the correct smart thing to write a column of society
gossip in a Sunday paper. If a smart young woman did not write such a column,
the sole reason must be that she lacked the wits to write it. And Nancy, for
all her sweet tenderness of demeanour, had wits.
Sir Henry Savott changed the subject with the
abruptness of a waiter changing one plate for another. The soup interested him,
being a novelty and a very delicate novelty. At the first spoonful he stopped,
impressed, thoughtful, curious, as to its ingredients. He praised the soup. It
was entitled on the menu-card 'Potage Gracieux.' Nobody at the table, not even
Evelyn, was aware that the name was Maître Planquet's subtle tribute to the
charm exercised by Miss Savott during her visit to the kitchens many weeks
earlier. Maître Planquet had made enquiries about the identity and station of
Gracie.
"Gracie ought by rights to try this,"
said Sir Henry, all unknowing, after his brief laudation addressed to Evelyn.
Already he was beginning to be confident that Evelyn's boast as to the quality
of the dinner which the Palace could serve to a thousand people at once would
be justified. Already the gourmand in him was gaining ground; and, the soup
finished, he anticipated the fish with eager hope.
Evelyn was thinking of Gracie, who had not been in
his mind for a long time, thinking of her with appreciation. She had said that
she would write a book, and she was writing, had written it. She was not of
those who dream of authorship, start a book, drop it and relapse into futility.
She had character. Yes, he was as much impressed by the news of Gracie as her
father had been impressed by the 'Potage Gracieux.'
"That, I venture to think, is a unique
hock," Evelyn remarked as the wine-waiter filled the glasses. "Anyone
who prefers champagne will kindly say the word. But that--isa
hock."
Sir Henry tasted.
"It is," said he, after a moment's
cerebration.
Evelyn felt sympathetic towards Sir Henry's
gourmandise. There was satisfaction in feeding a man who, though he somewhat
deteriorated into grossness at a fine meal, could passionately distinguish
between a first-rate dish and a second-rate. Evelyn had long since quite
forgiven Savott for attempting to interfere in the policy of the grill-room.
Lord Watlington had left half his soup. Also he
had asked for a whisky-and-soda. Mrs. Penkethman had refused soup. Instead of
soup she had taken a cigarette. "Barbarians," thought Evelyn, of the
peer and the lady. He was glad that he had not offered to the barbarians the
barbarism of cocktails. And he was glad to think that Nancy had probably been
(what she would have called) dying for a cocktail, while too well-bred and
modest to demand one.
At the end of the fish the sight and taste of food
and the quaffing of wine had accomplished their effect of stimulating the
goodwill proper to the grandiose occasion. Not only Evelyn's table, but all the
tables as far as the eye could reach across the vistas of white circles and
squares, had loosed themselves into loquacity and open joyousness. The noise of
the band was yielding ground to the human din. Tongues had been reinforced
against the band by gifts from the management of whistles, rattles, and other
instruments of music, crackers, and toy-balloons susceptible to explosion by
puncture. Coloured balls were being thrown about between tables. Coloured
streamers were being cast like long fishing-lines, coiling round the bodies of
dignified men and elegant women, who in their gaiety found no offence in such
entanglements. Perfect strangers merrily saluted and teased and slanged one
another. Adults and the minds of adults diminished into children and
child-minds. Dignity gave way to impudence.
And Sir Henry Savott continued steadily to eat and
drink, and Nancy to smoke, while Lord Watlington was so far affected by his
surroundings as to accept a second whisky-and-soda. Evelyn ate and drank
little. His was the ultimate responsibility for the success of the fête; he was
above Cappone, who perambulated watchfully to and fro, and above Cousin, who
appeared first in one corner and then in another, also watchful. Maitre
Planquet himself, in white cap and suit, peeped forth slily from the end of the
corridor which led to the kitchens, to observe the sweet influences of his rich
viands.
The hands of the great illuminated clock moved
lazily on towards the minute which would mark the solemn inception of the New
Year with its good resolutions and its bills. And despite the unseen labours of
engineers deep down below in the subterranean halls tending the machinery which
changed and washed and warmed and cooled the air of the glittering restaurant,
the restaurant grew hotter and hotter. And no one cared. And as the crackers
cracked, producing jewellery, wise mottoes, prophecies of destiny, and paper
caps, the last supplemented by splendid caps, genuine caps, distributed by
girls from baskets, there supervened the crisis which always arises at such a juncture.
Elegant women donned the splendid caps without the least hesitation or
self-consciousness. Would the men, even after having parted with their dignity?
The men could not. The terrible fear of looking asinine prevented them from
putting on caps. Then a V.C. of a man put on a cap, and felt himself an ass for
no more than a moment. Another man put on a cap, and he was cheered by his
shouting companions. Male craniums surmounted by caps soon dotted the room.
Evelyn's table was encumbered with caps, as the floor was littered with knotted
streamers and little balls and the wreckage of toy-balloons and crackers. Nancy
Penkethman, capped, motioned to Evelyn to assume a cap. Smiling, he shook his
head. Sir Henry Savott was invited similarly and refused.
"Harry!" said Nancy. Lord Watlington
shook his head.
"Harry!" Nancy repeated. She was the queen, and the time
had arrived for her to prove the reality of her power, which hitherto out of
the instinct to acquiesce she had forborne to use.
Lord Watlington sheepishly put on a cap, and
immediately he had done so his sheepishness left him. It was a magnificent cap,
solidly constructed in the shape of a helmet, with an authentic blue feather in
it. And Sir Henry Savott donned a cap. The fête was a success.
Nancy Penkethman relinquished her queenliness and
her momentarily shrewish tone, and resumed the role of trustful acquiescence
and subtle flattery.
"You look like winning--over this meal,"
said Sir Henry to Evelyn, in reference to Evelyn's old claim.
"I hope you'll think so after the
savoury," Evelyn replied.
He alone at the table was capless. With him, Nancy
had not insisted. She guessed that he was dreaming, preoccupied, absorbed by
his dream. He felt sure, now, that the festivity could not fail. Nay, he felt
sure that somehow in his gossip columns Immerson would make it the most
marvellous New Year's Eve in all the history of London luxury hotels. But he
was dreaming of more than the triumph of the festivity. He was dreaming of the
future triumph of the gigantic merger of luxury hotels, of which he was the
autocrat and the godfather. Both Sir Henry and Lord Watlington were indulging
in the sweetness of the same dream.
Sir Henry was thinking, as he surveyed the riotous
scene and digested the sumptuous food, and as he glanced furtively at the
quiet, unassuming, laconic man who in his fancy rode the whirlwind and directed
the storm:
"This fellow is the goods. He can't possibly
let us down."
And the brain of Lord Watlington, who had never
before condescended to a New Year's Eve public fête, was busily at work
reconstructing for himself the intricate and immense organisation which
underlay the glowing surface of the show. And he was thinking
"There's a damn sight more in this fellow
than some people might suppose, to look at him."
In 'some people' Lord Watlington in fact included
himself. He too had visions of a sensational triumph for the Merger, and
thereby was made glad, for he was the chief of the plutocrats who in secret
were lending their financial prestige and credit to Savott's scheme; and though
he had ten times as much wealth as he could spend, he would have regarded the
loss of a single penny of it as a heartrending and humiliating calamity.
The speech of none of the three men gave the
slightest clue to his reflections. The table was talking incessantly, but the
talk had no subject, scarcely a topic, unless it were the oddities of other
revellers.
Evelyn was awakened from his reverie by the sight
of a human being wandering, staring, searching with his eyes, among the tables.
He knew from the human being's uniform that he was a telephone-man. There
should have been nothing surprising in the sight of a telephone-man searching
the restaurant. But this man's face was tragic in its alarm and apprehension.
His face was enough to ruin the mirth of any festivity. Evelyn thought
"This simply won't do." Abruptly he rose from the table, and as the
man happened to come nearer he peremptorily beckoned, and the man saw the
gesture.
"What is it?" Evelyn murmured as the man
bent respectfully towards him.
"There's a young lady very ill upstairs, sir,
and I was looking for Dr. Constam. They said he was here, but I can't see him.
And I can't see Mr. Cousin either."
"Very ill, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Very ill."
"What number?"
"365, sir."
"What?"
"365, sir," the man repeated louder.
The table was of course listening.
"I'll attend to it," said Evelyn.
"365. That's one of my old numbers,"
said Sir Henry Savott, who had overheard the number.
"Are you staying here, Henry?" Lord
Watlington asked.
"No, Harry. I'm in my new house."
"Will you kind people excuse me for a
minute?" Evelyn asked. "I'm sorry, but--"
They excused him. He left the table, thinking:
"Though why the devil I should attend to it I don't know." On
his way out he had to pass by the band, the volume of whose sound shook his
poise as the weight of a cyclonic wind might have shaken it.
TESSA
On his way to the third floor Evelyn in reply to a
question learnt from the liftman that Dr. Constam had after all preceded him to
No. 365. Evidently the doctor had been told by someone other than the
telephone-man that his presence was urgently required up there; and the
probability was that he had left the restaurant before the excited and confused
searcher had begun to look for him. But the liftman could not say who were the
occupants of No. 365; he was a stranger to that particular lift; on New Year's
Eve many individuals were doing other individuals' work.
Evelyn knocked at the door of No. 365, one of the
six or eight finest suites in the Palace. No answer. He entered. There seemed
to be no sign at all of very grave illness in No. 365: no sound, no stir. The
door of the lighted sitting-room was open. He went in.
Violet Powler was standing in the embrasure of one
of the windows, apparently absorbed in the contemplation of an invisible St.
James's Park. Neither curtains nor blinds had been drawn. The temporary
head-housekeeper turned and saw Evelyn.
"Good evening, sir," she greeted him,
with placid formality. She was no longer the young woman who had smoked a
cigarette in his castle on the night of his homecoming from the Continent.
Indeed in the interval he had not seen her, though he had several times thought
of her with satisfaction, approval, and confidence. He was about to demand
somewhat abruptly by what remissness of a chambermaid the blinds had been left
up and the curtains open, but Violet's steady glance moved him to control the hasty
impulse.
"Someone very ill here, I understand. I
looked in myself because both Mr. Cousin and Mr. Pozzi have their hands
full."
"Yes, sir. The doctor is in there, and I'm
waiting to see if I can do anything else." She pointed to a bedroom-door.
"Who's staying here?"
"Miss Savott."
"Miss Savott--not Sir Henry Savott's--"
"Yes, sir...It's a miscarriage, sir,"
she added, laconic.
The situation called for further exercise of
self-control. The introductory tidings were in themselves astounding. Gracie in
the hotel, and her father unaware! Why had the talk at the dinner-table turned
at once on Gracie? And why had he himself taken the extraordinary course of
enquiring into the affair personally? Could these questions be convincingly
answered with the word 'coincidence'? Or were there in the universe forces,
mysterious correspondences, telepathies, whose existence he had hitherto always
rather disdainfully refused to credit? He still refused to credit their
existence with his reason; but now, primeval instincts, powerful and authentic,
fought within him against the scepticism of reason, and he was as perturbed as
though he had seen a ghost.
"You don't mean to say that Miss Savott's
here and she's--" Even as he uttered these words he charged himself with
clumsy phrasing; but really for a moment he was somewhat overset: first an
astonishing announcement, and then, right on the top of it, a staggering
announcement! And on New Year's Eve! With what affrighting suddenness had he
not been swept from the world of light pleasure into a world whose fundamentals
were crude pain and disaster!
"Oh no, sir," said Violet calmly,
unsmiling. "It's a--friend of hers that she brought with her. I don't know
the name."
He had a tremendous sensation of relief, tempered
by a dreadful private admission that he had made an unspeakable ass of himself.
Sound of pass-key in the outer door. Glimpse of a
chamber-maid outside A lady advanced very quickly into the sitting-room. She wore
a scanty evening frock, lilac-coloured, and a conspicuous, gleaming necklace of
large crimson stones. Clearly she had come straight from the world of light
pleasure.
"Yes?" Evelyn murmured.
"I'm dining in the same party as Dr.
Constam," said the reveIler, authoritatively, but in no accent of the West
End or Oxford. "He asked me to follow him as soon as I could. I'm a nurse.
Where is the patient?"
Violet made a step towards the bedroom-door; but
the reveller reached it first, opened it, shut it, vanished into the sinister
unknown of the bedroom: all in a few seconds.
"You don't expect to see them in party
frocks, do you?' said Evelyn with a short laugh to cover his nervous
diffidence. "But I suppose they're entitled to wear them just as much as
other women."
Violet gave a transient, reserved smile.
"When did this thing begin?" he
enquired.
The head-housekeeper related that she had been
summoned on the telephone by Miss Savott herself about half an hour earlier;
but she suspected that the 'thing' had begun some little time before the
summons. She had come downstairs instantly. She had felt helpless, and Miss
Savott too. Of course Miss Savott and herself knew each other of old. The
difficulty had been to get hold of the doctor. Miss Savott was much disturbed
at first, but later she had grown perfectly calm and clear-headed. She knew
something about nursing; and so did Violet; but what could they do till the
doctor arrived? When he did arrive he said that there was no need for the
head-housekeeper to remain in the bedroom. The head-housekeeper had gathered
that the two ladies had had a bad crossing, and that that was perhaps the cause
of the terrible trouble.
"It's amazing what pranks women will play
with themselves," said Evelyn, scandalised and sardonic. "Fancy a
woman--! When was the birth expected, do you know?"
"I think the lady is over six months
gone."
"And them crossing the Channel on a rough day
in the middle of winter!"
A silence.
The head-housekeeper noticed that the Director's
eye was on the windows She said:
"The chambermaid told me she had drawn the
curtains as usual, but Miss Savott had undrawn them again. Said she liked to
see the lights. That must have been before the trouble started."
Another silence. Then Evelyn said benevolently:
"I'm surprised to find you on duty to-night,
Miss Powler. How is it?"
"Well," said Violet, "it's not one
of my evenings, and Miss Ducker--she's the newest, sir: Sixth--really did want
to go to a party at Hammersmith, so I let her go. I'm easier in my mind if I'm
here on the spot."
"You shouldn't be. You must get over
that."
Evelyn offered this advice in a somewhat
peremptory tone. He remembered the time in his experience when he was
continuously uneasy during any absence from whatever organisation he happened
to be in control of. He had conquered the weakness. She must conquer it. As
head-housekeeper she had the right of priority over all her staff to a night
off on New Year's Eve, and for the sake of discipline she ought to have
exercised it. What about her lonely old parents with nobody to let the New Year
in for them? And he would have preferred her not to address him as 'sir.' He
had thought that the joint cigarette-smoking had ended that. Perhaps in the
presence of other members of the staff it might be well for her to say 'sir';
but when they were by themselves...How could he give her the hint? Then he
said, more gently:
"I think we might sit down." And he sat
down. Violet hesitated. "Sit down," he repeated, but still gently.
She sat.
She had shocked his masculine sensitiveness by the
calmness of the use of the words 'miscarriage' and 'six months gone.' What
could or should she, unmarried, know of such things? Her sister had not been
married either. Absurd! As manageress of a big laundry staff, as
head-housekeeper of a big place like the Palace with its very mixed assortment
of humanity, she must be familiar with all manner of strange and dubious
phenomena. Indeed nothing could be hid from her. The contents of the minds of
such women simply would not bear investigation. What could such women have to
learn about the secret nature of mankind? He would bet that she knew far more
than he did: she knew appalling things. And not a sign of the knowledge of them
on her tranquil, virtuous face!
"I don't know a lot about miscarriages,"
he said, after a long silence (thinking audaciously: "I may as well talk
to her in her own language"), "but it seems to me that that doctor of
ours can't get on with his work without some--er--apparatus that he hasn't got
in there. He didn't bring anything with him, I suppose?"
"No, sir. When he came I don't think he even
knew what was the matter."
"Well, it's all very odd to an amateur like
me." And he thought: "Why am I staying here? I can't be of any help.
It must be just sheer curiosity that's keeping me here."
Young Dr. Constam burst into the sitting-room.
"Oh, good evening!" he exclaimed,
startled to see Evelyn. He was laughing. He said nothing else until he had
carefully shut the door. Then he looked at Violet.
"It's no more a miscarriage than my boot.
Everything's absolutely normal so far as that goes. Nothing but an
attack of indigestion. I thought you ladies could never surprise me any more,
but I was wrong. The creature puts out to sea, feels queer, fills herself up
with champagne and God knows what. Train journey and so on. She gets here all
right, and then as soon as the tension is loosed and she has time to think
about herself she has rather acute indigestion. Pains in the tummy. Must be a
miscarriage! Miscarriage be blowed! I tell you I told her I couldn't help
laughing at her. That did her good." He laughed unfeelingly, almost
harshly. "Here I am eating my New Year's dinner, and I have to rush
upstairs because a girl's got the collywobbles. The biscuit is hers, and I hope
she'll have twins. I'm just going to find something to soothe her precious
alimentary tract. Shan't be two minutes. No earthly need for you to stay, Miss
Powler. Nurse is undressing her properly."
"I say," Evelyn stopped the young man as
he was going out.
"Yes?"
"Who is she?"
"Ask me another, sir." He was gone.
Violet had obediently risen to leave. Like Evelyn,
she was more relieved than she could show. But, also like Evelyn, she had a
sense of disappointment, of having been shamefully cheated of an anti-climax.
Comedy had replaced tragedy; and in spite of themselves, in spite of their
relief, they both instinctively regretted the change. There was something
magnificent in dire tragedy, in the terror of it, in the necessity which it
laid upon everybody to behave nobly and efficiently. But comedy demanded naught
from their higher selves. All they had to do now was to fade ingloriously away.
"I'm so glad," said Violet feebly.
"Yes."
"Good night, sir."
"Good night."
Violet went. Evelyn stayed. He was determined to
see Gracie Savott. He was there, and he would remain. He cared not a fig for
his party below. Dr. Constam returned, hurrying into the bedroom with a bottle
and a spoon. The stylish nurse appeared and departed quickly, ignoring the
presence of the panjandrum.
Then Evelyn heard faint rumours of an argument in
the next room. The doctor's voice. Another voice, no doubt Gracie's, though he
did not surely recognise it. Then the doctor reappeared, smiling grimly to
himself. He glanced at his watch and at the clock over the mantelpiece.
"Au revoir," he said to Evelyn, in the masonic tone of one man
to another when the vagaries of women are concerned.
Evelyn waved a hand, as if it were holding his
stick.
"I must look a bit odd, sitting here,"
he thought. But he stayed.
The length of the eventless interval tried his
patience. But he would not budge. He could hear automobiles hooting in Birdcage
Walk. Till then his preoccupied ear had not caught a single exterior sound. The
bedroom-door began to open. At last! The door remained half open for several
seconds. Then it opened farther. He heard Gracie's voice, now quite
recognisable, talking to her friend. He prepared a smile to receive her. Gracie
appeared. She was now untidy, almost unkempt, in her traveling pull-over and short
tweed skirt. As soon as he saw the expression on her face he dismissed the
smile from his own. Gracie was still sternly excited. She did not in the first
instant perceive Evelyn. Evidently she had been expecting the room to be empty.
"Oh!" she gasped, taken aback.
"I just came up to see how things were,"
he said, rising.
"That was very kind of you," she said
absently, and she shook hands absently. "I wish that doctor of yours had
been as kind--I suppose he's told you what's happened."
"Why!" Evelyn said, nodding an
affirmative to the question. He spoke soothingly, cautiously, as he shut the
bedroom-door, which she had forgotten. "He hasn't been unkind, has
he?"
"Yes, he has been unkind, very unkind,"
Gracie answered with emphasis. And while she spoke Evelyn recalled from the
past the rich, changing tones of that voice. "He laughed. That's what your
doctor did. Laughed. That was all he could do. Doctors are awful, especially
when they're young. Cruel. They don't seem to have any imagination."
"But everything's all right, isn't it?"
Evelyn said, even more cautiously. He thought: "She'll want some
handling."
And he contrasted her impetuous, agitated
vehemence with what Violet's demeanour would have been in Gracie's place. He
wished for one moment that he had not stayed. Nevertheless he was admiring
Gracie, her exuberant vitality, her passion--one might almost say her
exaltation. She showed no restraint in his presence. The freedom of her
behaviour could only be explained on the assumption that they were intimate.
Evelyn accepted the assumption. It was based not on their excursion to
Smithfield together, nor on their incursion into the Prince of Wales's
Feathers. To Evelyn at any rate it was based on the angry resentment in her
voice at their last parting, when he had offered to escort her from his office
to the lift, and she had suddenly turned on him like an infuriated tigress,
saying, "No, Please! I couldn't bear that!" She could not possibly
have forgotten her rudeness in that encounter. Yet she was now behaving as
though nothing unpleasant had happened between them.
"Everything's all right," she agreed
impatiently. "But that's not the point. That poor girl's going to have a
baby. Which is something, I hope, in a girl's life. She thought she was in for
a horrible mess. I thought so too. How could she tell it wasn't that, much less
me?...Last May it was--she'd been making love. She's been carrying that baby
for over six months. Fancy what it means, all that. Night and day. Well, of
course you can't. But I can. I've seen it all the time. I tell you it's simply
terrific. And then she thinks she's going to lose the baby. All that trouble
for nothing! Wasted in a most frightful mess! Can't you feel it? Can't you feel
the awfulness of it? Couldn't the doctor feel it? She was mistaken. She wasn't
going to lose the baby. But her agony--yes, agony--was just as real to her as
though she had been going to lose it. And this doctor of yours merely
laughs at her! Jokes! What does he think a woman is? He doesn't know the first thing
about being a doctor. Any fool who's passed his examinations can tell the
difference between a miscarriage and a bad attack of tummy-ache. But it takes a
man to feel. And that doctor can't. He isn't a man. He's a--there's no
word for him...Teases her about some champagne she'd had, on the top of some
peaches and some seasickness medicine! Well, if you want to know, it was I who
gave her the champagne, and I gave her the peaches. It isn't as if I hadn't had
her examined before we started. My French doctor saw her. He said she was in
splendid health. Never seen anyone better, he said, and it was perfectly safe
for her to travel, and if she did have a bit of a shaking up it wouldn't do her
any harm. And the voyage wasn't really so bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't
bad, though it was rather worse than we expected, I admit. And she was quite
all right till she had the champagne on the train. Even here she walked by
herself to the lift. She was so much all right that I went down to the
grill-room to eat something. But as soon as I'd gone her nerves went queer and
the pains began. She rang and I was fetched. I can understand it well
enough."
"Yes, yes," Evelyn agreed, appeasingly.
He felt as guilty as if he had been Dr. Constam. "Who is this young
lady?"
Gracie hesitated.
"Tessa," she answered in a low tone.
"Tessa?"
"Yes, Tessa Tye, my maid."
"I don't think I've seen her."
"Of course you've seen her. She came into the
hotel with me that morning when you were standing in the hall. Very pretty. And
rather smart too. Don't you remember. She's pretty enough for any man to
remember."
"Oh yes," Evelyn did remember. A
lackadaisical and self-conscious creature. Pretty? Yes. But he wouldn't have
said very pretty. He was thunderstruck. He said: "Married?...Or not?"
"Why do you say 'or not'? Why shouldn't she
be married? Can't maids be married? Can't they have their own lives like other
people? However, she isn't married, as it happens. That's why I made up my mind
to look after her. It may interest you to know--I haven't told anyone else--to
know that when we got here that first morning she tried to commit suicide.
Opening a vein with a pair of scissors. Yes, that was how she felt then. That
was why I kept you waiting before you took me to Smithfield. Oh, I didn't find
out till later what it was she'd been up to. I thought it was an accident with
the scissors. But I got it out of her in the end, when I noticed her body and
it was staring me in the face! I couldn't believe it at first--you never
do...Some half-English, half-Belgian rotter she'd fallen in love with in Paris.
She fell for him and then he ran away. She didn't know his address. I doubt if
she knew his real name. She carried that baby to New York with me and back
again. And I hadn't guessed--it wasn't till after we'd gone to Paris again from
here that she confessed. I wasn't going to throw her over then. No! What I had
to do was to put some self-respect into her. I took her to St. Cloud. It suited
me, because I wanted to be quiet to write my book. A little hotel there. Only
one bathroom for the two of us. I called her a friend of mine, Mrs. Tye. I
could see her growing before my eyes. We made no bones about it. We went around
for walks just as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. And so it is.
When we left St. Cloud you could see how she was half a mile off. Some of them
must have noticed it in the hall downstairs this afternoon, though she was
wearing a big cloak. She's been maiding me just the same. It wouldn't have done
for her to be idle. And the doctor, I mean the French one, said it would do her
all the good in the world to work--stoop, run about--you know. And she's a
different girl. It's set her up. She used to be anæmic and namby-pamby. All
that's gone. It'll be the making of her."
"But why have you brought her here to
London?"
"I brought her because I had to come about my
book. And I thought we should be as safe here in a big hotel as anywhere."
Gracie paused on a self-conscious half-smile. "I couldn't leave her
behind. She'd have fretted to death by herself. And I don't quite see why my
business should be held up because she's going to have a baby. She's got to
take the rough with the smooth, the same as the rest of us. Don't think I
coddle her. I shall be coddling her in about ten weeks' time, I expect. But not
yet. We shall only be here for a few days. I've made all the arrangements at
St. Cloud." Gracie tossed her head as it were defiantly, and sat down.
Evelyn, agitated, astounded, admiring, very
respectful, walked to and fro in the room. He could not express his sensations.
"Not now. Not yet," he kept saying to himself.
"Does your father know?" he asked, in a
voice artificially negligent.
"No. Of course he doesn't know. Why?"
"Well, he's dining with me at this moment.
That's all."
"Here? In the hotel?"
"In the restaurant. Him, and your friend Mrs.
Penkethman and Lord Watlington."
"But I heard from him at Christmas. I thought
he was going to the Bahamas for a holiday."
"He may be. But he's dining with me to-night.
I left them to come up here."
"Does he know I'm here?"
"He does not."
"Is he staying here in the hotel?" She
seemed to be really apprehensive.
"No, he's in the new house, so he told
me."
"And I haven't seen it." Genuine relief
in her tone. "Well, he must be frightfully taken with the new house. This
is the first New Year he's spent in London for years. If I'd known he was to be
in London I shouldn't have--"
The bedroom-door opened--was pulled open from the
other side. Evelyn was near the window, and Gracie's face, as she looked at
him, was turned a little away from the door. Tessa entered. Evelyn saw her
first, and before Tessa saw him. She was wearing a peignoir, splendid enough to
be one of Gracie's. It was boldly tied above the waist. No concealment of her
condition. But a shameless display of it. The central character of the piece
was indeed superbly enormous. Pale, worn, pretty face. Tousled bright hair.
Thin bust. And then the swelling curves of approaching motherhood. Evelyn was
thrilled. Tears came suddenly into his eyes. He blushed. "'Interesting' is
the right word for it," he thought, thrilled again and again. He exulted
in the girl's appearance; at the same time it put a deep solemnity into him.
All this in a fraction of a second.
"Tessa!" cried Gracie, outraged. She had
followed the direction of Evelyn's acutely perturbed glance. "What in
God's name are you doing? Go back to bed this instant and keep warm."
Tessa had now seen Evelyn. She gave a faint cry of
alarm and vanished. Gracie jumped up and shut the door with a bang. The large
room with its plenteous and ornate furniture, and its dozen electric lights,
was emptied of a capital presence, impressive, foolish and pitiful.
"Fools girls are!" Gracie exclaimed, and
went on quickly: "Well, I think you'd better go back to your dinner now.
And mind, don't say a word to father. He'd go in right off at the deep end. You
don't know father."
"Very well. I don't," said Evelyn. He
thought: "What separate lives they lead! And her mother--somewhere in the
background." They shook hands. "Good night. I think you're wonderful.
This is the greatest story I ever heard." What he appreciated as much as
anything else in her recital was its breathtaking matter-of-factness.
She said:
"Everyone's wonderful when it comes to the
point."
NEW
YEAR'S MORNING
As, in the restaurant, Evelyn with difficulty made
his way back towards the table of which he was the host, he saw from the intent
faces of Lord Watlington and Sir Henry Savott that these two were engaged in
some sort of recriminatory argument, while Nancy Penkethman was glancing aside
as if trying to dissociate herself from the affray. The rather simple-minded
Nancy, however, was not a very good actress. Her expression betrayed a certain
constraint. Yet it betrayed also a certain satisfaction, which sprang from her
intuitional knowledge of the pleasing fact that she herself was the prime
cause, though of course not the occasion, of the discord.
"So glad to see you again!" she greeted
Evelyn charmingly, and at the same time bestowed upon Harry and Henry in equal
proportions a charmingly mischievous smile.
"I'm extremely sorry to have been so
long," said Evelyn, feeling that he had not arrived a moment too soon.
"I really couldn't help it. You know, you never do know what will happen
next in a hotel."
The demeanour of the other two men changed
instantly from the bellicose to the perfectly peaceful. And indeed their
material interests and their prestige were too closely interwoven to permit of
anything worse than a tiff occurring between them; assuredly no woman on earth
could have estranged them, for each of them had a hard realistic sense of the
relative unimportance of women, beautiful or plain, in the world of their
ideals.
"We were beginning to suspect a fire had
broken out somewhere upstairs, and you were keeping it dark for the sake of
business," said Lord Watlington with a laugh; and Evelyn laughed.
"No," he said shortly. "It wasn't a
fire." He perceived now the risks which he ran in concealing from Savott
the presence of Gracie in the hotel. Savott and he were working together in the
enormous enterprise of the Merger and on a basis of the utmost candour.
Sometimes they even used their Christian names to one another. Supposing that
Savott were to discover Evelyn's uncandid reticence concerning Gracie, and
their cards-on-the-table friendship were to be imperilled! Pooh! Savott could
discover nothing. Gracie would be off again in a day or two. Moreover, it was
no part of Evelyn's duty to be aware of the identity of every visitor in the
largest luxury hotel on earth. Withal, Gracie evidently suffered from a
characteristic girlish deficiency in the sense of danger. Pooh! Dissension between
father and daughter could not conceivably bring about dissension between Savott
and himself...Why, if Gracie seriously wished to avoid her father, had she
chosen to come to just the Imperial Palace? Her stated reason for doing so was
not very credible.
Evelyn's thoughts ran on in this vein. But
absolutely no clue to them could be seen in his bearing. He was a master of
duplicity when circumstances demanded it.
The restaurant, if as noisy as ever, was less
crowded. A ceaseless procession of revellers was passing out in obedience to a
large, painted, pointing hand and a notice which said: "Ballroom.
Attractions."
"I think now is the moment for us to go and
see these mysterious 'attractions'," Evelyn suggested. "It will be
midnight before we know where we are, and by midnight we simply must be here
again."
"But your dinner, darling!" said Nancy
Penkethman, all of whose acquaintances were her darlings. "You haven't
eaten a mouthful."
"No, I haven't," Evelyn concurred.
"Unless soup, fish, and entrée are worthy to be called a mouthful. But
there'll be some supper after Auld Lang Syne."
Nancy having lighted a new cigarette, they rose
and went, Nancy and Evelyn in front. The high financiers behind were now fondly
Henrying and Harrying. Henry's flushed organism was engaged in the true
business of a gourmand at the end of a good luscious meal. Harry, as usual with
him, had eaten little, but he had honoured the approach of the New Year with a
fair number of whiskies.
The broad corridor leading to the ballroom section
of the public apartments was full of jostling people, men and women, in the
same condition as Harry and Henry: relaxed, released into a careless and
quasi-shameless jollity, with neckties somewhat disarranged, frocks somewhat
disarranged, splendid comic hats awry, ill-controlled mouths, loose smiles and
laughs, loud tongues. Evelyn could feel their bodies, male and female, against
his, see their faces very close: humanity in the mass, odorous, multitudinous,
flippant, saucy, brazen, free of social discipline. The too populous corridor
was like a suffocating tunnel made light and brilliant by pale toilettes,
rouge, exposed flesh, and jewels.
The party reached a large ante-room, round whose
walls had been ranged a series of concave and convex mirrors which, distorting
everything, changed beauty into the horribly grotesque, dignity into ridicule,
decency into the obscene. The reflections excited high mirth and salvos of
hysterical shrieks. This, the first of the attractions, was an immense success
of humour.
Next, the ballroom, which, with space for two
hundred couples to dance, contained only seventy or eighty persons, who watched
a stage-spectacle of three youths throwing crimson, glittering Indian clubs at
one another apparently with intent to kill. But the flying, revolving clubs
seemed to have a magic life and volition of their own; they flew into hands,
criss-crossed in parabolic curves, lodged themselves incredibly between arms
and torsos, dropped unerringly into pockets. They could make no mistakes; they
were tireless on their unending shuttle journeys to and fro; the youths alone
gave signs of effort and strain beneath their stage-smiles. The spectacle was a
dazzling exhibition of dexterity on the part of the clubs, assisted by the
three youths. But the sparse audience, while applauding at intervals, did not
increase.
The third and greatest attraction was in a third
room beyond. This room was so jammed with spectators that Evelyn's foursome
could not get into it at all. They had difficulty even in maintaining a
position at the wide doors. Guffaws, giggles, shouts rose out of the dense
floor of heads like invisible raucous birds. The heat was tropic. At the end of
the room, on a dais, Punch, popping up and down in a small oblong of a
proscenium, was exhibiting his domestic and conjugal existence with Judy,
policemen, maids, and executioners. Murders were being committed at express
speed; the law was derided; and Toby watched the farcical tragedies with canine
indifference.
Nancy, pouting, complained that she could see
nothing. Suddenly Lord Watlington picked her up by her slim waist, and perched
her on his shoulders--a feat which persons in the vicinity warmly applauded
with cheers. Nancy laughed like a schoolgirl. The drama went on and on; and
still on; repeating itself. Nobody was bored for a moment: everybody was
passionately interested in the fate of wooden puppets.
Then, just behind the foursome, a matchless
organ-voice, triumphing easily over the din, cried solemnly, warningly,
imperatively: "Ladies and gentlemen. A quarter to midnight." It was
the voice of the renowned chief toast-master of the Imperial Palace, in a red
coat and knee-breeches. Lord Watlington deposited Nancy on the parquet;
otherwise the admonition was ignored. But in a moment the curtain fell on the
career of Punch, and at once the room began to empty. The foursome were shoved
backwards with violence.
"What are you laughing at?" Nancy asked
Evelyn as she smoothed down her skirts; she feared that something was amiss
with her attire or her face.
"Punch and Judy of course," Evelyn
reassured her.
It was not the truth. He was laughing, quietly to
himself, at the thought of the mistake of Tessa and Gracie about Tessa's
condition. Suddenly it had struck him as extraordinarily funny. He sympathised
with Dr. Constam's unrepressed mirth. It was the funniest thing he had ever
come across. And Gracie might say what she chose in protest. It was really
funny. But to savour its funniness your sense of humour had to be robust. The
pilgrimage back to the restaurant was a retreat from Moscow; people fell by the
way; insecure possessions were torn off in the mêlée and some of them never
seen again.
In the restaurant as, breathless, the party struggled
to their table and dropped into chairs, the great clock showed five minutes to
midnight. Theatre chorus-girls dressed as ballet-dancers were entering; they
carried clusters of balloons high on the ends of long sticks, and men stood on
chairs to take balloons; explosions resounded. Processions of trumpeters
trumpeting, and of beef-eaters not eating beef, entered the restaurant with
excessive pomp. The band played "Tipperary." The colour, the noise,
the heat were all increased. Every light went out, except the festooned Chinese
lanterns and the illuminated dial of the great clock. In the dusk the last
loiterers scrambled to their places.
The minute-hand of the great clock crept up to the
hour-hand until the two joined on XII. The band was stilled. The chief
toast-master, in front of the lower storeys of the clock, raised his mighty
arm. The revellers obediently stood to their feet. The band resumed, in a new
strain. Nancy crossed her thin bare arms. The three men hesitated, shamefaced.
Then Nancy's right hand took Evelyn's left, and then eight hands were clasped
in the traditional fashion. And every revelling hand at every table was joined
to another, and soon arms were moving up and down to the rhythm of the music.
The three men hated the ceremony. Only Nancy in her simplicity enjoyed it. She
sang first; Sir Henry Savott then sang loudly; Evelyn hummed; Lord Watlington
remained obstinately mum in the sheltering dusk. Gradually the revellers lost
their shamed self-consciousness, and sang and wagged their arms with a will.
The waiters around the room, and the two
black-robed girls behind a control desk in a corner, had no share in the grave
rite. Serious, preoccupied by their duties, they were cut off from revelling
humanity. The advent of New Years was naught to them.
The ageless song ended. The lights blindingly went
up. The band jumped gloriously into the feverish waltz from "The
Meistersingers." The waiters started into life. The revellers shook hands
and exchanged fervent good wishes. Seven minutes had passed, but the hands of
the great clock had not budged. They marked an everlasting midnight. They would
not venture into the New Year. Time stood still.
A young man in a wondrous white waistcoat advanced
smiling and victorious towards Evelyn's table. He bowed indiscriminately to the
party.
"Well, sir?" he addressed Evelyn.
"All my congratulations. Not a single hitch.
A Happy New Year," said Evelyn.
It was the Bands-and-Cabaret-manager, Jones-Wyatt,
who had been responsible for all the complex arrangements except those
connected with food and drink.
"Thank you, sir. Same to you." He bowed
and retired, content.
A little later Lord Watlington made an abrupt sign
to Nancy Penkethman, who submissively rose.
"Well, my dear host," said Lord
Watlington very urbanely and smilingly expansive. "It's all been extremely
impressive. I admire your organisation as much as I like your hospitality. Ever
so many thanks. You'll excuse me if I go. I can't stand up against late
hours."
"So sweet of you, Mr. Orcham," said
Nancy, clinging to Evelyn's hand. "I've simply loved it. I never had such
a New Year's Eve before. Thank you ten million times."
"Very good of you to come," said Evelyn
lamely.
"Bye-bye, Henry."
"Bye-bye, Harry."
Henry put a chaste kiss on Nancy's cheek. The departing
pair were gone. When Harry decided to go he always acted on the decision with
ruthless promptitude.
Then Henry went, offering the same excuse as
Harry.
Evelyn was alone in the renewed multitudinous
champagne orgy of the restaurant. But within less than a minute Sir Henry
Savott returned, rather bustling. He would have passed as perfectly sober had
he not been a trifle too sure that he was perfectly sober.
"I say, Evelyn," he said brusquely,
"what day are you going back to Paris? You are going, aren't you?"
"Yes. But I can't settle the date till I hear
that the Concorde manager--what's the name, Laugier?-- has got over his attack
of flu and can answer questions."
"I can tell you that now," said Sir
Henry. "He was back at work to-day. A fellow told me before I came here
to-night, who'd seen him this morning at the Concorde."
"Oh! Well, then, I may go as soon as I've
wired him and got his answer. I'll telephone you."
"I'll see you before you start?"
"Certainly."
Sir Henry departed for the second time that New
Year's morning. Evelyn could explain his return only on the supposition that he
had preferred to keep out of the entrance-hall until Nancy and Harry were clear
away.
Cappone, as fresh as dawn, arrived at the table
and suggested that the panjandrum had insufficiently eaten. Cappone could watch
over the eating of a thousand guests, and not least of the panjandrum's. Evelyn
agreed to consider a couple of kidneys, which Cappone, having received
congratulations from his chief on the complete smoothness of the jollity of the
grand revel, went off into the kitchen to order personally from Maître
Planquet.
The revel could not die. It was now more vivacious
than ever. With the kind consent of the Licensing Authority, champagne and other
alcohol was still being generously served and quaffed. And a fair proportion of
guests, having convinced themselves that the New Year's Eve dinner was
finished, were starting the New Year well with a New Year's morning supper.
When the kidneys were eaten, however, a few craven roysterers were already
leaving, and a deserted table here and there showed plain white. The great
clock was now more than an hour late...
She was a unique young woman, was Gracie. Her
phrase, 'I had to put some self-respect into her,' stuck in Evelyn's mind. She
evidently had a sense of fundamentals. She had done, was doing, a marvellous
work with the silly, tragic Tessa. He thought of the two of them up there in
suite 365--and the unborn. He pictured the luxuriant embossed figure of the
foolish Tessa, one instant in the bedroom-doorway. If it could suddenly appear
in the midst of the hot, wild-fire revel presided over by Bacchus, Pan, Venus,
and all the gods of luxury--what a sensation, what a menacing reminder of the
inexorableness of life!
Why had Gracie chosen the Imperial Palace? She had
a sense of fundamentals, yes; but there were streaks of folly in her wisdom. He
felt obscurely that she was a girl capable of enormities which might be
magnificent, but they would be enormities all the same. She frightened his deep
prudence.
He rose and strolled through the deafening chatter
and clatter and tinkling towards the kitchen, still in full-heated activity,
there to bestow upon Maître Planquet and three important sub-chefs a reward which
could not be measured in money. When he slowly re-entered the restaurant a
refreshed orchestra had just replaced an orchestra which had blown and scraped
and drummed itself dry. The orchestras--he had been forgetting them! After a
moment he went downstairs to the band-lounge, a nondescript, large room where a
score of aristocratic, exhausted toilers in evening dress, whose earnest
efforts were requited with five hundred pounds a week from the Imperial Palace
treasury, lounged in easy-chairs and on sofas, and languidly smoked cigarettes
and imbibed drinks served to them by their own waiter and valet. None but the
conductor seemed to recognise Evelyn in the haze.
"Boys, here's the boss!" said the
conductor succinctly, after he had condescended to the panjandrum's hand.
"Wish him a Happy New Year." The musicians lifted themselves
reluctantly from the chairs and sofas, and in turn condescended to the
panjandrum's outstretched hand, and drank in eagerly the sweetness of his
prepared phrases...Duty done! The panjandrum thought of the grill-room and
wistful Ceria. To the grillroom then, via a couple of service-bars, a glass and
cutlery reserve, down more stone steps--and there his accustomed ear could
catch the faint whir of a dynamo deep in the earth's entrails--up steps, up
more steps, along a narrow stone corridor, bang into the mirrored resplendence
of the great entrance-hall, across which a stream of coated and cloaked and
subdued revellers had by this time set outwards. In the grill-room corridor he
met Ceria himself. Exchange of good wishes.
"You finished?"
"Nearly, sir." Ceria pointed through the
glazed wall. The interior of the grill-room was an expanse of plain white
tables; only three or four tables were occupied; there were twice as many
waiters as guests.
"Well, you've had a good evening."
"Wonderful, sir."
"Going to have a look at the restaurant,
eh?"
Ceria unwillingly admitted that this was so. They
went back together to the foyer and glanced through the curtains. A pallid and
fatigued page-boy accosted Ceria with a message. Ceria's appreciation of the
rich, variegated, intemperate scene was indifferent.
"Noisy," said he with his wistful smile,
and dismissed it.
The great clock was now nearly two hours late: it
seemed to dwell with serene self-approval in the eternal stillness of divine
perfection. The pair had to move aside from the opening between the curtains to
give room for a group of departing roysterers.
Evelyn thought of Violet Powler, nun-like and
secluded far aloft in her bedroom on Eighth, probably asleep. Ceria bade him
good night. Yet another ten minutes and the panjandrum was standing behind the
Reception counter in the hall, talking to Reyer. He talked to the deferential
Reyer for a long time. They watched the brilliant outgoing stream dwindle and
dwindle, then increase in a sudden spate, and dwindle again. Now was the
harvest of the cloak-rooms. Evelyn heard, from beyond the ever-revolving doors,
the hooting of cars; he could see their lights flashing.
He thought:
"Why the devil did that girl choose this
place to come to? It couldn't have been because she had a notion she might
perhaps come across me again here, could it? She never apologised to me for her
damnable rudeness about her party."
As for himself, he wished to see her again, but not
his should be the first move towards a meeting. Never! He would die rather.
More and more revellers carried forth their uneasy consciences into the chill
night air to confront the New Year and imagine good resolutions and the turning
over of new leaves. The fête was done.
IN THE
RAIN
"You remember you promised to go one night to
that Shaftesbury Express lunch-and-supper-counter place. Have you been?"
Rather an abrupt stand-and-deliver sort of an
opening for a telephone conversation at 10 p.m., thought Evelyn, startled. He
was alone in his office, smoking a cigar and drinking mineral water.
"What on earth place do you mean?" he
parried, quite intimately responding to Gracie's tone. The talk between them on
the previous evening had somehow re-established their intimacy of Smithfield
and the Prince of Wales's Feathers. But he knew very well what place she meant.
He had forgotten Charlie Jebson's proud announcement of his position as a
restaurateur. She had not forgotten it. Nor, probably, he said to himself
sardonically, had she forgotten the fine masculine figure of young Charlie
Jebson.
"Oh, dear! What a memory!" came the reply,
and Evelyn heard her light laugh. She recalled the incident to him.
"Oh yes!" he said. "I do remember
something of the kind."
"Well, have you been?"
"No. It's never crossed my mind from that day
to this." He thought: "I bet anything she wants me to take her there
tonight!"
"Well, don't you think you ought to go? A
promise is a promise."
"But surely it was you that promised
to go," he fibbed.
"Now don't pretend!" came the rich
voice, very firmly. It might have been a kindly reproof from an elder sister!
To her he was evidently no panjandrum; and he enjoyed not being a panjandrum.
"You know as well as I do it was you who promised."
"Well, one of these days I will go," he
said vaguely.
"That's just the same as saying you haven't
the slightest intention of ever going. I should like to go to-night. Let's
go." Cajolery in the tone. "Are you in evening dress?"
"I am not," he said. "I was in
evening dress till pretty nearly three o'clock this morning, and I'm taking a
night off, if you've no objection."
"That's splendid," came the voice,
eagerness in it. "It will be a night off. If you'd been in your
glad rags, we could hardly have gone. An Express counter isn't quite a suitable
atmosphere for a boiled shirt. Shall I come down?"
"But listen--"
"No, I won't listen," came the voice.
"Because I know exactly what you'd say if I let you. That's perfectly all
right. You and daddy are so thick in these days, it's perfectly all right for
your highness to be seen with me anywhere at any hour. And you needn't worry
about not telling daddy that last night you knew I was here. If he gets to hear
you can easily say you only found out to-day. Be a man. And don't be so damned
dignified."
The young voice was allaying all his unspoken
qualms and fears. The exhortation to shed his damned dignity was a challenge to
him which his courage was bound to accept.
"It would be a bit of a lark," he said,
with a laugh.
"I'm coming down this minute," the voice
answered. "Where are you?"
"In my office. But look here. Is your car
handy? Mine is not."
"Car!" the voice exclaimed. "We
can't arrive at an Express counter in Shaftesbury Avenue in a car. It simply
isn't done. We'll go in a taxi, of course."
"I'll be in the entrance-hall. Try not to
keep me waiting more than a couple of hours."
Evelyn picked up his hat, muffler, and overcoat
from the chair where he had thrown them. He tied the muffler twice round his
neck, raised the collar of his overcoat, stuck his hat on one side, shoved his
ungloved hands into his deep pockets, and went forth for the bit of a lark. He
felt uplifted, and found the hall by contrast more than half dead after the
late strain of the New Year's Eve fête. A sparse attendance in the restaurant.
Even the distant band sounded as if it might shortly expire in a sigh. At the
doors Long Sam, the head night-porter, was yawning in the lax ennui of the day
after.
"Taxi please, Sam."
"Yes, sir," said Sam Butcher, quickened.
"Taxi," he repeated to a janissary. "Lively."
The doors spun, the janissary dashed out,
stumbling on the steps.
"If I'm wanted, Sam," said Evelyn to
Sam. "I'm going out with Miss Savott to Jebson's restaurant in Shaftesbury
Avenue. I don't expect to be more than an hour at the outside."
After all, why attempt to conceal the lark? The
name of Savott was now illustrious in the hotel. Why not be grandly,
audaciously open about the lark? At the same moment Gracie appeared, uplifted
too, and hurrying. All in three or four minutes the lark had been conceived and
brought to birth. Astonishing. Frightening. But jolly. You never knew what
would happen next with that incalculable girl.
"D'ye mean that little place close by the
cinema?" the taxidriver asked, and when told by Evelyn that that little
place was indeed the place meant he gave an "Oh!" whose tone
indicated that as a man of the world he had ceased to be startled at the
vagaries of people of fashion. At the same time he lifted his eyebrows to
indicate a mild, weary criticism of people of fashion who would leave an
Imperial Palace in order to visit an Express counter near a cinema in
Shaftesbury Avenue.
The conversation in the bumping, danger-affronting
taxi was constrained, did not flow easily. Gracie said that Tessa was perfectly
well again, and was packing for departure the next morning.
"It does her good to bestir herself a
bit," said Gracie.
"I believe that is the theory," said
Evelyn.
"It's the practice--with Tessa," said
Gracie.
The Express Counter was very small: a long high
counter running down one side of a narrow room, ending with a partition at the farther
extremity; on the other side of the room three or four tiny tables, with a
couple of chairs apiece. A profusion of electricity. Not a soul visible, except
a blonde lady of thirty odd, dressed in black, with a thin gold necklet and a
gold wrist-watch. She might have passed for a floor-housekeeper of the Imperial
Palace.
"C'est très sympathique," said Gracie at once. "I love the
lampshades."
"Yes," Evelyn said, accepting her
verdict cheerfully. "Shall we sit here?" He put his hand on a chair
at one of the tiny tables.
"No," said Gracie. "We must sit at
the bar. I adore a bar." They took high chairs at the bar, and lodged
their feet comfortably on a brass rail provided for customers of stature less
than two yards and a half. Gracie loosed her leather coat. Evelyn did not even
take off his hat; there was no accommodation for it.
"Now," said Evelyn to the bar-woman.
"What do you serve here, please?"
"Well, sir. We serve the finest sandwiches in
London. Salads. Oysters. And the finest chops and steaks in London--but only at
lunch-time--I mean the chops and steaks. And cheeses of course--any hour."
Having examined and assessed and placed her customers, she waved a bare forearm
towards a range of sandwiches imprisoned in glass on a shelf behind her.
"I doubt if I've ever had the finest
sandwiches in London," said Evelyn, putting his hat on the counter.
"I think oysters," said Gracie,
"and stout."
"Stout? At night? Disturb my sleep,"
said Evelyn.
"And what if it does?" Gracie murmured,
lighting a cigarette. "Stout is such fun, and all fun has to be paid
for."
"Two dozen oysters and two stouts,
please," said Evelyn, acquiescent. And in that instant of abandonment to
adventure, it seemed to him that he really did not care whether his sleep would
be disturbed or not.
"Two dozen Whits and two draught
stouts," the bar-woman called to someone hidden beyond the partition.
"Very mild to-night," she added, to her customers.
"Ye-es," Evelyn said. He was not an
expert in the art of small-talk across counters.
"Windy," said Gracie. "Gusty."
"Well," said the bar-woman, glancing at
the leather coat, "if you're motoring that doesn't matter--unless of
course it's a touring car."
"I was thinking of the sea."
"Oh! Channel to-morrow morning. Yes, I
suppose so. I've never been over myself, that is, I mean since I was a
baby-in-arms. I began my travelling early, I did, and left it off early
too." All three laughed. "They do say there's nothing like travelling
for sharpening your wits. But what I say is a bar's pretty good in that
line." They all laughed again.
'Express' was a fit adjective for the Shaftesbury.
The bar-woman disappeared and returned immediately with two foamy stouts. And
the next minute a well-dressed man appeared with two plates of oysters and the
proper accompaniments thereto. He thanked the customers for accepting them,
then vanished, and the bar-woman retired to sit on a stool at the end of the
counter nearest the noisy Avenue. Peace and pleasantness within the bright
Shaftesbury. Evelyn was happy and excited, as he might have been in a foreign
town. He thought, and not for the first time: "What a rut I live in!"
"I'm not hungry," he murmured
confidentially.
"Neither am I," Gracie murmured.
"But not one of these oysters is going to be left. If you'd only ordered a
dozen between us I should have asked for more."
She blew away some of the foam from her stout,
exposing the deep, dark liquid beneath, and drank, and wiped her mouth gingerly
with a coloured paper napkin taken from a pile of napkins laid handy. They went
on murmuring confidentially. Anybody out of hearing might have thought that
they were exchanging emotional secrets charged with terrific importance,
instead of remarks about the excellence of the oysters, the freshness of the
brown bread-and-butter, and the sweet velvet of the stout. The adventure was
delicious, bizarre, romantic. Evelyn so felt it, and he knew that the
incalculable Gracie so felt it.
He thought: "I wish I could get past her
defences. There's no getting near her"--though their knees almost touched
in front of the counter. "She must have a sort of a liking for me,
otherwise she wouldn't run after me the way she does. She's very curt and
domineering. She's infernally independent. She's an egotist, can't be anything
else. And yet--Tessa! She isn't being very egotistical over Tessa. She's taking
risks there. But that may be egotism too. Wants to flatter herself she's making
a grand gesture, defying convention, being herself, going around with a
maid as big as a barrel, and so on and so on. 'Maid': that's good."
He was telling himself that his estimate of Gracie
was absolutely impartial, realistic, perhaps cynical. As she was not looking at
him--she seemed determined not to meet his eyes--he could look at her.
Benevolent expression, or the reverse? Who could say? All he could be sure of
was that she had distinction and pride. Her clothes were distinguished; her
untidiness was distinguished; she ate, and she drank stout, with distinction.
And with distinction in her curved fingers she raised an oyster off its shell,
slipped it into her mouth. Whence this distinction? Was it from the curves of
the fingers, the hands, the arms, the body--the slow, reflective movements of
the jaws as she munched? No, he was no nearer the core of her mystery. He was
checked by her barricades. Nobody ever comprehended anybody; and certainly he
refused the ridiculous notion that women were more mysterious than men. She was
cogitating about something--God knew what! Why in heaven's name had she lured
him out? To eat oysters and drink stout, covering her cogitations with a thin
layer of murmurous banalities? It would serve her tantalising beauty right if
he abducted her, seduced her by force, and then said casually: "There now!
You can go back to your cogitations again. You've got something to think about
now."
He murmured: "I suppose as you're leaving
to-morrow you've finished the business with your publisher to-day?"
"Yes," she said. "That's all
right."
"Well," he said, "there's one
thing. With your name on the title-page the book's bound to make a stir in the
world."
She raised her face and looked him solemnly in the
eyes.
"My name won't be on the title-page."
"No? Why not?"
"Surely you don't imagine," she
murmured. "Surely you don't imagine for a moment I'd let my book be helped
by the name of a racing motorist and my father's name and the name of a girl
who knows all the smart people in London! Because if you do you're wrong. My
book will have to stand by itself--or fall. I shall take a pseudonym. That's
what I came over about. My publisher was making a fuss over that very
point...He's given in. So it's all right." Her tone had more than
solemnity; it was religious; it vibrated with the formidableness of mystical
passion.
Evelyn was daunted, apologetic, admiring; he had a
thrill. "You're perfectly right!" he murmured gravely, and in his
tone too there was emotion.
Gracie smiled; a divine warm stillness in her
smile, and a magic power in it lifting him up. For an instant he held the key
to the enigma...It slipped from him.
"I knew you'd know what I mean," she
said. "Some people simply don't know the language you're talking. It's
just jabber to them." Then she turned towards the distant bar-worn who was
reading a paper-bound novel, and asked loudly "Can you tell us what time
Mr. Jebson will be here night?"
The bar-woman rose and walked half-way along the
length of the counter before calling out:
"Jim, what time will Mr. Jebson come in
to-night, d'y know?"
And the answering baritone voice from beyond the
partition; "The governor won't be along to-night. He telephoned."
"Can my husband or me do anything?" the
bar-woman amiably enquired.
"No, thanks," said Gracie. "It's
nothing. Only we know Jebson, and we thought if he happened to be here--"
Evelyn was glad that Charlie Jebson had telephoned.
He did not desire the presence of the imposingly masculine Charles complicating
the situation. And how could Gracie swing so abruptly from her book to Charlie
Jebson? There was a lamenting disappointment, rather desolate, in her 'No,
thanks,' to the bar-woman. No wonder the key had slipped from him! True, they
had come to the Shaftesbury to see Mr. Charles Jebson. Nevertheless Gracie's
transition from her book to Charlie was too swift not to irk Evelyn's
sensitiveness.
"Well," said she after a few moments.
"I've finished my oysters, and"--she stopped to drink the remainder
of the stout--"I've finished my stout."
"You'd like to go?"
"We may as well. But you've not finished
yours."
"Can't," said Evelyn.
The bar-woman approached them, novel in hand this
time, and Evelyn paid the bill, which was very modest compared with the scale
of charges for no better oysters and no better stout at the Imperial Palace.
"Thank you," said the bar-woman
indifferently. As the bell of the cash-register rang she added: "What name
shall I say to Mr. Jebson?"
Evelyn shook his head with a faint deprecating
smile:
"Doesn't matter."
"Oh, darling!" Gracie protested
benevolently. "I'm sure Mr. Jebson would be delighted to know you've
called." And to the woman: "Mr. Orcham, of the Imperial Palace
Hotel." The bar-woman, suddenly excited, had a sharp, simpering attack of
self-consciousness. She was no longer the experience-worn, life-weary,
detached, disdainful spectator of life. Ten or fifteen years dropped from her
age in an instant. She became an ingenuous schoolgirl, bridling, smirking from
innocent pride in the august identity of her customer. Evidently she had heard
of Mr. Orcham, and of his importance in the meat-trade, from the proprietor of
the Shaftesbury Express Counter. Her husband peeped out from behind the
partition.
"Mr. Jebson will be very proud, and very
sorry to have missed you, sir. Good night. Good night, madam."
Evelyn felt foolish as they left the room. He also
felt rather resentful against Gracie for having called him 'darling' in front
of the bar-woman. In Gracie's world 'darling' had no meaning, except in so far
as it constituted some sort of assurance that the user of it did not regard the
person addressed as absolutely repulsive and hateful. But the bar-woman was
certain to misunderstand it. However, Evelyn would not argue the matter
critically. The society, at a bar, of girls such as Gracie had its obvious
disadvantages, which the fatalistic philosopher would accept in a lofty spirit
of resignation. And at worst 'darling,' considered as an epithet, was less
offensive than the 'sweetie' which on a previous occasion she had applied to
him. He silently swallowed the rising poison of his resentment.
As they emerged on to the pavement two taxis drew
up, and nine strong, full-bodied men miraculously emerged from them, occupying
the pavement with their hearty, free masculinity unencumbered by women.
"We'll take one of these," said Evelyn.
"Can't we walk?"
"Of course, darling." That was his sole comment
on her improper use of a word. Gracie ignored it.
The squad of men one by one entered Mr. Charles
Jebson's establishment. The dead hour between nine-thirty and ten-thirty was
ending. The bar-woman would need all her high faculties of domination, diplomatic
retort, and express serving; for the nine were every one of them evidently
experts in bars--not simple, diffident amateurs like Evelyn.
"It's going to snow," said Evelyn.
"Oh no!"
"It is snowing," said Evelyn.
"Is it? Well, never mind. I love walking in a
snow-storm. Don't you?"
"Yes. But you'll get your feet wet."
"I can change."
"So can I."
They walked briskly side by side. At short
intervals down the Avenue taxis were waiting in long lines for the emptying of
theatres, and in the cross streets waited files of motor-cars. Small snowflakes
dallied and gambolled with one another in the dark air, reluctant to reach the
ground. Gracie's hat began to whiten. At Piccadilly Circus Evelyn led Gracie
down steps into the vast warm roundness of the populous Underground station,
and then led her up steps again into bleak Lower Regent Street.
"It's raining," said Evelyn.
"Let it," said Gracie, cautiously
unwilling this time to contradict him. "It's magnificent." She
quickened her pace. "Think of a hot bath."
Then silence. Evelyn agreed with Gracie that to
walk in the blusterous weather was indeed magnificent; in the wind and the rain
driven against his face by the wind he experienced sensations of triumphant
vitality such as perhaps he had not had for years; but he said nothing, and his
silence was grim. He felt cruel towards Gracie, striding along, her leather
coat now and then grazing his thick winter tweed. Well, she could indeed stride
along--even in her silly fragile high heels, which no doubt she would never
wear again after this soaking. At last he could tolerate the silence no more.
"You were disappointed at our Mr. Jebson not
being on view, weren't you?" He was openly sardonic.
"I think I was," Gracie answered with
acquiescent candour.
"You've remembered him ever since Smithfield,
haven't you?"
"I certainly have." Some resistance in
her tone.
"Just tell me. What was there in him that was
so interesting to you? I must say I didn't find him terribly interesting. Just
a well-set-up sort of a--brute." Evelyn chose the last word to annoy her;
he who never quarrelled, who maintained always that social friction was
unanswerable proof that somebody had been clumsy--he was aware of a desire to
force her into an ugly and perhaps violent altercation. Not because she ordered
him about and imposed her caprices upon him. Nor because she had called him
'darling' at the counter and all Smithfield would soon know that she had called
him 'darling.' But solely because she had actively shown interest in the young
butcher: phenomenon of sentiment which seriously offended him--while he sneered
at it. She, beautiful, elegant, intelligent, intellectual, civilised, a
masterpiece of an age of decadence--she to keep fondly in her mind for many
weeks the image of a tall, powerful, coarsely handsome, self-complacent dandy
of a tradesman whom she had seen for not more than a couple of minutes! And so
brazen about her interest too!
She said calmly:
"Well-set-up 'brutes' aren't so terrifically
plentiful, you know. And a brute is so soothing to the nerves. And this
particular brute is a worker. He's getting something done, like we are. I loved
his Express Counter. I could see his individuality all over it. Wholesome. And
him getting up at
Devilish girl! With that single word 'jealous' she
had rendered a quarrel impossible. He had his dignity to take care of. He acted
a pleasant, easy laugh.
"I was only asking," he said, acting
gentleness.
"And I was only answering," she said,
very amiably.
And she turned her head and looked up at him
through the rain with a charming glance that he felt rather than clearly saw in
the murk. Danger was past, resentment dissipated. He was happy; his spirit was
lifted; and for no logical reason.
"Oh!" she cried, pointing. "That's
marvellous, especially on a night like this. I do admire you for that. You're a
poet." She pointed.
They had come out on the top of the Duke of York's
Steps, into the full force of the south-west rain-bearing wind. Not a soul on
the Steps. Automobiles flitting in both directions along the Mall below them.
Lamps on both sides of the Mall obscured at moments by the swishing branches of
trees. Beyond, the dark forest of St. James's Park, with a gleam of the lake.
And beyond the forest, high in the invisible firmament, the flood-lit tower of
the Imperial Palace poking itself brilliantly up to the skies. There was
nothing in all London, then, but that commanding great column of white light.
The emotional accents of Gracie's rich voice moved
Evelyn. If she was thrilled by the tower, he was thrilled by her thrill as well
as by the tower. The rain on their cheeks came straight from heaven.
As, after skirting St. James's Park, they reached
Birdcage Walk, Evelyn's damnable habit of foresight asserted itself. He foresaw
that, all dripping wet as they were, they could not stop talking in the hall of
the Palace. It would be too absurd, and too conspicuous. Therefore everything
that had to be said must be said before entering the hotel.
'You're really leaving to-morrow morning?"
"Yes."
"There'll be some rough going in the
Channel."
"Oh no! It must have been blowing up for this
when we came over. It will blow itself out to-night. Besides, who cares?"
"I may possibly be down to see you off,"
he said. "What time?"
"Please don't!" she said firmly. "I loathe
being seen off. Monsieur Adolphe seeing me off is just as much as I can do
with."
"I understand. I should be the same
myself," Evelyn concurred.
Within the next few days he too would be going to
Paris; but she did not know this, and he did not tell her. To meet her in Paris
might, assuredly would, complicate his existence, and he could not tolerate
that. The Hotel de
With what a sense of triumph, of tingling warm
health, they entered the great, still, mirrored hall. Long Sam glanced at them.
"Wet, sir," said he. But he was too
discreet to show any curiosity as to their reason for arriving on foot and not
in a taxi, on a night so wild.
Crossing the hall they left a trail of drops of
water behind them. And in the lift they made little pools. As the lift climbed
up towards Third, the liftman looked enquiringly at Evelyn, who nodded. The
lift stopped.
"Well, au revoir," said Evelyn.
"You mentioned a hot bath." He smiled. She smiled. They stood
together for a moment at the lift-door. They were parting. He did not know her
address at St. Cloud. He might not see her again for months, years, if ever. It
was not he himself, but some volition not his, that said:
"I should rather like to hear how Tessa goes
on. You might send me a line."
She nodded, suddenly pulling off her hat, which
was sodden; so was much of her hair. She had quite the air of a child,
then--delicious. They shook hands. She walked off to her rooms. Evelyn
re-entered the lift to go up to Seventh and a hot bath.
"Well, I'm damned!" he breathed. He felt
relief.
AFTER
THE STORM
A few days later, on the special "Golden
Arrow" steamer, Evelyn experienced a surprise and a thrill. The New Year
gale had nearly but not quite blown itself out, and after an average
comfortable voyage the ship was nosing cautiously through the narrows of Calais
port, past flags and marine signals and quidnuncs and amateur fishermen whose
skirts were lifted at times by a gusty breeze. Although the boat was not
crowded, a large group of travellers had packed themselves tightly round the
spot where the gangway was to be, apparently lest the boat might start back for
Dover with themselves still on board.
Evelyn sat reading in a sheltered deck-chair. He
had a fine sense of freedom. He was alone. He had nobody to look after, because
he had nobody to look after him. For Oldham had been left behind. Oldham and
the Continent were mutually antipathetic. Oldham feared the sea and despised
foreign tongues, and so far as he was concerned the recent tour in France and
Italy had not been wholly successful. A holiday being overdue to him, he was
exiled for a week or more to Berkshire and the society of his wife. The
good-bye to Evelyn at Victoria had been wistful rather than buoyant. As for
Evelyn, it seemed to him, in those moments which Oldham's presence would have
rendered so anxious with a hundred cares, that he had not a care in the world.
His debarkation was already organised; and for passengers by the "Golden
Arrow" service the Calais custom-house did not exist. When he felt the
very faint bump which indicated that the vessel was alongside the quay, he rose
slowly, surveyed his three suit-cases ranged together on the deck, dropped the
pocket 'Eothen' into his pocket, and surveyed superiorly, with a deplorable
spiritual pride, the mass of his fellow-sinners who from mere stupidity were
inconveniencing themselves for no reason whatever.
Having duly confided his baggage to an instructed
porter, he strolled to the rail, aft, and from there watched the foolish
urgency of travellers down the sloping gangway to the quay.
He said to himself, boyish:
"I have my seat in the train, like all the
rest of us; there are no customs; the ship is on time; I will be the last
passenger to leave this ship." Yes, he felt boyish.
Had it not been for this infantile resolution, he might
have missed the surprise and the thrill. The stream of descending passengers
had thinned; the hand of the official at the bottom of the gangway was full of
landing tickets; and Evelyn was on the point of leaving the rail when the
surprise and the thrill happened to him. He saw Gracie on the gangway. Her face
was half-turned towards the ship, and she held by the hand big Tessa Tye,
leading her with every precaution down the steep slope. The two of them safe at
length on the quay, Gracie took Tessa's arm, solicitously, even tenderly, and
the slim girl and the spreading, ungainly expectant mother walked slowly
towards the train, whose engine was sending up a thin wisp of steam in the far
distance. He was thrilled. The expression of watchful motherliness on the face
of the girl, the expression of trust on the pinched pale face of the expectant
mother, offered a contrast and a harmony which made the most touching sight
that Evelyn had ever seen. "That girl is magnificent," he said to
himself, and not for the first time. He knew that he had witnessed something
unforgettable. Withal, he had lost the sense of freedom.
He had sworn to be the last passenger to leave the
ship, and he was. His seat chanced to be in the nearest coach of the train. The
young women were not in that coach. He superintended the stowing of his
baggage, tipped the porter, and then, scarcely witting, jumped down to the
platform and walked along the endless train, glancing at every window. He
reached the last coach, the coach at the head of the train. There was Gracie at
the end of the last passenger coach, talking to an attendant, who by much
physical force was closing a case for her.
"Good afternoon," Evelyn called.
She turned, standing high above him in the
doorway. "Well, well! How nice!" she smiled.
"Can I do anything?"
"Not a thing. Thanks frightfully!" She
laughed easily.
"Everything's all right?"
"Perfect. We waited four days at the Lord
Warden for the weather. I shouldn't have waited. But Tessa was really a
bit alarmed at the look of the sea. Dover's a very interesting place. I'd no
idea!...And you?"
"Hotel business in Paris. Your esteemed
father's business. You staying in Paris to-night?"
"Oh no! Straight on to St. Cloud. I wouldn't
have to begin all over again to-morrow for anything on earth. I suppose you'll
honour the Concorde?"
"No. The Montaigne. And if it isn't one of
the two best hotels in Paris it soon will be." They both smiled.
Officials on the platform were becoming restless,
and the windy air was very bleak.
"I'd better be getting back to my seat,"
said Evelyn. "Au revoir."
Gracie leaned her head out of the doorway, smiled
again, waved a hand as he hurried away. Enchanting spectacle: young, beautiful,
graceful, distinguished, mother to a mother! Enchanting! Faultless! In the
warmth of his corner at the other end of the train, a table all to himself, he
disposed his chilled limbs and his minor belongings for the journey. Not a word
had been said about meeting again. Every passenger on the "Golden
Arrow" is served with lunch where he sits. Evelyn did not move. He might
have stumbled through the length of the shaking train to pay a visit to Gracie
en route, but he refrained because of the intimidating prospect of having to
talk to the expectant mother as well as to Gracie. He read little; he did not
doze. He did not think. He just existed in a haze of vague meditation. Coffee.
Cigar. Dusk. Darkness. Bill-paying. The industrial lamps and flares of Creil.
Swift-sliding twinkles of squalid suburban stations. Weariness. A tunnel. Gare
du Nord. He looked at his watch. The train was punctual. Confusion on the
echoing platform of the Gare du Nord. Everyone for himself. Sauve qui peut.
Hostile and greedy glances of porters.
Evelyn had one glimpse of a known face: that of
one of the Cheddar brothers. Tall, physically as splendid an animal as Charlie
Jebson, and with features more refined; indeed aristocratic. Sort of
Renaissance prince. Evelyn envied him, and despised himself for envying him. Of
course he was at the station to meet Gracie, to take charge of her. Of course
she had telegraphed to him. In the jostling crowd a uniformed man, with
"Montaigne" gilded on his forehead, discovered Evelyn, and Evelyn
yielded himself up like a parcel to the ceremonious care of the uniform. As he
trudged along the stone-cold platform, miles of it, he looked out for Gracie.
She had gone, vanished into France.
TELEPHONE
Two afternoons later Evelyn was scrutinising
sheets of figures in the private office of Monsieur Laugier, directeur
of the Hotel de
The directorial apartment was on the mezzanine
floor of the courtyard of the magnificent old building which only thirty-five
years earlier had begun its rise from the status of a lovely but chilly palace
or ministry to that of a luxury hotel with steam-heating, lifts, electric
bells, and baths numerous enough to lave the limbs of the General Staff of a
whole army.
The luxury, however, had not extended itself to
the directorial room, which was small, low-ceilinged, lighted by two bulbs
only, and warmed by an anthracite stove of excessive power. The narrow window
was shut tight and curtained. The sole ventilation was obtained by means of a
draught under the heavy gilded door. The temperature was torrid. In strange
contrast with the antique, sombre, soiled, ornately panelled walls, the
elaborate cornice, and the curious parquet of blackened oak, was an assemblage
of office furniture of the very newest style; last mechanical, practical
ingenuity of Chicago gadgets refashioned in the last chic of Parisian design,
wilfully audacious in shape, insolently flouting every tradition, rioting in
the unexpected, steely, glassy, flimsy. M. Laugier's desk was as large as
Evelyn's in Birdcage Walk, and far more glittering; it had apparently about a
thousand drawers, and one turn of a handle, as M. Laugier had shown to Evelyn,
would simultaneously lock every drawer. The slope of the easy-chairs could be
modified without sound or effort, to suit the idiosyncrasy of any sitter. The
cabinets had the intricacy of Chinese puzzles. The files would snap and cling
to documents with the ferocity of tigers.
And in the midst, at the end of the desk, sat
Henri Laugier, fat as an operatic soprano, with the abdomen of a
self-contemplating Buddha, dressed, in black, as loosely as the ease-loving landlord
of a country inn; black hair, seamed slack face, intensely black eyes, long
black moustache, black beardlet, low collar, flowing black tie, podgy hands and
short fingers stained by the nicotine of countless cigarettes; the latest of
the cigarettes drooped precarious from a corner of the directorial pallid lips.
Laugier had the reputation of being a unique 'figure' in the continental
hotel-world; and perhaps he presumed upon his reputation, part of which resided
in the pliocene, immortal black straw hat, which he wore day and evening,
summer and winter; this straw hat now lay on a chair exclusively allotted to it
as a chair is allotted to a privileged cat. M. Laugier came from Carcassone,
and was proud of his origin. His eyes were said to be absolutely fatal to
women, even at long range, and none who had fallen to him ever forgot him. A
stout old lady still at intervals arrived with a grandchild or so to see him at
the hour of the aperitif; her boast, not clearly established, was that she had
been his first mistress.
Evelyn and M. Laugier conversed now in French now
in English as they pored over the serried columns whose nines were like fives,
fives like nines, and sevens like nothing in the history of British arithmetic.
Evelyn thought: "Is this man really my subordinate, and am I really
supposed to be in control of all his slippery and enigmatic foreignness?"
M. Laugier certainly treated him as a superior, but with an exquisite, soft,
forbearance such as he might have used to a noble and powerful savage. The
Orcham Merger seemed a less simple enterprise here than when it was under
discussion with Sir Henry Savott at the Imperial Palace.
The telephone faintly rang. M. Laugier clasped the
oddly shaped French instrument in his lazy, caressing fingers.
"Allo! Allo!" He listened with an intent yet dreamy smile.
"It is for you, mon cher directeur," he said, and pushed the
instrument across the corner of the desk towards Evelyn, who said to himself:
"It's that girl!"
"Allo! Allo!" Evelyn addressed the transmitter. "Excuse
me, mon cher directeur," he apologised to M. Laugier.
"I beg you, please," said M. Laugier,
spreading his arms in deprecation of Evelyn's apology.
"Mr. Orcham?" the voice from the
telephone enquired.
It was that girl.
"Yes," he replied, with primness--for he
had no intention of allowing Laugier to suspect from either tone or phrase that
it was a woman who had rung him up.
"I've had a deuce of time getting you. You
told me you would be staying at the Montaigne."
"That is quite correct," said Evelyn.
"But you're at the Concorde."
"Yes. And very busy," said Evelyn.
"Shall you be busy to-night?"
"Yes, I shall," said Evelyn.
"How late?"
"Afraid I can't say."
"Couldn't you get out of it?"
"I could not," said Evelyn with careful
coldness, more than ever determined that M. Laugier should gather nothing as to
the nature of the conversation from the side of it to which he was listening.
Conceive the old man (not that he was really old) aware that his grave but
younger superior, in the midst of a highly technical interview, was arguing
with a young woman about a proposed rendezvous! The notion horrified sedate
Evelyn.
"Couldn't you manage to be free by ten
o'clock?"
"Sorry. Impossible," said Evelyn with
dignity.
"Then ten-thirty."
"I might try," said Evelyn calmly, after
a pause.
"Why are you so cross with me?"
"I'm not at all cross," said Evelyn.
"You're very stiff."
"Where are you?" he asked in a new tone,
apparently ignoring the criticism.
"In a call-box."
"Well, you see, I'm not. Do you
understand?" said Evelyn grimly, and he heard Gracie's quick, rich laugh
of comprehension.
"You mean you aren't alone?"
"Yes," said Evelyn.
"Well now, what about to-night? Ten-thirty? I
must see you. It's rather urgent. I had to come in to Paris to-day, and I must
go back to St. Cloud some time to-night, but it doesn't matter much what time.
Where can we meet?"
She had throughout been assuming his readiness to
meet her provided only the hour could be arranged. The impudent assumption both
amazed and pleased him. She looked like being a serious nuisance. But her voice
in the telephone was so attractive, even seductive, alluring. And she knew it
was, curse her! She was using it unscrupulously. (He enjoyed thinking this
against her.) Then he remembered her expression, her gestures, her walk, as she
had convoyed Tessa up the platform of the marine station at Calais on the
previous day. She was a magnificent girl, and often had he privately admitted
her grand quality. He felt proud as he listened to her cajoling, wonderful voice.
She--she so chic, intelligent, magnificent--was running after him! Oh
yes! He fancied himself!...Coxcomb! And worse names than coxcomb did he apply
to himself. But there it was. She was running after him! "It's rather
urgent." What was rather urgent? An excuse. She was running after him.
Rather marvellous, say what you choose!
"Well," she questioned again, impatient.
"Where?"
"The Montaigne," he suggested.
"Oh no! That won't do. I loathe your
Montaigne. It's just something chipped off Park Avenue. Listen! You know the
rue Scribe?"
"I do," he answered impassively.
"I'll be there in a car, on the Opera
side."
"Very well," he agreed.
"Ten-thirty, mind!"
"Yes. Good-bye."
"Who's with you?" She was adding the
feminine postscript. Impertinent enquiry!
"The director," said Evelyn, more
coldly. He would not utter Laugier's name in Laugier's presence.
"Of the Concorde?"
"Precisely."
"Oh! Laugier. Isn't he a dear? Give him my
love."
"I will. Good-bye!" He replaced the
telephone in front of M. Laugier.
Assignation with a woman hidden in a car in the
rue Scribe, Opera side. It was a bit astounding, after all! A bit romantic! The
impulse to vaunt came over him, irresistible. Laugier should be made to
appreciate with what tranquil severity he, Evelyn, could talk to a beautiful,
wealthy, and headstrong young girl.
"She sends you her love," he said, with
a casual smile. "Miss--"
"Mademoiselle Gracie?" Laugier
interrupted eagerly.
Evelyn nodded, taken aback and forlorn.
"I imagined to myself that it was her voice
when she spoke first." M. Laugier gazed meditatively at the glassy desk.
"Ah! La belle creature! La belle creature!" It was as if he
saw her mirrored in the desk-top. Then he gazed at Evelyn long, a thousand
flattering, mischievous implications in his deathdealing dark eyes which no
illness and no slow convalescence could quench.
"Eh bien, mon cher directeur," said Evelyn, fingering a sheet of paper.
"Eh bien, mon cher directeur," said Laugier. "Revenons à nos
moutons." A wisp of a glistening black lock had fallen over the pale
forehead.
In the airless soporific warmth of the little room
Evelyn the man of business inexorably resumed his investigation.
ELECTRONS
When Evelyn reached the rue Scribe at one minute
before half-past ten, having left too early a very friendly dinner with the
manager of the Hotel Montaigne, there was no car waiting on the Opera side of the
broad rue Scribe, and comparatively little traffic to confuse a watcher for a
car containing a particular person. No stream of vehicles. No policeman. Cars
passed at intervals of a few seconds. In the near distance motor-buses rumbled
and great trams screeched and rattled over points. The huge edifice of the
Opera, dwarfing all the houses, piled itself up into the velvet starlit sky; a
few windows gleamed yellow in the hinder parts of the building. Evelyn stood
waiting opposite the entrance to one of the courtyards, in or out of which
walked occasionally some vague human being on some mysterious errand. An
operatic performance was going forward somewhere in the complex immensity of
the Opera; but it was hidden, soundless, immeasurably far off, like a secret
and esoteric ceremonial, attended by adepts and withdrawn from the profane city
into another world. Evelyn was alone. He felt alone. Waiting for a woman in a
foreign capital! He thought:
"Is this dignified? Something furtive and
illicit about it." What could it mean? What did it presage? Still, it was
certainly romantic, at his age--and hers. La belle creature, Laugier had
called her, with enthusiasm. What did that signify in the mouth of a Laugier?
One objective only could be applied to the belle creature, and Evelyn
had several times applied it: incalculable. He anticipated her arrival with the
excited interest of a reader awaiting the next instalment of a sensational
serial.
But she did not arrive. One minute after the
half-hour. Two minutes. Three minutes. And every second of them had been a
minute. The man of passionate punctuality glanced at a dim clock affixed to a
lamp-post. He unbuttoned his long overcoat to glance at his watch in the gloom.
He walked nearer to the lamp-post and glanced again. He was cold, and
rebuttoned his overcoat. Was he in the right street? He crossed the street to
examine the street-sign, though he had already examined it once. Then he
recrossed, quickly, lest the car might come while he was absent from the
arranged side. He grew more and more nervous. He was humiliated. Twenty-five
minutes to eleven. She was capable of being half an hour late. 'They' did it on
purpose: at least such was the masculine theory, and there was a lot in it. At
that moment, in Paris itself, hundreds of men might be waiting, waiting, and
saying to themselves bitterly:
"She is doing it on purpose."
A car slackened speed, swerving towards the
pavement. No. It could not be hers. It stopped, with the saloon-door exactly
opposite to him: pretty feat of brake-manipulation. He saw a figure in the dark
interior of the saloon. No resemblance to Gracie. Then a light was switched on
within, and Gracie sat suddenly revealed to him, radiant, opulent in a low
evening frock which a loosened, effulgent cloak hardly concealed. 'They' were
insensitive to cold, especially on a cold night.
The chauffeur had descended and was holding the
saloon-door open for him.
"I'm frightfully punctual," said Gracie,
leaning forward.
Her lovely face was serious, unsmiling.
"You are indeed," said Evelyn, raising
his gibus.
"Do get in."
He got in, crushing his hat against the top of the
door. Nervousness. The chauffeur shut the door, and then stationed himself
attendant with his back to the car. Evelyn subsided into soft cushions,
straightened his hat; he could detect her perfume, feel the richness of the
stuff of her cloak on his hand. Out went the light. The next instalment of the
sensational serial had apparently started. But not with words. Gracie said
nothing, and Evelyn could think of nothing to say, so constrained was he--and
no doubt she too. The interior of the car was the most private, the most secure
room in all Paris.
"And now?" said he at length. After all
he was a man, and the older, and for the sake of his own opinion of himself he
must assume an air of taking charge of the situation.
"Well, darling," said Gracie. "You
haven't shaken hands." He groped for her hand and held it, without
squeezing it. "It's much too early to do anything yet. What about going
into the Opera for an hour? They're doing 'Le Chevalier à
"So I noticed," said Evelyn. "But
we shall never be able to get seats, at this time of night, shall we?"
"Don't let that trouble you," she
replied. "You leave it to me, and you'll see."
"I should love it," he said, insincerely
but rather convincingly.
"It's the best of all the modern
operas," she said. "Of course you've seen it."
"Yes. I saw it in Naples. The boy chevalier,
what's-his-name, was played by an aged dame with bow-legs. It finished at two
in the morning."
Laughing nervously, Gracie leaned across Evelyn
and knocked at the window.
"Front of the Opera," she instructed the
chauffeur, in French.
Fifteen seconds, and Evelyn was handing her out of
the car. She gave a brief order to the chauffeur. She was carrying a book as
well as her bag. They climbed the steps of the façade and through gilded gates
entered the vast marmoreal and gilded vestibule. At the Control, she drew a
ticket from her bag and presented it. She had bought a box in advance.
"You've won," said Evelyn.
She lowered the corners of her mouth and half
closed her eyes as she laughed in mild, sardonic enjoyment of her trick on him.
Constraint was suddenly gone, intimacy established, the old intimacy of
Smithfield.
At sight of the ticket, and of Gracie's frock and
cloak, functionaries on the cyclopean marble and onyx staircase of honour took
on the demeanour of chamberlains of Louis Quatorze, and the pair were wafted
onward from smile to servile smile. Furlongs of unyielding marble to walk! An
old, cringing, importunate woman, with hair ribboned like a young girl's,
introduced them into the box, and her harpy-fingers closed rapaciously and
ungratefully on a ten-franc note from Evelyn.
The box was like a drawing-room of the 'seventies,
not refurbished nor cleaned since the 'seventies. The folds of its brocaded
curtains seemed to be stiff with the dust of Napoleon III. Loud, elaborate,
concealed music was heard, but the drawing-room had apparently no connection
with any phenomena external to it. It was sufficient to itself. Glimpse of a
fraction of a distant stage with small, moving, singing figures.
The pair strolled indifferently across the
drawing-room, at the end of which a gilt and velveted parapet protected the
unwary from the risk of falling into the stalls. They sat down in ornate
armchairs of gold and white; in front of them, below them and around them was
the auditorium, with a side view of the stage; and deep down a den of crowded musicians
fiddling and blowing away for life under an excited and ardent conductor. After
the spendthrift spaciousness of the approach the auditorium appeared small and
inconsiderable. But it was built of solid gold, and its tiers were supported by
golden Herculean naked women, carved in the fearful symmetry of Titan's
daughters, with breasts that might have nonchalantly suckled monsters of
insatiable voracity; scores of these ageless brazen nymphs, smiling fixedly as
they had smiled for half a century and more.
And everywhere, amid the stupendous gold
sculptures and ornamentations, covering the floor, crowding the tiers to the
topmost, sat midgets: the audience, inelegant, shabby, sombre, assisting at the
secret and esoteric ceremonial hidden within the heart of the huge encircling
opera-house. And of the ceremonial the stage-spectacle was scarcely the most
important part. Those of the midgets who watched it did so with indifference.
Which indifference was repeated on the stage by the performers whom custom had
withered and use staled. Only when some disaster threatened did one or other of
them glance in momentary anxiety at the conductor for help. The affair was less
an opera than part of a rite.
And by no means all the audience of midgets
watched the stage-spectacle. For a time Gracie's box and its two inhabitants
divided with the stage the popular interest. It was one of the two best boxes,
and perhaps Gracie was the smartest woman in the theatre; but in no
metropolitan theatre which had not sunk to the level of a tourist-resort would
the box have been a cynosure.
"Why are we here?" thought Evelyn,
fascinated by the slatternliness of the stalls, where there were men in morning
dress and women in three-piece raiment.
Gracie put her head closer to his.
"This and Napoleon's tomb and the
Folies-Bergêre and the Louvre are the sights of Paris," she murmured.
Evelyn smiled vaguely, thinking: "Is she a
mind-reader?" He murmured in response: "That's what makes the thing
interesting. But is that why you came here?"
"Don't you love being a tourist
sometimes?" she said. "I get so tired of being superior I simply must
have a change. Sometimes I feel like going into a shop in the rue de Rivoli and
buying a Baedeker just to carry about with me. Don't you understand what I mean?"
"Certainly," said Evelyn. "But then
I never do feel superior."
"No. I believe you never do," she
agreed, as if suddenly impressed by a hitherto unnoticed truth.
"Except now, in this box," he added
mischievously.
"You are in a mood to-day," she said
with strange meekness.
"Isn't that one of the Cheddars down there?
Fourth row? Near the middle?" Evelyn asked, having perceived a very
stylish young man islanded among the slatternliness.
"Where? Oh yes. I see," she calmly
answered. "Yes, it is. That's Leo. I wonder what he's doing here?"
"He's taking a rest from being
superior," said Evelyn. "Look at the Baedeker on his knee."
"Not a--" Gracie checked herself.
"You're teasing me!" she protested cheerfully. Then she gave
attention to the stage, and Evelyn also.
He was at last beginning to surrender himself to
the make-believe of the story when something happened. The curtain slowly hid
the stage. The musicians ceased to play. The conductor laid down his baton. A
mechanical, rhythmic, professional applause sounded from two separate parts of
the auditorium, persistent and formal: an incident of the great rite. The
curtain rose again. The beat of the applause was now irregular. A few persons
in the stalls were clapping. The curtain fell a second time. Then a row of the
principal singers appeared in front of the curtain, with the conductor, who had
been magically transported from the orchestra, in the midst of them. They held
hands like children, bowing, smirking, smiling, with formal, insincere
gestures. The applause grew to be more general, but even now the large majority
of the audience was not clapping. The artists disappeared in a seeming ecstasy
of gratitude for favour received. Hundreds of lamps glowed together, changing
twilight into dazzling day. Silence. The next moment the auditorium was half
empty. Tedium, futility, disillusion descended in an invisible vapour upon the
scene.
"Why are we here?" Evelyn demanded
again, in the terrible secrecy of his heart. But, such was the ennui distilled
from the vapour, he might well have propounded questions still more desolating:
Why are we anywhere? Why is anything? Is there after all a key to the
preposterous enigma of the universe? But Gracie was smiling happily,
meditative, as if to herself, as if she possessed the key in her soul. Evelyn
thought: "How robust, how coarse, is a woman's taste in pleasure!"
A tap on the door of the box, so discreet, so
dubious. The door opened with caution, and the ribboned harpy was seen
furtively accepting money. Leo Cheddar entered. Gracie rose and went to meet
him. Evelyn stood. He picked up the programme which lay on the broad
upholstered rail of the parapet. Under the programme had been hidden Gracie's
book. He looked down at it curiously. It was called, "The Nature of the Physical
World." He had read it in his castle at home and had found it very
disturbing, awakening, exciting. If the universe held an enigma, surely she was
the enigma.
"Evelyn!" She was softly calling him to
the other end of the box.
He turned to join the other two, and was
introduced. The tall, slim, beautifully clad, aristocratic young man overtopped
Evelyn by six or seven inches. His voice was deep and agreeable, his deportment
faultlessly urbane.
"We were wondering why you are in this
galley," said Gracie, mockingly.
"But you know wherever I am I never miss a
performance of the 'Rosenkavalier'if I can possibly help. I'm hearing it here
for the first time."
"And what do you think of it?" Evelyn
asked.
"The performance? The worst I have ever seen.
Ignoble in every detail, except the oboe playing." He smiled sadly.
"But the opera. The most enchanting thing since 'Figaro'."
"Enchanting," said Gracie. "That is
always Leo's adjective for the 'Rosenkavalier'." Mockery again in her tone
and glance.
"Give me a better one, and I'll never use
'enchanting' any more," said Cheddar evenly.
Gracie went on. "I've always told you there's
a bit too much slapstick in this opera for my refined taste." She was
still quizzing him.
"I prefer to call it realism," said
Cheddar amiably. "One must remember the period it portrays."
"'Period'--'portrays.' What an artist in
alliteration he is!" She looked at Evelyn.
"'Portrays.' Noble word."
"It's in the dictionary," said Cheddar.
"I don't believe in letting noble words rust there. I take them
out--"
"And give them a rub up."
"Yes," said Cheddar.
His politeness was impeccable. But Evelyn thought:
"They've got across one another...Am I the
cause?" His sympathy was with the man. Why did women rejoice in setting up
discomfort, men never? He said aloud, to ease the discomfort:
"I heard it at Naples last. In fact, the only
time I have heard it."
"Ah!" murmured Cheddar. "The San
Carlo. That must have been wormwood." He passed his hand over a pained
forehead.
"Gall," said Evelyn shortly, and
grinned.
"Now take what you call the 'slapstick' in
the last act." Cheddar returned to the defence of himself against Gracie.
He talked earnestly and ingeniously about the last
act and its 'slapstick' stuff. The reputation of the 'Rosenkavalier' was
evidently to him a matter of some moment. Though he lived a life of unmitigated
self-indulgence, though in every detail of material existence he demanded and
accepted as of right the services of others, though he toiled not nor span,
though he had never known what it was to be overdrawn at the bank, though he
spent his life in savouring his own reactions to works of art, in all the
arts--including.the culinary and the sartorial--he was a serious youth; and
admitting that he neither wrote nor painted nor composed music, his manners at
any rate were an example to the world of the perfection which sustained honest
effort might reach in one of the applied arts.
Evelyn liked and admired him, and supported him
against the naughty malice of Gracie, and regretted that she did not invite him
to stay in the box for the remainder of the performance. When the musicians
crept back with lowered heads into their cave, the two men shook hands
sympathetically. Evelyn never saw Leo Cheddar again, for the serious youth did
not even reappear in his stall.
"Shall we sit more back for this act? In this
place it's better to hear than to see," Gracie suggested when she and
Evelyn were alone again. All mischief had suddenly gone out of her changing,
shot-silk voice, and her face had an expression of angelic sweetness. (Not a
syllable about Leo Cheddar.) Evelyn agreed. They sat down. There were chairs
enough in the box to accommodate a Board of Directors. A very long time seemed
to pass before the lights of the auditorium were lowered. While they were
waiting Evelyn said: "I see you've got 'The Nature of the Physical World'
with you."
"You've read it?"
"Oh yes."
"Don't you think it's perfectly
thrilling?"
"I do," said Evelyn, with emphasis, responding
to the vibrations of her tone.
"Only," she went on, "these
scientists don't really understand, or they pretend not to. I wonder whether
any of them have condescended to read Troward."
"Troward?"
"There you are! Of course you've never heard
of him! I'm quite used to that. You ought to read his Edinburgh Lectures on
Mental Science. I really mean you ought. They're more exciting than
Eddington's book there."
"And what's Troward's line?" Evelyn
asked, carefully serious to suit her new mood.
"God's his line," she answered, with a
sort of fierceness. "The divine creative mind. That's his line. If the
divine creative mind is infinite, we are it. You and me, and all those
people there. And these chairs and the lights from the chandelier. Everything.
No getting away from it. You know the electrons, whirling around. Of course
they aren't the purest form of the divine mind, I mean the first original form.
But some finer kind of electrons are--that our electrons are made of. Must be.
And they're everywhere and they're all the same and all perfect and all working
together, doing evolution. God isn't imperfect. If you try hard and keep on
trying you realise them. I can realise them now and then for half a minute.
Then I can't, and then I have to begin and try again. But that half
minute!...No, it isn't as much as half a minute. Two seconds, half a second. I
tell you--well, I want you to read that book of Troward's. You'll be glad
afterwards. I know you will. And there's something else--"
As she turned her eager, radiant face to look into
his, the chandelier extinguished itself, and her features became a vague oval
to him in the obscurity of the back of the box. The orchestra sounded warm,
mellow, benevolent. They listened, intent. Evelyn felt the nearness of her presence,
her frock, the bodily organism within the frock--she had cast her brilliant
cloak on one of the empty chairs. This was another instalment of the serial,
and it was indeed sensational. She stirred, restless as usual. She rose.
"I think I must watch," she whispered,
bending over him, and walked to the front of the box and sat down there. Evelyn
followed her.
The music had now asserted its importance over the
importance of the audience and even of the musicians. The auditorium, lit as
before only by the radiating brightness of the stage, was a blur of faces less
distinct than in the previous act. The music mounted swiftly to a forte,
fervid, imposing, exciting. The music was an enveloping atmosphere, intoxicant.
As it were involuntarily, Gracie's fingers for an instant touched Evelyn's
knee. He could feel her hand shaking. The fine shock of momentary contact was
electric.
"Perhaps this is why we are
here," he thought, intimidated, almost fearful of mysterious forces
unloosed.
Now the music sank to a piano. The glimpsed
danger receded...Later, much later, after an unmeasured passage of time, after
a period in which time was not and the senses were satisfied beyond any
anticipation of the future or memory of the past, existing content and
entranced in the present as the music unrolled itself bar by bar of the
score--three singers conspired to sing together in concert. Gracie sat
moveless, upright in her chair, gazing rightwards at the stage. Evelyn, on her
left, leaned his left elbow on Gracie's book on the rail of the parapet, his
left hand upholding his chin, and he too gazed, across her bosom, rightwards at
the stage. With her left hand Gracie touched his shoulder warningly as if to
still him into a more rapt attention to the music. Slapstick, horse-play, farce
there had been in the antic movement of the comedy, but it was finished, and it
had never distracted him from the music, through which exquisite fragments of
Viennese waltzes had tantalisingly filtered.
Now the mood was serious, lovely, sublime. Beauty
was born from beauty. Impossible that the next beauty could exceed the last;
but it did. The interwoven voices of the singers wavered in patterns above the
mighty changing sea of instrumental harmony ascending from the pit, flames
curling and uncurling over a white glow of fire. Sound louder, sound softer, in
a steady, solemn rhythm. Ravishment of the soul through the delicate receiving
ear. Evelyn did not look at Gracie. The ray of his glance passed by her
straight to the three figures on the stage, the conductor's tyrannic stick, the
swaying mass of scraping and blowing humanity down in the pit. But he was
exactly aware of the expression on her set face, and therefrom of the emotions
in her heart. And he was aware also of the two thousand blurred faces of the
audience, distant and nearer, high in the upper tiers, low on the floor of the
stalls.
And the whole vast concourse of material flesh in
infinite gradations began to melt, to refine itself, to rarefy itself, into
those spiritual electrons of which Gracie had spoken, glistening,
scintillating, coruscating, as they whirled, immaterial at last, on their
unfathomable errands in pursuance of the divine supreme plan. Individuality
ceased; he was not he, Gracie was not she; nobody in the auditorium was anybody.
All were merged into a single impersonal, shining, shimmering integrity of
primal mind. Evolution had reversed, and at incredible speed swung back through
æons into the causal eternity before the Word moved upon the waters and before
even the waters were. .
The trio ended. Time resumed. Material flesh was
formed. Individualities separated themselves. Evelyn was Evelyn again, and
Gracie Gracie, and the audience became tourists, bourgeois, concierges,
husbands, wives, mistresses, young girls.
The story of the comic opera went on its earthly
way. Evelyn and Gracie looked at each other. He saw that her beautiful face was
very stern. She rose, beckoning to him. He picked up the book and her bag, both
of which she was forgetting, and followed her out. She offered no explanation
of the sudden departure. Neither of them spoke. In the cold street, she wrapped
tight in her cloak and Evelyn in his long, thick overcoat, Gracie went
unhesitating to the left and up the rue Halèvy, ignoring persistent touts.
Scores of waiting cars and lounging chauffeurs. She walked straight to her own
car. The chauffeur saluted.
"Could I make that young man understand the
last half-hour?" Evelyn asked himself, glancing at the chauffeur.
"No. Not if all our lives depended on it. But according to her that cap of
his isn't a cap. It's a mass of whirling electrons."
They stepped into the car. The chauffeur, unaware
of his own composition, shut the door on them. Intimacy once more in the
solitude of the saloon. Gracie switched the light on.
"It was the only right moment to leave,
wasn't it?" she said. "Thanks awfully for not forgetting my things.
Give me my bag, will you?" She pulled a mirror from the bag and powdered
her face. "I'm simply frightfully hungry. Do you know the Caligula?"
"Not at all," said Evelyn.
"I'm told it's rather good. In the rue des
Trois Frères, near the Place Pigalle. Shall we go there?"
"Anywhere," said Evelyn dreamily.
The chauffeur, hired by the week with the
grandiose car and all their electrons, knew the Caligula. He manœuvred the
vehicle backwards and forwards out of the line of cars. And soon they were
shooting up the curve of the rue Pigalle, with illuminated signs of night-cafés
on either side. They crossed the blazing, multi-coloured Place, and in a dark
wilderness of streets beyond they found the Caligula burning red, all alone.
CALIGULA
"I've never been here before," said Gracie
as they passed by a negro dwarf-commissionaire out of the dark street into the
strangely-lit interior of the Caligula. "But I've heard a good deal about
it from French painters and Argentines and things, and--" The first glance
at the walls of the first room made her pause. "Well, yes. It's just about
what I expected it to be."
She looked at Evelyn and laughed. And Evelyn
laughed a little, and said:
"I suppose everything ought to be seen."
The first room of the establishment was separated
from the street door by only three feet and a rattling curtain of strings of
red beads. The largest of three rooms in a suite that formed a vista, it seemed
rather small. It had a tiny bar with a very high counter, and next to the bar
an orchestra of three instruments: a fiddle, a sort of inlaid accordion, and a
kettle-drum with cymbals. The music floated discreetly faint; the drummer
caressed his drum instead of hitting it, and the cymbals had a muffled sound.
Round the room were ranged tiny tables. In the middle, on a space hardly bigger
than the area of a dray, writhed a packed mass of animals: human beings,
dancing; they were closer to one another than bees in a swarm, but they danced
and appeared to delight in the jam and in their asphyxiation. True the heat of the
room was tempered by an icy draught from the street at each fresh arrival of
visitors. The lighting was a reddish amber, achieved by a number of pendant
lamps each enclosed in a very small globe of paper; it was as discreet as the
music; it disclosed, even if it did not fully reveal, the existence of the room
and the revellers.
The walls were frescoed with barbaric
scenes--aphrodisiac, orgiastic, murderous--from the short but merry life of the
Roman emperor nicknamed Caligula, the man-god who had dared everything in
licence, and whose audacity the painter had successfully emulated. The fact
that in the twilight of the room the frescoes had to be scanned with care in
order to be completely appreciated added much to their interest.
The second room was smaller than the first and the
third smaller than the second. The third was divided at the end into three
alcoves, in each a table. Evelyn demanded a table in the third room. A
beautiful young man raised his arms to signify that, although no table therein
was as yet occupied, all were reserved. Evelyn murmured that he was director of
the Hotels de
"In that case, monsieur, one will arrange
oneself at once." And he did, and personally accompanied his clients to
the central alcove, on whose sides were depicted with considerable ardour the
loves of Caligula and his sister Drusilla (named by name on her coiffure), with
a priest-horse and a massacre in the background.
Evelyn sat alone for a few minutes while Gracie
was titivating in some far retreat. Then the beautiful young manager
reappeared. He had vaguely heard of the Orcham Hotel-merger, though not by
name. He talked to Evelyn as to a confrère, and told him that ten of the chief
night-resorts in Montmartre, including the Caligula, were under one powerful
control, and that the Caligula was the fashionable baby of the bunch. With
pride he indicated that the wall-paintings were the true origin of its vogue.
He then departed and a head-waiter came up.
"As we are here," thought Evelyn,
"we may as well be here." And said to the waiter:
"Champagne."
"Bien, monsieur."
He named the brand and the year.
"Bien, monsieur."
"Caviare."
"Bien, monsieur."
"With chopped onions."
"Bien, monsieur."
"Ham sandwiches."
"Bien, monsieur."
"Fresh fruit."
"Bien, monsieur."
"Pears, let us say."
"Bien, monsieur."
The waiter wrote and vanished.
When Gracie returned, Evelyn said:
"I've ordered."
She said, submissively:
"I'm so glad. I hate being asked what I want.
Because I never know."
"I guessed what you would like," he
said. They regarded the scene.
"It's very amusing," said Gracie.
"Very," Evelyn agreed.
"You're in one of your distant moods,"
said Gracie.
Smiling sympathetically, he shook his head.
"Aren't you?"
"Not in the least," said Evelyn.
"But I want you to know that I don't live in a universe of
superlatives."
"I like you for that," she said, looking
up at him.
Never had she seemed so virginal to him, so
ingenuous, so receptive, as she did then. The innocence of her air ravished him.
It was indeed a heavenly phenomenon. He thought:
"She lives alone. No one to protect her with
common sense. Apparently she knows all manner of strange people; some of them
must have told her to come here, for instance. It's all wrong. Her father ought
to look after her better."
A man and two young women, all expensively smart,
and French, walked up the vista under escort of the beautiful manager, and took
one of the side alcoves. The young women had the melting, bold, fatigued eyes,
the glance, the swaying hips of debauchery; as shameless as monkeys, as elegant
as mannequins of a first-class couturière. When they had disappeared into the
alcove Gracie raised her eyebrows to Evelyn.
"Yes," he murmured. "It's a nice
question whether they ought to be on the floor or on the walls."
Gracie, however, ignored the sally. Already her
mind had flitted away from the two Cyprians.
"You don't know," she said gently,
"what I was thinking while they were singing that trio at the Opera."
Her expression was very serious, and as if imploring comprehension of what she
was about to say.
"I think I do," Evelyn answered, his
tone and expression suddenly responding to hers. "You were thinking that
everybody and everything in the theatre was kind of dissolving into those
elemental electrons of yours. I can't explain quite, but it was somehow like
that."
She turned pale. Beneath her powder and rouge he
could see that she had paled.
"How did you know?" she breathed, in a
disconcerted whisper.
"I was feeling the same," he said.
"There you are!" breathed Gracie,
solemn, deeply impressed, as if she had just found the full explanation of a
whole series of mysterious phenomena and the confirmation of her secret ideas
as to their origin. She showed emotion, which communicated itself to Evelyn,
who felt apprehensive, even dismayed, though somehow agreeably.
But the materials of the repast arrived, and the
topic was momentarily suspended. Gracie drank three-quarters of a glass of
champagne. Evelyn watched new visitors, their demeanour, the service of the
tables, the writhing crowded mass of dancers in the distant first room. The
discreet lilt of the music and the low hum of talk mingled together in his ear.
Now and then a loud laugh, a thin shriek, disturbed the general rhythm. He
judged that the majority of the men were American, some of whom were with their
wives, others with Frenchwomen who probably had chosen the Caligula for them.
He noticed how the English visitors looked at the storied walls as if
surreptitiously, as if fearful of being caught in the act of looking at them.
And in a corner of his mind, meanwhile, played fragmentary thoughts about the
growing prevalence of mergers and the rationalisation of dubious delights.
Somewhere, in some office, to-morrow, clerks would be checking the nightly
returns of the ten resorts of carousal, and adding them up, and preparing
statistics for the "Orcham" of the great pleasure-merger. Two waiters
buzzed like flies in front of the table, officious and fussily deferential.
Evelyn guessed that they must have been apprised of his important identity by
the beautiful young manager. When they had at last gone, Gracie said:
"Do you know, Evelyn--I want to tell you--I
knew when I first met you that morning we were bound to have the same ideas
about things. I just knew it. Did you?"
He gave the expected answer, sorry that he could
not contrive to put a more joyous conviction into his tone. His regret was due
to the simple, girlish earnestness of her glance and voice. He had misjudged
her. She was not really spoilt by sophistication. Her sensibilities had not
been dulled by experience. She had the fresh, ingenuous gusts of happy emotion
proper to a maiden. And she was so wise and serious too. Her interests in life
were noble.
"This is marvellous! She is marvellous!"
he thought, suddenly uplifted. "We are by ourselves here. Free! What a
night! I've never been through anything like it. It is marvellous!"
And he in turn had a gust of happy emotion. Was it
not exquisitely strange that in the opera-house they should have had the same
illusion, if illusion it could be called? Call it hallucination if you
chose--no matter! And was it not strange that, guessing half-playfully at
first, he should have divined that what had happened to him had happened to her
also? Of course the book had been the cause of it all, but the result was none
the less impressive. Easy to laugh--especially for an Englishman!
Nevertheless--
"And there's something else I want to tell
you," Gracie went on, earnestly, confidingly, after a mouthful of caviare:
"I was frightfully rude to you when you wouldn't come to my party that
night at the Palace. I simply couldn't bear you not coming. But all the same I
liked you for not coming. Yes, I did. I should have been disappointed if you
had come. And I didn't fly off the next morning because I was in a temper with
you--you thought that was the reason, didn't you?"
"I'm not so conceited," Evelyn smiled.
"Do let's be frank," she appealed.
"I feel so near to you. You're always drawing away from me. Remember our
dance? Now honestly, didn't you think I'd left the Palace because I was
vexed?"
"Yes," said Evelyn bravely, and felt as
though he had snapped a chain which was holding him.
"Well, that wasn't the reason. I went off
because I was afraid of you...I know it sounds very odd, but truly that was the
reason." Gracie continued without a pause: "I told you a lie the
other day. I didn't come to London on account of my book. I could have fixed
that by post. I came because I'd been thinking about you for weeks and weeks. I
felt I was missing you, and it was silly of me to go on missing you. I'm saying
all this because it's easier for a girl to talk than a man. People think it
isn't, but that's nonsense. I know how men feel--how you feel, I mean. And I
went away again because I was afraid of you again. It comes over me. But
to-night I'm not afraid of you. I'm very close to you. And I need to be close
to someone. I'm a beast. Yes. I am. You can guess lots of things, but you'll
never guess why I was so keen on going with you to that Shaftesbury Express
Counter of Mr. Jebson's. It was because I wanted to see if I could make you
jealous."
"Me! Jealous!"
"Oh! I know I didn't make you jealous,
darling, though I said all men were. I knew you weren't, without being told.
But wasn't that walk to the hotel in the rain heavenly? I got specially
frightened of you on that walk. I felt like nobody when I saw your lighted
tower from the Duke of York's Steps. You're so wonderful with your hotels.
Father's said so again and again. You know, daddy and I don't see much of each
other, but we're great friends, really. He always says you're wonderful. I
don't know how you're so wonderful, but I can feel it. You make me feel
it. And I was walking with you in the rain, all wet, and I was nothing. I knew
I was nothing. If I hadn't known I was nothing I might have stayed on at the
Palace for a bit. So I just faded out. I know you think I'm brilliant, and so I
am in a way. But right down in me I'm nothing. Why should I want to feel near
you when I'm nothing?...Now don't speak. Don't answer. I'm only telling you all
this because I should hate to deceive you any more. I'm not going to make any
excuses for myself...'Girls don't talk as I'm talking.' And all that. To hell
with girls! I'm not girls. I'm me. That's all. Pour me out some more champagne,
will you? A girl likes to be looked after. I suppose I am girls. But I'm
me too. Wasn't that trio too lovely to bear?"
Evelyn said:
"You told me not to speak. But I shall speak
if I like." He smiled. "And I shall say what I like. You're
miraculous. I say no more."
Instinct warned him to say no more. His eyes were
speaking for him, telling her his admiration, telling her that he was 'near' to
her, and that when he said 'miraculous' he meant it. He was convinced, then,
that there had never been a girl like this girl. She was wise in her
ingenuousness, in her direct simplicity. She understood. She had said,
"It's easier for a girl to talk than a man." And she was so honest:
and so humble: telling him with such sincerity that she was
"nothing." She thought that she really was nothing. He was more than
touched; he was shaken by the force of his own wondering admiration of her
courage. Of course he thought: "Is she in love with me?" He would not
answer the tremendous question. He would only say to himself that she was
pathetically lonely in the world, and that she comprehended him and trusted
him. It was the need to confess this fact that in her opinion had made a
meeting between them urgent for this very night. The meeting had happened, and
she had confessed. He desired, he yearned, to protect her, to assuage her
loneliness. Her eyes met his, and he saw happiness in hers as the result of
what she had seen in his. And in her happiness he was happier than he had ever
been. Happiness surged through him. Life itself, the essence of life, throbbed
serenely in his veins. There was no sensual image in his mind, and no wish for
anything but her happiness. He was content. Hotels, a victorious career,
autocracy had no significance for him. The poor little lamp was extinguished in
a general blaze of glory.
She said:
"I think I ought to go home."
"Now?"
Her trusting eyes implored him.
"Very well," he said.
The sandwiches had been served. He picked up the
plate.
"Just one."
"Well, one," she acquiesced with the
sweetest submission.
Evelyn discharged a bill which, even after a
deduction of twenty per cent. voluntarily conceded to him as a member of the
great catering profession, demonstrated that the pleasure-merger was meant to
yield large dividends. The pair rose and passed down the rooms, wafted along by
deferential bows and smirks; Evelyn went so far as to shake hands with the
beautiful manager. He was wondering why, for so short a stay, Gracie had put
herself and him to the trouble of visiting the Caligula, when she suddenly
stopped.
"Shall we have just one drink before we
go?" she suggested, with bright persuasiveness.
Since she was irresistible, he yielded. But he
thought:
"What next? And what an anti-climax! When
we've had the drink we shall have to begin the departure business all over
afresh. Nuisance!"
The man who was holding Evelyn's hat and overcoat
moved away with an unconvincing smile. They climbed on to the very high chairs
at the bar.
"And the drink?" Evelyn questioned,
disappointed in his miraculous girl.
"Oh! Your favourite," said Gracie.
"What's that?"
"Orange juice." She laughed quizzically.
How did she know that he affected orange juice? Still, he was relieved. The
choice at any rate showed that the miraculous girl had some sense. She went up
again in his esteem.
"Deux jus d'orange nature," she gave the order herself.
The barman disguised his stupefaction.
Gracie turned round to gaze at the dense mass of
dancers contorted, gyrating, swaying, perspiring within six feet of the high
chairs. What a crew (thought Evelyn)! Foolish faces, lascivious, abandoned,
inane. How grotesquely indecent the faces of the old men in the sweltering
crowd! How hard, insincere, grasping, or sentimental and sensually loving, the
faces of the girls! All pretending joy, in the hope of satisfactions to come!
All utterly despicable! He was ashamed to be there, ashamed to have Gracie by his
side, ashamed that she was not ashamed. Only the orchestral trio were worthy of
a mild respect. They were earning a living, making money--not squandering it.
Calmly, efficiently, indefatigably doing their job, they plodded on from
measure to measure, hundreds of measures, thousands of measures, ruling the
fatuous dancers; and they would conscientiously plod on and on until five
o'clock, when the Caligula closed. The entire spectacle was incomprehensible,
frightening. And was the spectacle of the dance-floor at the Imperial Palace
less incomprehensible? Evelyn's mind ran back to Volivia, now dancing at the
Casino de Paris.
Two glasses clinked on the counter. Gracie twisted
her body, picked them up both at once, and handed one to Evelyn. He said, after
a sip:
"You might tell me just why you've come to an
affair like this. Is it amusing, or is it silly?"
"It's both," she answered. "And
didn't you say yourself that everything ought to be seen? I love it because it
shows what people really are. I'm always wanting to know that. I've enjoyed it.
And so have you--so you needn't say you haven't."
"Then I won't," he said grimly.
"But it is interesting, isn't it?" she
cajoled, ignoring his grimness.
"Oh! It's interesting," he
agreed, rather condescendingly.
"It teaches you, doesn't it?" She was
still cajoling.
"Teaches you what?"
"About--well, human nature."
"Some sorts of human nature."
"Aren't we all God's creatures?" she
said gravely.
He gave in with a sympathetic smiling nod. He was
beaten. Gracie's eyes ranged round the exciting walls; but while she gazed she
seemed to be absorbed in reflection.
Then two girls extricated themselves from the
thronged floor and approached the bar. One was tall and slim, in a
closefitting, high-necked gown which rendered the wearer conspicuous by its
long trailing skirts. The other was short and plump in the scantiest possible
flimsy frock. The demeanour of the tall girl was protective. They settled
themselves at the bar, next to Evelyn and Gracie. The tall girl furtively,
delicately, fondled her friend, with whom she had been dancing.
"Shall we go?" said Gracie, very
abruptly. And in the doorway, as Evelyn held aside the bead-curtain for her,
she murmured harshly: "I can't stand that kind."
"Why not?" Evelyn demanded. "Aren't
we all God's creatures?" After being defeated, he had won.
In the chill, dank winter night of the street,
Gracie's car was waiting with other cars, and her chauffeur with other
chauffeurs, nonchalantly patient. How these chauffeurs ate, drank, kept warm,
passed the interminable time, was their affair. Gracie's chauffeur saluted very
amiably; he might have had to wait till
"I'll drop you," said Gracie.
"Oh no! It's out of your way. I'll get a
taxi."
"It isn't out of my way." A pause.
"And I don't care if it is. I'll drop you. 1 can be home in twenty minutes
at the most."
"Thank you."
The chauffeur whisked them away. In the darkness
of the saloon they did not speak. When the car swerved swiftly round a corner
and Gracie was thrown against Evelyn, she did not immediately straighten
herself. They were entering the Champs Elysées before she said:
"You're quite right."
He knew that she was referring to her attitude
towards the two girls at the bar.
"Well, well! Who knows?" said he
quietly. He was asking himself when they were to meet again. He wanted to
suggest a rendezvous, but his unconquerable reserve prevented him from doing
so. "It's my place to do it," he thought, impartially. Yet he could
not do it. The car drew up at the Montaigne. He looked at her. She looked at
him. Something expectant in her dimly seen eyes. He kissed her. The kiss
fraternal, friendly, companionable. Naught in such a kiss! Such a kiss was a
duty. They had been very 'near' to one another. The kiss gave him pleasure,
too. And as for her, it seemed to comfort her.
The chauffeur had hardly descended from the wheel.
"I say," she said, as Evelyn stepped
down on to the kerb. "Where shall you be to-morrow, about
lunch-time?"
"Concorde," he replied.
"I'll telephone you," she said, and
yawned.
"That's fine," he said. "Au
revoir."
He thought:
"I was a perfect boor not to make the first
move. However, it's all right..."
The car was gone, and she in it. He stood on the
pavement for a few seconds, recalling the taste and touch of her soft girlish
lips. "I am an idiot," he murmured. A functionary emerged from the
hotel to welcome him.
ON THE
BOULEVARD
The next morning (a Saturday), after a very short
and very restless night, Evelyn was again working with M. Laugier in the
latter's room in the Concorde. But, at work, he had the appearance rather than
the reality of earnest application. And, when the Louis Philippe clock struck
noon, he began to grow anxious lest Gracie should telephone to him once more
while he was with M. Laugier, because M. Laugier would certainly himself answer
the ring, and he had no desire to see a quizzical look on the southerner's
face. Noon was the customary lunch-hour for M. Laugier, and Evelyn made a
polite remark to this effect. M. Laugier replied that the clock was ten minutes
fast. It was. They laboured until the clock struck the half-hour. There had
been no ring. Evelyn was not surprised. He said to himself grimly that with
Gracie lunch-time meant any time between noon and three o'clock, or even four.
They went down into a little basement room, where M. Laugier entertained his
dear director to an admirable, plenteous meal.
Evelyn was now more at ease. When Gracie summoned
him he would be told merely that he was wanted on the telephone, and thus he
could talk comfortably to the girl from a telephone-cabin, with nobody to
listen. Of course she was a wonderful girl, but this admitted fact did not
prevent him from manfully and superiorly cursing her. She was really too much
of a mixture to appeal to a serious man. Her earnest moods frightened him, and
her moods of levity pained him. Yes, she had nobility, impressive nobility. She
had given him to think. Nevertheless with a girl like that you never knew where
you were. The disorderliness of her mind was fantastic. She had no daily common
sense and no sense of danger. To be connected with her was to be a kettle tied
to the tail of a magnificent mad thoroughbred dog. Was she in love with him?
Who could say? Probably even she herself could not say. She was a girl who
might ruin the careers of twenty men out of sheer impulse and caprice, and then
be startled twenty times to learn what she had done. He had best bring the
affair, courteously, to an abrupt conclusion. He would have no tampering with
his career, which had now reached a new and more splendid period. He hoped that
she would not ring him up. He would have finished with Laugier by five o'clock,
and if he did not hear from her, damned if he would not depart for London on
Sunday morning! He would have a sound excuse for doing so, as she had omitted
to give him her address at St. Cloud. She could communicate with him, but he
could not communicate with her.
Well, she did not ring him up. The lunch was eaten
without hurry, and the after-lunch cigars were smoked as cigars ought to be
smoked. At a quarter to three the mutually dear directors returned to the study
of statistics and other documents. And now she would assuredly ring up. Women
were always confoundedly inconvenient. She would ring up, and he would be
compelled to go through again his tight-rope telephone performance of the
previous day. But there was no call. Once the telephone-bell did tinkle,
exciting alarm--also a not unpleasant expectancy--but the call was for M.
Laugier. Four o'clock. Dusk. Lights. Five o'clock. Endless afternoon. She had
not rung. Good. Excellent. Hang it all! He was twice her age, and had an
objection to rendering himself ridiculous in the sight of men. The task of the
dear directors was finished, and satisfactorily. The Englishman, having
congratulated the Frenchman on the final result of the exhaustive inquisition,
announced that he should leave for London on the morrow. The Frenchman, charmed
by the congratulations, invited the Englishman to yet another meal--dinner.
Evelyn said regretfully that he had an engagement. "Ah!" twinkled M.
Laugier. They parted in the grand manner, providing a spectacle to inspirit
circumambient functionaries in the hall.
Evelyn came back a minute later, and said to the
concierge:
"I suppose there's been no telephone message
for me?" There had not. He walked to the Hotel Montaigne, and to the
concierge of the Montaigne he said:
"Any telephone message for me?"
None. He was on the point of asking for a corner
seat to be reserved on the "Golden Arrow"; but he did not ask. Better
wait a while. She might yet ring. He must give her every chance. At seven
o'clock the frightful, desolating vista of an empty evening stretched out
before him. The director of the Montaigne was out, and not expected home till
midnight. He had an impulse to ring up Laugier and say that, through a
misunderstanding, he was free after all; but he checked it. Too proud! Instead,
he got London, twice: first for the Palace and then for the Wey, and at both
hotels kept important members of the staffs engaged too long in quite
unimportant conversations. To Cousin at the Palace he said everything except
that he should return the next day. Besides, Oldham would be still with his
wife in the country. Not that Oldham was indispensable. He could manage, was
managing, very well without Oldham. Still--He dined alone, reading French
newspapers. Then he strolled about the hotel, chatting beautifully with the
flattered staff. Then he walked to the Etoile--a constitutional. Then it
rained, and he returned in a taxi. Then he went to bed. Only five minutes past
ten. Clocks and watches would not move. He stared at them for hours, and the
hands budged not. Yet they had not stopped, for he could hear his watch ticking
plainly enough.
The moment he was in bed and the light out, his
thoughts began to whirl round and round, and round and round. Why the hell had
he not taken her address? She might be ill. Or the Tessa girl might be ill.
Gracie would be extremely conscientious where Tessa was concerned. By the
calendar he was indubitably twice her age. But not by any other measurement.
While he was with her he had absolutely no feeling of seniority. They were
equals. He realised more and more in the darkness how wonderful she was. He saw
her image in the darkness. He had kissed her. Damn it! She had invited his
kiss, or at least she had warmly accepted it. Was this an adventure to be
clicked off as by hanging up a telephone-receiver? She was miraculous--he had
told her so--and because she was miraculous the adventure was miraculous.
Paris! The freedom of Paris! Marriage. Had she been thinking of marriage? No.
Anyhow, he would never marry. And never would he allow his career to be fooled
about with. But she was miraculous. She said astounding things. She had a
unique intelligence. Why had he not taken her address? He was miserable, he the
eponymous hero of the greatest hotel-merger in all the annals of luxury. He
knew he would have no sleep that night...He awoke. Four o'clock. He had slept
four hours. At the Palace he could have telephoned for some tea; but the
Montaigne was not the Palace--though it would be. He dozed at intervals. Six
o'clock. Seven o'clock. The electric timepiece on the wall made a disturbing
little noise every minute, as its finger was pushed on. Exasperating. He had
heard it ten million times. But the Montaigne was not the Palace...A faint,
pale discoloration on the blind. Dawn. Eight o'clock. He would ring for tea, and
also he would give orders for a seat in the train. What an inferno of a night!
He felt like a towel flung into a corner of a bathroom.
Just as he was about to ring, he heard the
telephone-bell delicately murmuring on the floor, and he grasped the instrument.
It could not be she. But it was, and this was the most incredible, solacing
thing that ever befell any Englishman in Paris.
"Is that you, Evelyn?" Her rich voice,
changing at nearly every word, again like the sheen of shifting shot-silk.
"Speaking. Can't you tell my voice? I can
tell yours." When he had spoken he thought: "This won't do. I mustn't
use that excited tone." Then he waited. She did not continue immediately.
It was a delightful experience to be on his back in the wide bed and in the ease
of pyjamas, holding the mouthpiece to his lips and the receiver to his ear, and
wait for her next exciting sentence. All fatigue had gone from him. He
understood, afresh, that fatigue was a nervous sensation, an illusion which
another nervous sensation could obliterate as a sponge wipes pencil-marks from
a slate.
"I hope I haven't disturbed you too
early." Her voice was now tense with that terrible earnestness which on
the previous evening had affrighted him. He recalled her manner of saying in
the Caligula, "I need to be close to someone," and her manner of
confessing that she had missed him and that she had tried to make him jealous.
A man would naturally, inevitably, think that a girl who talked in that style
was in love with him, or fancied she was. But Evelyn could not honestly believe
it. In the first place, he could not see in himself anything for her to fall in
love with. And in the second place, it appeared to him that her accents were
too grave for mere love.
"Are you there? Can you hear? I said I hope I
haven't disturbed you too early."
His mind had been wandering--as hers too often
would wander.
"I beg pardon. No, you certainly haven't
disturbed me too early. In fact, you're about twenty hours late in disturbing
me. Didn't you say you'd ring me up yesterday at lunch-time, or was I
dreaming?" He meant to put some affectionate banter into his tone, but the
attempt was somehow not very convincing.
"Yes. I know," she said. "But I
couldn't."
"Why not?"
"Well. I couldn't. And I've rung you so early
this morning because I knew when I awoke I never should ring you if I
didn't do it instantly--instantly. So I did."
"And you've just caught me in time. I'm
leaving by the 'Golden Arrow,'and I have to pack and do all sorts of things.
And I'm not up yet." Still the same unsuccessful effort towards cheerful
banter.
"Evelyn, you aren't! You can't go
to-day!" she protested solemnly.
"Why not?"
"I must see you."
It appeared to him that she was repeating the
telephone conversation in Laugier's office.
"Anything wrong?" he questioned,
dropping the banter.
"I--I don't know." A hint of desperation
in her voice. "We must have lunch together. If you must go back
home to-night you can take the four o'clock. Surely you can do that for me, Evelyn."
She was pleading, irresistibly.
"All right, my dear," he soothed her.
"Listen!" she went on, more vivaciously.
"You can pack up your things and bring them along with you, and then you
can stay with me till it's time for you to go to the station. You can have my
car. Listen! I'll come with you to the Gare du Nord and see you off."
"It's ideal," he answered. "But I
wouldn't agree to being seen off by anybody else." (Why had he gone out of
his way to say a thing like that?)
"You're teasing me," she said, as it
were plaintively.
"I'm not! Now what time lunch?"
"I'll expect you at twelve o'clock. Noon.
Listen. I'll send the car for you to the Montaigne. Five to twelve. I know I
shan't be fit to be seen till twelve."
"But I can't get to St. Cloud in five minutes,
can I?"
"Oh! I'm not at St. Cloud. I'm in the
Boulevard des Italiens." She gave a number.
"You must have got up frightfully
early."
"No. I came here yesterday."
"Is it a hotel?"
"No."
"You're with friends, eh?"
"N-no. It's rooms. I had to be in Paris."
Evelyn was considerably startled, as much by her
tone as by the news; but he made no comment.
"I'll count on you then," she said.
"You may, my dear."
The talk ended there. Evelyn felt bewildered, perturbed;
yet happy--and excited enough in his expectancy. He rang for tea, and he rang
for the valet.
Gracie's car arrived at the hotel ten minutes
before time, and Evelyn's suit-cases were downstairs ten minutes before the
hour. Therefore he had to wait, chatting with the concierge. Ridden by his
mania for punctuality, he objected as much to being one minute early as to
being one minute late. Yet he was quite hungrily anxious to set eyes on Gracie
again. He could not recall every detail of her features and bearing, and he was
impatient to refresh his memory. Also he was impatient to know the reason of
her formidable earnestness on the telephone; though he kept saying to himself:
"It's nothing. It's nothing. She's a child, after all."
Rain began to fall, not unexpectedly. The
boulevard had the desolating aspect proper to a wet Parisian Sunday. Little
traffic. Few wayfarers. Imperfect umbrellas sailing horizontally along over
glistening dirty pavements, each umbrella the canopy of a mysterious,
undecipherable soul. All the shops shuttered in grey steel, except the
tobacco-bureaux, which were open. The kiosks, which offered for sale every
newspaper and periodical decent and indecent in Europe, had no customers.
The Morris Columns, with their advertisements of the
stages of Paris, shone somehow morbidly in the rain. The cafés did no business
to speak of. All was depressing, but not for Evelyn, whose age had gradually
diminished to twenty-five.
The car halted opposite a large but inconspicuous
portico between two big shuttered shops. Evelyn jumped out. His heart was
perceptibly beating. He was now only twenty-two. On one side of the portico was
a small, discreet brass-plate: "Appartements meublés." The
entrance seemed very dubious indeed. But within the entrance, against a pair of
glazed doors, stood Gracie, waiting for him, a figure of perfect, serious
respectability. She wore a mackintosh and carried a red Baedeker in addition to
her handbag. Close by her stood a sad, pale houseman, in slippers, striped
sleeves, and a long white apron.
"Well?" said Gracie, and shook hands.
The houseman silently went to the car, seized the
suit-cases and disappeared with them into the building.
"C'est ça," said Gracie to the chauffeur, who touched
his cap and drove away.
"Now we're here!" she said to Evelyn,
and at last smiled.
"What's the object of that Baedeker?" he
enquired, with a quasi-sardonic blandness.
She replied: "I went out specially to buy it
yesterday, and I shall carry it with me everywhere. Just for a sign to myself
that I've climbed out of the rut of being always so correct and rich and
knowing the best places, and being superior to common people. That's why I
bought the mackintosh too. I want to be common. I'm sick of being in the
swim--in everything. It's come over me. I simply had to have a change. If I
hadn't I do believe I should have--well, I don't know what! I think it's rather
romantic to carry a mackintosh and a Baedeker and walk in the rain. Don't
you?"
"I see what you mean," Evelyn said
negligently. "You aren't feeling unwell, are you?"
"No. A bit tired, that's all. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. I had an idea you looked
pale...Well, what's the next move?"
"The next move is lunch. We must have it
early."
"Where?"
"Anywhere. The first rotten little place we
see. There's lots of '
She crossed the boulevard in front of him, and
they turned westwards towards the Madeleine; then into the rue Tronchet;
half-way up the rue Tronchet she took a side-street to the right. They did not
speak.
"Now here's one, for instance," she
said, pleased, stopping suddenly at the first corner in the side-street. Yes,
lo! A little restaurant and wineshop, situated like a minor public-house in London.
An untidy zinc bar on the ground-floor, not as yet very busy. A narrow
staircase hardly visible in a corner.
"It must be up here," she murmured, and
up she went, Evelyn following.
The dirty bare staircase, which in its middle part
was dangerously dark, ended in a restaurant of the same dimensions as the
bar-room. A buffet. A number of extremely small tables, covered with coarse
grey-white linen. Clumsy black-handled knives and black-handled three-pronged
forks. Salt in lumps. Bread in yards. Glass cruets, twin receptacles containing
vinegar and oil. Odours. Warmth. No air.
A plump, pleasant young woman in soiled blue dress
and still more soiled white apron was serving some dozen Sundayed customers of
the small bourgeois class. They were all absorbed in eating, and they were
nearly all talking; and while they masticated and talked they ledged the
extremities of their tools on either side of their plates. The napkins, which a
few men wore as bibs, were of the same material as the table-cloths, but apparently
larger. The scene was squalid enough, until you regarded it as romantic, when
it ceased to be anything else but romantic.
The plump woman, lively without haste or flurry,
pointed to an empty table, with a friendly yet commanding gesture which said:
"You aren't absolutely compelled to take that
table, but on the whole you will be well advised to take it."
They took it. The waitress then ignored them; she
attended to customers in what she deemed to be the right order of precedence.
Evelyn removed his big overcoat, which was damp.
Gracie loosed her new mackintosh and disposed her bag and the Baedeker on a
corner of the table. They settled themselves on insecure cane-bottomed chairs.
Nothing more to do till the waitress should occupy herself with them.
Constraint and self-consciousness separated them.
And they were marked customers. Everybody in the room knew, and showed by
curious glances that they were different from the ordinary clientèle. Evelyn
felt incapable of making conversation. Gracie appeared not to care whether they
conversed or were silent. The waitress at last arrived at their table, and at
once displayed an amiable and genuine interest in their individual desires.
Gracie altered her mind twice about dishes, but the waitress was not to be
ruffled by indecision.
"And to drink?" said she, when the menu
was definitely fixed.
"Beer," said Gracie suddenly, not
consulting Evelyn.
Then they had to be idle until the first dish and
hot plates were planted before them. Eating for a time obviated the social
necessity for talk.
The waitress popped her tousled head between them
and asked:
"That pleases you?"
"Much," said Gracie.
"So much the better," said the waitress,
and left them. They were still separated by a constraint which, instead of
diminishing, grew in intensity. As for Evelyn, he feared to meet Gracie's eyes.
Why? He did not know. Honestly, he could not imagine why. All he knew was that
he felt ridiculously self-conscious, and that she too was self-conscious. He
could not even think consecutively. He did not try to understand Gracie's
motive in this extraordinary caprice. He tried neither to examine the immediate
past nor to foresee the immediate future. He had to be content with mere
existence in an uncomfortable and interminable present.
"You've never been in a place like this
before?" said Gracie.
"Oh! Haven't I!" said Evelyn, who was
reminded of his first frugal visit to Paris a quarter of a century earlier.
Islet of talk in a vast heaving ocean of
taciturnity!
The meal did come to an end. Coffee was drunk,
thick, out of thick overflowing cups. Evelyn paid the bill, whose total was the
equivalent of five-and-sixpence. All the tables were filled. Two more customers
rose into the room from the stairway.
"We're interfering with business," said
Evelyn, getting up. The waitress warned Gracie of the peril of the dark stairs.
They reached the street, and took deep breaths.
"I loved it!" Gracie said with emphasis.
"Yes," Evelyn reluctantly agreed.
"And now what next?" Gracie glanced at him, half tenderly, half
slyly.
"I'm still tired," she said. "I
expect I've eaten too much. I did love it. Suppose we go back to my rooms? It
isn't raining."
DECLARATION
"Isn't it all lovely and vulgar?" Gracie
exclaimed, looking at Evelyn for some expression of morbid delight to match her
own.
"No exaggeration to call it vulgar,"
said Evelyn with a humouring smile.
They had climbed some fusty, dusty, ill-carpeted
stairs to what was marked as the first floor, though it was really the second,
the first being a mezzanine. Gracie had produced a latch-key to open the
double-doors leading into her rented flat; they had gone through a small
ante-chamber or hall, and were now at the open double-doors leading therefrom
into the drawing-room.
A large and lofty apartment: carved and partly
gilded cornice, discoloured ceiling, heavily patterned wall-paper torn in one
or two places, heavily framed oil-paintings of landscapes and of richly
breasted girls whose flimsy draperies were on the very point of slipping off to
disclose the root of all evil, a life-sized white statue of a woman whose
modesty was similarly imperilled, a stuffed black bear close by it, heavy and
cumbrous imitation Louis Quatorze furniture, all shabby gilt, on the
mantelpiece a vast ormolu and gilt clock (not going) with vast candelabra to
correspond, and a stained crimson carpet which covered the entire floor. Seen
on a stage from the pit such an interior might have passed for luxury. Seen
from within itself it was as hatefully spurious as a false coin. It shocked
Evelyn.
"I adore it because it is so
awful," said Gracie, as they gazed around.
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know. I told you I wanted a
change from all that expensive respectability that I've been imprisoned in all
my life. I like to be vulgar and low sometimes. That's me, you know, and we may
as well be honest about it."
"Expensive!" said Evelyn. "You
aren't getting this show for two francs a night, I'm sure."
"No, it isn't cheap," she changed her
ground. "But I don't mind that. It's what I wanted. And I found it all by
myself. Come and see my bedroom."
She led him through a masked door in a corner of
the drawing-room along a short passage, and so into a bedroom of the same
dimensions and in the same style as the drawing-room: enormous bed, two
night-tables, enormous cheval-glass, enormous sofa, enormous dressing-table,
and enormous wardrobe. The room was in a state of extreme disorder: open trunk,
open toilet-case, open door of the wardrobe, white fabric protruding from a
shut drawer in the wardrobe, garments thrown on several chairs and on the
floor. The garments, however, tended to civilise the room. Evelyn noted the
costly splendour of Gracie's brushes and other toilet utensils spread
higgledypiggledy over the dusty glassy surface of the dressing-table.
"The bed's very comfortable," Gracie
remarked, apologetic despite herself.
"Well, that's a good mark, anyway," said
Evelyn. "Then you stayed here last night, I see."
"Considering I rang you from here at eight
o'clock this morning, you might have guessed I hadn't just got here. Besides,
didn't I tell you I'd only that moment wakened up?"
"Of course you did," he agreed.
"But I thought you said Tessa couldn't be left."
"Oh! Tessa!" she answered lightly.
"Tessa must stick it for a day or two, like other people...And you haven't
even shaken hands with me yet," she finished, as if adding one final item
to a series of grievances.
They were standing side by side. Gracie had
pitched her hat and her handbag and the Baedeker on to the bed, and she was
taking off her mackintosh. She stopped and looked sternly at him, one arm out
of and the other in the mackintosh. But though her glance was stern, the
forward, upward poise of the head and a tremor of the vermilion lips seemed to
draw him to her. He kissed her. A formal kiss, a kiss of ceremony. Little more
than a peck. No significance in it, even less significance than there had been
in the kiss of the previous night in the car. He knew that between many men and
women kissing was a habit, like handshaking. And what could a kiss mean when
the kisser was wearing a big overcoat and the kissed entangled in a mackintosh?
And they were separated now, if not by constraint, by an obscure hostility.
Gracie, having got rid of the mackintosh, turned
back towards the passage. In the passage was a door.
"That's the bathroom and so on," she
said. "You can hang your overcoat in there--and powder your nose."
When he re-entered the drawing-room she was
reclining with her feet tucked under her on an easy-chair. Her eyes were
closed.
"Sit down," she said weakly, not opening
her eyes.
As he came in Evelyn touched a large gilded
radiator; it was very hot.
"Oh, dear!" she said. "I do feel so
tired."
"I thought you were never tired," he
responded, with surprise, but sympathetically.
"Well," she said, glancing at him
covertly, "I do get tired sometimes in the afternoon, and then I rest a
bit, and then I'm perfectly all right again. We're all ups and downs. Women, I
mean. I say, would you mind if I went and lay on the bed for a tiny weeny
minute?"
"Do," said he.
"I think I will." She rose from the
horrible easy-chair "Here! You can read this." She handed him
"The Nature of the Physical World," which had been insecurely perched
on a console.
He accepted it in silence. She left the room,
turning her head at the door to give him a doleful smile. She forgot to shut
the door, as she forgot to shut all doors.
Evelyn, dropping the book, thought:
"This is rotten."
He felt exceedingly gloomy. Still, some intimacy
had been reached. She was treating him as an intimate. And he was less ill at
ease. There was something rather piquant, interesting, provocative, in the situation,
and in her strange demeanour. And at worst they could not be interrupted. They
had themselves to themselves.
He strolled to one of the big windows and looked
forth at the boulevard. Rain, persistent and ruthless. The road and the pavements
were mirrors reflecting the melancholy of the universe. He thought he heard a
voice, distant, thin, shrill, lacking its customary richness.
"Evelyn! Evelyn! Evelyn!"
"Coming."
He went to the bedroom, of which the door was wide
open. He halted at the door.
"Yes?"
She was not on the bed; she was in the bed. Under
her head was her own pillow. He saw her frock on a chair. Other garments, which
had previously disfigured and civilised the room, were now hidden somewhere,
and the baggage was stacked in a corner.
"I think I must have some tea," she
murmured, eyes directed towards the ceiling.
"Well, there's some attendance here, I
suppose. I'll ring, shall I?"
"Oh yes, there's attendance of a sort,"
she answered, shifting her head to look at him. "Come in. Come in. I
shan't explode." She was fretful. He advanced into the room. "But
they'll never be able to make my kind of tea. I'm going to get up and make it
myself. The things are in the bathroom. I never travel without my tea-gadgets.
Will you have some too?"
"You stay where you are," he said
firmly, feeling sorry for her. "I'll make the tea."
"But you can't make tea."
"Can't I? You'll see in a minute. I've shown
more than one person at the Palace exactly how tea ought to be made."
"No. I can't have you making tea for me. It's
not decent."
"Please do as I tell you," he said
sharply.
She yielded with meekness.
"You are a darling."
In the bathroom he discovered the tea-gadgets
complete on a tray on the floor, concealed beyond the end of the bath.
Everything was there: saucepan, teapot, hot-water jug, cups and saucers (two),
spoons, sugar, white dry "metra" fuel, a lemon, a monogrammed fruit
knife, a box of matches, and a small canister of tea. It was true that he could
make tea. And indeed one of his theories, perhaps sex-biased, was that men
could make tea better than women. While the water was boiling he sliced the
lemon, warmed the pot, and dropped four spoonfuls of tea into it. No hitch. No
slip. Perfection. The watched saucepan did boil, with startling alacrity. As he
carefully carried the loaded tray into the bedroom, he was aware of an even
higher degree of intimacy. Strange vocation for him, being a chambermaid! But
he enjoyed it, and was proud. Gracie smiled at him celestial thanks.
"You might stick it down here on the bed.
There's plenty of room. And will you mind shutting the door?"
"Lady," said he, depositing the tray on
the soiled crimson satin eiderdown, which must have had vast and varied
experience in keeping human bodies warm, "I was about to do so. But having
both hands full of tray--the rest is silence." He thought, carefully
shutting the door, that a request to shut doors came in from the greatest
leaver-open of doors that ever lived.
"I like you when you're sprightly," she
said. "And I like your new suit."
"It's an old suit," he corrected her.
"Yes, of course. That's what father always
says."
"And while I'm about it," he said,
"I'll shut a few more doors."
And having shut the door of the room he shut the
doors of the wardrobe, opened a drawer, straightened some linen that had been
sticking out of it, and pushed it to again. Gracie smiled at the operation,
lowering her eyelids.
"Will you pour?" she asked.
"I shall pour," he answered, drawing a
heavy gilt chair up to the bedside.
"I'm so grateful," said she, relapsing
into fatigue after her few sentences of liveliness.
He poured out the tea. She turned and lay on her
side, facing him, and, her head propped on her right hand, took the cup without
the saucer in her left hand and sipped.
"You were quite right, darling," she
said. "You can make tea. It's a gift."
They each drank two cups.
"Another."
"No, thanks," she said. "You might
put the tray on the floor. It's only in the way."
"On the table will be better," he said,
and moved the tray.
"Won't you sit on the bed?" she
suggested.
He sat on the bed.
"Now do you feel better?"
"I just want you to listen," she said,
ignoring his question. "I've got to tell you something, and I swore to
myself I'd tell you instantly we'd had tea. All day yesterday I was dying to
tell you, but I couldn't make up my mind to it. I kept putting it off and
putting it off. That's why I didn't telephone you. And it's why I was so stiff
and awkward with you at lunch. Nervousness. You know--it stops you from being natural.
You can't be natural and easy when you know you have something awful to do and
can't bring yourself up to the scratch. It sort of weighs you down. And I'm so
tired. I couldn't sleep last night."
"Nor could I," said Evelyn.
She glanced at him sharply.
"Oh, couldn't you sleep either?" She
seemed pleased. "I'm in a most terrible mess. Terrible. I don't expect you
can help me. But if you can't no one else can. I know I oughtn't to worry you.
Still, when one's desperate"--she paused--"as I am. Evelyn, my
dear--" She was silent.
He thought, anxious:
"What now? What's the scrape she's in? It's
an infernal shame the way her father leaves her to take care of herself. She's
incapable of taking care of herself. Look at her now in this place, and me
sitting on her bed, and her father not giving a damn where she is!"
Her face was pathetic to him. The sight of it
roused his protective instinct, his instinct for solving problems and for
setting people in the right path and seeing that they kept to it. Whatever
foolishness she had committed, his wisdom must save her somehow from the
consequences of it. And he was convinced in his pride that there was no
difficulty that he could not vanquish, no trouble that he could not conjure
away. A nuisance, of course; but nuisances had to be squarely confronted. The
image of the four o'clock train shot surprisingly through his brain. He had
forgotten it.
"Well?" he encouraged her.
"I'm too fond of you, my dear."
As the full significance of those first five words
penetrated into his mind--a matter not instantaneous but occupying a few
seconds--his first reflection was: "This is what comes of having anything
to do with a hotel-merger!" And his second: "But what is there
in me to attract her?" He had had this thought before, but not so
puzzlingly. He opened his lips to speak, though he did not know what he would
say. She raised her arm for silence, gazing at him with a long, woebegone,
martyrised, mercy-imploring look. He was not genuinely startled by her
confession. He had only been misled for a moment by the phrase, 'most terrible
mess,' and the word 'desperate': which had appeared to him to indicate a
calamity more material than unrequited passion. Now her soul was newly lit for
him, and he began to discern a little more plainly the deeps of her character.
He understood, as by revelation, that different people may have different
estimates of the importance of passion. The question was one which he had
seldom pondered, and never exhaustively.
She proceeded:
"When I told you how I'd been thinking of you
for weeks, and how I'd come to London just to see you, and all that, I was
putting it much too mildly. It was far worse than that. One reason why I've
been so keen on taking charge of Tessa was to keep my mind off you. Yes.
I may as well admit it. If you hadn't happened to catch sight of me at Calais,
I should have tried never to see you again. Because I was frightfully depressed
in London--I mean about you. The walk in the rain was lovely, and we were
near--weren't we?--only somehow things were very chilly, very chilly. But when
we met at Calais like that, I thought that couldn't be just accident. I don't
believe in chance, but I do believe in providence--God. Yes, I do. I believe
God's in everything. I couldn't get over that meeting. So I rang you up. I had
to. And you were so sweet on Friday night--though you weren't a bit sweet on
the telephone on Friday afternoon--and then your knowing what I'd been thinking
while they sang that trio, and your thinking the very same--well, that was too much
for me, that was! I might have got over the meeting at Calais, but I couldn't
get over that. I thought, surely it must mean something. So yesterday I
took this flat, and I hadn't the pluck to ring you up until this morning. You
know, my dear, I've been rather in hell, still am. I'm not the tiniest morsel
conventional. No! But there's something deep in me that says to me a woman
ought never to say the things to a man that I'm saying to you now. It's against
nature; and nature isn't conventional; it's against my nature--part of my
nature. Only, however deep you dig into your nature, there's always a layer
that's deeper. And it was that deeper layer, when I half got down to it, that
decided me I ought to speak to you. Must speak, in fact. And--and--then
you--"
He foresaw that she was going to remind him that
he had kissed her. But he was wrong. She definitely stopped. He liked her for
not referring to the kisses. She was too magnanimous to refer to them; and she
had too just a sense of proportion to give any real importance to such social
trifles. How far they had progressed in intimacy, and at what speed, since her
first telephone call only two days earlier! And it was all due to her
initiative alone! He felt once again, and more strongly, the impulse to protect
her, to save her from the consequences of her headlong, capricious temperament.
He admired her gift of self-analysis; as for him, he was always very reluctant
even to try to analyse himself; he accepted himself as he was, and indeed he
regarded self-analysis as a rather morbid exercise. Nevertheless it suited some
people, and it suited her, and she could do it. That bit about her not being
conventional but feeling all the same how it was against nature for a woman to
say to a man what she'd said to him--that was good; it showed a masculine
breadth of mind. And then deliberately to go against her own axiom of
conduct--that showed a still greater breadth of mind, super-masculine. But of
course she did possess a mind; her conversation continually proved it. And she
could be so formidably, so disturbingly serious. With all her disadvantages,
she was a creature to respect. Impossible, even in one's most secret soul, to
condescend to her. And how marvellous her mere voice! It enriched everything
she said.
But for him a woman was either an asset or a
liability, and she would be an everlasting liability. Long ago he had decided
that to live with her would be to live in an inferno mitigated by transient
glimpses of paradise. Leave her for your work in the morning, and you could
never be sure what would not happen to her while she was out of your sight; you
would be on pins until you saw her again in the evening, and after that you
would have no peace of mind until she was asleep. To live with such a woman
would be a career in itself. All these thoughts ran through his mind in a
moment.
She had put him in a perfect hell of an awkward
position. But that was a point which would not have occurred to her, naturally!
She was egregiously self-centred. What in the name of God could he answer to
her? Withal, he was happy as well as distracted. The situation was terrible,
but it was terribly flattering, and there was beauty in it, and the beauty
communicated itself to the whole environment.
The rain rained harder than ever; through the
interstices of the once-white curtains he could distinguish raindrops slipping
down the window-pane; but now the rain, the sadness of the implacable winter
rain, was beautiful. Her toilet-gadgets, offspring of wealth and taste, were
beautiful; the eye could gaze on them with a voluptuous satisfaction. And her
blue négligé, or whatever it was--wondrous. And how well it became her
hair and her pale face. And they were together in an inviolable solitude. They
were on the boulevard, but as safe from prying interruption as in a boat by
themselves at sea. For nobody knew where he was, and he was sure that nobody
knew where she was. They were lost and undiscoverable in Paris. Something
beautiful in that piquant, provocative security.
She said, in a lower tone:
"Don't say anything. Don't answer. I know
I've put you in a frightfully awkward position. I know. I know." Her voice
sank. Then louder: "Will you draw the curtains, please? It's getting dark.
I hate these winter afternoons, but I love winter evenings...Yes, I know I've
made it awkward for you. I know."
Her voice died quite away. She was not so
self-centred after all; he had been unjust to her. 'They' had an extraordinary
faculty for putting a man in the wrong.
He drew the heavy curtains. He saw a light behind
him. She was sitting up and had switched on one of the bed-lamps. He switched
on the other lamp, the one nearer the window. In the soft shaded light the room
grew quite presentable, and its false luxury authentic. She patted the surface
of the bed at the spot where he had been sitting, to indicate that he must
resume his seat. He obeyed. It was all a marvellous experience, unique. She had
not uttered a word.
"Don't say anything until to-morrow,"
she said. "Say nothing. Nothing...You're very dignified. But then you
always are. I do admire your dignity."
He thought:
"To-morrow!' And my train this
afternoon?"
His train, however, seemed to have lost every
shred of its importance. It was not his train; it was no train in particular:
it was a train that left Paris monotonously every afternoon at four o'clock.
She was now sitting up, and therefore nearer to
him. She looked away from him, staring with a stern, mournful expression at the
expanse of the window-curtains. She turned and looked not at his face, but at
his right hand, which was resting on his right thigh as he sat half-turned
towards her on the side of the bed. She leaned forward a little more to pat his
hand, maternally to soothe him, girlishly to excuse herself for having put him
in a position so intensely difficult. The folds of the blue wrap slipped aside.
He observed for the first time that under it she was not wearing a camisole;
she was wearing pyjamas, unbuttoned at the neck. She had undressed completely
and put herself to bed in earnest. As she leaned forward he could not fail to
see her sumptuous breasts, mysterious within the shadow of the loosened,
thin-spun garment.
What elemental force, raising his left hand, drew
it to her shoulder and laid his fingers gently on her velvet-covered shoulder?
Madness perhaps, but a divine madness. There was something tremendously
exciting in the fact that whereas he was fully clad and might have walked out
into the street without causing remark, she was unseemly for any eye but his.
Her expression changed slowly from sternness to soft, timid bliss. She was very
beautiful: her face, her hair, her eyes, her lips, her bosom--all were
intolerably beautiful. Their beauty redeemed the entire room from its horrid
vulgarity. The lamps had somewhat changed the room, and now her beauty,
trembling, changed it completely. Bliss awaited him, a dozen inches off. There
were no liabilities, only assets. He ceased to reason. He felt that reason was
an absurdity. Reason was dissolved in emotion. Anxieties, apprehensions,
careers, worldly considerations were cast away and forgotten. His hand still on
her shoulder, he pushed her backwards on to the pillow, pushed her violently;
and she yielded in ravished acquiescence to his violent gesture. And waited,
resigned, humble, ecstatic in bliss.
He leaned over her, and kissed her open mouth. She
closed her eyes. Suddenly she lifted her head an inch from the pillow and
repaid his kiss. And he too, having given happiness to her, was happy beyond
measuring. No matter what the price, the happiness outvalued it.
She whispered:
"And did you really not sleep last
night?" He nodded.
She whispered:
"So we were both lying awake." He
nodded.
"Were you glad when I rang you up on
Friday?" she asked, whispering.
He nodded. He could distinguish every detail of
her eyes as he gazed at her, the down on her cheeks.
"How pale you are!" he whispered: the
first words he had spoken!
"I didn't put any rouge on this
morning," she whispered. "I didn't want to look well. I wanted to
look pale. Was it wrong of me?"
He shook his head.
"Sure?"
He nodded, in his heart justifying what he
imagined to be her motive.
She said: "I don't mean I did it to make you
think I looked pale--"
"But I did think you looked pale," he
murmured. (Once more he had been misjudging her.)
"I did it because I wanted to look pale for
myself," she finished her sentence. "And so you noticed I looked
pale?"
He nodded.
"Very pale?" She was smiling.
"Rather pale."
"And did you feel sorry for me?"
He nodded.
"Were you sorry for me because you thought I
was sort of pining away for you?"
"No."
"I'm so glad. That would have been awful. I
couldn't have borne it. Then why?"
"I thought you were unwell. And you looked so
tired."
"Did I? Well. I was tired. But I'm not tired
now. Are you?"
"Not a bit."
"How lovely!...Darling, tell me all you ever
thought about me. I want to know all you ever thought about me. I know I'm an
egotist, so you needn't tell me that. Tell me all the nice things."
She was a child, he reflected, answering her smile
with a smile. Fancy being curious about what people thought of you, about the
impression you were making! It never occurred to him to wonder what impression
be himself was making. He just went blandly on his way. Perhaps it was he who was
the egotist, with his instinctive indifference to outside opinion.
He said, louder:
"You haven't been very egotistic with
Tessa."
"Ah! But that's a special kind of thing. That
was showing off--to myself. Tell me some more."
"I'll tell you the finest thing I know about
you. I've never forgotten it and I never shall."
"What?" she whispered, eager.
"Whisper it."
He whispered:
"Be still and know that I am God."
"But I never said that to you. Quoted it, I
mean. I can remember everything I ever said to you--or you said to me.
Everything."
"No. But you said it to your father, and he
told me. It puzzled your father, but it did impress him." He thought for a
moment of her neglectful father.
"But it didn't puzzle you."
"It's the greatest saying ever said," he
replied. She raised her head and gave him a delicious warm kiss; then,
contemplating, slowly stroked his cheek.
"How well you shave!" she murmured.
"Much better than father. Tell me, you weren't annoyed that morning when I
had the nerve to ask you to take me with you to Smithfield?"
"A bit. For a moment."
"Oh! How honest you are, darling! I adore you
for that. I'd sooner hear that than something smooth. But did you enjoy the
visit--me being with you?"
"Yes I did, as soon as I'd given myself up to
it."
"Wouldn't you like to read what I wrote about
it, in my book. I've got a carbon of it here. It's in the middle drawer of the
dressing-table."
"Shall I get it now?"
She nodded. He stirred.
"It must be very uncomfortable for you, on your
elbows like this, and your legs all twisted."
Yet she had called herself an egotist!
He found the typescript half-buried in gloves and
handkerchiefs. He held it in his hand, without opening it. No title on the limp
green paper cover. No name. No clue. Nothing. He fingered the dark green silk
which bound the sheets together. Her book would certainly show what she thought
of him, her reactions to him; and for this reason alone he was acutely
impatient to read it. How wrong he had been: superiorly crediting himself with
indifference to outside opinion about himself! He was quite as curious
concerning her estimate of him as she had been concerning his estimate of her.
Through the curtains he could hear the drumming of the raindrops on the pane.
"I'm to read this thing now, eh? At
once?"
"Of course!"
"Shall I go into the other room to read
it?"
"No. Stay here. I should be so lonely."
"I can't read by those bed-lights, I'm
afraid."
She sprang like a leopard suddenly out of the bed,
rushed to the door, and turned on the chandelier-lights, then to the
dressing-table and turned on the two toilet-lights.
"Now can you see to read?" She was standing close
by him. The blue négligé was a lovely flimsy thing. Below its curving
hem showed her blue trousers, and below the ends of the trousers her feet,
bare. Her eyes flashed with joy and pride. He recalled the soft assent of her
shoulder under his hand, and thought: "What an ass I was to hesitate for a
single second!" Did one hesitate to enter heaven? And the pure intimacy--exquisite
almost past enduring! He sat down in the sole easy chair, and opened the
typescript. She moved to and fro restlessly. He glanced at her with a
benevolent reproving frown.
"Look here," he said. "If you want
something to do, you might take away that tea-tray. I'm sure you're like
me--you hate to see things out of place, especially on the floor. In fact while
you're about it you might do a bit of washing-up." His tone was lightly
teasing.
She smiled enigmatically. "But there's
nothing in there to wipe with."
"There's a million towels or so. I saw
them."
"Very well."
She stooped and picked up the tray, and off she
went, lodging the rim of the tray against the door-jamb while she turned the
knob.
"And leave the door open," he said.
"Leave both doors open."
"But why?"
"I want to hear the sound of you
washing-up."
His false sternness enchanted her.
"I shall spoil my beautiful
dressing-gown," she objected. "Take it off then." She vanished,
and came back in a moment in her pyjamas and threw the peignoir into the middle
of the bedroom floor, where it lay--furnishing the room afresh. She was gone.
He could feel her ardent happiness like a heat ray. Soon he could hear,
faintly, the sound of crockery under the hands of the new kitchen-maid. He was
ineffably happy. Out of what strange material could felicity build itself!
In such felicity he would have been unable to
concentrate on any other book, but he found that on this book he could
concentrate without the least difficulty. It began with her sensations in Smithfield
Market. It was frank, wholly shameless. Was it fit for print in England? Well,
it must be, since a publisher had agreed to publish it. He read on the second
page that her companion and escort was masterful without quite knowing it. She
knew in herself that he was masterful, and she knew it too from the demeanour
of others towards him. He expected to find a lot more about her companion. But
he was disappointed. The book was about her, not about him. Was he masterful?
He supposed he must be. Because she could not be wrong. Everything else in the
chapter was so convincing. He marvelled at the total picture of her reactions
to Smithfield. He had to admit that he had been blind to some of the secret
essence of Smithfield. She was more fully revealing it to him. Her reference to
the nun was shocking. But beautiful too. On each page she unveiled beauty whose
existence he had not suspected.
He thought:
"She has a lovely mind...Of course. I knew
that before. The girl's a genius! But is she? Can I judge? She may be able to
write this, and nothing else. Anyway, she's a genius in herself, even if she
sits idle and doesn't do a thing. I'm a conceited idiot. I've been
condescending to her."
After a short time she reappeared in the bedroom.
"Have you read it--about the
meat-markets?"
"I've just this moment finished that part,
and I'm going on."
"Well?"
"I think it's simply wonderful. That's
all--for the present."
"You really mean that? Be careful of your
words. Because I shall believe you."
"I really mean it."
"Oh, my dear!" She breathed. "I'm
so relieved. You can't tell how happy you make me. I had a sort of idea it
mightn't be anything after all."
"Well, it is something after all."
"You're a great reader, aren't you?"
"I've read a fair amount. But I've never read
anything like this--since Marie Bashkirtseff."
"Who was she?"
"Never heard of her? No. Of course you
wouldn't have heard of her. She was before your time. But in her time
she made a devil of a stir in the world."
She approached the chair where he was reclining.
"Thank you," she said, with
extraordinary modesty, and kissed him.
He calmly turned a page.
"I'll tell you some more later." He bent
his eyes to the new page.
"But you can leave it now," she
suggested.
"Why?"
"Why! I want to talk."
"I will not leave it," he said
positively.
"But don't you want us to talk?"
"I want to listen to you. And this is
you." He raised the typescript. "Haven't you got anything to
do?"
"Yes. Plenty."
"Well, go and do it then. But not here."
"Why not here?"
"Because you're too exciting."
"Very well, darling," she acquiesced,
looked for and snatched up her handbag and departed, shutting the door.
His attention was now distracted from the page.
What would an impartial observer say? There he was, at his ease in her bedroom.
And she in pyjamas! Pooh! There was not and could not be an observer, impartial
or otherwise. Neither he nor she had anybody to consider. They were their own
convention-makers. And what was wrong with pyjamas? He was ridden by outworn
social prejudices. In these days did not both sexes go to cocktail-parties in
pyjamas. And her suit, in addition to being at least as decent as an evening
frock, was very handsome and very elaborate: obviously intended to be seen and
admired. The fact was he was being scared by the word 'pyjamas' and its
associations. Silly! And if anyone was entitled to see and admire pyjamas, and
her in them, was not he the man? Had she not welcomed his kisses as she lay in
bed in those very pyjamas? If so, why in the name of reason should he not watch
her as she walked to and fro in the pyjamas? Yes, utterly silly! And more--was
she not the writer of the astonishing pages which had thrilled him? She, the
actual author, somewhere outside, probably in the bathroom, obedient to him,
submitting meekly to his command! That was what was so marvelous--marvellous
enough to be hardly credible. Had not such a girl the right to wear what she
chose? And still more--he was happy. And she was happy. He repeated to himself
that they were their own convention-makers. And why not?
She returned again, but not soon. He was half-way
through the typescript.
"How do I look?" she asked, as she stood
close by him. Her cheeks had become delicately rose. She no longer wanted to be
pale for herself. She wanted to signalise her happiness, her perfect content.
"You're an artist," he answered.
"Say you're happy," she appealed to him,
finger on lip, rather childlike.
"I am." His tone was gay. "Well, I
see I mustn't read any more just now." She took the manuscript from him.
"But I shan't be properly happy till I've read every word of it. And
that's your fault. I expect you know I've missed my train."
"You haven't!"
"Let's guess what time it is."
"Three o'clock," she guessed.
"I guess five to four."
His watch said five o'clock. They were both
astounded. He had always maintained that he had the hour continuously at the
back of his mind, to ten minutes or so. And now he was sixty-five minutes out.
His happiness was mysteriously increased, his spirits heightened.
"What does it matter?" he exclaimed
joyously. "I'd telephoned to London, but I can call them up again--"
"And say you've missed the train."
"Not a bit of it. I've got my reputation to
think of. I never miss trains. I'll say I've been kept."
"And so you have!" she said. "But
you're glad, aren't you?"
He nodded. She put her arms round him.
"I'd better telephone to the hotel for a
room," he added.
"Not yet," she appealed.
"All right. Plenty of time. But oughtn't you
to be getting dressed?"
"Dressed? I don't want to waste my time
dressing. Shan't I do as I am?"
"But we shall have to eat, shan't we? And I
gather we can't eat here."
"Of course we can eat here," she said.
"You don't know your Paris, darling. All we have to do is to telephone, to
Larue's--say. And order what we like. They'll deliver it here, complete; and
they'll take away the ruins and remains. I'll do it now, shall I?"
"'Do it now' is a pretty sound motto."
"What would you like?"
"What you'd like."
"May I order anything I want?"
"You must."
She ran off into the drawing-room, where the
telephone was. Alone, he smiled to himself.
She came running back.
"Tell me what champagne," she said, as
it were breathless.
"Krug 1919."
She vanished.
He thought:
"Now where do I stand with her? I've kissed her.
That kind of a kiss must mean something. What? What does it mean to her?
Marriage? I don't care whether it means marriage or not. No, I don't
care!" He had been starved of women for long. The fast was at an end now.
She reappeared, and lay down like an animal on the
hearth-rug, shaking her head at the suggestion of the sofa.
A little before half-past six he had finished
reading the account of her reactions to life in London and Paris: fragmentary
impressions connected only by her individuality; a series of Very lights that
shot up into the sky, dazzlingly illuminated the dark landscape with a strange,
perhaps sinister revealing splendour, faded, and left the landscape in darkness
again. Not all the flashes were equally vivid; the later were not as brilliant
as the earlier; but on the whole the book was to him what he had called it:
wonderful, simply wonderful. It had fascinated and somewhat dismayed him. Some
minutes elapsed before he could think himself back into the accustomed three
dimensions of daily existence. He reflected: "But this girl is
staggering." It was scarcely to be credited that there she lay enveloped
in the blue négligé, on the hearthrug at his feet, her slippers kicked
off and her narrow feet bare, poring over "The Nature of the Physical
World," which apparently, from the look of the volume, she had by no means
yet finished. Twice, with an exclamation, she had sprung up and run into the
drawing-room, and through two open doorways he could hear her loud, clear, telephone-voice,
altering in French her order for the dinner.
Then they talked, she on the floor and he in the
easy-chair, her fingers occasionally stroking his ankles. The intimacy of their
seclusion! The intimacy was exquisite to him! And plainly so to her too! The
old question: What could she see in him? Then a bell rang, and startled him.
"Don't move!" she smiled. "It's our
dinner. I'll see to it."
Her tone and radiant glance thrilled him. He had
never seen anybody as rapturously beatified as she was. And he the sole cause!
If he had repelled her, what would have been her state at that moment? She
passed quickly into the drawing-room and closed the door. He dashed on tiptoe,
stealthily, into the bathroom to prepare himself for the enchanting meal.
"Oh! There you are!" she said as he
emerged.
She was coming out of the drawing-room. She
clasped his hand and without a word they went to dinner. The round centre table
was laid for two; and she must have laid it herself, for the two places were
set close together.
"It's what's called a cold collation, except
for the soup. Do you know how to open champagne?" She laughed.
It was all miraculous. At moments she sat on his
knee, and they ate from one plate.
He thought: "This cannot last. It's bound to
end. It's too good to last."
Hardly had they finished when the bell rang, and
startled him again.
"They've come for the things. I told them
nine o'clock. Can it be nine o'clock already? Now you go back into the bedroom,
that's a good boy. I'll attend to all this."
He obeyed. She ran after him into the bedroom,
snatched at her handbag, kissed him--a touch only.
"Here!" he said. "I'll--"
"I'm the hostess, if you don't mind,"
she said, giving him another kiss. And was gone. Both doors closed.
His heart was thumping in nervousness. The thing
was bound to end; and the duty to end it was his. She returned.
"Coast clear!" she said. "How
stuffy this central heating is!" She threw down the négligé.
"Well," he said, extremely
self-conscious, "I shall have to be off soon." He had said it. He had
no feeling at all of having eaten and drunk.
"But surely, darling," she murmured,
facing him with a candid, artless look of pure amazement. "Surely you
aren't thinking of leaving me here all by myself to-night." Her eyes
moistened.
THE
GLOVE
Next morning at about ten o'clock Evelyn, in his
big overcoat, was sitting on the terrasse of a large café on the north side
of the boulevard. The January air was sharp enough, but Evelyn sat in full
sunshine under the glass roofing, and an absolutely clear pale-blue sky above.
Not a trace of mud or dampness on the boulevard and its broad pavements. You
could no more believe that the Parisian climate was capable of serious rain
than you could believe that a pretty and charming woman seen at a party was
capable of a scowl or a tantrum.
The staff was attending to two huge stoves whose
warmth enabled customers to persist in the open-air habit characteristic of
Paris. Evelyn had before him on a tiny round table a tray containing chocolate,
rolls, butter, and a glass of cold water. Boulevard coffee he had reason to
distrust. Tea, which might have been excellent, would have suited his
alimentary tract better than the chocolate; but he had ordered chocolate for
the novelty of it, for the joy of the first sip, and because he knew that he
could rely on its quality. The rolls nearly equalled the rolls of the Imperial
Palace; the butter was delicious. He revelled in anticipation of the light
meal; he would be sorry when the last morsel was eaten, the last drop drunk,
and the palate. cleansing water had to be tasted. He revelled in the generous
sunshine. He revelled in the incessant traffic, the tooting of horns, the
moving spectacle of wayfarers brushing past his table, a little shabby and
hurried, not a single smart girl and hardly a man whose face did not show the
Latin melancholy, exacting, covetous, implacable, and preoccupied by desires;
hundreds of those pallid faces in the great motor-buses and in the taxis;
sardonic faces of the taxi-drivers; occasionally a magnificent auto;
occasionally a tourist-crowded charabanc; a small policeman with a big white
baton; shops, other cafés right and left and opposite; enormous gilt signs on
the monotonously similar façades, and signs black against the pale-blue sky;
Morris Columns advertising the performances at the Opéra, the Opéra Comique,
the Francais, the Odéon, the Variétés; the Palais Royal, the Trianon, the
Casino de Paris, etc., etc.:
Paris. He had a sensation of vigorous well-being,
of adventure, of an unplanned idle day awaiting him. And he had a sensation of
freedom. Who would have foreseen that he could share a bed with a
fellow-creature and yet would sleep moveless for more than six hours, awaking
at nine o'clock, fatigued, but agreeably fatigued, and refreshed?
Gracie, on being asked at
At nine o'clock, by the twilight of a bed-lamp, he
had gazed at her asleep. Unique vision: relaxed, the lips parted, the eyes
hidden, quiet, regular breathing, youth, beauty. He had gazed, and then risen.
If she wakened, so much the better for her satisfaction. If she did not waken,
so much the better for her health, and for his satisfaction in adhering to his
refusal to wake her. He had left the room to bathe; returned; she still slept.
He had transferred his studs to a clean shirt, opened and shut drawers, found
another suit and pair of shoes, every operation making a noise. She had not
stirred. The project of a solitary breakfast on the boulevard had irresistibly
enticed him. He had discovered her latch-key, and crept away, like a thief in
danger of being caught. Then the sunshine had smitten him. Yes, he was aware of
a sensation of masculine freedom.
As he luxuriated in the breakfast he kept
muttering, or perhaps only thinking, to himself: "By God! By God!"
Meaning that he had done it, had voyaged to Cythera. He muttered
"She is mine! Incredible! She is mine! What
about her father? Curse her father!" And thinking of the smooth
organisation of the admirable dinner, he muttered: "By God! She knows how
to make a man comfortable!" This had rather surprised him. Nevertheless,
on reflection it was not so surprising. Had she not presided over her father's
household! He thought: "Lucky I had my luggage with me!" Then a shaft
pricked him: "Had she schemed that luggage business beforehand?" No
matter! He drew out the shaft and threw it down. She was marvellous, she was
miraculous, and she was his. A virgin? He shook his head. No matter! These
notions about the importance of virginity were obsolete. What was her sexual
history? He had no right to enquire. Her experiments were her own business. One
must be fair. Beyond doubt she was passionately in love with him. He thought of
her with extreme tenderness. He could have forgiven her anything. A woman of
her extraordinary qualities was entitled to a code of her own. He exulted in
her.
A waiter having emerged from the interior of the
café, to serve another customer who had rapped impatiently on the window,
Evelyn asked for a newspaper--any newspaper. Two very well-dressed English
tourists strolled past the terrasse. He had a vague memory of having
once seen them, the woman assuredly, dining in the restaurant of the Imperial
Palace. They did not notice him.
"By Jove!" he thought, "I might be
recognised here at any moment!"
He had a spasm of apprehension. Absurd. Supposing
he was recognized--what of it? The boulevard was a free country. And at any
moment he could disappear beyond the possibility of tracing into the apartment
of his mistress. Still, he had the spasm, and he admitted to himself that he
would not have had it if he had been staying, a bachelor, at a hotel.
The waiter brought the newspaper. Of course it was
a continental Anglo-Saxon newspaper. But it was uncrumpled, fresh as newly gathered
fruit, and almost as appetising. He spread it out. The first thing he saw on
the front page was a little inconspicuous couple of paragraphs, to the effect
that the governmentally appointed Commission to examine and report on the
Licensing Laws and make recommendations thereupon was to hold its first meeting
on the Wednesday, and that a number of leading provincial and Scottish
hotel-proprietors were coming to London to give evidence. He was thunderstruck.
He would have to return to England on the morrow, Tuesday. Was he not the
leader of the great national agitation for the reform of the Licensing Laws?
And he remembered that he had not telephoned to London on the previous night.
He who never forgot anything had forgotten the nightly telephoning. Stranger
still: he had not once thought of it till that very moment! His exultation died
out like a finished candle. He became perturbed and gloomy, full of forebodings
and of disconsolate dejection. Probably, as he had failed to arrive home on the
previous night, Cousin or somebody would have called him up at the Concorde or
the Montaigne, or both, and would have been told that he had left Paris. Be
sure your sin will find you out...He had had no expectation that the meetings
of the Licensing Commission would start so soon.
He must go and break the news to Gracie instantly.
He in his turn rapped on the window. A waiter emerged. He paid the bill and set
off. Forebodings! Forebodings! Gracie's flat was within two hundred yards of
the café. He wished it had been further away. He had crept out of the flat like
a thief, and like a thief he re-entered it. Curious that, though he was
completely innocent in the affair of the Licensing Commission, he had a sense
of guilt, as if he was conspiring against Gracie; and he could not shake it
off!
He began minutely to plan his procedure in order
to minimise both the shock of the news to her and the inevitable resulting
friction. She would no longer be the author of the wonderful book; she would be
a girl in whom emotion would supplant reason: he knew it for certain. Should he
take off his big overcoat before going into the bedroom? Or not? He would not
take it off. The sight of the overcoat would at once convey to her the awkward
fact that he had been out; she would be faced with it, and no word said. The
fewer words the better, until she had accustomed herself to the new situation.
The bed-lamp was burning. She had wakened, then.
No, she was peacefully, touchingly, asleep. He had merely forgotten to
extinguish the light on departing. Where had been his wits? What had come over
him? He purposely shut the bedroom door with a bang. The bang disturbed her.
She stirred, opened her eyes, saw him. She smiled all her love. Love for him
was her first thought. The overcoat apparently did not disconcert her in the
least.
"Darling!" She stretched her arms to
welcome him. He advanced, bent down, kissed her, tenderly fondled her, kissed
her again. She held him close to her, his thick, rough, overcoat pressed
against her thin delicate pyjamas. "Darling! Were you going out? I'm so
glad you didn't go out without me. Why didn't you wake me when you got up? I
asked you to wake me, didn't I?" Her lips were under his; she was
murmuring into his mouth. Her rich voice was soft with sleep.
"Did you?" he murmured vaguely. By a
single misconception she had deranged all his plan. He would be compelled to
speak his confession.
"I thought I did."
"I shouldn't have dreamt of waking you,"
he said. "You looked too lovely asleep."
She went on:
"I've just this second had a most heavenly
idea. Of course we could have petit déjeuner here. It's not bad
either. But let's go out and have it on the boulevard. At some café."
"Fine!" he agreed. "It's a
beautiful morning."
He perceived the utter impossibility of confessing
that he had already breakfasted on the boulevard. To do so would break her
heart, child that she was. He perceived too that in breakfasting alone he had
committed an outrage. No! Despite the taste of chocolate on his tongue he had
assuredly not breakfasted.
"Well," he said gently, "I'm not
going out. I've been out."
'Oh! Darling!" she protested, but very
lovingly. "And I did want to lie here and watch you dress. I had a
delicious dream of watching you dress yourself. Why did you go out?"
"Only to buy a paper. Must keep an eye on the
world, you know."
"Darling, you are funny. Of course you must
keep an eye on your funny world," she assented, with ravishing humurous
charm.
Yes, she was unique. He would do anything for her,
anythingwithin reason and perhaps a bit beyond reason. But he was troubled. He
foresaw terrible complications from the momentshe was made to realise that he
must leave her the next morning. While he was removing his overcoat, she
slipped from under the bedclothes and silently took the overcoat from him and
put it on, and laughed at her image in the cheval glass. Evelyn laughed too.
She seemed not a great deal shorter than himself, and she could hardly be
called thin; yet the overcoat was immensely too big for her; it covered half
her hands, reached to her ankles; and as she wrapped it round her body it
doubly enveloped her, like a cloak.
"How enormous you creatures are!" she
said. "Still, it shall be my dressing-gown. Don't you love it on me,
dearest?" She glanced at him for admiration, and turned up the deep
collar. "How's that?"
"I suppose you're somewhere inside the
thing," he answered. "But I don't quite know where. Oh! Is that your
head peeping out of it? What a morsel!"
She went to the window, and drew the curtains
apart and raised the blind. Bright light rushed like an inundation into the
room, filling it to the ceiling and transforming it. The bed-lamp, which to the
eye had been the most important object, was now scarcely visible; it went on
burning unseen and neglected. She gazed forth at the blue sky.
"The morning has repented," she
murmured. Then she examined her features close in the dressing-table mirror.
"Oh! My God!" She set to work on them. She roamed around, did forty
things.
"Bath!" she said; and vanished.
Evelyn sat down to wait. He wanted to read again
the fatal paragraphs, but the newspaper was in the pocket of his overcoat. How
the devil was he to tell her? Nothing had been said between them as to his
departure, but he was deeply aware that she would resent being left less than
two days after she had seduced him. (Thus did he too realistically phrase the
event to himself.) He heard faintly the water pouring into the bath. He
observed the details of the bedroom. She had passed through it like an invading
army; the havoc and the litter she had made in two minutes were unbelievable.
"Darling!" He heard her distant voice.
"Help! Help!"
He hurried into the bathroom. She lay in the
steaming bath, white and pale pink, idly splashing: amphibious; a marvellous,
shameless, indecorous vision; but from the door he could not see her face.
"Darling! Do give me that dark soap from the
lavatory-basin. Is it there, or have I--"
"It's there."
He gave her the soap. Her wet fingers touched his.
"Let me see you," she said.
He advanced obediently towards the window, and her
eyes met his.
"What are you hiding from me?" she
asked, as it were casually, but with complete assurance.
They were necromancers, women; they possessed the
mysterious senses of animals. His guilt overpowered him. Well, the moment had
come. He bent down and drew the newspaper from the overcoat, which she had
thrown on the tiled floor, with her pyjamas on the top of it. He folded the
newspaper and handed it to her, indicating the paragraphs. She began by letting
it drop into the bath-water.
"That's what I was hiding from you, Mrs.
Clever." He tried to make his tone airy, amusing; but failed. She
retrieved the newspaper, and read the paragraphs.
"Well?" she demanded. Her eyes were very
wide open as she looked at him innocently, candidly, a puzzled child.
Explaining to her why it was essential that he
should be in London for the first sitting of the Commission in order to marshal
the evidence for reform, and telling her that it had long since been arranged
for the visiting hotel-potentates to stay at the Imperial Palace, where they
would count on his presence and guidance, he said:
"The odious fact is, that I must leave Paris
to-morrow morning. And I'm most frightfully sick about it. I'd no idea that the
sittings would start so soon. And nobody else had, either."
Gracie laughed, still with assurance, but a less
complete assurance.
"You needn't worry about the first day,
darling, or the first three or four days," she said, with a confident air
that had in it a trace of something akin to condescension. "You probably
don't know much about Parliamentary Commissions. I do. Daddy has had to give
evidence before them lots of times--well, two or three times--and I've often
heard him furious at their goings-on. He says they generally waste at least a
week before they get down to work, and they'll even adjourn for a week or a
fortnight or a month at the first meeting. Believe me, darling, I know! I've
not lived with daddy for nothing. No!" She was calmly quite peremptory, as
one who has settled a question once for all. Inexperienced in Evelyn, she did
not even suspect that her technique was very badly conceived.
"That may be so," he said quietly,
benevolently; "but all the same I shall have to leave to-morrow morning."
He saw her face change into a tragic discomposure.
She had continued to splash the bath-water. She ceased. She had looked at him
innocently, candidly, like a child. Now she wept like a child--a child that
simply cannot comprehend some cruel decree of a malevolent providence. Her
grief desolated Evelyn. He was ashamed of that unspoken sardonic thought of his
which had defined their coming together as a seduction by her, not by him. She
was ingenuousness itself. Stricken, she needed protection, defence, everything
that he could give her. She was entitled to the satisfaction of her young
instincts. And withal, what a woman! He recalled her phrase: 'The morning has
repented.' How exquisite! How easily it had come out! Doubtless she had lovely
fancies like that endlessly, all day, every day. The mind in the delicious,
forlorn, suffering child was amazing. To see her suffer was intolerable. All
had been happiness. Now all was woe. He must soothe her, succour her in her
irrational weakness. No. There was no 'must' about it. He most ardently desired
and yearned to soothe and succour her. He moved near her, bent down, and took
her soft cheeks in his hands, and raised her face to his. She was still crying.
"Would you leave me alone here for a
Commission?" she bubbled.
"Darling!" he murmured. "You don't
know how I hate to do it. Listen. I'll run along to the Concorde at once."
"What for?"
"To telephone to London. I shall get the
communication quicker there than here. I ought to have telephoned to the Palace
last night that I wasn't coming. But I absolutely forgot. They'll be thinking I
died en route." He smiled.
"Don't joke about dying," she said,
loud. The joke had frightened her, "And as for getting the communication,
I'll get that for you better than any hotel. I know a man at the Quai
d'Orsay--"
She freed her cheeks and climbed impulsively out
of the bath, wetting him. And, all wet, she put on his overcoat, and ran into
the drawing-room, leaving a trail of wet footmarks. He followed. What decision,
what resource she had! She was no more the defenceless child. She was a woman
engaging in battle to retain possession of a treasure to her priceless.
"What's your number at the Palace?" she
demanded sharply over her shoulder. He gave the number and waited. In three
minutes she had used her influence at the French Foreign Office. She rang off.
"You'll see how soon you'll get London!"
she said triumphantly.
Evelyn had somehow temporarily dwindled into a
nonentity. She padded back into the bath and he after her.
"You'll see it's bound to be all right,"
she said. Her self-deception was touching. She believed what she wished to
believe. 'They' all did. He knew that there was no hope whatever of it being
all right. But he did not say so.
"You might turn on some more hot water,"
she said. "This bath's nearly cold."
Nevertheless the water was still giving off steam.
She lay passive, all her enchanting body immersed except the head. She lay for
a long time. At intervals she burst into a sob, and tears fell. Evelyn hung up
the damp overcoat, inside out. No sooner had he done so than she said,
brokenly:
"Let me have that, will you?" and got
out of the bath, wiped herself, got into the overcoat once more, and passed
into the bedroom.
"I shall lie down for a while," she
said.
And down she lay in the overcoat. Comical sight.
Evelyn attentively covered her with the eiderdown. Then the telephone-bell
rang.
"What did I tell you, darling!" she
exclaimed. He was relieved that she had resumed the use of that last word,
though he was well aware that ordinarily it meant nothing in her vocabulary.
Since their union, however, he had decided that it had begun to mean all that
he could have wished it to mean. And in fact it had.
Voice of Mr. Cousin in the telephone in the
drawing-room. It explained that as he had not rung up, Oldham, recalled upon
his holiday, had gone to Victoria to meet his master on Sunday night, and that
on the man's report that his master had not arrived vain attempts had been made
to communicate with Evelyn at both the Concorde and the Montaigne, in which
places it was understood that he had left Paris for London. In answer to this
Evelyn stated with careful vagueness that he had decided to take a brief
holiday from his hotels, but had been prevented from telephoning news of the
change of plan. He enquired about the sittings of the Licensing Commission. The
answer surprised and intensely relieved him. And then Cousin began to talk
generally of Imperial Palace affairs.
Evelyn resisted the onset of business; he
preferred to reserve his mind exclusively for the affair of Gracie; but the
force of habit overcame his resistance. He wanted not to enjoy the familiar
sensation of dealing with the problems and difficulties of the hotel organism;
but he enjoyed it, and he could not deny this to himself. Such sensations had
constituted almost the whole of his emotional life, until the last two days.
Gracie had brought about a revolution in his mind, overturning a throne; but
now the deposed monarch resumed dominion in a moment. Strange! Disconcerting!
Yet somehow reassuring, comforting! His thoughts were far too complex for
analysis, especially by one who was temperamentally hostile to the process of
analysis.
Gracie was enveloped in his overcoat on the bed in
the next room, incalculable, exacting, an exquisite, adored, brilliant,
childlike monopolist..."Concerning the arrangements for lodging the
northern hotel-managers. Yes. No. Yes. No. Sixth. Nothing should be higher than
Sixth..." Gracie was lying in his overcoat..."Leave all that to Miss
Powler..." Gracie was unhappy...The telephone time-allowance had to be
renewed twice. God! And an hour or so earlier he had been visualising the day
as a day of idle dalliance without a programme!..No, he could not give a
telephone number to Cousin; he did not know quite where he would be. But he
would telephone to the hotel for news. "Au revoir. Au revoir."
He replaced the receiver, sighing as much in apprehension as in relief. Before
returning to the bedroom he reflected, unfruitfully.
He was amazed, and a little hurt, to find Gracie
lying on her stomach, absorbed, scribbling fast with a pencil on a block of
manuscript-paper. She must have got out of bed, for the eiderdown was on the
floor. Had she forgotten her woe and her suspense?
"Well, darling?" She did not look up;
indeed she continued to write.
"It's all right," he said.
"I knew it would be," she said.
"Yes. But not in the way you think. The
Chairman of the Commission has caught a chill, and he doesn't want them to
start without him. It's all postponed for a week. The journalists didn't hear
the news yesterday, so to-day's papers are a bit behind the times."
Tenderly he restored the eiderdown. She now looked
up at him, offering her lips. He kissed her. He clasped her. If she had the
whim to write, was she not her own lord? He felt no hurt. What were hotels,
mergers, organisations, careers? Naught. He was as variable as a woman. His
ideals, his desires, changed from one minute to the next. His mental processes
(he admitted) were, then, as crude as a woman's. What alone was certain was
that the sight and feel of her affected him overwhelmingly. His instinct to
protect her, to please her, to delight her, to produce the smile of bliss on
her beautiful face, shot up resistlessly and ruled his being.
"Darling," she said, still half absorbed
in the dream of her composition. "Breakfast. You must be terribly
hungry."
"Not very," he said, with truth.
The chocolate reproached him, in the French sense
of the word as well as in the English.
"Will you order something?" she
suggested.
"Oh! Hadn't you better order it
yourself?" he countered. The Englishman in him was intimidated by the
prospect of demanding breakfast for two in the apartment of a young woman!
Gracie replied:
"Oughtn't a hotel-keeper to be capable of
ordering a breakfast?" She said the words with a delicious, roguish, and
loving smile. And he was undoubtedly a hotel-keeper. Nevertheless his sensitive
pride felt a prick, as if from her disdain of his calling. Moreover, could the
managing director of the world's greatest luxury hotel-merger fitly be
described as a hotel-keeper? Childish vanity! Still, the dart stuck in the
wound.
"He certainly ought," he agreed
manfully. "What will you have, my dear?"
"Oh! Anything. Tea?"
He nodded and left the bedroom. His hat lay on the
centre table of the drawing-room, where he had dropped it. He put it on,
ridiculously, idiotically arguing to himself that a hat on his head might
persuade the waiter that he had merely dropped in for breakfast with the young
woman. He rang the bell, and then, ashamed, he went into the little
entrance-hall and hung the hat on the hatstand there. The waiter arrived in
long white apron, sleeved waistcoat and noiseless slippers, and accepted the
order with a bland and totally indifferent: "Deux thés complets. Bien,
monsieur." The folly and futility of pretending to a waiter in such an
apartment that things were not what they were became humiliatingly clear to
Evelyn. Nothing was or could be hid from the waiter. The service was very
rapid.
Gracie, having heard the front-door close a second
time, called out from the bedroom: "Is it there? You go on with yours,
will you, darling? I'll be there in half a minute."
In less than half a minute she indeed was there,
in knickers and camisole, frockless. She said, lightly:
"You think I shall be two hours over
dressing. You'll see. I can dress as quick as any woman you ever knew."
She sipped the tea, tore a roll into two halves. "I think I'll get my
frock on, if you don't mind, dearest." And she ran off, cup in hand and
her mouth full of buttered roll.
Evelyn sat miserably alone, sipped tea, ate
nothing. Gracie returned for a second cup and another mouthful; she was still
frockless, but she had exchanged her bedroom mules for shoes. This time
she sat close to Evelyn.
"Of course," she said, "if it
hadn't been for that lucky chill, you'd have simply had to go to London
to-morrow morning."
"I should," he answered, and added with
a sigh: "Duty before--love."
"Yes," she said.
She was charming in her sweet acquiescence. She
had seen reason. Tears gone, resentment gone. Happy as a child. Throwing a kiss
to him, she vanished once more. Evelyn was still not happy. Her demeanour was
exquisite, but was it not perhaps mysteriously deceptive? His own was
deceptive. At last she returned fully accoutred, bag in one hand, gloves in the
other.
"Now I must fly," she said brightly.
"The car's been waiting I don't know how long."
"Where to?"
"To see poor Tessa, of course. I daren't
neglect her. Oh! damn these gloves!" She crunched the gloves into a ball
in her hand.
"What's the matter with them?'
"They're the wrong ones."
"Give me one of them," he said.
"What for?"
"Because you've worn it." And the fact
was that in that moment he did feel a real desire for one of her gloves as a
keepsake. A very odd desire, for him, but it existed.
"Oh! Darling! Isn't that morbid?" She
put her arms lovingly round his neck, but she was reproving him. "I
couldn't do that."
"No," he agreed, forcing a pleasant smile.
"Of course you couldn't. Excuse me one second."
He went into the bathroom, merely in order to hide
from her.
'Morbid,' was it? He would not deny that it was
morbid. And what then? She ought to have felt tremendously flattered by such
morbidity. He was hurt for the second time that morning. He waited to recover
from being so incomprehensibly an ass. Then he heard her run back to the
bedroom, and he emerged. In the drawing-room he saw the gloves conspicuously
placed on the breakfast-tray. He thought, querulously:
"She should know better than that. One glove
is a keepsake. But two are only a pair of gloves. No man ever kept a pair of
gloves for a souvenir." And he left the gloves where they lay, and sat
down in front of them, harshly ignoring the fact that she had yielded to his
morbid caprice. He thought, shamed but obstinate: "My character is
changing. Why is it changing?"
Gracie reappeared with another pair of gloves. She
glanced for the fifth of a second at the pair on the tray, and at him.
"Well," she exclaimed with
self-possessed, affectionate cheerfulness. "I must be off."
"Am I to come with you?"
"Oh no, darling! That wouldn't quite
do, would it?"
"Why must you go just now?" He forced a
new smile. If she could still be self-possessed and affectionately cheerful, he
could.
She said:
"Duty before--love, dearest."
This was her unkindest blow, for it silenced and
paralysed him. He glanced about the room while she put on the gloves. When they
were on she came to him and kissed him many times. And her clothes were so
exceedingly smart, and so fresh and cool, and her smile so perfect, loving and
unvirginal! But, though his bearing was as admirable as hers, his heart would
not be comforted.
"And when shall I see you?" he asked.
"When I come back."
She was maddening, but he refused to be maddened.
"And when will that be?"
"Oh! Not long."
"Two hours?"
"At the most, my lion."
"And supposing I want to go out, how shall I
get in again?"
"Sweetest. Here's the key. Stick it under the
mat. If you don't find it there, ring. I shall be in. If I don't find it there,
I'll ring--"
She departed. Solitary in the flat, he felt more
miserable than ever. He was beloved--yes, perhaps; nay, surely!--but he was
miserable. Everything had gone wrong. The suddenly announced excursion to St.
Cloud was mere feminine vindictiveness. Must be!..Her 'lion' indeed!
Then he happened to look at the breakfast-tray.
Only one glove on it among the crockery! She had needed no telling. She had
understood. While he was looking about the room, she had surreptitiously
snatched a glove away. She was astounding. There could not be another like her.
Strange, strange indeed, that this trifle should comfort his difficult heart,
exhilarate his mood into joy. But it was so. He picked up the glove, examined it,
turned it over and over, smelt its perfume. The glove was a precious morsel of
herself; she had left herself in the glove. He put it into his pocket, and he
could feel it there, an authentic treasure.
THE
LOVELY MILKMAID
Evelyn was in the drawing-room when he heard
voices in the hall. Voices of Gracie and a man--doubtless her chauffeur.
Closing of the front-door. Gracie peeped into the room. At last! She had
evidently changed her clothes while at St. Cloud. She ran into the room,
smiling in happy anticipation of the reunion. He rose. She kissed him and
kissed him, and her embraces gave him acute pleasure, pleasure whose intensity
surprised him. He thought: "Yes, I am really in love." This thought
itself gave him pleasure. She seemed not to be able to cease from kissing him.
Impossible to disbelieve that she too was passionately in love.
"You poor thing!" she said, in eager
commiseration. "Have you been sitting here ever since I left?"
"Not quite all the time," he answered.
"The man came in to do the rooms, so I went out for a walk. I left the key
under the mat. When I came back it was still under the mat. The man hadn't absolutely
removed the dust, but he'd shifted it about a bit. I waited till you'd been
gone two hours and a half or more, and then I thought I'd better be getting
something to eat. So I stepped over to Larue's. I had a cold snack there. And
I've just come in again. The key was still under the mat. How's Tessa?"
"She's quite all right. But she had to be
soothed, and I decided to stay and see her eat--"
"You haven't eaten anything?"
"Oh yes. I ate with her. Then I had to
collect some clothes I simply hadn't a rag here."
"No. Only a wardrobe full," he
interjected.
"And here I am. Sit down, because I want to
sit on your knee."
"Well, then, take your coat off, and
your hat. If you keep them on it'll make me feel as if you were sitting on my
knee in the street."
"How right you are! I was going to."
She obeyed and she sat on his knee and secured her
position by putting one arm round his neck. "You aren't cross with me for
being so late?"
"Do I look cross?"
She gazed at him. "No. You look
heavenly."
"Well, I know I don't look heavenly, but I'm
not the tiniest trifle in the world cross, my dear."
This was true. He had forgiven and forgotten her
vindictiveness in leaving him, if indeed vindictive she had been. But he still
felt a physical weight of oppression in the chest, such as one feels at the
announcement of the possibility of a grave misfortune. She was not acting; she
was too young and too candid to act convincingly for long together. But he was
acting. She was 'near' him (her phrase), but he, despite love, was not near to
her. He was afraid. He feared that a disaster had only been postponed. One day,
and soon, he would have to leave her. And then--what? More tears? More ruthless
tears? Yes, her tears were ruthless. She had used tears without regard for the
cost of them to himself. Passionate love was ruthless. It could not argue. It
could not see reason. Serious trouble had been averted by an accident, but he
had had a glimpse of it. And the imminent menace of it was bound to recur.
Their situation was not defined. It continued from hour to hour. Undefined, it
could not continue for ever. They had loved, but they had not spoken, save to
assert that they loved.
And Evelyn could not bring himself to attempt to
define the situation to her. To do so would appear too practical, too prosaic.
And the situation between them was too delicate in its beauty to bear such
rough treatment. How could he say to her:
"Look here, darling! All this is lovely, but
where are we?" He must obviously await his opportunity. And to be forced to
wait exasperated his nerves. Such was his character: he had a horror of an
undefined situation. He must have his programme clearly before him if he was to
be at peace within. No matter what the programme! He preferred a harassing
programme to no programme. Marriage? He was entirely ready for marriage and all
its risks. But she was just the kind of girl to laugh at the notion of
marriage. Liaison? He was entirely ready for that too, with all its ecstasies
and frightful trammels of deceit. But was it to be understood to be permanent?
Or merely a charming, transient episode in their lives? No. The latter
alternative was absurd, for she was passionately in love with him. He thought
of her all the time, of her wishes and her happiness. He did not think of himself,
except in so far as he wanted an answer to the question, "Where are
we?" The question could not be put. It was too crude...He felt the weight
on the chest. But her kisses were surpassingly sweet, her companionship quite
marvellous. She was utterly his. And he loved her unselfishly.
"Shall we start out?" she whispered.
"I vote for the Louvre. It isn't three o'clock."
"The Louvre!" he objected.
"Not to see the Titian Venus?"
"But the Louvre's so hackneyed."
"That's why we must go there." She
kissed him. "Have you forgotten we're going to be tourists? What
fun!"
"The Louvre then!" he yielded, and this
time it was he who kissed her.
She slipped from his knee, passed into the
bedroom, and returned, laughing, in the mackintosh, and the Baedeker in her
hand. Entrancing child!
As they descended the frowsy, dubious stairs he
asked:
"Got the car here?"
"Oh no! Tourists in mackintoshes don't have
cars. They take taxis."
"Of course. What was I thinking of?" he
agreed, joining in the make-believe.
Outside she glanced up at the sky and said:
"I'm so glad it looks like rain, for the sake
of my mackintosh."
The taxi was rolling along the rue de Rivoli, and
the Louvre well in sight, and their hands comfortably clasped, when Evelyn
suddenly signalled to the driver to stop.
"What is it?" Gracie's face changed from
joy to alarm.
"We shan't go to the Louvre," he said
firmly, masterfully. "Very well, darling," she instantly acquiesced.
"Anywhere you please." Her submissiveness made him ashamed, for his
tone had been a trick.
"It's closed on Mondays," he said with
casualness. "We'd both forgotten that."
"I believe you remembered it all the
time," said Gracie, accusing him with a laugh; but when she saw on
Evelyn's face the beginning of a half-serious rebuttal of the charge, she ceased
laughing and put a soothing hand on his knee. "No, I didn't really believe
that. What a tease I am!"
He had never noticed in her any tendency to tease.
"Well now, what is to be the next move?"
"I'll tell you," she replied at once.
"But you can turn it down if you don't like it. I want to buy a frock at
Jolie Laitière. Of course, darling, you hate shopping."
"I love it," he said. "When I get
the chance. Especially in a big shop."
The fact was that he was always strongly attracted
by the spectacle of the organisation of any large commercial establishment, and
he considered that in this respect department stores were the nearest rivals of
the big hotels.
Gracie popped her blithe touristic head out of the
taxi-window and reinstructed the driver, and the taxi swerved into the rue des
Pyrénées. She was gleeful; the Louvre, demolished in one second, no longer
existed for her. Her mood communicated itself to Evelyn; her girlishness and
the intimacy of the taxi had lightened the weight on his chest; life was joyous.
Now they were going up the Avenue de l'Opéra. Just south of the Place de
l'Opéra there was the customary block of traffic, and scores of vehicles were
chafing against the white baton on a pigmy policeman.
"Arrêtez/" cried Gracie, though the taxi was stationary at
the kerb. She opened the door and jumped down. "That's a car that daddy
always hires, in front! I remember the number on its tail."
She ran ahead a few steps and tattooed on the
window of the car. Evelyn thought: "Is she mad? What will she do next?"
He too got out, judging that the safest course was to stick to her. The door of
the car swung open. Sir Henry Savott's head appeared. Gracie eagerly kissed her
father. Already the girl was innocently chattering.
"Here's Mr. Orcham. I waited three days for
weather at Dover; it was simply frightful, and when I got on the boat he
came on board. He looked after me on the train. And now he's finished his work
and I've made him take an afternoon off. We were going to the Louvre, only it's
closed on Mondays; so I'm dragging him off to do some shopping with me, and he
has to buy some cigars. You off to London by the four o'clock, daddy?"
Sir Henry nodded.
"I thought so from the luggage."
It all sounded impeccably proper and natural, and
Gracie's demeanour had the perfect grace of easy innocence. But what was the
significance of that touch about cigars?
"And where are you picnicking, child?"
asked Sir Henry.
"Oh! At St. Cloud as usual."
The two men shook hands. Sir Henry said that he
had had one night in Paris. He did not pursue the enquiry concerning Gracie. He
accepted her statements with bland and kindly indifference. It was no affair of
his where she might be picnicking, or whom she might have inveigled into an
afternoon off. The block was loosened; vehicles began to move; there was some
impatient hooting of horns because Sir Henry's car and Evelyn's taxi were
impeding the outer line of traffic; car and taxi stood their ground, and the
taxis and cars behind swerved past them.
"I say, Evelyn," said Sir Henry. "I
suppose you're at the Montaigne. I shall probably be telephoning to you early
tomorrow morning. Say nine o'clock?"
Evelyn collected his wits. If Gracie could invent
misleading but persuasive detail on the instant, he reckoned that he could do
as much. He answered nonchalantly:
"Well, I'm not quite sure about to-night and
to-morrow. I've nothing else to do here..."
"Everything all right with old Laugier?"
Sir Henry interrupted.
"Quite. Quite. And I had an idea of running
up to Brussels to-night. I've heard of a proposition there that might possibly
suit us."
"Really?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, and thought:
"If he asks me the name of the hotel I'm done. Ah! The Splendide would
serve." He said aloud, but in a semi-confidential murmur: "The
Splendide."
"Really! But you'll be back in London
to-morrow evening, Evelyn?"
"I might or I might not. It depends."
"But the Licensing Commission business. I saw
it in the paper to-day."
Evelyn explained.
"Oh well, if that's so, I shan't trouble to telephone
you to-morrow. It was about the evidence." Sir Henry glanced at his watch,
and then proceeded to demonstrate that he had been studying Licensing Reform
with some care. He raised, briefly, several points. Evelyn's mind had been void
of Licensing Reform for days, and he had feared that his erudition on the
subject had left him for ever. But Sir Henry's questions brought it all back
complete, absolutely complete. He welcomed its return with satisfaction, and
answered the questions with satisfaction--and fully. Sir Henry might have
studied the matter with some care, but he, Evelyn, would prove to him that he
was an amateur talking to an expert. And Evelyn did prove it. As for Gracie,
she amiably and modestly listened to the panjandrums, without the slightest
impatience. Sir Henry glanced at his watch again.
"I must be off. I'm not quite sure about my
seat in the train. I'm going to Berlin to-morrow."
"Films, daddy?"
Sir Henry nodded. He kissed his daughter, shook
hands with Evelyn, and was gone at once, a second traffic block having been by
this time freed.
Ensconced again in the intimacy of the taxi,
Gracie and Evelyn broadly smiled to one another.
"Fancy seeing daddy like that! I couldn't not
have two words with him, could I?" Gracie justified herself.
"Of course not," Evelyn agreed.
"And you're very clever. But what's this about me wanting cigars?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, and popped her head
out and told the driver to go to the tobacco-bureau under the Grand Hotel. The
driver complained that, according to the police rules, he would have to make
the circuit of the Opera in order to reach the bureau.
"Deux fois si vous voulez," Gracie laughed. Then she turned to
Evelyn. "I noticed yesterday you hadn't any cigars. A man must have
cigars. I intend to buy you some. It's a good bureau, the one under the Grand
Hotel is. If it isn't under the Grand Hotel it's next door. Anyhow he knows
where I mean." She indicated the driver.
"This is the height of hospitality,"
said Evelyn, and comically raised his hat.
"And you're pretty clever too!" she went
on. "What was the bit about Brussels?"
"Nothing," he said. "It just
occurred to me and I brought it in."
They both laughed again. Nevertheless Evelyn was
somewhat perturbed by the brilliant glibness of the perversions of truth with
which she had fed her deceived father. Not a word about Tessa. (Well, of course
not.) If she could hoodwink one man she could hoodwink another. Hers was a
rich, wondrous individuality; but could she be called a reliable helpmeet? And
she had been so light-hearted and prettily shameless in the bravura
performance.
Arrived at the tobacco-bureau, Evelyn was
requested to choose cigars, and Gracie insisted on paying for a box of fifty
and on carrying the box--in addition to the red Baedeker.
He was perturbed anew. Was it her dream that they
two would live together in the dubious apartment for ever?
Evelyn paid off the taxi, and they walked side by
side in the thronged, noisy, gay streets round the back of the Opéra to Jolie
Laitière. At the foot of the wide and high stone-faced façade were a series of
al fresco counters, covered with an apparent confusion of stuffs, feminine
garments and fal-lals of a hundred varieties, all of them fingered, handled,
and turned over and over by crowds of besieging, appraising women. Behind the
counters, against the immense windows of the store, a row of men stood in the
dying light and in the cold, hatless but overcoated, who with chilled, bluish
hands served the women while protecting the goods as well as they could from
the rapacious female assault.
More business was transacted at those counters
than had been transacted in the whole establishment during its early days. The
Lovely Milkmaid had started a long career as a small shop whose dimensions were
not unsuited to its sentimental title. It had been burnt down once, and rebuilt
three times, larger and larger, growing incessantly until it was now one of the
wonders of the retail world. But it was still called the Lovely Milkmaid, and
no Parisian perceived any incongruity in the name. Indeed the good will of the
mere name was probably worth some millions of francs.
Gracie and Evelyn went in by one of the ten grand
entrances. Heat smote them; light smote them. The winter day died much earlier
in the store than in the street. Electricity was festooned everywhere. Dozens
of counters, hundreds of saleswomen and salesmen in black, multitudes of women
customers and a few men. Incalculable heaps of commodities in all tints. Lifts
on every side ascending and descending. Huge as the place appeared from the
street, it appeared much more huge within. It was measureless, infinite. In the
centre a monumental stairway, all balustraded with lamps, rose in curves from
storey to storey till it ended at the sixth. Above the stairway, in the roof,
an incredible chandelier of a thousand lamps! Gracie pushed forward through the
throngs, between the counters,straight to the stairway.
"I want the first floor," she said.
"It's more amusing to walk up..."
"You seem to know the geography here,"
Evelyn observed.
"No. I've only been here once--for Tessa. She
came with me."
On the first floor they were in another universe,
the universe of frocks, coats, cloaks, peignoirs. All seemed to be disorder;
every individual was preoccupied, busy. Yet Gracie had not gazed for ten
seconds at a long straight range of hung frocks before a plump little
black-robed woman of thirty-five or so materialised magically at her elbow.
"Madame desires?"
The plump little woman's tone, speciously urbane, conveyed
the great truth that the one object of her existence was to devote herself
solely to the satisfaction of the wishes, however exacting or capricious, of
Gracie. Soon the saleswoman had three day-frocks on her arm, and was leading
Gracie towards a trying-on cubicle in a street of cubicles.
"Don't leave me, darling," Gracie
murmured.
All three entered a cubicle full of mirrors and
lamps, and glistening with polished woodwork. The door was shut.
"No, not that one," said Gracie.
"My husband loves not green."
"A pink then," said the saleswoman.
"Monsieur loves pink?" She turned deferentially to Evelyn, as to one
whose preferences were a law. "I have a ravishing pink." She left the
cubicle, hurrying.
"What's the idea of all this?" Evelyn
asked, but he said nothing about having been made a husband. "Is it for
Tessa?"
"Certainly not. It's for me."
"But--"
"You are sweet" Gracie laughed,
and kissed him. "Don't you see I want to be a tourist? These things I have
on don't go at all with a mackintosh and a Baedeker."
The saleswoman came back with the ravishing pink.
Gracie took off her mackintosh, and then her frock. Evelyn, abashed, caught the
saleswoman's eye with alarm, but the saleswoman's eye gave no sign that she was
shocked. Gracie put on the ravishing pink.
"That suits madame to a marvel. Is it not so,
monsieur?"
Gracie surveyed herself in a mirror.
"I think it will do," said she. "I
am pressed for time."
"But madame," the saleswoman protested
against this rapidity of decision. "These others--they are worth the
trouble of essaying."
So Gracie essayed the others. But she held to her
first ideal--the ravishing pink, and put it on again.
"I will take it."
"It needs a quite little touch on the
shoulder."
"That is nothing," said Gracie. "I
do not wish that it should fit too well. I will wear it at once. You can send
my old frock to my address."
"But certainly, madame," said the
saleswoman, as suspicious now as she was astounded. She seized the old frock,
held it up and examined it. "That," said she, "that is high dressmaking."
"Now can I try on some cloaks--in here?"
Gracie asked.
"But with pleasure, madame."
Another saleswoman was fetched, with an assortment
of coats. The first saleswoman remained; the cubicle seemed to be full of
women. Twenty minutes passed on the choosing of a coat.
"And now a hat," said Gracie.
"Here, madame?"
"Yes."
"Ah! madame, that will be more difficult. The
department of hats--"
"I supplicate you."
"It is well, madame."
The first saleswoman vanished once more. The second
saleswoman was studying Gracie's old hat. A third saleswoman appeared, followed
by a young girl bearing a shallow basket of hats. With five women in the
cubicle Evelyn deemed himself extinguished. But as soon as a new hat was
established on Gracie's head, all four assistants brought him back to life and
importance by one combined glance of appeal for approval. A hat was selected
from a dozen. Gracie resumed the mackintosh, strapped it at the waist, took the
Baedeker, her bag, the box of cigars. And the first saleswoman, price-tickets
in hand, escorted the lovers to a cash-desk, and complex arrangements were
concluded for the delivery of Gracie's cast-offs.
"Madame can count on it," said the first
saleswoman. "Au revoir, madame. Au revoir, monsieur. Many thanks.
To the pleasure of seeing you again."
As soon as they were free of the assistants,
Gracie laughed with abandonment.
"Isn't it too lovely? Don't you adore me like
this? Shall we have tea now?"
"Where, my dear?"
"Why! Here, of course. Upstairs."
They regained the vast curving stairway. He took
her arm, and she pressed his forearm between her arm and body, and leaned
slightly against him.
"Trying-on's great fun," she said.
"But it's frightfully exhausting." Because he was supporting her she
wanted to feel fatigue, and she did feel it.
He reflected:
"Supposing I was seen by someone I knew
arming a young woman up these stairs! They'd instantly think I'd brought her to
Paris for the week-end--a typist or some girl of that sort, they'd think--with
those clothes she's wearing now. Whereas if she'd looked really smart they
wouldn't have thought that, and what's more, if she'd been wearing her own très
chic things, I doubt whether I should have taken her arm. Extraordinary how
people always think that girls of a lower class than themselves, or a higher,
are less moral than they are!" He wondered what Miss Cass would say and do
if he tried to abduct her to Paris for a week-end. The mere notion made him
smile. Miss Cass would assuredly give notice--and with haughtiness too. But at
that moment he didn't care who might see him with Gracie on his arm. He
abandoned himself without a qualm to her capturing love, recalling sardonically
the line of Racine:
"Venus all clinging to her helpless
prey."
He savoured the sensation of being a
prey--especially a prey which could when it chose turn on its captor and tear
her to pieces.
"What are you laughing at?" Gracie asked
in a low voice charged with her love.
"Smiling," he corrected her.
"Well, smiling."
"Your clothes, my dear."
"I'm so glad you like them, darling!"
she breathed. (Not that he did like them!)
"How do you know there's a restaurant in this
place?" he questioned, mischievous in his happiness.
"Well, there must be."
"I'll bet anything there isn't," he
said.
"And how do you know?"
"I know because I haven't seen a single
notice about it," he said. "They think here that customers come to
buy--not to drink tea. And I beg to state that your acquaintance with these big
shops is still very imperfect."
"Perhaps it is," she assented.
She questioned a liftman on the third floor. No.
So far as the liftman knew there was no restaurant in the Lovely Milkmaid.
"You are clever!" she said to Evelyn
admiringly. She would lose no pretext for admiring him. "I'm tired,"
she murmured. "Let's sit down."
They were now in the household furniture
department. Gracie glanced around for chairs.
"Not a chair," she said.
"Scores of chairs," he corrected her,
and moved two chairs from a dining-room suite close by, and put them near the
balustrade.
"I meant chairs for customers," she
said. "They'll come and complain"
"When they do, we'll deal with the new
situation," said Evelyn
"Oh, darling! I'm so happy you're
happy." They sat.
"There's one good thing," said Evelyn.
"Anglo-Saxons may come here for frocks, but they certainly won't come here
for furniture."
" What do you mean, darling?"
"I mean we're safe."
Gracie made no answer.
They both looked over the brass-ornamented steel
railing down, down, into the deep well of the vast shop. The string of electric
lamps beneath the railing confused and dazzled their eyes; but they had a
general vision of the spectacle of the glittering mart; the bottom of the well
seemed to be packed with a struggling mob of women's hats, among which a few
masculine hats moved strangely--hats of intruders, of Paul Prys, who had no
right to insinuate themselves into this illimitable, esoteric purdah. The
intermediate floors, of which the lovers from their vantage could see only the
half on the opposite side of the well, were almost equally crowded; the
stairway was as busy with women as a street, and at short intervals crowded
lifts could be glimpsed, sliding mysterious and silent up or down. And
everywhere, except in the lifts, half the women, bareheaded and in black,
helping the other half, hatted and in colours, to adorn their persons for the
allurement of absent males: while at broad, sloping desks men were writing out
bills and receiving cash, cash, endless cash, and in the parcels-enclosures
girls and boys were tying up parcels, parcels, parcels.
"It's rather wonderful, I must say,"
Evelyn remarked.
"It makes me feel sad," Gracie answered.
"Sad! Why? Half a minute ago you seemed to
have so much happiness in you you didn't know what to do with it all."
Evelyn's tone was benevolently bantering.
"There are too many of us. Women, I mean. And
we have to fight. It reminds me of the world, this shop does: too many women,
and all fighting for a niche and trying to stretch ten francs into twenty to
make the best of themselves. I can see them all naked. I can see into their
naked minds, and all their minds are the same. But I haven't seen a happy face.
Every face I've seen is anxious. Do you know what this place is--it's the
Western Front."
"What do you know of the Western Front, my
dear? You aren't old enough to have been a Waac."
"Don't I know! I've read 'All Quiet,' and
I've read 'Not so Quiet.' Not know the Western Front! Why! In a few years, ten,
twenty, it'll be only people as young as I am, and younger, who will
know what the Western Front was. And I tell you this is the real Western Front
to-day."
She had suddenly fallen into a new mood, and
Evelyn could feel that she wanted to envelop him also in the mood. He resisted.
"Anyway," he said, turning to her and
smiling. "Anyway, you haven't been trying to make the best of yourself
this afternoon. You've been trying to make the worst of yourself. Only you
haven't succeeded. You simply can't wear bad clothes as they ought to be worn.
You give the show away all the time. You told me the other day--yesterday, was
it?--you wanted to be common. Well, you just can't be common. And you've only
half-done the job even this afternoon. Look at your five-guinea shoes, and your
stockings, and your gloves, and your bag. And think of your undies. This noble
effort of yours to look common is merely pathetic. I'd give something to have
heard what those vendeuses said about it all, after we'd gone. They must
have wondered what on earth you were up to." He patted her knee--one
touch--affectionately, reassuringly.
A silence. She was gazing straight in front of
her.
She said, in an even voice, as though she were
asking the time:
"Would you like us to get married?"
He was discomposed. There was no end to the girl's
incalculableness. Fancy starting such a subject in the public promiscuity of
the Lovely Milkmaid! And what a misinterpretation she had put upon the
spectacle of the interior of the Lovely Milkmaid! He controlled himself.
"Of course I should like us to marry. You
know I should."
"You know, you don't love me."
"Liar!" he gently smiled.
"You don't know what love is, real
love."
"My dear! My dear! I undertake to say my
ignorance isn't quite as complete as you imagine to yourself you think it is.
I'm a very learned man."
"Evelyn! Listen! You see this well. There's
a--a chasm as deep as that between us. Deeper. You think I left you all alone
this morning because I was angry with you. It wasn't that. I left you so that I
could look down that awful big hole by myself. And I couldn't bear to look down
it. I pretended it wasn't there. And I've been pretending all the afternoon.
Because I did want to be nice to you, and I do. But it's been all pretending. I
mean pretending about you, not about me. You're everything to me, and I
haven't tried to hide it. Now have I?" Evelyn did not speak. "But I'm
not everything to you. You're only trying to make yourself think I'm everything
to you. Because you're a heavenly kind man. D'you know why I kept you in my
flat last night? D'you think it was because I was so terribly hungry for you?
It wasn't that. It was because I just had to find out whether you loved me. I
could wait--but I couldn't wait to know that--"
"But--"
"No. Please. Don't stop me. Let me empty my mind
now; I've begun. I've told you before I'm nothing, nothing at all. And I've
told you I'm a beast. And so I am. It was only half true what I told you about
Saturday. I kept you waiting all day on Saturday partly because I wanted to see
how you'd stand it. And I chose those rooms so that they'd frighten you off, if
you could be frightened off. And I asked you to bring your luggage along so
that it should be there all ready if you stayed. And I had the tea-things all
ready as well. You noticed there were two cups. And I've told you about leaving
off my rouge. Somehow I couldn't help telling you about that, and I wasn't
really tired yesterday afternoon. But I am to-day. And I didn't ask you to stay
the night until the very last thing because I knew how nice and shy you are,
and I didn't intend to give you time to hesitate. You had to decide one way or
the other at once. And--Oh! It all sounds frightfully mixed up. But motives are
mixed up--especially women's. Now and then yesterday afternoon and evening I felt
like sticking at nothing to keep you. I won't go into details--you can think of
them without me helping you. But at other times now and then I tried to do
nothing that would help you. I tried to play the game, and I did play it. And I
went to sleep absolutely sure you did love me. I was happy. And I dreamt happy
dreams of you. And I was happy when I woke up this morning, until I saw you in
your big overcoat. It was the overcoat that began it. You couldn't lie in bed
and wait for me to wake up. You were too restless for something outside me. And
then the newspaper. Those paragraphs. And what you said then...I've been happy
today too. But I've been happy in my love, not yours. It is happiness to
be in love. But it's misery as well, if you're the only one who's in love. Now
you've heard. I'm a beast. But I'm honest. At any rate I've been honest with
you. And I'm not going to cry, or whine, or anything of the sort. I'm going to
be terribly nice, because it isn't a bit your fault. You deserve I should be
nice. No, no! I shall play the game all the time now."
At this moment a middle-aged and bearded
floor-walker appeared from behind them.
"One occupies oneself with you, monsieur,
madame?" he asked with a ceremonious bow, looking more at Evelyn than at
Gracie.
Gracie replied at once:
"While essaying your chairs, my husband and I
are discussing the matter, monsieur." She smiled urbanely.
"Perfectly, madame. At your service,
madame." With another bow the man went away.
Gracie made a humorous face at Evelyn, who was startled,
even a little shocked by her extraordinary aplomb. He himself was incapable of
changing his mood with her lightning rapidity. He said gravely:
"My dear! You can only play the game by
marrying me." He was determined that she should marry him. He foresaw
marvellous hours with such a wife. Her mind alone would be a continual
refreshment and inspiration. She would be an intellectual equal. He ignored the
incalculable flightiness of her mind. Nevertheless the thought ran through his
whole being:
"Her liabilities will exceed her
assets." And was gone. She said:
"When you said we were safe here, did you
mean you don't want to be seen with me like this by anybody who knows us?"
He was about to prevaricate, but he decided not to do so.
"I did, my dear."
"But why?"
"Well, it's natural, isn't it--in the
circumstances? Don't you think we have an air?..People do talk, you know."
She went on:
"Darling, if you were in love with me as you
fancy you are--oh, quite sincerely!--you simply wouldn't think of a thing like
that. It wouldn't occur to you, and even if it did, you'd laugh at it. No, you
wouldn't. You'd glory in it. I do glory in it. I'd deliberately go out to be
seen by people we know. It would be magnificent, like walking in the wind and
rain." Her voice took on its full richness. "Darling, that's the
chasm between us. You're afraid of the consequences of love. I'm not. I want
every consequence, and I don't care, because I'm in love. You do care. Darling,
when you said you must go to London tomorrow--and leave me all by
myself--" She broke off. "You're an artist in your way. I
admire you for being an artist--and a great artist. I know women are supposed
to be the enemies of art, when they're in love with the artist. It's been said
hundreds of times."
"And aren't they? I'm being frank with
you."
"A man ought never to be frank with a woman.
Not one woman in a thousand can stand it, unless he's in a temper. And you
aren't in a temper. You're too damnably self-possessed. But I happen to be the
one woman. I can stand it. To me your frankness is like eating an olive. It's
the sharp taste of it I adore. You know, astringent. Well, go on being
frank."
"You haven't answered my question: aren't
women the enemies of art?" Evelyn murmured, with an appearance of complete
calm. But he was excited by the flattery of the word 'artist,' which she had so
stimulatingly pronounced. She understood him: that was it. Yes, he was a
creative artist, in his way, as she had said.
She answered:
"Of course women are the enemies of art, when
they're in love with the artist. It's their business to be the enemies of art
and of everything else that makes men egotists. Both sexes can't be egotistic.
If they were, it would be the end of the world, and the death of society. Men
are only amateur egotists. Women are professional. It's their nature, and so
it's right, because the divine mind did it. When you see a woman has got hold
of a man, firm, and she's forcing him to fight for his art, and beating
him--it's the finest, most gorgeous thing you ever could see! It's supreme!
It's God himself, working out his plan, that is! And when she's clasping him
tight, and he struggles, and he gives up struggling and the artist in him sighs
terribly and dies happy in her inflexible arms, and she smiles, that's God's
smile. It's a tremendous moment. I'm telling you; but I might just as well not
tell you. You won't understand. Can't. No man can. Only women can understand
what is the greatest thing in the world. When I hear people say a man has
ruined himself for a woman, I laugh. I hug myself. I know of three. There were
General Boulanger and Parnell. I've read nearly everything that's been written
about those two. They thrill me whenever I think of them. They sacrificed
everything for women, and the women took it as a matter of course. That's the
spirit. What lives! What ruin! It was so lovely, and majestic, and awful, I
could cry. But God is awful."
She turned and looked at him, and Evelyn faced
her. She had not raised her voice; her tranquillity was as awful as God; but
Evelyn was determined to meet her eyes. He thought:
"And she's clasped me tight," and,
recalling her embrace, quivered as one quivers at a peril past. He said:
"And the third one?" She dropped her
voice:
"Leo."
"Leo?"
"Cheddar."
"Oh! Him."
"Yes. Him. One of God's errors. Leo chose
wrong. Not his fault, I expect. But he did. And he can't undo it. But he
understands. He's sacrificed everything for me. Even his greatness. He might
have been great, if he hadn't met me. He preferred being my victim to being
great. Wherever I go he goes. He's quarrelled with his brother because of me.
His character is as splendid as his mind. But I couldn't love him. I tell you I
could kneel down and crouch on my breasts before him, and wash his feet with my
tears, and absolutely implore him to forgive me. But he knows there's nothing
to forgive. He knows it's no more my fault than it's his."
She stood up.
"But we haven't finished," said Evelyn.
They gazed at one another.
"Yes, we have, and I can't bear this place any
longer. It's full of vibrations that scare me."
"That's the central heating," said
Evelyn grimly, half closing his eyes.
"You can call it by that name if you like,
darling." Her tone was softened.
The floorwalker lay in wait for them, ready to
pounce. Carrying the chairs back to the rest of the dining-room suite, Evelyn
made no attempt to evade him; nor Gracie either.
"Eh bien, monsieur," she said to the man. "Pour cette
salle-à-manger?"
"Monsieur and madame have decided
themselves?"
Another member of the selling staff of the Lovely
Milkmaid came to assist the floorwalker in the sale of the suite. Then the
floorwalker departed, leaving the second man to the job.
"What's she going to do now?" thought
Evelyn, as he watched Gracie minutely examining the suite.
It was a very ugly suite, very banal, the suite of
large-scale rationalised commerce; thousands of precisely similar suites were
the pride of modest, comfortable homes up and down France.
"There are naturally leaves for the
table?" Gracie demanded.
"Yes, madame. Two."
"One can buy supplementary chairs?"
"But there are six, madame."
"But one can buy more?"
"But yes, madame."
"And another sideboard?"
"But yes, madame. But perhaps it would be
more simple to buy two suites, madame, if madame's dining-room is very large,
if madame has many guests."
"That is an idea!" said Gracie.
"What is she going to do now?"
thought Evelyn.
She bought two suites, and six extra
chairs--eighteen chairs in all. The salesman made a calculation: something over
twenty-thousand francs.
"Payment on delivery," said Gracie.
"To-morrow?"
"Ah, madame!" said the dark Latin male
with prodigious apologetic deference, "if madame would give me two more
days! It will be necessary for me to communicate with the factory as to the
supplementary chairs."
"Very well, Thursday."
She gave the St. Cloud address. The salesman bowed
almost orientally. Twice in less than an hour had Gracie confounded the Lovely
Milkmaid.
When the formalities were finished, Evelyn
enquired:
"And the answer to all this furniture riddle,
please?"
She lifted her shoulders negligently.
"A surprise for the landlady of my little
hotel. She's been incredibly kind about Tessa. She's an angel. And her
dining-room furniture is all falling to pieces."
They descended the stairway in silence, and on the
ground-floor made a difficult path for themselves through the ruthless
egotistic throng of priestesses of the martyrdom of men. Evelyn noticed a
counter placarded: "Chemises de nuit. Occasions." Without consulting
Gracie he bought the most expensive, paid for it, stuck the tiny parcel into
his overcoat pocket.
"I don't very much care for pyjamas for the
instruments of God," he said.
"Perhaps we might have a few flowers,"
she suggested, ignoring his purchase.
He enquired for the flower-department and bought
flowers of his own choosing.
Outside in the dark populous street, where the
sack of the alfresco counters was still proceeding, he raised his arm for a
passing taxi.
"See. What's your number?"
"But we aren't going home yet!" Gracie
protested.
"Yes, we are--with all these parcels!"
She told him the number. He told the chauffeur. He
opened the door of the little, low taxi. She got in, bowing her head to avoid
the lintel. Just before turning into the boulevard he halted the taxi in front
of a confectioner's illuminated window which displayed an irresistible
assortment of éclairs, madeleines, babas, brioches, tartelettes, millefeuilles,
and petits fours.
"Wait for me one moment, will you?" he
appealed, getting out of the vehicle, and presently came back with a quite
sizeable fragile parcel. They drove on.
TEMPER
Parcel-laden, they entered the deteriorated,
dubious, garishly-lit drawing-room, and saw again the statue of the almost-nude
woman, the paintings of almost-nude women in the heavy tarnished gilt frames,
the tiger-skin, and the clock which one day in the past had slipped into
timeless eternity at seven minutes to three. The red Baedeker was dropped on to
the centre-table, together with sundry items--the cigars, the cakes, the
flowers, Gracie's bag, and the slim parcel drawn by Evelyn from his overcoat
pocket.
"Now I wonder whether it would be asking you
too much to make the tea," said Evelyn. The formula was ceremonious, but
the tone commanding.
"Hadn't I better do the flowers first?"
Gracie suggested.
"Men before flowers," said Evelyn.
"Organise your energy, my dear. You can see to the flowers while the water
is boiling for the tea. And give me your mackintosh, will you?"
"Yes, darling!"
She went away mysteriously smiling into the
bathroom with the flowers and the cakes. He hung up her mackintosh and his
overcoat and hat in the ante-chamber. He unpacked the box of cigars and put it
on a side-table with the Baedeker. He took her bag and the slim parcel into the
bedroom; and then he stood idle, wondering what he could do next. He thought of
his yesterday's suit and pulled it from the wardrobe. After a minute or two she
called out from the bathroom: "What are you doing?"
"Attending to my clothes."
She appeared in the bedroom. She had tied round
her waist a bath-towel for an apron. In the apron and the cheap reach-me-down frock
and hat she looked, to Evelyn, perfectly delicious, not to say exciting.
"I thought I heard brushing," she
laughed. "It's like home. Not my home at home. A nice little home."
He was brushing his trousers laid carefully along
the length of the bed. He glanced up.
"Why the towel, my dear?"
"Flowers, darling. They're rather messy. I
want two vases--three. The water's on." Her eye roved about the room. She
snatched a vase from the mantelpiece, and disappeared into the drawing-room.
As he finished brushing the suit and restored it
to the wardrobe, Evelyn reflected:
"And that's the girl who made that
frightening speech to me in the Jolie Laitière?..Like a home, is it, a nice
little home! A disreputable appartement on the boulevard! And I bet it
isn't costing her a penny less than five pounds a night!"
He would not admit, even to himself, that it was
like a home. But he felt that it was, and that he was the master in it. He was
ingenuously happy and tyrannic in it. He loved the towel-apron. He heard the
rattle of crockery. He heard her passing busily to and fro between the bathroom
and the drawing-room. He said to himself that she was doing his will. But the
menace of her speech in the furniture department of the Jolie Laitière shot
lancinating darts into his mind. As he was drawing the curtains together she
came, apronless now, into the bedroom with a vase of flowers and deposited it
on a table.
"Tea's all ready," she said in a quiet
tone falsely casual, and threw her hat on to the bed.
Then she took his hand and led him, a male
child-tyrant, towards the tea. Was it symbolic, that act? Was he the victimised
captive of her ideal? "I'll teach her!" he thought grandly.
He felt a condescending pity for Leo Cheddar, the
hopeless prisoner. He was bound to despise Leo for a weakling. And yet, on the
previous afternoon, as he sat on the professional egotist's bed, had not he,
Evelyn, in a single moment become utterly weak at the sight of her beauty? Was
she his, or was he hers? He had strange fears in the midst of his masterfulness.
The tea was indeed all ready, very neatly arranged
on the centre-table, the cakes on two plates, and a vase of resplendent flowers
between them. She had been very quick, and very efficient too. He could not
deny that she had the capacity to make a man comfortable.
"It's delicious having tea together like
this," said Gracie, as, having filled the cups, she bit into the first
cake. "You're a terrible sultan, but you do have ideas. When I think of
you lunching all alone and me lunching all alone to-day I feel as if I could
weep real tears. I'm frightfully sorry, darling. Iwas a beast. Call me a
beast."
He smiled magnanimously.
"Now don't be forgiving. I couldn't stand it.
Call me a beast."
"Beast!" said he obediently.
Her mouth half full, she stopped eating the cake,
as if a new thought had occurred to her.
"And you've got more than ideas--you've got
taste. Anyhow in confectionery. This brioche is the finest ever! Oh! And I must
make quite sure what your taste's like in something else."
She jumped up and ran into the bedroom and came
back with the slim parcel, which she undid. She shook out the folds of the
nightdress, and, close at Evelyn's side, held it against her figure.
"It goes with the frock," he said.
She moved away, and examined herself as well as
she could in the overmantel mirror. Not satisfied, she pulled a chair on to the
tiger-skin and perched tiptoe on it, so as to have an entire view of the
garment in the glass. And then laughed quite loudly.
"Isn't it too comic?" she giggled.
"And when you think there are millions of girls who would really adore
it--and men too!"
"It's exactly what you deserve," said
Evelyn. "And I should like some more tea, please."
"Oh!" she protested, stepping down.
"Don't imagine I don't adore it! Because I do. So do you. We're
both a bit morbid in our liking for ugliness--when it's ugly enough. Yes, I
admire your morbid taste. Poor Tessa would drop dead if she saw me in this
affair...Your tea! Your tea!" She threw the nightdress across his knees,
and poured out another cup for him. He calmly folded the garment in its
original folds, and pitched it with accurate aim on to an easy-chair.
"Now we'll continue," said Evelyn.
"Oh! You needn't be afraid," she
exclaimed. "I shall continue till every one of these cakes is eaten."
"I didn't mean tea," he said. "I
meant we'd continue about that chasm of yours." Gracie's face changed.
"I always like to have everything clear and straight; and the sooner the
better. You've been upset because I told you I should have to go to London
to-morrow morning."
"And leave me here all alone."
"Yes. And leave you here all alone. Well, you
know, I couldn't help it happening like that. Just a chance--"
"Haven't I said before that I don't believe
in chance?" she interrupted him. "And there isn't any chance. How
could there be? It was a sign. Fate meant it, so that I should see what your
real feelings were--in time. If it hadn't happened like that I might never have
known what your real feelings were until it was too late. Now I do know. It
makes no difference that you haven't had to go to London after all. I know.
And it wasn't chance. I'm not blaming you, darling! You are you, and you can't
alter yourself." She was sweet, but grave.
"But can't you see?" he reasoned.
"Can't you see I shouldn't have gone because I wanted to go? I should have
hated to go. The very thought of going was awful. But I should have had to go.
There wouldn't have been any alternative. It's best to look facts in the
face."
"No alternative?"
"No." Evelyn was almost curt. He added,
to placate her:
"Of course if I'd been ill--But so long as I
could physically go, I should just have had to go."
"What about morally?" she asked.
"Morally?"
"Yes. You said 'physically.' Is physically
more important than morally? In your opinion?"
He hesitated.
"No," he agreed. "Instead of
'physically' I ought to have said 'physically and morally.'"
"So you think you were morally able to
go?"
"I think I should have been morally compelled
to go, Mrs. Counsel-for-the-Prosecution."
"Well," she said. "If this is
cross-examining, it's only because I'm trying to get. everything 'absolutely
clear and straight'--for you and for me too. That was what you said you
wanted."
"Quite!" he admitted.
"This licensing business is the most
important thing on earth for you."
"Not at all," he cheerfully contradicted
her. "The most important thing on earth to me is to keep my word, my
engagements. You see, I'm indispensable to the case for Reform. I put the case
together. And I'm the engine that drives it forward."
"So that if you did happen to be in for a
serious illness, the campaign would fail. There's nobody to take your place.
You've taught no one else the job. You've deliberately kept yourself
indispensable. You're the director of the finest hotel in the world, it runs
perfectly so long as you're in charge, but you don't believe in the maxim that
a director ought as quickly as he can to teach the people he directs how to
carry on without him."
"See here!" said Evelyn. "Where did
you pick up these notions about organisation?"
"Daddy," she answered. "Daddy
always says that a boss who is indispensable is a rotten organiser and a rotten
boss. He used to take that line sometimes about my housekeeping. Darling!"
she proceeded with no pause. "You needn't answer. I don't want to catch
you out. I'll admit that now and then a man may really be indispensable, and if
he doesn't stay on the spot everything falls to pieces. Here, for instance.
Here you are indispensable. No one can take your place here. You're so
indispensable that nobody could possibly be more indispensable. All this hotel
and licensing business and so on is only machinery for living. Here it's
a question of living itself. It's more vital than any machinery could ever even
begin to be. I daresay it's most frightfully important that customers in your
restaurants should be able to get champagne and whisky every night till 2a.m.
instead of 11 p.m. Still, champagne and whisky are only helps to living. Sort
of preliminaries to being properly alive. But here, you and I have got past
preliminaries. We're living. Or we were living, until you came in this morning
and told me while I was in my bath that you must stop living--and me
too--because you had to rush off to London to argue with M.P.'s and things
about whisky and champagne."
"Is that quite the way to put it?"
"It's the only way I can put it, darling. And
any other way would be merely the voice of common sense. You won't tell me that
you don't know that common sense is not the law of laws. If you tell me that, I
tell you you just don't know the first word about living. Jesus Christ never
said anything about common sense...Darling! Please don't fidget your
legs." She left her chair and with one bound planted herself on his knees,
and curved her arms loosely round his neck. "Darling!" Her voice
softened into a dreamy tenderness. "We were divine last night, darling.
God was pleased with us. But this morning...to-day--"
"Yes," said Evelyn, and his tone was
hard because he hated her, he was afraid of her, in that moment. "And
you're being the professional egotist and doing all you can to cure my egotism.
You're trying to make me ruin myself, and you call it working out God's
plan."
"No, no."
"You said so yourself this afternoon."
"But surely you can see I was exaggerating,
then!" she exclaimed. "I'm always ready to compromise...If only you'd
given us a few days, a week. You could easily have arranged that, with all your
cleverness. But no! We were in heaven last night. And this morning, the very
next day, when I'm lying in my bath in front of you, you smash our heaven to
pieces. You couldn't keep your whisky and champagne waiting. Not an hour! As I
said, I don't blame you. It's myself I blame. I was mistaken, not you. I laid a
bet, and my stake was everything I had. And I've lost. You understand love in
one way, and I understand it in another. But I can only live with a man
who understands love in my way. I don't say my way's right. But it's my way.
Darling!" She kissed him. "I do love you. You can't guess how much.
And you love me--in your way. But your way would kill me. No. That's not fair.
I should be killing myself." She kissed him again. "That's a good-bye
kiss."
And Evelyn thought bitterly and tenderly:
"And I suppose that's what she calls playing
the game!" He said aloud: "My way! My way! But that first night at
the Palace, when I refused to go to your party because I had work to do and you
got angry, you told me afterwards you liked me for refusing."
She reflected a moment before answering:
"That was different. You weren't in love with
me then."
He was about to make a retort, when the door-bell
rang. He had not quite settled the nature of the retort; what he chiefly felt
was that he must hide his irritation better than he had hidden it in his
previous remark; you could not, decently, be cross with a young woman who was
still sitting on your knee and kissing you, even though she had used the word
'goodbye'; moreover, she did not, could not, mean it. She sprang from his knee.
"I'll answer the door," he said,
standing up.
"You'll do nothing of the kind, thanks,"
said she, faintly showing irritation.
"What reason has she to be irritated?"
he asked himself. His attitude to her had not changed. Hers to him was changing
from moment to moment, in a manner totally incomprehensible, not to say
inexcusable.
She returned from a parley in the ante-chamber
bearing a large cardboard box.
"Hello!" he exclaimed brightly.
"What's that?"
"My old things, from the Jolie Laitière,"
said Gracie. "They're pretty quick, aren't they?" The second half of
her reply was evidently meant to mitigate the perhaps excessive curtness of the
first.
She went straight by him, through the masked door,
along the corridor into the bedroom; and her chin was raised. His instinct and
desire were not to let her out of his sight. But he sat down again, because he
disliked to think of himself as running after her. All his thoughts were
resentful. Good-bye, indeed! What damned nonsense! And dangerous nonsense!
Women, however, had no sense of danger. They were all--women. Within a few
minutes the desire to see her had become irresistible. He strolled into the
bedroom, grandly, masculinely casual. The Jolie Laitière frock had been flung
on the bed, and Gracie, in her knickers, was bending over the open cardboard
box.
"What are you doing?" he asked in a kind
tone; but the words 'my dear' refused to add themselves to the question.
"I'm putting on my own things," she
said, not looking up, and drew forth the frock which had won praise from the
saleswoman at the Jolie Laitière.
"But why?"
"That game is finished," she said.
"I don't feel like being dowdy any more. It's no fun." She slipped on
the frock, and as her head emerged from the neck of the frock she turned and
faced him, shaking down the skirt impatiently. Her glance, defiant, and rather
hard, displeased him. Still, he could control himself, being a man.
"I think I'll try one of your cigars,"
he said, in a neutral tone, and left her, and after some trouble opened the box
of cigars. "This situation has got to be handled," he said firmly to
himself as he lit the cigar and walked back into the bedroom.
"What a heavenly smell!" she murmured
agreeably. She was perfuming herself.
"Your scent or my cigar?" he asked, with
equal mildness.
"Your cigar."
"Yes, it's what I call a pretty good cigar.
Now, my child, I want you to--"
"I'm not so much of a child as you think I
am," she stopped him.
"Now, my dear girl," he began again.
"I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I want you to do it to
please me. Take that frock off and put on the other one. I love to see you in
it. You invented a most amusing game. Do keep it up. It's great and original
fun. Do oblige me. I should feel frightfully gloomy if you wouldn't play any
more. It would spoil everything." He smiled, varied the tones of his
voice, did all he could, by employing a semblance of airy, affectionate humour,
to be persuasive.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks. I've changed now, and I'm not
going to waste this scent either." Her tone was challenging; her features
were beginning to be contorted into a vindictive ugliness.
Evelyn, amazed and hurt, thought: "Only a few
minutes since she was sitting on my knee, and hanging round my neck, and
kissing me, and saying how she loved me. And now she's all altered! And I'll
swear I haven't said a word, not one word to upset her. On the contrary. What
sort of a creature is she?" Still controlling himself, he continued aloud:
"I always thought women liked to dress to please men, and--"
"You thought wrong then," she stopped
him once more. "Everybody who knows anything at all knows that women dress
to please women. I mean, they mind what women think far more than what men think.
Men aren't judges. Women are. And if a woman has to choose between pleasing a
man she's fond of and pleasing a woman who hates her, she'd please the woman
every time--in her clothes."
"But even if that's true..."
"Even if it's true! It is true!"
"Well, let it be true. You knew it before you
started the game, and you didn't care. Why have you altered?"
"Listen to me," she answered. It struck
him that she was now using the same tone as when she had flared up at him at
the Palace on the night of his refusal to go to her party; also, the
vindictiveness of her expression was candid and intense. "Do you imagine I
can't read you like the front page of a newspaper? If you do you're mistaken.
You just made up your mind to come the grand over me. You said to yourself
you'd force me to keep on wearing that dowdy thing. You thought you'd show me
who was the master here. Just because I've been fool enough to tell you and
show you how I've gone crazy about you."
"Not at all," he protested
unconvincingly.
"I say yes!" she cried.
He saw that she was inexplicably losing her
temper. "Oh, very well!" he thought superiorly, and waited.
"The truth is," she cried, louder and
louder, "and you may as well know it, you're conceited. You were always
conceited, and I've made you more conceited. You show it the whole time! You
simply can't move without showing it. You're taking advantage of me every
minute, that's what you're doing!"
He sat down, near the door, thinking what a
brilliant idea it was to sit down.
"Now, come here! Please!" he begged her.
If only she would obey, he could restore her to his knee, and soothe and fondle
her into being rational.
"There you are again!" she cried.
"I'm in love with you. So I'm to be your slave. Finger up, I come. Finger
down, I go."
He shook his head, with a gesture of fatigue.
"You say you're in love with me," he
resumed, very low and careful. "I believe you are. And I'm quite sure I'm
in love with you."
"You're more sure than I am, then."
"But I am!"
"So you say! But I'll just ask you one question.
This morning, the very next day after you'd made love to me, you were ready to
leave me because of something you'd seen in a newspaper."
"Well?"
"Supposing they telephoned to you to-night
that you were wanted in London to-morrow, should you go?"
He replied uncompromisingly:
"Yes."
"Of course!" she sneered. "And
after all that explanation I gave you this afternoon! Of course you'd go. And
glad to. Men soon get tired of a girl who's been fool enough to let out that
she's in love with them! I've heard that from lots of girls, and mothers too.
But you just don't know what love is. You take everything for granted. Men
generally do. And you're worse than most. I'm an idiot, but I'd sooner be an
idiot than a conceited ass like you are!" Her eyes were radiant with fury,
her fine nostrils twitching, and she leaned forward in her defiance of him.
"Oh, if that's it!" Evelyn exploded.
"If that's it, I'd better be off." He threw his cigar fiercely into
the fireplace.
"Yes, you had!" she provoked him
further.
"But before I do go, I'll tell you what I
think of those explanations of yours. How they struck me. Silly. Absolutely
silly. There you were, choosing your words, and thinking you were being so
damned eloquent, and feeling conceited about your book because I'd praised it.
And your explanations were perfect bosh. All over the place! All over the damn
place!" He had not yet quite realised that he too had lost his temper; but
he was distinctly aware of a sensation of voluptuous happiness in his outbreak.
"Not an argument in the whole blooming performance that couldn't be
riddled to pieces by any man who took the trouble to argue. Not that anything
you said was worth an argument! You the author of that book! You must be if you
say so. But don't you forget that I read it under your influence. You looked
after that all right, didn't you? You managed to lie on the floor and watch me
read it, didn't you? But I wonder what I should think of it if I were to read
it a second time." He had stood up.
"And now you can go!" she shouted.
"I've listened to you. Most women would have shut you up. But I'm
different. Off you go." Her hands were clenched.
He did go. In the ante-chamber he threw his
overcoat on anyhow, seized his hat and went, and banged the door. He felt hot and
he was breathing hard. He turned westward down the boulevard, but he knew not
whether he had turned westward or eastward. He merely moved on, rather quickly.
"She's absolutely awful," he exclaimed,
half-aloud. And, "Of all the" And, "She must be mad." And,
"What excuse can there be?" And, "I'm jolly glad I let
her have it." And, "What an escape! My God!"
He repeated all these remarks several times. One
or two passers-by glanced at him apprehensively. When he had cooled a little,
he looked round, and discovered with surprise that he was in the rue du
Faubourg St. Honoré. How he had arrived in it he could not remember, for he had
no recollection whatever of going down the rue Royale, as he must have done.
The night was sharp, with a clear starry sky. He
began to notice the crowds of wayfarers, the noise of traffic, and the January
night-frost. He buttoned his big overcoat, whose front had been flying loose.
He thought: "Seems to me my coat-collar is higher than my overcoat!"
In other men he was very scornful of this negligence. He put his hand to his
nape Yes, the coat-collar was half an inch higher than the collar of the
overcoat! He halted, set it right, with an angry tug at the coat behind, and
walked on. He decided that he would send for his belongings. She was dreadful,
dreadful! The utter lack of reason! The injustice! He hated injustice. The same
thoughts ran round and round in his brain.
Was it what they termed a lovers' quarrel? No, by
Heaven! He said: "My character's changing. I noticed that not long since.
I can't remember ever losing my temper before. Well, anyway not for ages."
He passed the Hôtel Bristol. What sort of a new-fangled noisy place was that?
He turned down the avenue Matignon. He was in the avenue des Champs Elysées,
majestic and vast and beautiful in the night. An illuminated shop on the south
side appeared to be miles away, and full of mysterious magic. He thought:
"It was childish of me to lose my temper, if I did lose it. But
there are limits to patience." Then he felt humiliated because he had lost
his temper. He, at his age! He was no better than she was. Yes, he was better,
because she'd begun it, but he was not enough better. She was magnificent in
her defiance. Her nostrils! Her burning eyes! Her stance! Nevertheless an impossible
Tartar. She might be a genius, but she was hellish. Imagine her as a wife. You
couldn't.
About sending for his things. How could he? He
couldn't. He might go to a strange hotel; but he would have to give his right
name, and then the hotel would know that he had had to send for his luggage to
a dubious flat on the boulevard; and that a young woman had opened the door of
the flat. Besides, his things weren't packed.
No! He had his dignity to think of. He must jump
into a taxi at once, and go and get his luggage himself. And he must be very
calm and cold and dignified. No alternative! None. He had blundered. He must
repair the blunder. He could; and he would. And the incident would be a lesson
to him. By God! It would be a lesson to him!...What injustice! What infernal
foolishness and cheek! A conceited ass, was he? Ah! And she--what was she? he
would like to know. No doubt she was magnificent in her madness. But--He
hesitated, and then raised his hand to a taxi-driver, and gave the address. The
taxi had wings, for it flew. No trafficblocks, no slackenings. In five seconds,
so it seemed to him, the taxi had pulled up at the portico of the house of
furnished flats. Should he keep the taxi, or pay it off? Easy to get a fresh
one on the boulevard. He paid off the taxi. He climbed the stairs very slowly;
yet he was at her door in an instant. He paused, because he was afraid, so
afraid that his hand shook on the bell push, and he touched it before he had
definitely decided whether or not to touch it. Hours passed.
Then the door was opened. She was wearing the
Jolie Laitière dowdy ravishing pink frock. She was smiling. He entered. She
slammed the door. She burst into tears. He put his arms round her. Not a word
was said.
THE
CASH-GIRL
"Now you mustn't cry," said Evelyn, in a
voice low and tender. "I don't like to see you crying." He charged
his voice to the full with tenderness, thinking: "I have never been as
tender as this before to anybody." Then he added, on a note of humour
equally tender: "Well, you may cry for three minutes--not more. And I
won't look at my watch."
He peeped down, to glance at her averted face, and
saw a plaintive, weak smile. There they stood, uncomfortably, near the door in
the drawing-room, Evelyn not daring to move her towards a chair, or not having
the wit to do so. She murmured something inarticulate.
"What? What did you say?"
"Hanky. My bag. Handkerchief," she
snivelled.
"Bag be blowed!" said Evelyn, and took
out his own handkerchief.
He tried to raise her face, but she resisted; he
felt delicately for her eyes and with extreme care wiped them. Then he tried
again to raise her face, and she no longer resisted. His hand pressing on the
top of her forehead, he pushed her head backwards, until her face was in full
view beneath his. Her eyes met his eyes, and she smiled. Her shoulders rested
softly upon his left arm. All her body was limp, lax, acquiescent, utterly
yielding to his will and strong muscles. It confessed its weakness and the
weakness of her spirit. He lightly brushed away the last trace of moisture from
her shining eyes and a stray tear from her soft ripe cheek; the handkerchief
fell to the carpet. Her smile died as if from exhaustion, returned to life,
died, returned, stayed. Moment agitating and exquisite. The women painted in
their gilt frames, and the sculptured woman on her pedestal, regarded the human
scene with the callous indifference of goddesses; the clock stirred not a
finger: the room was a phantasm. Only the two bodies, held together by their
invisible mysterious souls, were alive under the garish downpour of light from
the chandelier, whose pendants faintly tinkled now and then in response to
vibrations set up by footsteps overhead in another abode of human beings
invisible and mysterious. No recriminations, no explanations even, nor
justifications. Silence. Words were unnecessary, because there was absolutely
nothing that needed to be said. In the quarrel words had lost all meaning, and
perhaps were now discredited. As for the quarrel, it merely did not exist; more
strange, it never had existed; that which is annihilated has never existed.
"You'd better sit down," Evelyn
murmured, and led her to an easy-chair. She sat, reclining in the abandonment
of emotional fatigue. Evelyn had an impulse to kneel at her knees. He checked
it. He could not persuade himself to kneel; the posture would have been
sentimental, ridiculous. He had won the battle; conquerors do not kneel. Still
less could he have knelt if he had lost the battle. He leaned against the side
of the back of the chair and stroked her cheek, endlessly, and so
compassionately that sometimes he did not touch it.
When he thought of the annihilated past, as he did,
he thought of it as something which, even had it had existence, would have been
entirely negligible. Its sole importance lay in the fact that out of its
nothingness it had engendered this marvellous bliss. And he had not won;
neither of them had won; he would have hated to win. His desire was to preserve
her equality with himself. Self-complacency? Perhaps.
Absorbed in contemplation of Gracie, he yet could
detect in the far distance of his mind, faint as the rumour of boulevard
traffic through the closed windows, fragmentary rumours of the unreal quarrel.
Was it true that women dress for women, not for men? It was not true. Women
submitted themselves to the judgment of women only in so far as concerned the
efficiency of their effort to please men. Women did not think in criticism of a
woman: "That frock does not please me." They thought: "That
frock does not achieve its aim, which is not directed at me at all."
Example of the girl's inability to think straight, or, in the alternative, of
her instinct to think dishonestly...No. The quarrel was not growing real to
him. Even when he recalled her phrase, 'conceited ass,' he smiled; he could
have laughed. It had no significance. Nothing of the quarrel had significance.
The memory of the quarrel did not humiliate him now. He had not been wrong, nor
had he been right. They were both of them beyond good and evil. They had
ascended, for a while, to the plane of pure, unconditioned existence. She
lifted her hand and gently seized his, and looked up at him.
"I suppose I ought to be getting ready,"
she said, in quite a prosaic tone.
But how enchantingly! It seemed to him that all
the prose of their life would for ever be poetry, that within the dailiness of
life their joint existence would always be pure and unconditioned. Unresolved
problems? Pooh! Trifles of less than no importance! She rose slowly; he held
her against falling; they passed silently into the bedroom, where she had left
the lights burning.
On the bed, the Lovely Milkmaid nightdress was laid
out in all its graceless attractiveness for the morbid. At any rate her
repentances and surrenders seemed to Evelyn to be thorough. He was pleased. She
hated to be his 'slave'--with what scorn she had uttered that word!--but she
loved to be his slave. He was more than pleased, he was more than content. He
felt that he could be wondrously kind to a slave. She put her hand on his
shoulder, and said with apologetic timidity:
"What time is it? I think I shall soon be
hungry." The admission had the instant effect of lowering the plane of
their mood to the normal, the humdrum, the safe. And they both became cheerful.
"Oh! It's not late," he said. He too was
aware of the onset of hunger. But he would not admit it. Slaves might confess
hunger, not masters.
"What about dinner, darling?"
"Where would you like to eat? Here, same as
last night?"
"If you prefer it, darling," she
answered, submissive but reluctant.
"Not at all," he said. "Anywhere
you please, my dear. I want you to choose."
"A Durand?" she suggested.
"Have you ever been in a Durand? I
haven't."
"No. But I'm dying to try one. It ought to
suit this frock." She smiled. Her childlike fancy had returned to the idea
of the game of mackintosh, Baedeker, and Jolie Laitière frock and hat.
"They're awful, aren't they?"
"I hope so," said she.
"You are a funny little thing!" He
patted her.
"Shall we go now?" she cajoled, less
humbly.
"Isn't it frightfully early?"
"Not for cheap tourists like us," she
said. "They always dine early."
Yes, she was a child.
"Right then! But aren't your lips a shade too
brilliant for a Restaurant Durand?" He would show her that he also could
act the child.
"I was just thinking of that," she said
eagerly. "Wait two minutes. Wait here." She ran laughing into the
bathroom.
He was quite youthfully happy. When she emerged,
she presented her face for his inspection.
"Will it do?" she asked.
"I love it."
She had removed every trace of rouge and powder.
Her cheeks were pale, her lips a pale, imperfect crimson. She looked unwell.
The artlessness of her complexion appealed to him as the nightdress appealed to
him.
"I haven't washed my face with water for
years and years," she said. "But I couldn't do anything with my
nails. The stuff wouldn't come off without too much trouble." She
displayed her elaborately manicured hands.
"Hide them! Hide them! Shocking!" said
he. "Even if you did forget to buy proper gloves."
She had noticed a Durand in the avenue de l'Opéra,
near the Café de Paris. In less than another minute they were on the way. How
different was the bliss of the walk from his miserable, tragical, solitary
promenade to the Champs Elysées! Were they walking, or floating?
"There are thirty-two Durands in Paris,"
said Gracie, as they stood a moment hesitant at the door of the restaurant. (No
welcoming official at the doors.)
"Who told you that?"
"Uncle Laugier."
"You seem to know the old rascal pretty
well."
"No. But daddy and I have stayed several
times at the Concorde, and Laugier is rather a dear."
The large interior, like the exterior, of the
Durand had the sedateness of panelled brown wood which might have been
mahogany, or rosewood, or even synthetic wood. The mirrors and the small
window-panes were bevelled, and the bevelling split the light of the lamps into
glints of all the colours of the spectrum. Many small tables arranged in rows
strictly rectilinear. Waitresses in black and white. One man, short and fat and
shabby in morning dress, overseeing the entire place. Two enormous sideboards
bearing fruit that appeared to be artificial but was not. A brass-protected
service-door, which the waitresses kicked open as they entered with hands
occupied by trays of food. A broad staircase, with indiarubber treads, showed
that there was another room upstairs. The restaurant was nearly full of dowdy,
staid people of all ages from twenty-five to that of Methuselah, eating
seriously. No sound, or hardly a sound, save the faint clatter of knives and
forks on earthenware. Paris!
The overseer advanced to meet the new arrivals.
"Two?" he asked in English,
imperceptibly bowing, with a slight smile. He directed them to a distant table,
still encumbered with the debris of a recently finished meal. Then he left
them. After a time a stout, very deliberate, middle-aged waitress came up and
restored to the table its virginity.
"Do let me order," said Gracie
mischievously when at last the waitress drew a menu from the bib of her apron
and presented it, first to Evelyn, who indicated that she was presenting it to
the wrong person. The waitress shut her lips together, and stood patiently
impatient while Gracie scanned the card. Evelyn heard the order: vermicelli
soup, skate, cutlets, fried potatoes, crême caramel, carafe of red vin
ordinaire. The waitress wrote nothing, remembered everything.
"This place is a million times worse than
where we had lunch yesterday," said Evelyn.
"I should just hope so!" said Gracie.
"I should have been very disappointed if it hadn't been. But haven't I
chosen the perfect Durand dinner for you?"
"You're the kind of girl that gets murdered
and nobody can guess the motive," Evelyn replied. He felt gaily sardonic.
"You'll have to eat it," she enjoined
him.
"Oh! I shall eat it," said he. "If
I die for it."
"I think it's all heavenly," she said,
glancing round. "It was nice of you to let me come here. I shall bring
Tessa here now, for a treat. It's the very place for expectant mothers--I
bought Tessa a wedding ring."
He gazed at her pale, virginal face, thinking:
"Well, there's one good thing about her--she's depraved!" Her
morbidity strongly attracted him. There was no end to it, no end to her
unpredictable caprices. He was absolutely determined to marry her. 'Good-bye
kiss!' Nonsense!
The wine appeared first. Then, after an interval,
the soup. She took a spoonful of the soup, swallowed it with a noise, and
looked at him for approval of this realistic touch.
"When you think," said she, "that
in thirty-two Durands at this moment respectable people are eating vermicelli
soup! You know, it's exactly the same menu in all these places." The soup
was hot and wet, and as interesting as a uniformly overcast sky.
"What was that you were writing this morning,
in my big coat?" he demanded.
"I think I'll take my mackintosh off,"
she said, and did so and Evelyn hung it up on the rack behind him where he had
hung the big coat and the hat. Then he repeated the question.
"I tore it up," she said.
"But what was it about?"
"Oh, nothing! I'm not going to write any
more."
"It was something about me," he said.
"It wasn't. You flatter yourself. It was
about me. I've only got one subject. That's why I'm not going to write any
more." Disillusion and sudden melancholy in her rich voice. "I want
to work."
"But isn't writing work?"
"Mine isn't. It's fun."
He thought: "She's like all the rest of 'em. Flirting
about all over the place. Can't stick to anything. She gave up motor-racing.
Now she's giving up writing. But when she's my wife I'll put the fear of God
into her." He was absolutely confident of his power to form her.
"What sort of work?"
"You see that girl there at the
cash-desk," she said, and without moving her eyes from him went on:
"Look at her. See those black wristlets to keep her cuffs clean? You may
be sure they're white linen cuffs to match her open-work collar. See her hair?
She's not like any other girl in this place--I mean on the staff. See the
expression of her face? No, you can't get it from here."
"No. I can't," said Evelyn as he looked,
scrutinising.
"I noticed her as we came in," said
Gracie.
"I didn't. Well, what about her?"
"See how she can't move so long as she's at
that desk. Rather like an A.B.C. or a Lyons cash-desk, isn't it?"
"Do you patronise those places?"
"Yes, sometimes. They're far more interesting
than your Palace restaurants, darling. And the tea's just as good...And she has
to sit on a stool--it isn't a chair. And she has to sit there behind that grill
until the last customer has gone. Same for lunch. I expect. She never speaks to
anyone unless a customer asks her something. She isn't quite as solitary as a
bus-driver in the Strand, but she nearly is. She just sits behind that grill
and looks at bills and takes money and gives change. Now that's the sort of
work I want to do. No, you needn't smile. Please don't smile. It is. I should
love the monotony. It would be so restful. She loves it; I could tell from her
face. She can be herself. She has time to be herself. I want to be myself, only
I never have time as I live now. That girl's job is better even than being a
nun. It's nearly as good as being in the grave."
The solemn sincerity of Gracie's tone as she spoke
those last words dismayed him.
"I should like to do that girl's work for
years and years," Gracie continued. "Nothing would happen to me. I'm
tired of things happening to me. She's meek. She has to be. Blessed are the
meek. It's a blessing I've never had, and I need it. You don't know how much I
need it. I don't know how much I need it. I don't know who I am. And I simply
must know who I am. Couldn't I have a job like that, in one of your hotels? Not
in London. On the Continent. I can talk both French and Italian frightfully
well. Do you understand how I feel?"
"Yes, I understand, my dear," said
Evelyn. "But are you ready to what I call talk straight?"
"Yes. I adore straight talking."
"Truly now?" His voice and an upturned
finger warned her.
"Truly. Neither you or anyone else can be too
straight for me."
"Well, listen, my dear. In the first place,
the girl hasn't only got to look at bills and take money and give change. She
has to enter every bill on a sheet. And when the last customer's gone she has
to add up the sheet, probably several sheets, and wait while somebody else
checks the total. And she has to count her cash, and the cash has to agree with
the total, and she can't go home till it does agree with the total, and if it's
more than the total she doesn't pocket the difference--oh no! But if it's less
than the total she has to find the difference out of her wages. And all the
time while she's taking money and paying it out, that's what she's thinking about.
She isn't thinking about herself and the mystic beauty of being meek and the
virtue of monotony and so on."
"Darling, you're laughing at me," Grace
interrupted him with sweet plaintiveness.
"I'm not!" He rapped the table in
emphasis. "I'm perfectly serious and I'm just talking straight. However,
I'll stop, if you can't stand it."
"You go on. I'm sorry. But do you imagine I
couldn't do the adding-up business and the counting? Of course I could. I'm
very good at it. As if I hadn't kept the house-books at home for daddy. And
they're no joke either."
"I don't say you aren't good at it," he
replied, soothingly. "But you couldn't do it. I mean you couldn't
keep on doing it. You say you've kept your father's house-books. But who's
keeping your father's house-books now? Not you. You kept them as long as you
felt like keeping them, and then you turned them over to someone else to keep,
someone who had to keep them whether she felt like it or not. The moment you
didn't feel like it you chucked it. And quite right too!"
"But I could keep books whether I felt
like it or not."
"You're wrong. You couldn't. That's the whole
point. It isn't your fault. You weren't brought up to it. That cash-girl there
was brought up to it. She's always been used to being in a certain place at a
certain time, whatever the weather, and whatever she feels like. If she can
move her feet, she's got to arrive on time and stay until she's
finished. She's been disciplined. It takes years to learn discipline, and you
must begin early. You have to begin to learn discipline before you can talk.
There's no other way--that is, if you are to be happy under discipline. That
cash-girl has learnt one accomplishment that you've never learnt and never
will, and she took years to learn it."
"What's that?"
"She's learnt to stick it. You've never
learnt that--you've never had the chance to. You could no more stick it as she
sticks it than you could learn to play Beethoven sonatas in public without
being laughed off the platform. You think that that girl's work is easy and you
could do it on your head. It isn't, and you couldn't. It requires gifts that
are beyond you. You're young, God knows, but if you wanted her qualities you
ought to have started out after them twenty years ago."
He added, in silence to himself:
"I might twit you about throwing up
motor-racing and wanting now to throw up writing; but I won't. I'll spare you
that. You've had all you can swallow. And all this talk is a pure waste of
time. I've got something else in store for you, and right down in your heart
you know it."
"Aren't you being a little hard on me,
darling?"
"Hard, my dear? No. Only straight. A straight
line is the nearest way between two points. A line isn't hard. And I'll tell you
another thing. You couldn't get a responsible place like that girl has. You
just apply, and you'll see. They'd ask you quick enough what experience you'd
had, and they'd ask for your testimonials. And then when you couldn't deliver
the goods they'd laugh at you."
"But everyone has to begin."
"Not at your age, and with your money. Sell
all that you have and give to the poor. And make your father do the same, so
that he couldn't help you when you didn't feel like sticking it; and you might
have a chance. You'd probably die of the experience, or do something worse, but
you'd have a chance. Oh yes, you could get a place. I could push you into some
kind of place, just as you are, if I was an unscrupulous scoundrel. But you'd
only be playing at it, and everybody would know you were only playing at it. I
can hear the other girls talking among themselves about you. 'Oh, her! She's a
scream! And keeps girls that want a job out of it!' You'd like that, wouldn't
you, my dear!"
A considerable silence. The buxom matron removed
the remains of the raie au beurre noir. Gracie's plate was empty except
for the spine of the fish, but Evelyn had eaten little. The matron with placid
indifference set down tiny cutlets, and minute quantities of vegetables which
had apparently been weighed to the nearest dram in chemists' scales, accurately
according to a doctor's prescription. The matron made no enquiry as to the
reactions of her customers to the Durand diet. Evelyn thought, of Gracie:
"Have I driven any of the mysticism out of her?
When was it she was talking about secret Signs with a capital S, and Fate with
a capital F? Oh yes, my seeing the paragraphs in the paper was a mystical
sign--that I didn't really love her. 'No such thing as chance!' What a world
the witch lives in! And what a sardonic devil I am! Still, she asked for it.
It's ask and ye shall receive--when I'm the person that's asked."
Nevertheless, beneath all this sharp irony his
tenderness was flowing into her. He divined from her glance that she was as
aware of the one mood in him as of the other.
"Darling, how can I argue with you? I can't.
You're too strong for me. You're ruthless. I don't say you aren't right.
Haven't I told you I'm nothing--nothing?"
"I'm not ruthless," said he, with love.
"It's common sense that's ruthless."
"It doesn't seem to help me," she
murmured. "What I always want is encouragement."
"Not encouragement on the wrong path,"
he said. He was startled to hear that she always wanted encouragement--she so
independent, so full of initiative, so adventurous (as in the affair of Tessa).
Was he getting down to the deeps of her individuality?
"Then the right path--what is it?" she
asked gently.
"You're rich," he answered. "And
you can't not be rich. You've got to go on being rich and spectacular and all
that. It's not a bad thing, really. Has its uses in what political journalists
call the fabric of society. We others are entitled to have something to look
at. Of course I know you'll say I'm talking like a manager of luxury hotels.
But I mean it. If I didn't I shouldn't be what I am. In any case it's not the
slightest use selling all you have and giving to the poor, or trying to do jobs
that plain ordinary girls can do ten times better than you ever could. That
would only show that you're afraid of your responsibilities and want to shirk
them. That would show you were a coward, and you aren't. We're all discouraged
and discontented and crying out for the moon at times."
"But I must do something!" she
pleaded. "And I wasn't brought up to do anything."
"That's the sins of the fathers. The fathers
have eaten what-ever-it-was--sour grapes--and the children's teeth are set on
edge. That's what you've got to stick--not sitting at a desk and counting
thirty thousand francs a day for a hundred francs a week and your food...Well,
you've seen through motor-racing and you've seen through writing" (he
failed after all to leave out the jibe), "but there's Tessa. You've taken
on that responsibility. The baby isn't born yet, and your responsibility there
won't be done with until either you or both mother and baby are dead. And it'll
need a lot of thinking about. And I shall rely on you not to do anything that
will set the child's teeth on edge. And you'll have to marry, you know. And
your husband will be all you can manage for years. And if you have children
you'll have twenty pretty busy years setting them a good example. The fact is,
you won't have a moment to spare. And if you do happen to find you have some
leisure on your hands, it'll be up to you to think out some schemes. Nobody
else can do that for you. The preacher will now step down from the pulpit. This
cutlet ought to be put in the British Museum. Egyptian antiquities. No. Elgin
marbles."
"Darling! I've never heard you like this
before."
"No. You've thought I was just an ordinary
man. You see how mistaken you've been."
"And so you think I must marry."
"You can't avoid it."
"But who?"
She smiled at him weakly; he could not interpret
her smile, which somewhat troubled him.
"I'm nothing," she breathed.
"That's exactly as it ought to be," he
said. "I've always sworn to myself I'd never marry" (he might have
added "again"; but he was sure that if he did she would question him
closely about his first wife, and such questions would have irked him);
"but if you're nothing and I marry you, I shan't be marrying. See?"
She continued to look at him with her loving,
disquieting, undecipherable smile.
He thought:
"Her money may be a regular curse to me. On
the other hand it may not. Also, her father might go bankrupt, over the films."
The crême caramel followed the cutlets.
"Well," he said, having tasted it.
"I propose we go."
"Where?"
"Any place where we can dine."
"Sweetie!" she protested. "I'm so
sorry you haven't enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it all. But we can't eat another dinner."
"Then I must have some cheese. Let's order
two portions, and I'll eat both."
When at last he demanded the bill, she said:
"I'll pay it."
"No."
"But I want to. It's my dinner."
"No."
"Well then, give me the bill and the money,
and let me pay at the desk."
He gave her a hundred-franc note, and a tip to the
impassive matron.
"It isn't good and it isn't cheap," he
muttered to Gracie. "And women don't understand food."
He followed her to the cash-desk, putting on his
overcoat as he walked between the emptying tables. Standing by Gracie at the
desk, he examined the face of the cash-girl, and in spite of his wish not to do
so he seemed to see in the face all that Gracie had seen. Something significant
ought to have happened, but nothing did. Gracie, tendering the money, smiled at
the cash-girl, who handed her the change and stamped the bill.
"Merci, madame," said Gracie,
The cash-girl appeared to be a little startled,
but did not respond, even with a smile. No doubt Gracie would say that she was
dreaming her private dream of meekness behind that casual, insensitive glance.
"There's one good thing about this
restaurant," said Evelyn in the street, as Gracie bestowed on him the
change. "No music."
Then, to atone for his persistent irony, he took
her arm possessively, and made her happy. Her smile was modest enough; but
Evelyn, impressed, thought that her general demeanour had a certain grandeur,
and he was proud of it.
THE
HELPMEET
"Evelyn, you haven't forgotten to telephone
to London, have you?"
Gracie, who had changed the reach-me-down frock
for her peignoir, came as far as the door of the drawing-room, where Evelyn was
smoking the second of her cigars. She had asked him to sit in the drawing-room
for a while. Her tone now was serious. 'Evelyn,' she had begun, not 'Darling.'
And she spoke as if she realised, in the way a wife should, that communication
with the Imperial Palace was a duty not to be neglected.
"Oh! It doesn't matter. There won't be
anything," he answered very casually. He was in an easy-chair, with his
back to the masked door. The next moment she was perched on the arm of his
chair, and bending towards him.
"Darling, you know you ought to. You know
they haven't got your number and they'll be expecting you to ring them up. Do
be a good boy."
Yes, she had taken the role of thoughtful wife,
gently determined that her husband's interests should be protected, even against
himself. After pretending not to notice her nearness, he glanced at her,
happily; for he enjoyed the unusual sensation of being looked after. True, Miss
Cass was devoted to his highest welfare, but her methods were less delectable
than Gracie's.
"Woman!" he exclaimed. "What in
God's name have you been doing to yourself?"
She had made up her face again with the utmost
elaboration of artifice.
"I felt positively indecent in that
restaurant," she laughed.
"You hid your feelings pretty well
then!"
"Of course I did! It was my own fault I went
out naked, and I had to stand for it, without making you uncomfortable too.
Besides, you were so interesting. Now, darling, you must do your little bit of
telephoning."
"Shan't!" he said, playing the
recalcitrant child. All his sensations were novel and delicious.
"I'll get the hotel for you," she
whispered, and went to the telephone.
He puffed voluptuously at the cigar, and in a
sultanic style watched her do the chore. She was a serious girl. He had always
known that at heart she was a serious girl. And in the restaurant he had beaten
her and silenced her. She was marvellously his to command. Not another word
from her about her infantile scheme for finding herself. She had accepted the
ultimatum.
"They'll ring you when you're through,"
she said, rising from the instrument, on which she was certainly a very
accomplished virtuoso.
He expected her to stop on her way out of the room
and kiss and caress him. But all she gave him was a trifle of a satisfied,
warning nod. He solaced his disappointment by the reflection that there was a
time for everything and that in her opinion the present was a time for
seriousness. How changed she was, the explanation doubtless being that he had
been forming her: the man's business! He pondered dreamily upon her. She was
not a woman, and hers was not a love, to be lightly lost. What a helpmeet! What
a comfort! And her nerves were all pacified now, after the storm. 'They' needed
a storm at intervals. A quarrel, a scene, a wild expenditure of nervous force,
was a physical necessity for them. Emotional instability: that was their
weakness, poor exquisite things! .
The telephone bell rang. He smiled and sat still.
It rang more than once. Gracie came running into the room; she must have
dropped her peignoir en route. He continued to smile, mischievously.
"Evelyn! What are you thinking
of?" She pulled him out of his chair.
"All right! All right! Mind my cigar! I'm
coming. But I won't touch the damned telephone until you've kissed me with your
sticky vermilion lips!"
She kissed him, wifely. As soon as she had seen
him safe with the instrument to his ear, she disappeared again. His eye caught
her in the act of vanishing, and it winked at her. It laughed because of the
comicality of her evident notion that without her moral spurring he would have
been feckless in a difficult world. He chatted gravely with Cousin for two
periods of three minutes. At the close he said: "Very well. I'll give you
a ring about ten in the morning." He replaced the instrument. Gracie was
standing at the door. She had assumed the Lovely Milkmaid nightdress; she was
indeed more or less loyally playing the game.
In the bedroom he put his hands on her half-bare
shoulders, and surveyed her and shook her, and laughed loudly, as if unable to
contain his joy.
"You are uproarious!" she said.
"Or are you pretending? Anything exciting at the Palace?"
He shook his head, and turned suddenly to empty
his pockets into the smallest of the drawers which Gracie, out of her riches,
had bestowed upon him for his exclusive use. (Home!) In his hip-pocket he felt
a soft protuberance. It was her glove. He slipped it into the drawer
surreptitiously. Then, happening to glance at the bed, he observed that she had
laid out thereon, with a scrupulosity of balanced line that Oldham could not
have equalled, his pyjamas. Final touch of conscientious, forethoughtful
wifeliness.
And yet, later, though nothing lacked in the
responsiveness of her loving ardour to his, there seemed to be always a veil
over her wide-open eyes when she looked at him, peering and probing in silence
into the secrecies of his mind. The veil foiled not her vision but his. Having
given apparently everything of herself, still she was withholding something: so
he surmised, subtly disconsolate in joy, baffled.
The bed-lamps were extinguished. Darkness. The
intimate warmth of her invisible body. The faint, faint sound of her delicate
breathing. Relaxation of limbs. Tiny frictions of apprehension in the confused,
vague activity of his sympathetically fatigued brain. Checked stirrings of the
limbs. A crumpled rose-leaf in the pillow. Subdued yawns. Intense wakefulness.
Uncontrollable racing of the machine of thought.
"You can't sleep, darling!"
"I shall, soon," he answered, startled
but reassuring, in a tone to imitate sleepiness.
Blinding light. With her feminine instinct for
drama, she had switched on the lamp at her side of the bed. She raised herself
on one elbow.
"Something's gone wrong at the Palace,"
she asserted sadly. He shook his head lazily, and noticed again the coarse ecru
lace at the top of her nightdress.
"Nothing to speak of. Nothing. What makes you
think there's anything wrong, my dear?"
"You said you'd ring them up again in the
morning. I heard you. And as you do all your hotel-telephoning at night--at
least that's what I understood--"
"Now just to show you how mistaken you are,
I'll tell you exactly what I did hear to-night. Ceria--the
Grill-room-manager--hasn't been seen for two days. And our head-housekeeper is
ill--but not seriously. That's all, and if we never had anything worse--"
He smiled, but ceased to smile when he saw tears
in her eyes. One of them reached the prominence of her cheek-bone and then
dropped on to his shoulder.
"Believe me," he said, caressing her.
"It's nothing serious."
"But why didn't you tell me?" she
murmured. "I asked you if there was anything at the hotel, and you shook
your head."
"'Anything exciting,' you said. Well, there
wasn't. And I didn't want to spoil your evening with any of those things. Why
should I?"
"But I want my evenings to be spoilt
by those things. I don't care whether they're serious or not. It's just those
things that would make everything so lovely between us. If you keep things from
me it means you don't believe in me being able to take them just right--not too
seriously and not too unseriously. Oh, darling!"
The grieved, dignified, affectionate expression on
her face made him contrite.
"My dear, it wasn't that at all."
"Really?"
"Really!" He asseverated the word with a
calm emphasis, but she continued to gaze down at him seemingly unconvinced.
However, the tears were quenched.
"That housekeeper," she asked. "Is
that the one that came to me when Tessa had the attack?"
"Yes. Miss Powler. Violet Powler."
"Oh! I know her! I was only wondering if it
was she who was your head-housekeeper at the Palace. You know, her sister used
to be daddy's housekeeper."
"And Violet was too, for a time."
"Yes, but I wasn't at home much then. She's
splendid. Susan was fine too, but I think I should admire Violet Powler more
than Susan if I knew her. I wish I'd got some of her qualities." Gracie
sighed. She showed no curiosity as to Ceria. "Darling, put your arms round
me. We aren't a bit near. And shall we ever be?"
He enfolded her. She was weeping again. She wept
on his face.
"There, there!" he murmured.
"You're only tired." He held her close. How long? He could not guess.
At length, kissing him, she gently freed herself, put the light out, and went
immediately to sleep.
It was a wondrous, enlarging experience. But
disturbing, disconcerting. Yes, he had to admit that inexplicably they were not
'near.' But it was she who was far away.
The next morning, when he opened his eyes and
grunted--first sign, grunting, that conscious cerebration was about to be resumed--the
room was dark, but the door was open, and there seemed to be a faint light in
the passage; and in this light he seemed to see, vaguely, the figure of Gracie,
which immediately vanished. He felt for her in the bed; she was not in the bed.
He closed his eyes again and yawned, wondering--not without apprehension--what
she could be about. He thought: "I must have gone to sleep after
all." Yet he could hardly believe it, because he had made up his mind in
the night that he would not and could not sleep and had reconciled himself to
the situation.
Then the chandelier light was switched on from the
door, and Gracie came into the room bearing a tray. She appeared to be dressed,
except for a frock...She put the tray on the side of the bed where she had lain.
The tray contained breakfast for two. Her smile as she leaned across the bed,
over the tray, was angelic; it expressed joy, pride, and devotion, all in a
high degree.
She said:
"I do like your funny old front teeth. Oh!
How rough your complicated chin is!"
"Here!" he said. "What's the
meaning of this miracle? I wake up, and breakfast walks in by magic."
"Well," she said, drawing a chair to the
bed and sitting down. "I got the rolls and butter from the house, but I
made the tea myself. I've been up for ages, and I'm frightfully well, and I
didn't wake you up, did I? You woke all by your little self. Well, I had the
water ready just off the boil, and the tray ready, and as soon as you began to
be a bit restless, I made the tea, and here we are. My poor darling, I know
you've had a bad night. I could feel it all the time while I was asleep. I can,
you know. But when I woke up you were asleep, and so I simply crept out
of bed. I didn't turn on the light. I just took your watch into the bathroom
and it was a quarter-past eight. So I got busy then. I dressed in the bathroom.
And I must have come in here about ten million times for things, and you never
heard me! But I could hear your breathing. You sleep like a child. If you
snored I don't think I could have borne it. I did want to see you asleep, but
of course I couldn't in the dark. Now, you comic child, sit up and drink some
tea." He sat up. "Wait a moment. He must have his mummy's
dressing-gown over his shoulders." She arranged her peignoir on him.
"Oh! He does look funny!" Then she
passed him the cup. "I've stirred it."
"But I don't take sugar."
"You will, this morning. Makes a change for
you."
Her tone was most exquisitely loving and tender.
To listen to it, to watch her eyes, was worth a month of bad nights. And his
sincere conviction was that he had never tasted such tea. He thought: "I
haven't half appreciated my girl. She's astounding. I'll lie in bed for hours
and let her do what she likes with me, looking after me. Only women can look
after men. They have a way...No man could do it a quarter as well."
Another of his sincere convictions was that he had never been so happy as he
was then. The sensation of bliss was acute.
"She made his night worse than it
would have been--she knows that," said Gracie, "and she's so sorry.
But he knows what she is. How's the tea?"
"Perfect."
"I should have given you chocolate, but I
couldn't be sure of it here."
"Why chocolate?" he asked.
"You like chocolate for breakfast when you're
in Paris, don't you?" She looked at him with a sort of loving, teasing,
mischievous shrewdness.
"Sometimes," he murmured. He guessed
that she must have tasted chocolate on his lips on the previous morning, and
knew that he had fibbed, then, in pretending to her that he had not
breakfasted. And she had known it ever since yesterday morning and said not a
word. Duplicity! No doubt she could surpass him in duplicity. He drank three
cups of tea, and finished the last roll regretfully. She picked up the tray in
a very business-like manner.
"Now he can lie down again. Wait a second,
though." She freed him from the peignoir and went off with the tray.
"What time is it?" he asked, when she
was at the door.
"I'll get your watch."
In a moment she returned with the watch. "A
quarter to ten," she said. "I must get London for you, dearest,
now."
"London?"
"You told them you'd telephone them this
morning at ten."
"Yes, perhaps I did. But I needn't bother
about it until to-night as usual."
He was full of delicious sloth.
She bent over him and gazed at him with an
indulgent smile. "I love to see you putting off things," she said.
"With all that common sense of yours that always makes me feel so small
and silly. It's such a relief." She kissed him, and her lips lingered on
his cheek. "All right. We'll attend to London later...You're in a heavenly
mood this morning." She left him and sharply drew back the thick curtains
with a metallic swish of brass rings on the brass pole. Then she tripped
towards the door, and switched off the electric light.
"You aren't going, are you?" he demanded
as she opened the door.
"Only for a minute, darling." She went
away, shutting the door.
Daylight had deprived the bedroom of some of its
romantic intimacy. The morning had a neutral colour; so far as he could judge
from a glimpse of a bit of sky through the window, it was overcast: large
clouds, and they were stationary. He was a little disturbed by what she had
said. 'In a heavenly mood this morning.' Was he not generally in a
heavenly mood? And could it be true that his common sense about things made her
feel small and silly? Undoubtedly, whatever his own moods, he had grown
hypersensitive to hers. He would hate to think that her appreciation of him had
any reserves, that his demeanour fretted her in the very least. He ardently
desired that their relationship should be without flaw. He was impatient for
her to return. His eyes needed her. He would not lose a moment of her. Yes, she
was managing him, thinking for him, regardful of his interests, with her prim,
girlish, ravishing assumption of superior wisdom. Even the moments of her
absence were divine.
She came back, mysteriously smiling, and slipped
on a frock--not the reach-me-down. She had been undressed; in five seconds she
was dressed, fit to receive ambassadors, radiating energy and efficiency!
"Shall I do?" she sought his approval.
He nodded, content. Indeed, she was exceedingly
beautiful, and her chic matched her beauty. And she was his. He was continually
surprised, and rather incredulous, in spite of all evidence, that she was his,
anxious to please him. What astounding good fortune! How proud of her he would
be when the time arrived to exhibit her as his wife? The contrast between the
tired, weeping--you might almost say deliquescent--girl of the later night,
between the racing-motorist, between the author of her amazing book, between
the fiery fierce fury, and this prim adorable feminine wife, this clever wise
housewife, this helpmeet! She was five girls in one. Bewildering! There she
stood, chattering in a manner original and charming about the weather, and
about his shirts. She seemed to be learned in the lore of his shirts. She must
have been exploring them in secret while at some time or other he was out of
the room.
"I think you might wear the black and white
stripe," she said. Naturally her choice was his law. "Do let me
change the studs. Anyhow I will." She laughed, hummed a tune.
Why worry about getting to heaven, when you were
there already? Damn the Palace! And the Orcham Merger! And every hotel in
the Merger!
Dropping the black and white striped shirt, she
ran out of the room. What next? She was very 'near' to him, surely. But was
she? Even in the early night there had been the veil--tenuous, nearly
diaphanous, but a veil--baffling him, though possibly it had added to her
allurement. Was the veil now torn away, or did it still delicately separate
them? When first she had mentioned 'nearness,' he had privately smiled at the
fancy. But now 'nearness' preoccupied his mind before everything else. Was she
near, or was she withdrawn? He wished she had never put the fancy into his
head, for he could not put it out again.
She reappeared, in a hurry.
"I've got London for you, darling!" she
announced casually, in a submissive tone.
"But--" He was dumbfounded.
"I thought I'd better," she said.
"When you've 'phoned we shall know where we are."
He wanted to be cross with her; but he could not.
She had deceived him, cheated him, taken far too much on herself, forced his hand;
but he could not be cross with her. After all, it amused her girlishness to
manage him, gave her a sense of power (quite illusory). And why should he not
telephone at once? He would have to talk to Cousin sooner or later.
She seized his dressing-gown, and by her serious
glance drew him from the security of the bed. She held the gown for him.
"Your slippers, darling."
She propelled him towards the drawing-room by an
affectionate wifely pat between the shoulders. The sensuousness and the
sensuality of the night were their own justification (he thought as he
hastened), but even so this wifeliness, this housewifeliness, seemed to purify
them. One of his old-fathioned puritanical notions!
"Well?" she questioned anxiously, when
he returned.
"It's really nothing," he replied
falsely.
"But how is your Miss Powler?"
"She doesn't seem any better."
"Is she worse?"
"He didn't say," Evelyn said
equivocally.
"Who didn't say?"
"Cousin."
"And the Grill-room-manager--Ceria, is
it?"
"No news."
"Darling, don't you think you ought to go
back?"
"Certainly not. Why should I? It's all in
Cousin's department. It's nothing to do with me. Is the hotel to stop because
one person's ill and another missing? It's up to Cousin to deal with the thing.
That's what he's paid for, isn't it?"
"What did you tell him?"
"Nothing. I only said I'd call him up again
to-night."
"Darling, you aren't easy in your mind about
it all."
"I'm perfectly easy in my mind. Here one day
you're terribly hurt because I think I ought to leave you, and the next day
you're positiveIy urging me to go. Do you want me to go?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I'm sure if it wasn't for me you
wouldn't dream of not going."
He knew she was right there. He looked away from
her. His conscience was siding with her against him. Cousin was undoubtedly
perturbed, and had undoubtedly transmitted his perturbation to his superior.
But Evelyn would not face the prospect of leaving her; he merely could not.
"Well, there's plenty of time," he said
glumly. "I couldn't catch the 'Golden Arrow' now."
"Why not?" she said. "You've got
lots of time. It's only just after half-past ten. I'll run out to the
Wagons-Lits office."
"There won't be any seats." He knew that
he was in full retreat. She smiled and kissed him.
"There'll be seats," she said. "Did
you ever see the 'Golden Arrow' full in January? I never did. Why, when we came
over it was half empty. What a good thing I've put the studs in your shirt for
you! You'll catch it easily. You go and have your bath and shave off that
beard, and I'll do your packing." She embraced him fondly. "Darling,
I couldn't bear to think I was making you slack. I couldn't bear it. And if you
don't go, I should know I was making you slack. It would spoil
everything."
Women were devilish.
"But hang it all!" he cried. "I can't
go off all in a rush in this style. It's so sudden. And I did have a rotten
night."
She kissed him again.
"I'll turn on the bath-water for you."
"And I loathe being in a hurry," be
added.
"You won't be in a hurry," she said, and
went into the bathroom
The whole episode was incredible. If he had seen
any other man behaving as he was behaving--putty in the hands of a woman
because he couldn't resist her--he would have scorned that man.
Sudden, by heaven! It was more sudden than an
earthquake, than a street-accident. His mind was a chaos of resentment and
revolt. Why was she persuading him to leave her? For the sake, not of his
conscience, but of hers...The hour? Was it really only just after half-past
ten? He searched for his watch and saw it on the night-table, where she had put
it. Twenty-two minutes to eleven...What finally decided him to leave her was
the realisation of the calamitous injury to the idyll if he should defy her.
Her distress would be terrible, her brave hiding of her feelings would be still
more terrible, and he himself would be sunk deep in gloomy unease.
Despite the usual obstructive conspiracy against
train-catchers on the part of all Paris traffic and traffic-policemen, they
reached the Gare du Nord at twelve minutes to twelve, in the automobile which
Gracie had telephoned for. Gracie had done nearly everything, got the railway
ticket and the seat, telegraphed to the Palace, finished the shirt-studs,
achieved some packing, and generally made straight a pathway before the
traveller's face. As for her packing, it seemed to Evelyn to be outrageously
and ruinously comic, but he had felt obliged to temper his criticisms of it,
because the earnest girl had shown herself very sensitive about it. During the
drive he had been far less apprehensive than Gracie as to the chances of
missing the train; partly by reason of the fact that he would have been well
content to miss it, and partly by reason of the fact that his mind had quite
another preoccupation, namely, his return to Paris. Gracie had not mentioned
the question of his return; no single word had she said as to it. Evelyn
thought that she ought to speak of it first. And he had waited and waited for
her to mention it.
At the station she masterfully attended to each
detail preliminary to boarding the train, just as though he had never travelled
alone in his life, just as though he were a simple schoolboy departing to
school. She acted and she paid; and she would have it so.
"I hate this train," she observed as
they climbed up into the coach. "It's so pleased with itself."
"But you always take it."
"Yes. But I hate it all the same. I'd sooner
go second-class by the ordinary train and let it be as crowded as it likes.
This is so superior and conceited; it makes you feel ashamed."
There she was again, yearning to be 'common'!
Except for one traveller at the other end, the coach was empty.
"Didn't I tell you, darling, there'd be
plenty of room?" she said with kindly forbearance.
The suit-cases were stowed under her orders; she
tipped the porters and the carriage-attendant. Seven minutes to twelve. Now she
would, she must, speak of his return.
"This train is awfully stuffy," she
said. "Let's go out a minute."
In the doorway of the corridor, where for an
instant they were unseen, she suddenly kissed him. Her kiss and her glance had
a voluptuous quality which reminded him of Volivia's performance on their first
evening together, at the Palace, and of her remark, "We all know what we
are." What sort of a girl was she? He said to himself that he knew nothing
about her. She loved him; she thought for him; she was efficient; she had
initiative. But he knew nothing about her: he could not guess what was passing
in her brain. The veil separated them. She loved him, but he was disturbed and
unhappy. He was almost persuaded that he had never been so unhappy. Time
flying. And they were both tongue-tied, and they did not move.
"What are you going to do now, my dear?"
he asked. "Shall you stay on in that queer flat?" The enquiry would
give her the opportunity to reply that she would stay there for his return.
"Queer?" she said. "What do you
mean, darling?"
"Well, isn't it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Do you call it respectable?"
"It's just as respectable as any suite in any
of your hotels, darling. Do your people ask for marriage-certificates from
visitors? What's the matter with the flat? The pictures? Have you ever been to
the Paris Salon?"
"Oh! I suppose it's all correct," he
capitulated.
"I told the waiter when I took the place that
my husband might be coming to join me."
"But the ring?"
"Well, do you imagine if I bought a ring for
Tessa I shouldn't remember to buy one for myself? Oh, darling! You are funny,
you know!" She raised her left hand. Six rings on it, including an alliance!
He had never noticed it. "However," she went on. "I shall leave
my queer flat this afternoon. I mustn't neglect Tessa. She'll need me more and
more now...Oh! I remember what you told me in the Durand last night. I remember
every word of it."
She moved now to the open door of the coach, and
he followed her. The platform had the quiet which presages departure of a
train. The majority of its population, their heads upturned, were talking and
laughing with unseen passengers in the train. A boy came along with a selection
of newspapers and magazines, all English. Gracie bought a bunch of them at
random and thrust them into Evelyn's hands.
"I was forgetting you'd want something to
read, darling!" she said. "You'd better read. If you read you won't
worry so much. I do hope you won't find things too bad at your wonderful
hotel."
He resented her inflection. He resented the
assumptions that he was worrying, and that his hotel could not function
perfectly without him, and that he was leaving for the sake of his hotel. He
was very proud of his hotel.
"My hotel will be all right," he said
with a difficult smile. "I shouldn't be surprised if I came back here
to-morrow." After all she had not mentioned his return; so that at the
last minute he found no alternative but to mention it himself. Astounding,
absolutely astounding, that she had avoided the slightest reference to it!
Shocking! Monstrous! And yet, her kiss!
"But, darling, you can't do that!" Her
tone was startled and very serious.
"Why not?"
"You haven't got any excuse for coming
back--just yet. Even as it is, do you think your staff aren't talking about
you, and wondering why you haven't given them an address, and why you've been
staying on in Paris after your work's finished? Nobody ever finds any but one
explanation of these things. And if you came, where should you stay? You
wouldn't come to your own hotels, and you'd have to leave an address at the
Palace, wouldn't you? What address then? You see, you've always been so
respectable--that's your trouble. When you've started a bluff you can keep it
going for a while, and your respectability helps you. But if you drop it, and
then try to start it again--well you're bound to be done in. If you told them
to-morrow morning you had to go back to Paris at once, what would they think?
And if you went off without saying where you were going, what would they
think? Even to explain these two or three days you'll have to invent a pretty
good story. No, darling!..Isn't it strange how things turn out? Yesterday
morning you were saying you positively must leave Paris to-day--and you are
leaving Paris to-day! Darling, I'll write you."
The train gave the mysterious shiver which
precedes movement. Gracie jumped down. Evelyn had so many things to say that he
could say nothing. The situation was beyond his handling. Gracie stepped away
from the edge of the platform. She stood below him, looking at him. She stood
straight. She was all youth, elegance, and beauty. And her face had an
expression of such proud, dignified sadness, disillusion, and despair that it
intimidated Evelyn. Then he saw tears in her eyes. She made no effort to hide
them. She remained quite still, crying. Imperceptibly her figure began to slide
across the space framed by the doorway of the coach. The train was in motion.
MELODRAMA
The distance between Victoria and the Palace was
short; the early night was fine and cold. Greeting Oldham and Brench, his
chauffeur, with a somewhat casual kindliness--casual because he was absorbed in
a dream--Evelyn told them that he would walk home. Throughout the journey to
London he had brooded upon the multiple enigma of Gracie's character, acts and
demeanour, and his relations with her, with no clear result. He had postponed
any reflection about the problems of the hotel, thinking: "Time enough
when I get there." But when he stepped off the train he suddenly realised
that postponement must go no farther. He tried to face the problems. What he did
not perceive was that the man facing them was not the old Evelyn. The new
Evelyn saw the hotel, and the Merger, in a mist, which no effort could
disperse. Whereas Gracie would appear out of the mist with all the solid and
detailed reality of life itself. His interest in the Palace was not authentic.
As he passed into the courtyard and glanced up at
the dark familiar façade, he saw a window open on the second floor and a
youngish woman appear, and behind her hung a bird-cage silhouetted against the
brilliant electric light of the room within. Then the window was closed and the
curtains drawn.
He climbed the steps under the portico rather
nervously, saluting in silence an overcoated janissary who was all deferential
smiles of welcome. The revolving doors swung round for him. He had the
sensation of revisiting a forgotten world, and then each aspect, feature, and
particularity of it returned into his memory. He pictured every floor, nearly
every room; he knew what everyone was doing--or ought to be doing. His mind descended
into the deep engine-hall where Ickeringway, the chief engineer, and his men
were engaged in meeting the heavy winter demand for light and heat; it darted
into the bill-office and into the strong-room; it saw the different sections of
the staff finishing their evening meal; and the last touches being given to the
tables in the restaurants; and Violet Powler in her sick-bed; and housekeepers
counting linen, and the page-boy writing in a book the time-details of every
ring upstairs as it was signalled in coloured lights on the indicator in the
corner behind the Reception-counter; and he saw the ringing visitors and the
dozing visitors; and Cousin and Pozzi and Miss Cass and old Perosi awaiting
him, and many other individuals hardly less important keyed up to a hundred per
cent. efficiency on the chance of a summons from him.
And the entire organism seemed phantasmal to him,
bizarre, unnatural, negligible, even indefensible. Why was he in London? Why
had he left Paris? Why had he allowed that astounding girl to bundle him out of
Paris? He would have paid a high price to be in Paris again at that moment. He
had the illusion that one embrace, the mere feel of her frock in his arms,
would have mystically solved the multiple enigma of Gracie and of their relations.
He hoped that old Mowlem, the head hall-porter,
would not be in his cubicle. But old Mowlem was in his cubicle, having hurried
through his dinner in order to be there for the panjandrum's arrival. He shook
hands with the magnificent and hoary Mowlem, as always after an absence from
the hotel. He felt guilty before Mowlem, before the immense rectitude of
Mowlem. His private affairs were no concern of Mowlem's; but he felt guilty. He
was deceiving Mowlem. He knew now that he was another Evelyn, whereas Mowlem
confidently took him for the old Evelyn. What would Mowlem think of his
master's proceedings in Paris, were they revealed to him? A few conventional
exchanges of greeting between them, on Mowlem's part sincere and hearty,
perfunctory on Evelyn's. For Evelyn's brain had in the very instant been
startlingly occupied with a new, unthought-of difficulty.
"I am an idiot. Where are my wits?" he
reflected. "I ought to have cabled to her."
An omission surely easy to rectify? Not at all.
For he could entrust the telegram to no one. Hundreds and hundreds of people in
the place, ready to execute his demands, devoted people very many of them, and
some of them on confidential terms with him, people from whom he had the habit
of concealing naught. Miss Cass, for example. But could he dictate to Miss
Cass: "Arrived safely. I kiss you tenderly. Writing. Your lion"? Or
anything like it? Could he even write any such message and hand it even to a
page-boy for despatch? Unthinkable! Of course he had always intended to cable,
but inexcusably, incredibly, he had not envisaged the precautions necessary. He
was committed to daily deceit. He, the panjandrum, must henceforward go forth,
making a mystery of his errand, and send off his own cables! He who never did
anything for himself except think and talk
"Who is it who's got that bird-cage on the
second floor?' he asked Mowlem, with a smile and in a tone artificially light.
"Bird-cage, sir?"
"Yes. No. 216." Evelyn could give a
number to every room seen from the outside: more than Mowlem could do.
"216. That's Lord and Lady Levering,
sir."
"Not--"
"Yes, sir." Mowlem permitted himself one
of his infrequent mildly humorous smiles.
"Well, I'm--! He has some courage."
The aged Lancashire peer (cotton), a zealot, a ferocious
fanatic for total abstinence, was the self-constituted leader of the opposition
to the movement led by Evelyn for Licensing Reform. He was a terrific fighter.
He had at least a couple of millions of money, and was ready to spend a lot of
it in utterly smashing Evelyn's movement. And he had chosen to make Evelyn's
hotel his home for the sittings of the Licensing Commission! Characteristic of
him! Evelyn admired him for a grand old belligerent. Ought Cousin to have
admitted the old cock? Certainly Cousin had been right to admit him.
Still--Mowlem glanced significantly and warningly at Evelyn. Evelyn looked
round and saw an aged, erect man, enveloped in a tremendous overcoat, coming
towards the doors with a youngish, buxom, somewhat coarse-featured woman--the
woman of the bird-cage. Evelyn recognised the man from press photographs. He
was ninety-one; the woman must have been at least half a century his junior. He
had married her--his fourth wife, apparently he could not exist without a young
woman to handle--and she had wheedled him into allowing her to travel with a
bird in a cage. But you could see at once, from his mien and hers, that he was
her ruler. Not unjustifiably did he regard himself, with his long white hair,
white moustache, shaggy clear eyes, and pure white complexion, as the finest
living witness to the value of total abstinence.
Just as he never 'drank,' so he never swore; and
yet he swore all day and every day, for his bearing said continuously in a
language impossible to misunderstand:
"I don't care a damn for anybody on
earth!"
He called in his loud, firm, authoritative voice
to Mowlem in passing:
"My car here?"
"Yes, my lord. It's this minute come."
If Mowlem had been engaged with any person less
important than the panjandrum, he would have left his cubicle to escort the
splendid Methuselah to the car, but Evelyn could not be left. Lord Levering
gave Evelyn one careless glance and went out, attended by a mere janissary.
Lady Levering was carrying a plaid for his shoulders.
"His lordship doesn't know who you are,
sir," Mowlem murmured, as if apologising for his lordship.
"He will do soon," said Evelyn.
"They've brought their little girl with
them," said Mowlem. "She doesn't look more than ten or eleven. The
image of his lordship."
A remark which Evelyn ignored; but it engendered
in him the novel idea that he himself was perhaps not too aged to become a
father.
"Anything new as to Mr. Ceria?" he was
about to enquire. He did not put the question, which he decided was too
delicate for any ear but Cousin's. Instead he asked: "What's the latest
about Miss Powler? I hope she's better."
"Better? Oh yes, sir. I hear from Mr. Maxon
she went out an hour and a half ago."
"Really!"
Evelyn hid his astonishment. Earlier in the day
Cousin had told him on the telephone that the temporary head-housekeeper was
not at all better. And now she had gone out!
"I shall be back in a few minutes," he
said to the surprised Mowlem, and departed. In the broad thoroughfare he called
a taxi off the rank and, where he could not be overheard by janissaries,
instructed the driver to drive to the nearest post-office. It occurred to him
that to lead the double life was a business both onerous and humiliating, and
being in love an ordeal more arduous than the direction of many hotels.
When he returned from his degrading excursion, the
illuminated sign over Mr. Cousin's door attracted him as he was on his way to
the directorial office. He went in. According to etiquette, the less important
personage should have been summoned by the more important; but Evelyn disliked
any formal expression of his own importance, though he could check
unceremonious familiarity well enough when he chose; he even regarded the
importance itself as a nuisance, if a necessary nuisance; withal his attitude
towards both his importance and the expression of it was full of
contradictions. In the outer room Miss Marian Tilton jumped up from her desk at
the sight of the Director, warmly greeting him in her thin, vivacious, worldly
voice, and asking after the Channel and his health. Yes, Mr. Cousin was in.
"Mr. Plimsing is with him," she said,
with an intonation to imply that very strange matters were afoot. Her eyes, not
her tongue, uttered the word 'Ceria.' "Oh! And Miss Powler is better. She
went out this afternoon. We're all so glad." Her eyes, speaking again,
subtly and very strangely connected the name of Ceria with the name of Powler.
It was a marvellous exercise in benevolent innuendo, and characteristic of Miss
Tilton.
"I'd heard she's gone out," said Evelyn
drily.
"Oh! I beg pardon, Mr. Orcham. I thought you
mightn't have." She opened the inner door.
"Mr. Orcham, Mr. Cousin," she announced.
Evelyn entered, and she softly shut the door.
The French manager and the Nordic detective stood
up. More greetings. More small-talk about the journey and about health. More
manifestations of pleasure at the sight of the Director. Plimsing mechanically
consulted his jewelled wristwatch. Evelyn felt that he would be relieved when
he had settled down again into the daily groove.
"Well," he said. "Shall we sit?
What's the latest news?"
"About Ceria?" Cousin suggested.
"About anything."
"Plimsing has just been telling me. Tell Mr.
Orcham, Plimsing."
The detective cleared his throat.
"The fact is, sir," said Plimsing,
"I've been rather handicapped in my investigations by the fact that Mr.
Cousin thought it better not to call the police in--at any rate at
present."
"Quite right," said Evelyn.
"Yes, sir. I quite agreed. Of course I did
mention the disappearance at Scotland Yard, but unofficially. The car has been
traced."
"The car? I never knew Ceria had a car."
"No, sir. Nor did I until yesterday. Either
our friend was somewhat secretive or his colleagues here omitted to tell me of
it. I heard of it as the result of discreet enquiries in his neighbourhood. The
car was found several days ago on the Great North Road, having apparently been
run into a milestone and bent its front axle. The accident must have occurred
at night. But something went wrong in the identification of the vehicle. Notice
of change of ownership had not been given, and the affair was further
complicated by Ceria having recently changed his garage and not given his name
at the new garage. Extraordinary negligence. His mother and two sisters went
off very suddenly to Italy before Christmas; no one knows why; they are Italian
subjects, sir. Scotland Yard was inclined to think there might be something in
that. I reserve my opinion. A false clue may give rise to endless trouble,
especially when you have no official standing. No one seemed to know the
address of the ladies in Italy--if it was Italy they went to. In the
neighbourhood reports were not unanimous. Some said Ceria was in the house,
others said not. I must not omit to point out that the family had an Italian
maid. She has disappeared. I tried a few likely places in Soho and Clerkenwell,
but without result. My difficulty was to get into the house. This would have
been easy for the police, but for me it was an illegal act. However, this
morning at an early hour, after suitable warning at the Hampstead
police-station to keep the officer on the beat out of the way, I did effect an
entrance by a lavatory-window at the back of the house. Of course this is very
confidential, sir. The electricity was working--I mean it had not been turned
off at the main switch. Before leaving I turned it off, as a measure of
precaution against unauthorised. intruders. Not that I was authorised myself,
sir."
Mr. Plimsing smiled and fingered his tie-pin.
"I made an exhaustive search, sir," he
continued. "Ceria was not in the house. Nothing suspicious. His bed had
not been made since he slept in it. But exactly how many days had elapsed since
he did sleep in it, I could not conjecture. The dressing-table was very
dusty, but not disarranged. The tops of the brushes were as dusty as the table.
The comb was missing. There were no letters in the letter-box. There was no
food in the kitchen or the larder, except a tin of biscuits, half empty. All
the crockery had been washed and put away. One saucepan was dirty. All the
blinds and curtains were drawn."
Mr. Plimsing proceeded with his report, and Evelyn
and Mr. Cousin continued to listen with seeming interest. But as for Mr.
Cousin, he was listening in the slightly perfunctory manner of one who hears a
story for the second time. And further, he had his Latin, sardonic, reserved
air of listening with forbearance to the child which for him was in nine
Anglo-Saxons out of ten. As for Evelyn, he would not interrupt, but his
attention wandered. He noticed the horizontal creases in Mr. Plimsing's black
waistcoat, and the evidence of strain on the lower buttons and buttonholes. Mr.
Plimsing's girth was increasing; Mr. Plimsing ought to be warned to eat less,
and to eat no potatoes, bread, or other starchiness; Mr. Plimsing...
Then he began to forget Plimsing and to recall his
visit to the post office and the inscrutable look of the girl behind the
counter as she read and counted the words of his cable. Pooh! They were
accustomed to all kinds of telegrams, those girls were; they must be. The cable
would now be on its way to Paris and St. Cloud. Soon Gracie would be reading
it. Had he been wise, or silly, to sign the thing 'Lion'? Would she smile
critically at the word, or would she be delighted, touched, that he had
remembered the strange French term of endearment which she had once, only once,
used to him? And about her share of the love correspondence, cabled or written!
He felt apprehensive; for he was living in a glass house. He hoped that if she indulged
in any odd telegraphic tendernesses, she would put them into French. Because
Miss Cass knew no French, and Miss Cass of course opened all telegrams. But
even so, there would be danger, owing to the inconvenient similarity of the two
languages. The word 'tendresses,' for instance. Miss Cass's lightning
intelligence, upon which she somewhat naïvely prided herself, would translate
such a word correctly, and with horror and sinister satisfaction, in the
hundredth part of a second. Yes, he was helpless, he could not instruct Miss
Cass not in future to open telegrams. Indeed, he could hardly instruct her not
to open letters. She did open the majority of his letters; but he admitted that
she had an uncanny power of divination which withheld her envelope-opener in
doubtful cases.
Not that Evelyn had hitherto had anything to
conceal! He could live, and he had lived, in a glass house with mind
undisturbed. But now he had something very important to conceal, and he must
persevere with his double life, amid danger, until his engagement to Gracie
should be formally declared. If ever! Why did he add 'if ever'? An absurd
proviso! And yet, was he sure of her? A weight of anxiety oppressed him.
The monologue of the detective had ceased. Both
the detective and Cousin were awaiting some pronouncement from the panjandrum.
Evelyn said:
"We don't seem to have got very far, do we?
Now, Plimsing, have you formed any theory about this disappearance?"
"Frankly, no, sir. Not yet."
"None at all?"
"Well, sir, I couldn't call it a theory.
But--"
"Well? You aren't on your oath, my
friend," Evelyn encouraged him.
"The whole Ceria family has
disappeared," said the detective, after a short pause. "And the maid
has disappeared. All Italians, I beg to point out. The Imperial Palace is a hotel
with an international clientèle and an international staff. It is a very
suitable and likely field for any activity, good or bad, of an international
nature. According to what I hear and read in the papers, there is a lot of
friction between France and Italy, and all sorts of movements are going on. Two
detectives have just been over to the Yard from the Paris Surety, as they call
it, and from what I am told confidentially at the Yard, the tales those two men
tell--Well!"
"Do you mean to say that Ceria is mixed up in
some anti-Fascist plot?" Evelyn demanded; and Cousin gave him a quizzical
glance.
"No, sir. I don't mean to say any such thing.
But people who are busy on some scheme might have reasons for wanting to
shift Ceria."
"But this is melodrama," said Evelyn.
"Yes, sir, it may be. But when a whole family
disappears, and a maid, melodrama is what I should call it myself. And it's
along those lines that I should look for a clue There's been melodrama in this
hotel before now, sir. And if you ask me, I don't know of any big hotel where
there hasn't been melodrama."
'That's true," Evelyn admitted; for he
remembered at least two instances, including a manslaughter suspected to be a
murder, whose scene had been the Imperial Palace. And Cousin and Plimsing remembered
them. (The press had been admirably reticent.) A new vista of speculation
opened in Evelyn's mind. Why not melodrama? Melodrama existed.
"And there's another thing, sir."
"Yes?"
"I haven't been able to see Miss Powler. Dr. Constam
wouldn't let me. Said she was too ill. Of course I didn't tell him why I
wanted to see her. I gave him to understand it might be about some missing
saltspoons."
Evelyn was really taken aback by the detective's
astounding insinuation, which drove the figure of Gracie completely from his
thoughts. Despite the shock, he gathered his wits together, and made an
instantaneous decision to say nothing whatever: a policy whose wisdom he had
proved in previous crises.
Plimsing waited vainly for a word. Both his
superiors were silent.
"I know," the detective went on; "I
know Ceria had been seeing the lady. And what do I find to-day? She's supposed
to be so ill that I can't see her, but I find to-day that she's gone out of the
hotel by herself. She went out by the Queen Anne doors and proceeded into
Birdcage Walk, where she took a taxi. It was observed that she was a little
lame."
Cousin, who had comprehended and enjoyed Evelyn's
policy of silence, said casually:
"That is her sciatica."
"Sciatica" said Evelyn. "Is that
what was the matter with her? I thought you didn't quite know."
"I didn't," said Cousin, "until
to-day. Constam confessed to me this morning that he had been misleading her
and all of us. She had had some symptoms in the umbilical region, and he told
her that they might be very serious, and she must stay in bed and keep
perfectly quiet for quite a fortnight. But now he tells me that those symptoms
were without importance and he knew it. She was really suffering from
overstrain, and she was in danger of a complete nervous breakdown. He argued
that as women are what they are, a diagnosis of overstrain and danger of a
breakdown would not be sufficient to keep her in bed and idle. That was why he
put emphasis on the other symptoms. Constam believes that he has no illusions
about women. The sciatica is more recent. It began only yesterday, very
slightly. She told him that her mother had had sciatica as a girl." Cousin
gazed meditatively at the opposite wall as he spoke.
Miss Tilton knocked and entered with a note for
Evelyn. The sight of Miss Tilton reminded Evelyn of the connection which a few
minutes earlier she had implied, without stating it, between Ceria and Violet
Powler. He opened the note and read:
"DEAR SIR, I am confined to my bed, and
should like to see you about something important. Might I ask you to come up
when convenient to yourself. With apologies. Yours obediently, V. POWLER."
The note was written in pencil.
"Well, Plimsing," said Evelyn calmly.
"We shall hear more from you to-morrow, eh?" (He was thinking,
ridiculously "How the devil did a fellow with his paunch manage to squeeze
through a lavatory-window?")
"I may see you later," said Cousin to
Evelyn. "Shall we dine?"
"Charmed. Nine o'clock," Evelyn decided.
As to the contents of the note, he said not a
syllable. It was exceeding strange that a woman who had just been out and about
should write to announce that she was confined to her bed.
VIOLET
AND CERIA
There was no answer when Evelyn knocked at the
door of the head-housekeeper's room on Eighth. He opened the door and went
cautiously in.
Except for Miss Maclaren's framed photographs on
the walls, and the absence of cushions, the room had much the same appearance
as on his visit to the former Mrs. O'Riordan many weeks earlier. Same sofa in
the same place near the fire; same eiderdown; and same cat--the cat being one
of the assets of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company Limited, and counting among
landlords' fixtures. But the woman under the eiderdown was Violet Powler,
instead of the betrothed of an Irish baronet; and she wore the coloured frock
in which Evelyn had last seen her on the night of his previous arrival from the
Continent. No alluring negligé for Miss Powler!
"Oh, Mr. Orcham, thank you very much for
coming. I'm so sorry about the chain of authority, but--"
"'Chain of authority'?" For a moment
Evelyn failed to catch the allusion.
"You remember you told me that Mr. Cousin was
the next above me in the chain, not you."
"That's all right," he said, with a
reassuring smile, rather pleased that she should have begun by recalling his
phrase and admitting the irregularity of the request in her note.
"I couldn't have talked to anyone but you,
and it isn't really about the hotel I wished to see you; and yet of course it
is."
"That's all right," he repeated.
"I'd better sit down, hadn't I?"
"Please do."
She had been lying on her back when he entered,
and had turned only her head. Now, as if to look for a chair for him, she
attempted to turn her body, and he observed a slight contraction of the facial
muscles indicating pain.
"Sorry to find you ill," he said, moving
the easy-chair so that he could see her as he sat in it.
"I'm not what you'd call ill," she
answered, "in myself. It's only sciatica. That's what Dr. Constam says it
is. But it was nothing to speak of till I went out this afternoon."
"So you've been out?"
"Yes, sir. I had to go out."
"But I hear the doctor ordered you complete
rest."
"Oh, that wasn't for sciatica. The sciatica
only came on two days ago. I must say going out's made it much worse. I've sent
for Dr. Constam to come and see about it, but he isn't in the hotel just now.
He'll be in some time this evening."
"You said you were in bed."
"In my note? Yes, I have been. And I am going
back to bed, but I found I couldn't quite manage it. So I lay down here and
Beatrice got the eiderdown for me and took my shoes off."
(Odd similarity between Violet Powler's case and
Mrs. O'Riordan's.)
"I suppose you've been overworking."
"Oh no, sir. But when Dr. Constam told me I
must stay in bed I did."
"You haven't been staying in bed much this
afternoon, I'm afraid." Evelyn was benevolently ironic.
"It's like this, Mr. Orcham. I had a letter
from Mr. Ceria, and I felt I ought to go and see him at once."
She made the motion of swallowing. For the first
time she had given a sign of nervousness, and her nervousness communicated
itself instantly to Evelyn.
"Melodrama!" he thought, very impatient
for her to continue, but incapable of showing her that he was impatient. Why
had Ceria chosen the head-housekeeper as the person to be written to? What was
there between them? Plimsing had perhaps not been so wildly wrong, after all.
Evelyn had been wrong, not the detective. And he, Evelyn, ought to have known
that the utterly cautious and judicious and experienced Plimsing would not
lightly have connected the names of Ceria and Miss Powler. The detective's tact
and discretion in the discharge of duties demanding the most delicate wiliness
had earned the admiration of all the heads of departments, every one of whom
was an expert in the vagaries of human nature; and his work was appreciated by
Evelyn perhaps as much as any. And here was the ex-Laundry-staff-manageress
practically admitting herself to be the key to the puzzle of Ceria's
disappearance! Fascist plots! Anti-Fascist plots! Vanishings of Italian
individuals, families, servant-maids! And the matter-of-fact English girl from
South London in the centre of the mystery, the sole recipient of Ceria's
confidence! But she had ceased to be the Laundry-staff-manageress. She was
changed. Her deportment, her tone, her self-confidence were all still
developing--though heaven knew that in her mild way she had been confident
enough before! She had indeed become the head-housekeeper of the world's chief
luxury hotel. Her manner of sending for and addressing the panjandrum was alone
sufficient proof of an extraordinary feminine capacity to acquire a new status
and be at ease in it.
Evelyn waited, saying nothing.
"I must tell you," she continued.
"Mr. Ceria asked me to marry him."
"Really!" Evelyn exclaimed quietly. But
he was startled. What could an Italian see in a staid English girl? Attraction
of contrast, he supposed. Love and marriage appeared to be in the air. He had left love
in Paris; he had been in the hotel less than an hour, and discovered love in
London. He himself had been dreaming of marriage, and Ceria had been dreaming
of marriage.
He heard pride in Violet's voice.
"Yes. Of course, Mr. Orcham, this is very
private. I'm only telling you because--" She stopped.
"Of course! But I'd no idea--"
"I hadn't any idea either. Not the least. You
know, sir, when Mr. Ceria had that scheme for a special New Year's Eve evening
in the grill-room and it couldn't be done, I felt very sorry for him and I
expect he--Well! And he'd told me all about his mother and sisters one Sunday
afternoon. They were away, still are, and I expect he was feeling lonely. And
he came up here to see me once or twice about the Floors meals and so on. No
one could help liking Mr. Ceria, could they, Mr. Orcham?"
"No. He's certainly very likeable."
"And then one evening he suddenly broke out and--asked
me."
"You were surprised."
"Yes, I was, until after he'd done it, and
then I wasn't surprised. I could see it all then. Oh yes, I could see it plain
enough. And really I was frightfully sorry."
"When was this?"
"The day you went to Paris, sir. And I think
I'd only seen him four times--I mean to what you'd call talk to! And I did
think it very strange for a man to propose to somebody after he's only talked
to her four times."
"Well," said Evelyn, very judicially,
"I don't know about that."
His thoughts flew over to Gracie. He could
sympathise with Ceria. Not in four days but in twenty-four hours had he fallen
in love, and far more than fallen in love, with Gracie. He was conscious of
falseness towards Violet Powler. She was thinking of him as a man of dignity, a
man of settled moral habits, a man who could and did live serenely in a glass
house! If she guessed the truth, or half the truth! If she could picture him
loving Gracie, Gracie sitting on his knee in a dubious Paris flat, him buying chemises
de nuit for Gracie, quarrelling with Gracie! The thought was affrighting.
And as for the rapidity of love, he knew all about that!
Violet said:
"Of course I had to disappoint him."
"Of course!" Evelyn repeated her words.
"I don't believe they sort of understand
English people, Italians don't. They can't. There was a very bad scene then,
when I told him I couldn't accept him. Not that he didn't believe me. He did.
But he was so upset it was terrible. The poor boy quite lost his head. Somehow
I managed to keep mine--I don't know how. Oh! I needn't tell you how glad I was
when I got him out of the room. I didn't know where to look. I'm afraid I did
rather go to pieces when I was by myself. But--excuse me troubling you with all
this. I oughtn't to."
Her face twitched.
"You're in pain," said Evelyn.
"No, it's nothing, thank you."
"Sure?"
"It isn't half as bad as it was when I came
in. And if you know just what a thing is, it's easier to stand it, somehow, a
pain. There I am again, going on about myself! I've only told you about Mr.
Ceria and me so that you can understand why he's written to me."
"Quite. I quite see. It must have all been
very trying for you," said Evelyn soothingly. And to himself: "And
she had her worries with the excellent Purkin too!" She was in demand.
Cousin's left eyelid, drooping, had once hinted to him that old Perosi was just
possibly looking upon her as serious tutors do not look on their pupils.
"Yes, it was," she agreed quietly.
Her demeanour and her tone had throughout been
noticeably quiet. She might have been relating some episode of Floors
management, instead of the strange passion of a handsome young man with an
irresistible smile for herself. She had not troubled to give her reasons for
declining Ceria's offer. She had somehow assumed that Evelyn would need no
explanation of the refusal, she being a sedate English girl, and he being with
all his charm a foreigner as to whose individuality and ways of thought nothing
could be safely predicted. She had refused him by an insular instinct, and
finally. She might have shown him some kindness in his adversity, but between
benevolence towards a man and marrying him there was an incalculable
difference. She was not of those women whom an adventurous and thoughtless
disposition flings into dangerous experiments. She had sense, and was fully
conscious of it. And yet her quiet 'Yes, it was,' in response to Evelyn's
remark that the affair must have been very trying for her, had an intonation
which indicated that 'trying' was hardly the right adjective for the occasion.
The affair might have been trying, but also it had flattered her, pleased her,
quickened her existence. From Ceria's discomfiture and grief she had drawn a
feminine joy. Already Evelyn had heard pride in her voice. And now her glance,
subtle, subdued, momentary, was a glance of triumph.
She lay on a hotel sofa, under a hotel eiderdown,
in a common South London frock; she was ill; she was in pain; she stirred with
difficulty; she was a housekeeper; she was prosaic. But she was not prosaic,
she was romantic. She was not a housekeeper, she was a girl desired and
unconsenting. She was not ill, she was tingling with the sharp animation of
essential life, and pain was less than nothing to her. She had lived, was
living. The transient gleam in her eyes as she glanced at Evelyn lit her sober
face, and for an instant transformed it and her frock and the eiderdown and the
sofa and the whole environment as a streak of lightning bafflingly perceived on
the horizon behind a forest irradiates the landscape and the firmament--and
leaves darkness again.
Evelyn felt a tremor at this glimpse beyond the
reticence of a soul. The cat sidled casually up to his feet, surveyed him,
yawned, and strolled away.
"Tell me," said Evelyn. "I don't
understand. When Ceria disappeared and the entire place was disturbed about
him, why didn't you inform Mr. Cousin--at any rate give him some hint--that you
might be able to throw some light on the mystery? Mr. Cousin hadn't the least
notion that you were mixed up in it."
"I didn't know Mr. Ceria had
disappeared," Violet answered, "until I got his letter early this
afternoon. I never was so surprised in all my life. You see, it was on the same
night he disappeared that I had to send for the doctor for myself."
"Do you mean to say that nobody said anything
to you at all?"
"Nobody!"
"It's very odd!"
"I expect Dr. Constam gave orders to everyone
that I wasn't to hear a word about hotel business. It was Beatrice who brought
me the letter. I didn't want to let on to her, but I did just mention Mr. Ceria
after I'd read the letter; and then she admitted he wasn't here. She looked
rather awkward for a minute, I must say. But she ended by telling me the fuss
there'd been. Once she's started she can't be stopped, Beatrice can't. She did
enjoy telling me. One good thing--she'd no idea who the letter was from. She
thought she was telling me something I simply didn't know anything about. And
all the time a lot of it was in the letter I had in my hand. I sent her out of
the bedroom and then I dressed as quick as I could and went off, and it was a
great chance I wasn't seen on this floor. If I had been goodness knows what
would have happened!" She smiled to herself.
"Did Ceria ask you to go and see
him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Up at Hampstead?"
"Yes, sir. At his house. He said in the
letter that he was in dreadful trouble about not turning up for duty here and
not writing to Mr. Cousin. So I went--of course. I felt as if I was to
blame."
"And then?"
"He was all alone in the house. His mother
and sisters are away in France. He'd told me that long ago."
"But there was a servant--Italian."
"Yes. But she has a brother married to an
English girl, and this sister-in-law wouldn't hear of her sleeping in the house
while the ladies were away and only Mr. Ceria there. So she slept at her
brother's--he has a café or something in Chelsea. He wrote me that after--after
he'd had that scene with me he went home and took out his little car for a
drive to calm himself. He likes driving at night. And he ran the car into a
tree--"
"A milestone."
"Yes, I believe he did say a milestone, now I
come to think of it. It's my belief the poor man didn't know what he was doing,
he was in such a state. He was shaken but he wasn't hurt, because he could
walk. It seems he walked a long way. I don't know where the accident
happened--it couldn't have been anywhere near Hampstead. In the end he came
back home to Hampstead. Middle of the night. And the next morning he felt he
couldn't face the hotel. And he couldn't bring himself to telephone. But he did
telephone to the maid and told her he was leaving the house until his people
came back, and she could take a holiday till he sent word to her again. I don't
know where he went, and I don't think he quite knows either. And he said that each
day he stayed away from the hotel and didn't let them know, the harder it was
for him to do as he ought, and so he didn't. He just let things drag on. You
can understand it, Mr. Orcham, can't you? Anyhow, I got his letter this
afternoon, saying he'd be at the house all afternoon, and would I come? He was
quite quiet. That made it all the worse. I couldn't tell you half he told me,
not because there was anything you oughtn't to hear. I couldn't remember it
all, and it was all so mixed up. He looked ill. In fact he was rather changed.
You can't imagine how he was. He's terribly afraid of you, Mr. Orcham. I never
thought any man could be as upset as he was, though he's quite made up his mind
to take my refusal. If he hadn't, I should have walked out of his house. I
didn't know what to do with him. I thought I'd better put his bed
straight for him. And he promised me he'd go out somewhere and have a proper
meal. While he was telling me he walked all over the house and I had to follow
him. That was how I saw how his bed was. Oh! You can't imagine...If I hadn't
seen it I couldn't have believed it." She ceased.
Meanwhile Evelyn had gradually, in private, been
resuming his role of director of the Imperial Palace Hotel. He was hardening
his heart. Every shred of melodrama had been stripped from the affair, which
had become a poor little pseudo-romantic tale of weak, conscienceless passion.
Not love; passion; southern passion; despicable to Anglo-Saxon restraint. Nor
was he uncritical of Violet Powler. It was she herself who had referred to that
supreme law of the hotel's organisation, the chain of authority. She had said
that she could tell to nobody else what she had told to Evelyn. But why not?
Duty was duty, however unpleasant. And her duty had been to enlighten the
management of the hotel without a moment's delay. Supposing that Evelyn had
not, unexpectedly, returned from Paris, would she have withheld her story?
"I am an ass," thought Evelyn.
"What's the good of supposing? I have returned...And she's
ill."
The more he considered her bearing, the more he
was impressed by it. She had told a very difficult story, and told it
courageously and straightforwardly. No nonsense! No insinuating feminine
appeal! No attempt to impress him, Evelyn! No attempt to justify the
unparalleled conduct of the man whose mad worship of her must have inclined her
to judge him mercifully! She had indeed accomplished a remarkable feat of
truthfulness, impartiality, and self-control. How would the present Lady
Milligan, or even Gracie, have behaved in similar circumstances? It disturbed
him to think how either of them would have behaved. But as for Ceria, though he
had ceased to criticise Violet Powler, his verdict on Ceria grew harsher. 'The
poor boy,' she had commiseratingly called Ceria. 'Poor boy' be damned! Ceria
had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. He had failed the hotel. He was
wonderful, perfect, in his professional capacity as Grill-room-manager; but he
had failed the hotel, and from mere weakness of fundamental character! He had
allowed the distracted suitor in him fatally to undo the Grill-room-manager. He
was worse than Miss Brury, for Miss Brury, when she went in at the deep end,
was at least engaged in protecting the interests of the hotel. Ceria's
defection was utterly unrelated to the hotel. And therefore inexcusable. Men of
character did not permit themselves to lose their professional heads over a
love-affair. They faced the music. There was not a head of a department in the
place who would not be hotly indignant if he heard what Evelyn had just heard.
A stirring on the sofa.
"It wasn't his fault! He couldn't help
it!" Violet spluttered. She gave one sob. She was crying. She stopped
crying, and most absurdly, most comically, most pathetically, patted her wet
eyes with the edge of the eiderdown. Evelyn was abashed, daunted. He felt as
though he had collided violently with something unaccountable and frightening
in the dark.
He rose from his chair with a nervous movement,
and walked to the window, and waited, pulling aside the curtains and staring
intently at black nothing. What was Gracie doing with Tessa at that moment?
Perhaps she was writing a letter to her lover. Her letters would certainly be
very exciting compositions. He would have given much to be rid of the
PowlerCeria situation. Why were hotel-employees so cursedly human, falling in
love, and leaving motor-cars against milestones in the middle of the night, and
disappearing, and getting sciatica, and lying on sofas, and sobbing, and
weeping, and whimpering silly compassion for adult male cry-babies? He was fed
up with it all. The ideal was robots, mechanical, bloodless, tireless, without
bowels and without human ties.
He heard the door open at the end of the room and
a woman's rapid, bright, vivacious voice. He would not move from the window.
"Well, Miss Powler, this is a startler. Out
of bed! Oh! And you're dressed too! I am glad. I've only a minute, but I
thought I'd dash in and tell you I called at the Laundry this afternoon in my
time off as you asked me last night, and I saw Mr. Purkin about those
seventy-one pillow-slips. I told him exactly what you said. I assure you my
modest female politeness to the great little man was just heavenly, but he was
furious, perfectly furious. Some men are very funny. He said he couldn't
believe his eyes when the lot of them came back to him yesterday. He said
they'd been finished exactly like all the others and there couldn't be any
mistake, and they weren't rough at all. And to make sure he'd put one on his
own pillow last night and it was absolutely smooth, and if he hadn't slept well
it wasn't because of the pillow-slip, it was because he'd been so upset. I had
all I could do to keep from laughing, but of course I didn't laugh. Can you
imagine the gentle creature putting the slip on his pillow himself and laying
his dear little precious head on it and then not sleeping? And him telling me
in the most serious way! And I'd never seen him before! Perhaps it was just as
well you didn't warn me what you were letting me in for. If you had I should
have been prepared and that would have spoilt it." A resonant, jolly
laugh, possibly somewhat too loud for a head-housekeeper's room.
Evelyn dropped the curtains in spite of himself
and turned. "Oh! Oh! I didn't know you were engaged. So sorry.
Excuse me."
"This is Mr. Orcham," said Violet in a
flat, casual voice. "This is Mrs. Oulsnam, sir."
Evelyn saw a plump, rather short girl with a quite
undistinguished face, but gay, laughing eyes and lips. She might have been any
age under forty. Evelyn had never seen her, knew nothing about her except that
he had arranged with Cousin to have her transferred from the Majestic. Since
she was Mrs. Oulsnam she must possess, or have possessed, a husband; but she
had no air of being a Mrs.; she was the born Miss, even if she had had half a
dozen children.
"Good evening, Mrs. Oulsnam," he greeted
her.
"Good evening, sir," she replied, in an
entirely new voice, subdued, murmurous, respectful. In no other respect did she
betray trepidation.
"How I take the life out of them!"
Evelyn thought. "I never know them as they are."
But Mrs. Oulsnam showed not a sign of
discomposure, and offered no apology for her garrulous cackling. In her
eagerness to tell a story to Miss Powler she merely had not observed the presence
of the mighty panjandrum near the window, and at first, when he had moved, she
had not guessed his identity. (He was wearing a tweed travelling suit, and had
no resemblance to the formal autocrat of the largest luxury hotel.)
"She'll make a fine tale of this to some of
the others," thought the panjandrum sardonically. Still, he wouldn't hear
her telling the tale. And somehow his heart was momentarily lightened.
"Well, I'll leave you, Miss Powler,"
said Mrs. Oulsnam primly.
"But how did it all end?" Violet
demanded with authority.
Was she displaying her authority for the benefit
of the panjandrum; or would she have used the same tone if he had not been
there? The panjandrum could not decide. He would never know. He would never,
and never could, know anything worth knowing of the rock-bottom psychology of
the women members of his staff. They were mysteries for him. They hid their
nakedness from him in a veil of ceremony.
"I soothed him as well as I could, Miss
Powler," said Mrs. Oulsnam, still prim and murmurous. "But he says
he is coming up to see Mr. Cousin."
"Well, thank you, Mrs. Oulsnam," said
Violet.
"Good night. Good night, sir...Oh! I think
everything is in order for the Rajah, Miss Powler." Mrs. Oulsnam nodded
and went away. You would have thought butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Although he felt slightly perturbed at this merest
suspicion of a slur on his darling, matchless Laundry, which had stricken with
naïve wonder so many American hotel-panjandrums, Evelyn offered no remark on
the droll incursion of Mrs. Oulsnam. Trouble between the Palace and its Laundry
was Cousin's affair, not his, and Cousin must settle it and settle it
satisfactorily. It was a detail not important enough for the august notice of
the Director. Yet he would have liked to handle the thing himself. He was
amused to think that Violet Powler was standing up to the ruler of the Laundry.
Surely she would not have complained about nothing. She was not that sort. He
surmised that in a real set-to she would beat Purkin. He had a vision of the
serious, conscientious Purkin putting a specimen slip on to his own pillow. A
less conscientious person would certainly have told Violet's emissary that he
had slept excellently with his head on the pillow-slip alleged to have been
roughly finished. But not Purkin.
There was a knock and the door opened again.
Fluffy pink Agatha entered. At the formidable spectacle of the Director she
hesitated, flushing.
"Come in. Come in," said Evelyn.
"Thank you, sir."
Agatha became as secretarial as she could in the
stress of the moment.
"I've only brought the reports for Miss
Powler, sir," she said.
"Well then. Only give the reports to Miss
Powler," Evelyn smiled.
Agatha obeyed, adding to Violet as she did so:
"And there's this about the Imperial suite." Then she quickly
departed.
He thought:
"That child's working rather late." And
he recalled also that according to Constam Violet Powler had narrowly escaped a
breakdown through over-work. Some revision of hours or duties or both might be
advisable. Violet was holding a thin sheaf of papers in her hand.
"May I look at those?" he asked
formally.
"Certainly, sir." She gave him the sheaf
which comprised brief notes of the day from each of the Floors. Evidently the
head-housekeeper had been initiating some organisation of her own.
"But I heard from Mr. Cousin," said
Evelyn, glancing at her, "I heard you'd been prescribed complete rest. And
here I find you're giving battle to the Laundry and receiving reports at night
from the Floors! What's the object of having a doctor?"
"Well, sir," Violet answered, "you
know what women are." She did not smile. "I haven't been giving half
an hour a day to my work. But I must keep an eye on things, and I like the
staff to come in and see me. And then the Rajah arriving tomorrow."
"Does Dr. Constam know you're attending to
business?" he demanded, ignoring the point about the Rajah.
"Not from me, sir."
"Then you're deceiving him." He smiled,
and Violet smiled weakly in response.
"I suppose I am, sir. But it does me good.
And besides--"
"Besides what?"
"Dr. Constam's been deceiving me. Does
he think I don't know? I know there's nothing the matter with me except I'm a
bit tired--and this sciatica now, of course. And he's been pretending I've got
something wrong inside me, just to frighten me into being completely
idle."
"Somebody told you that."
"No, sir. No one told me. I guessed."
"Has your mother been to see you?" he
said quickly, to hide the fact that her second-sight, or second-hearing, had
made an impression on him.
"Oh no, sir. I only sent her a post-card to
say I was too busy to go home on my usual night. If she knew I was under the
doctor she'd worry to death. But I shall tell her about the sciatica, because
that doesn't matter. She knows all about sciatica."
"She may know all about sciatica, but does
she know her daughter is a wicked and deceitful woman?" Evelyn laughed.
Then thought, "Why this badinage? It's out of place." And as Violet
did not immediately respond to the badinage he went on, altering his tone to the
grave: "To return to Ceria. Why did he ask you to go and see him?" He
restored the sheaf of papers to her, and began to move up and down the room.
"He didn't like to come here, and he wanted
to talk to me about what he ought to do. So he asked me to go to him,"
Violet replied, smoothly but firmly.
"What he ought to do? Do about what?"
"About returning to his work."
"Then he had a notion of returning after all.
That was something." A chill sneer in Evelyn's voice, disclosing his
resentment against the young man. "If he thought he ought to return, why
didn't he return and have done with it? There was no need to consult
anybody."
Evelyn knew that he should have shown some
consideration for Miss Powler, as the innocent cause of the trouble; but he was
not perfectly master of his tone; and, having used the wrong tone and being
ashamed of it, he grew a little desperate, and, to justify himself to himself,
determined that the wrong tone was really the right tone, and that he ought to
persist in it. The interests of the Palace demanded such a tone, and if Miss
Powler suffered by it, and even if she was ill and in pain, that could not be
helped. Moreover, had she not expressed a tearful sympathy for a man who
merited no sympathy? Evelyn deliberately fostered his own indignation; it had
been a spark, genuine enough--he blew it into a fire. And, as he waited for
Miss Powler to speak, he put more coal on the fire, and blew again, and found a
sombre, half-voluptuous joy in the procedure.
Violet did not speak.
"Is she being obstinate?" Evelyn
thought, and continued aloud: "And so he has the nerve to send for you,
though he knows you're ill!"
"No. He'd no idea I was ill. He couldn't have
had, because I didn't send for the doctor until the morning after he'd--he'd
disappeared." Her tone was now mild and placatory.
"She's trying to humour me, is she?"
thought Evelyn. "Soft answer turning away wrath and so on! Well, it shan't
turn away wrath. Does she imagine I'm a child to be deceived by those
dodges?" He said aloud: "Even if he didn't know--"
"But he really didn't."
Evelyn controlled his exasperation.
"I say even if he didn't, he ought not to
have appealed to you. I repeat, there was no need for him to consult anybody.
But if he had to consult someone, he has experienced colleagues here, friendly
colleagues too, whom he knew years before he ever heard of you. They were the
proper people to consult. Mind you, I'm not blaming you." The assertion
was unconvincingly made because it was untrue. He was blaming her--for her hysterical
outburst, 'It isn't his fault, he couldn't help it.' He had treated that cry
rather lightly at the moment of utterance; but now he very seriously objected
to it, and the more so for the reason that by its revelation of her secret
attitude it had frightened him, imposed itself upon him.
He said aloud, with an assumption of formidable
judicial calm:
"You say he couldn't help it. I say we don't
want men here who 'can't help it.' And we don't want men who, when they're in a
fix solely through their own fault, send for our head-housekeeper and take her
away from her duties. Remember, you yourself say he didn't know you were ill.
Therefore for anything he knew to the contrary he was taking you away
from your duties."
"I expect he sent for me because he thought I
should understand," said Violet, as it were meditatively, but
uncompromisingly.
"But do you understand?" Evelyn
proceeded. "Do you appreciate that a man occupying an important position
in this place can't be permitted to behave as Ceria has behaved? He asks you to
marry him. You refuse--and quite right too! And then forsooth he absents
himself from his job and gives no explanation and no warning even. If he'd only
telephoned or wired he was ill, everything would have been all right. When a
head of department says he's ill, we accept what he says. We don't hold a court
of enquiry and demand doctor's certificates. But Ceria does nothing--nothing.
He just leaves us in the lurch. Oh yes! The grill-room, I've no doubt, has been
functioning as usual. But that's no excuse for Ceria, and no thanks to him. And
think of the disturbance and all the anxiety for Mr. Cousin, and others too. A
good thing we happen to have a detective of our own here. Otherwise Mr. Cousin
would have had to call in the police. A nice thing, Scotland Yard making a hue
and cry after a missing head of department who's only hiding himself because
he's been crossed in love! Think of the effect on the hotel!..Well, Miss
Powler, Ceria sent for you. You went. And he consulted you. What then? What did
you advise him to do?"
"I told him he ought to come back at once,
sir."
"And is he coming back?"
"He's afraid. He asked me to speak to you
first."
"But he didn't know I was here."
"Yes, he knew that."
"How?"
"I told him. Beatrice told me before I left
that you were expected back about seven. She'd heard. Of course everybody had
heard."
"And so what he really wanted was that you
should make an appeal to me on his behalf. He daren't do it himself. He shelters
behind you! Nothing doing, Miss Powler! Nothing at all! Ceria was an excellent
manager of the grill-room, so far as we know. But we didn't know far enough.
His behaviour when I sat on his ridiculous scheme for a New Year's Eve show in
his precious grill-room ought to have enlightened us. We passed it over. Mr.
Cousin, I may tell you privately, did suggest to me that some notice ought to
be taken of that. But I said no. I said we must excuse it because it evidently
sprang out of his enthusiasm for his work. But this new affair hasn't the
remotest connection with his work. And further. If he's capable of going on in
this style because of a crisis in his private life, how do we know he wouldn't
do something fatal if a really big crisis occurred in the grill-room? We don't
know. We should never feel safe. You've heard what happened to Miss Brury and
to Miss Venables when they failed us. It had to happen. We can't have these
upsets. To certain rules there simply can't be any exception. Nobody is indispensable.
Now honestly, don't you think I'm right?"
The last words, said in a persuasive, almost
kindly tone, were a tremendous concession to Violet. Conceive the Director
deigning to ask a housekeeper whether or not he was right on a fundamental
question of managerial policy! Evelyn, self-approving, considered that he had
shown himself a very reasonable human being.
Violet, as she gazed at the ceiling, answered
resolutely, indomitably, and with a mild defiance:
"I'm sorry, sir. But as you ask me, what I
say is there's an exception to every rule."
"So am I sorry!" Evelyn snapped with a
great and not unsuccessful effort to keep his full dignity.
He was thunderstruck, and despite himself he had a
sensation of alarm. Had the earth ceased to revolve? He was being defied, for
the first time in the history of his Palace rule. He could hardly believe it.
No other head of a department, not even Cousin, would have carried a defiance
of opinion so far. No disobedience in her remark. If she had declined to accept
an order she would either have resigned or been dismissed. But an employee
could not be punished for an opinion, particularly when the opinion had been
demanded. She would not resign.
She might resign. He would not, could not, dismiss
her. The idea was wildly ridiculous. He certainly desired to keep her. But
still more he desired her support for his opinion. He glanced at her--she did
not glance at him--and he saw her as a being very challenging and very
feminine. Yes, she was a human individual as she lay there on the sofa. She was
all woman. She had attraction; but, very strangely, he felt a repulsion for
her. In his heart he was furious against her; he hated her. That high
cheek-bone underneath the curious curve of the cheek, that bosom, that soft
brown hair, those flickering eyelashes. She drew him; and she repelled him
horribly. Curse her! She had amazingly succeeded in her job. And she had
amazingly stood up to Purkin: which in itself was a prodigious feat. And now
she was standing up to the Director. He had had to do with hundreds and
hundreds of employees, but never one like her. She was a girl of quite
unalarming aspect; but she had undoubtedly alarmed the Director. He was very
uneasy, and he did not know why. The interview was ending in a manner totally
unsatisfactory.
"Well, Miss Powler," he said, grandly.
"I regret you've had all this trouble while you're ill. But you wanted to
see me, and I thought I ought to come. I do hope you'll have a good night and
get well quickly. I'll see that Constam has a look at you this evening without
fail."
"You're very kind. Thank you, sir," she
said, negligently.
Evelyn left the room.
HER
LETTER
It was after a quarter to ten when Evelyn and Mr.
Cousin finished their rather rapid tête-à-tête dinner in the little
nondescript room where they had once entertained Miss Maclaren with a lunch and
the conversation which she had so sharply criticised to her new friend Violet Powler.
They had eaten the dinner quickly because Mr. Cousin wished to make his regular
evening tour of the restaurant and, particularly, the grill-room; also because
he had to inspect the Imperial suite, which was being very specially prepared
for the august arrival on the morrow of his highness the Rajah and retinue.
Further, Evelyn had an engagement of his own in his private office. At dinner
he had related to his subordinate the principal facts elucidating the great
Ceria mystery, and Cousin, a telephone being always on that meal-table, had at
once transmitted them to Plimsing--but to nobody else. The panjandrum and the
sub-panjandrum, the one apparently and the other as usual really unperturbed,
had agreed that the only right policy was to await the next move from Ceria.
Meanwhile the grill-room was taking no harm under the control of the very
experienced French under-manager. Three times during the meal the waiter had
been sent away in order that the two chiefs might talk of their secrets at
ease. They had, however, reflected silently upon the strange affair at much
greater length than they had spoken, Mr. Cousin being by nature rather taciturn
and Evelyn having been rendered taciturn for the moment by the intensity of his
musings upon the reactions to men of two entirely different women--Violet
Powler and Gracie.
As the chiefs slowly crossed the hall in the
direction of the grill-room, an imposing figure, with a cigar still more
imposing, came magnificently up the length of the foyer.
"That's your Levering, isn't it?" Evelyn
muttered.
"Oui."
"I'd better meet him."
"Oui...Good evening, Lord Levering. I hope you found
everything to your liking to-night in the restaurant." Cousin made a
beautiful obeisance.
"Can't say that I did," was the
magnate's strong, loud, inexorable, but quite cheerful reply.
"Sorry to hear that, my lord," said
Cousin with similar cheerfulness. "May I present Mr. Orcham? Lord
Levering, sir."
Lord Levering glared inquisitorially at the
panjandrum; then held out the shiny ivory hand of old age.
"So you're the foe!" said his lordship,
shaking hands, and shut together his splendid teeth.
"I am the arch-foe," said Evelyn.
"Well," said his lordship, "we
shall soon be over the top, eh! What!"
"The sooner the better," said Evelyn.
"Your strategy was wrong at the start,"
said his lordship.
"Oh! How was that?"
"You'd like to know. But you won't,"
said his lordship, and laughed grimly.
The laugh was the laugh of an old man, but not his
handshake nor his bearing, though the bearing was extremely deliberate.
Climbing the carpeted stairs up into the entrance-hall, Lord Levering had had
the air of carefully considering each step in advance. He was old enough to be
old Dennis Dover's father, and Evelyn's grandfather; but he could have passed for
seventy, and seventy in his case seemed youth itself. Behind Evelyn might have
stood the spectre of death, and Lord Levering might have been defying both
death and Evelyn.
"I'm not as young as I was," he went on,
"and I expect to be told I haven't moved with the times. This is my first
taste of your hotel, for instance. I'll tell you what your hotel is," he
glanced at Cousin. "It's a drinking den. That's what it is. At least the
restaurant is. If your restaurant is the times, perhaps it's just as well I
haven't moved with them. I've seen enough alcohol drunk to-night to float a
company. And I hear this is what you call your extension night, and you keep it
up till two o'clock. I'd like to know what your female customers look like when
they wake up in the morning soaked in the poison you give them--at how much a
glass? And what sort of a day's work their men do next day. And young women as
brazen as strumpets painting their faces in public! Even strumpets didn't do
that in my young days. And smoking like chimneys." He puffed gorgeously at
his immense cigar. "And then I'm positively told you keep young men here,
pay them, to dance with libidinous old women. Holding them in their arms, women
they haven't been introduced to, and clasping their fat bodies, and smirking at
them, and making eyes at them, and cantering round with them. That's what's not
to my liking in your restaurant, you, sir, I don't know your name." He
looked at Cousin again after gazing at Evelyn. "Your food's good. And so
is your mineral water. But for the rest--You've heard of the fall of the Roman
Empire. We used to learn at school that Waterloo was won on the playing fields
of Eton--not that I went to Eton. No, I went to the mills. I don't know where
Waterloo was won. I should have said myself it was won at Waterloo. But I know
this. The Roman Empire was lost in circuses and orgies, and the British
Empire's being lost in your restaurant. Yes, right here, and now! And yet you
laugh at me if I fight your proposed arrangements for losing it quicker. Want
to get it over, I suppose! You wait till Prohibition comes, as it will."
The restaurant orchestra could be distantly heard,
accompanying the loss of the British Empire with a tango.
Evelyn said, laughing:
"I shall be very interested to see Prohibition
at work. It's been such an unqualified success in America--"
"You laugh, Mr. Orcham. But you're laughing
on the wrong side of your face. As regards America, don't forget that America
isn't a law-abiding country. England is. And if England votes for Prohibition,
it will obey Prohibition, sir. And then where shall you be, and where will your
fancy men and your fancy women and your fancy dividends be?"
"No doubt in the soup," said Evelyn.
A plump little woman emerged from the ladies'
cloak-room and walked up the stairs.
"Come along, Maria," Lord Levering
addressed her sharply. "When you girls get into one of those places, God
knows when you'll come out again. Ten minutes I've been waiting."
His tone, despite the words, was markedly
benevolent. But Lady Levering frowned and dropped her coarse lower lip and was
silent. Lord Levering did not trouble to introduce his wife, whose acquaintance
he had made in the first tea-shop ever known in Rochdale.
As the pair moved away towards the lift, Lord
Levering turned back to Evelyn for an instant.
"I don't mind telling you where your strategy
went wrong," said he, grimly genial. "You'll never do anything with
this Licensing Commission. You ought to have begun by packing it. I did.
Good night to you. It's the rule to shake hands before a fight." He shook
hands again heartily with both Evelyn and Cousin.
"It's fortunate there weren't many people
about," said Evelyn, smiling vaguely, somewhat self-consciously, when he
and Cousin were alone.
"Ça n'a pas d'importance," said Cousin. "This is only his
second full day here, but everyone knows him and his style. Lady Levering was
not really offended by him. She quarrels with him once a day on purpose."
"Why?"
"So that he shan't kiss her, I'm told. She'll
come back here soon and order a liqueur brandy. She did that yesterday after
lunch. So long as he doesn't kiss her she's safe."
"Well, it's a shame!" said Evelyn.
"He's a great fellow."
"C'est malin, les femmes!" Cousin murmured.
Then they both laughed. Mr. Cousin directed himself
towards the grill-room, and Evelyn went to his private office. Miss Cass was
working at her desk in the outer room.
"Hello!" said Evelyn, with no
preliminary greeting. "I told them to tell you I shouldn't do anything
to-night. You know I never do till next day, when I get home." And in fact
he had had no time even to look in at his office. Dashing off to cable to
Gracie; dashing back and being caught by Cousin and Plimsing in a most urgent
crisis; being caught again by Violet Powler; long interview with Violet; then
dressing for dinner while listening to Oldham's experiences in the country. Not
a moment to himself.
"Good evening, Mr. Orcham." Miss Cass
greeted him with pleasant indifference, as a worker might reply to a shirker.
"I had a few things to do, and I thought perhaps you might just look
in."
Evelyn thought: "All these girls work too
hard." Violet Powler had nearly had a breakdown. He felt guilty. Was he a
slave-driver?
"Any telegrams for me?" The words were
uttered before he had considered them. They were a symptom of his preoccupation
with Gracie; she might have cabled her love or something of the sort.
"Yes sir, one."
He was alarmed. Had Miss Cass opened it?
"Who from?"
"Sir Henry, sir."
He was relieved.
"And there's a very long letter from Sir
Henry too. From Berlin. I've left them on your desk in case you did happen to
come here, and I'd gone."
"Thanks. And you ought to be gone. Tuesday
isn't one of your late nights. You'll be falling ill."
"I was just going," said Miss Cass with
decorous but masterful dignity. She tended him like a mother; she watched over
his flowers and his Malvern water; and she held that she had nothing to learn
from him about the management of the human machine.
"Good night."
"Good night, sir."
Evelyn passed into his own room, where the
desk-light was burning. He was glad that the interview with Miss Cass had been
so short. The cable from Sir Henry Savott had to do with the Merger; also the
letter, which comprised ten quarto pages on German note-paper. Sir Henry might
be busy on his film scheme, but apparently he was still determined to prove to
Evelyn and the world that his attention to the progress of the hotel-merger was
as minute as ever. Evelyn scanned the cable and glanced through the letter, which
raised a large number of complex questions. He thrust both documents into a
drawer, out of his sight and out of his mind too. Then he lit a cigar and sat
down and smoked very slowly, showing respect for a cigar worthy of it. Then he
got out a sheet of note-paper, and his reserve fountain-pen, which was kept
with the notepaper, and wrote the date on the sheet, and even the hour.
"My--" he began. "My what?" He
stopped. "My everything." That was rather good.
He wanted his office to be the isle of Cythera. He
wanted to yield himself, helpless prey of Venus, to drown, to expire in bliss:
as when, weary of all else, one sinks with ecstasy into enfolding sleep. He
wanted too many things that night. Not a single lamp, but several, burned in
his brain...Lord Levering was a terrible old man, and you could not hate him.
He might win the battle. Mean, deceitful, low-down creature, his wife!
Disloyal. You could hate the wife. But not the venerable bruiser. Lord Levering
had the legions of the Nonconformist Conscience behind him. And even if the
Commission favoured Reform, vote-catching politicians in Parliament in their
pusillanimous fear of the vengeance of the Conscience, might shelve the
Commission's Report or even condemn it in the Lobbies. 'Drinking-den,' 'lounge-lizards,'
'libidinous old women,' 'fall of an Empire,' etc., etc. Preposterous! But
something in it, something in it! He, Evelyn, might be a Spartan by temperament
(Was he? What about the boulevard flat?), but he was committed to expensive
luxurious hedonism...
He listened for the noises of the departure of
Miss Cass. Not a sound. That woman's appetite for work was morbid; it was
depraved. He would order her to go; he could not be at ease while she stayed.
No, it would be a mistake to open the door and let more of the vulgar air of
the world into the scented groves of Cythera. 'Scented?' He sneered at the word
which had uttered itself in his sentimental mind. He rose and refreshed the
fire which, tired of waiting for succour, was nearly dead.
The image of Violet Powler teased him. Gracie
could not think straight. He had always thought of Powler as a woman who
positively could and did think straight. She couldn't. 'They' were all alike.
Have anything to do with them--and your peace was gone! Damn her 'exception to
every rule'! Ceria was impossible, and indispensable he was not. She was
affected by Ceria's unhappiness and its consequences because she was the author
of his unhappiness. Ceria worshipped her: therefore he must be saved from his
own acts. Nonsense! Yet, now, Evelyn could understand Ceria's madness for
Powler; for, upstairs in her room on Eighth, he had had one glimpse of her as a
girl human, feminine, as a Venus, this head-housekeeper whom hitherto he had
looked upon as a sexless functionary. She had behaved, as a functionary,
marvellously; she had surpassed his hopes. And not the least--indeed perhaps
the greatest--of her feats was to rise up from a bed of some degree of pain,
and dress, unaided, and go forth, doctor-defying, at the call for help, and
face the winter day and the desperate man, and counsel him, and make his bed
for him, and force promises from him, and then return, too ill to put herself
to bed again, but not ill enough to prevent her from sending like a queen for
the Director and defying the Director as she had defied the doctor! Grit in
her. She was no doll stuffed with bran. And Evelyn could not deny, in the
disturbing honesty of the central core of his mind, that she had infected him
with the microbe of sympathy for the poor little love-lorn Italian recreant.
But he would annihilate the mischievous microbe by force of straight-thinking
will.
The telephone bell! He could hear it faintly
ringing in the outer room. Ring-ring, ring-ring, ring-ring, ring-ring. Miss
Cass had gone, then. With an impatient savage gesture he got up and strode into
the outer room. He might have ignored the ringing. But he longed for another
grievance as a man longs for another whisky. It was only the conscientious
Smiss, asking whether the Director desired to see him that night. The Director
softened his voice. Politely and appreciatively he thanked Smiss and told him
to go home. Instead of drowning in some enchanted lake in the arms of Venus
hidden within the secret groves of Cythera, the Director felt himself drowning
in the vast sea of the life of the hotel.
He returned to his desk.
"My dear Everything. Are you in bed? Are you
wearing the nightdress I bought you?"...How the hell did you write a
love-letter? Look here! He was in love. He ought to be able to write a
love-letter! True, this was almost his first love-letter, for his wife before
their marriage had lived so near to him that correspondence had been
unnecessary. True, he was worried, preoccupied, by professional cares. No! They
were naught. The chief of his worries was Gracie herself. Was he in love
with her? He argued that he must be, but how could he be sure? He was only sure
that he did not feel happy. Gracie so baffling! A grand figure--at moments! A
heroic figure--at moments! But at other moments--what? A genius. Lovely always.
Intoxicating in her acquiescences. Oh yes! All that. He thought of her ardours
in surrender, her smile, her wifely initiative, her strong volitions...The
affair was so strange. The opera, the cabaret, in one night. Two days and two
nights with her; the exquisitely awful quarrel; and the last morning of violent
surprises.
And the morning was the morning of this very night
on which he was trying to write to her, Tuesday. On the previous Friday morning
the affair had not begun. In the space of a few days he had changed his life,
changed hers, bound himself for ever. And he was suffering. Affliction was his.
Oh! To be free of women, with their damnable complications! To live solely for
his work! Nevertheless, his yearning to be with Gracie, to caress her, to gaze
close at her face, to forget everything in her--this yearning excruciated him.
"I want to share you intimately, and I want
you to share me intimately. I've had a fantastic time since I got here."
He scribbled hard, telling her without any reserve, and in detail, the story of
Powler and Ceria, the episode of Lord Levering, Lady Levering's brazen
disloyalty. He filled two sheets, front and back, at terrific speed.
"Darling, I love you. Thine, Evelyn the so-called lion."
He would not read what he had written, lest he
might doubt its sincerity or deride its phrasing. He addressed and stamped the
envelope--penny extra. He pushed the sheets into it, stuck it down with a
thump; turned off the light, left the room.
At the lift he said to the liftman:
"Get a pass-key from someone, and go upstairs
to my room and bring down my hat and overcoat."
He went into the empty hall. Long Sam was on duty.
Reyer had just come on duty. He nodded smiling to Long Sam, and talked to Reyer.
(Reyer was certainly due to get a rise in the world.) And all the time he was
carrying the letter. If Reyer could read it, had the least notion of its
contents! It was like a bomb in his hand. He dropped it into the vermilion
letter-box. Safe. No longer a bomb.
Visitors passed through the hall. One of them, a
young woman, pretty, and endowed by heaven with much self-confidence, argued at
length with the attendant at the Enquiries counter about the departures of the
Indian Air Mail. The liftman arrived with the hat and overcoat.
"You see," said Evelyn to Reyer,
"I'm not borrowing yours to-night." And to Long Sam: "I'm just
going out for a short walk, Sam."
Long Sam looked at him benevolently. A janissary
swung the door. He walked towards Westminster Bridge. No distance. Cold. Not a
star. The leafless trees in the park moved in the wind with scarcely a sound.
The Palace tower was still illuminated. Suddenly, while he faced round to look
at it, the tower went out...The Abbey loomed above him. The Clock Tower of
Parliament gleamed forth the time of night...He stood on Westminster Bridge,
saw the curving, twinkling, noble river; a menacing red lamp here and there in
the strings and groups of white lamps. In the distance on the left bank of the
river he could see the lights of two great hotels. One of them was the
Majestic. His word was already law there, as at the Palace. Romance. He was
thrilled. He thought of Rome, Paris, Cannes, Madrid. Romance on a tremendous
scale.
Women! What were they? Toys, distractions,
delectations, retreats. But, though Ceria might not be indispensable, women
were. He felt their monstrous power. Gracie was in bed, wearing that nightdress
with ecru lace. No! Perhaps the fear of Tessa's disdain had prevented her from
putting it on after all. And Violet Powler, stern, sleepless from sciatica.
CERIA'S
OFFICE
The next morning Violet, in a dream, was trying to
do something that Mr. Orcham did not want her to do, and the presence of his
restraining hand on her arm grew stronger and stronger till it woke her up. The
dream reminded her of an incident in the engine-hall on her first day in the
hotel, when she had shown alarm at the unexpected sound of a suddenly-started
machine, which alarm Mr. Orcham's firm hand had stilled. The reality was that
Beatrice Noakes was rousing her with tea and bread-and-butter, according to
order.
"Where am I?" Violet asked of the fat,
smiling chambermaid. She recognised nothing in the room. The wardrobe had
changed its place and increased in size, and the window could not be seen at
all.
"In your new bedroom, miss. I should say Miss
Maclaren's." Then Violet recalled that Dr. Constam had insisted on her sleeping
in that room, because of the trouble of carrying her along the length of the
corridor to her own. Yes, at last she had the head-housekeeper's bedroom as
well as the head-house-keeper's sitting-room. The news of Miss Maclaren's
convalescence had not been very reassuring; and it now seemed as if Violet's
exalted post would in due course, and soon rather than late, be changed from
the temporary to the permanent. She cautiously moved her limbs in the bed. No
pain. She moved them less cautiously. No pain.
"I'm better, Beaty," she said.
"It's them violet-rays, miss. Violet to the
Violet, miss." Beatrice grinned.
A nurse, by means of a portable lamp, had under
Dr. Constam's direction given Violet five minutes of the ray on the previous
night; and, unknown to the patient, a sedative afterwards.
"I do believe I'm quite better," said
Violet.
"Well, miss," said Beatrice. "Dr.
Constam did say to me--he's always very nice and friendly like with me, and to
be sure I've been here a lot longer than he has--he said it might be three days
or it might be three weeks, and I said, I said, with you it was more likely to
be three days. There's some here as would be three months with it, not three
weeks, because when they get down nothing will get 'em up again. But what I always
say--"
"Beatrice. Fetch Miss Jixon for me, will you?
She's bound to be about somewhere. It's frightfully late." (Miss Jixon was
the secretarial Agatha.)
Violet's mind, as she drank the tea, advanced its
tentacles eagerly, graspingly, towards the idea of the arrears of work that
must have accumulated during the period of her repose. She finished the tea and
stepped boldly out of bed, and found her slippers. She felt quite firm on her
feet. Energy was forming in her, like sap in a tree. Dr. Constam would be angry
with her, of course.
"Damn the doctor!" she exclaimed aloud,
defiantly. "He told me he should cure me, and he's vexed because he has
cured me. Well, he can be vexed! I'm certain I've had ten times more of
his repose than was good for me."
She was half dressed when Agatha entered.
"Agatha!" said Violet, forestalling all
greetings and enquiries. "Before I forget. Tell everyone I shan't want any
more of those reports to-night. I'm perfectly well again, had a splendid sleep.
Sciatica all gone. Have you brought the letters? No? Well, bring them to me in
half an hour. And any message from Craven Street about the new carpet for
441.And find out what's happened about the leak in the radiator in 275. And
telephone Mr. Cousin and see if Mr. Purkin has written to him about coming up.
And--that'll do for the present. Run along. We shall have a big day to-day. Oh!
If Dr. Constam rings up, say you've seen me and I'm much, much better, and
there's no need for him to come and see me until he's quite free."
Agatha departed, with a scared glance.
"The little thing can't understand me getting
a move on. She's fearfully slow," thought Violet. She was critical. In her
private mind she was always critical and exacting, but seldom showed it: though
behind her invigorating, helpful smile, the really intelligent could divine a
certain condescension towards the weaknesses of other people's human nature.
Agatha was really intelligent, and therefore Violet had upon her an
intimidating effect at times. Just as Violet was making up her face the
telephone-bell rang in the sitting-room. She looked about her for her black
frock, and did not instantly discover it. At her urgent behest, all her
possessions had been transported from the old bedroom to the new, but they were
not yet in place. She went into the sitting-room frockless.
"Who's speaking?"
"Ceria. I've come."
She hesitated, dismayed and irresolute. Ceria's
voice was abashed, foolish, guilty. She had advised him, instructed him, to
resume his duties that morning, and had promised that she would 'speak' to Mr.
Orcham. But she was not expecting the young man quite so early.
"Where are you?"
"In my office."
She hesitated again.
"I'll come down and see you there," she
said brightly and smoothly. "That will be better than you coming up here.
I'll be down in three minutes."
She found the frock, slipped it on, examined the
appearance of the head-housekeeper in the wardrobe mirror, scribbled a note
telling Agatha to await her return, and went forth, as on the previous
afternoon but less fearsomely, into the open, dangerous country of the
corridor.
Less fearsomely; yet she was aware of grave
qualms. Her mood was rash rather than courageous. She frankly admitted to
herself, as she descended on the lift, that she had accomplished nothing
whatever with Mr. Orcham. The Director, incomprehensibly harsh, shockingly
pitiless, was against her. She knew too well his attitude towards even the
appearance of disloyalty to the Palace. He would allow no excuses, except
physical excuses. If only Ceria had telephoned that he was ill all would have
been different. She recalled, on this point, the Director's very words. But the
tiresome Ceria had not telephoned, having entirely lost his head. Still, he had
come. He was there. That was a fait accompli (she thought in French),
which the Director would have to face. He surely would not send Ceria packing.
No, he could not.
The door of Ceria's office was shut. She tapped,
and walked straight into the absurd little room. A pile of opened letters lay
on the tiny desk--accumulations; and a few unopened envelopes--the morning's
batch. Evidently Ceria's official mail had been dealt with in his absence.
Nobody was indispensable. And there sat Ceria, bowed, limp, shamefast. He did
not rise at her entrance. He had no notion that she had been what the doctor
termed ill, no notion of the miracle which had made it possible for her to come
down and see him and watch over him and inspire him.
"I'm so glad you're here," she began
cheerfully.
"Yes, I'm here." Ceria said in a weak,
half-despairing tone. "But what am I to do?"
He expected guidance from her. Without it, he was
helpless. He was the very image of disastrous woe. He was a beaten child: he,
the once brilliant, resourceful, successful ruler of the famous grill-room, the
rival of Cappone, the darling of the Palace.
"I have brought him down to this," she
thought, pricked to the centre of her soul. She wanted to cry, but if she
yielded to tears she might ruin everything. She would not cry. She was the man,
and he was the woman. "Poor boy! He can't help it. It isn't his
fault." How often had she used that phrase to herself! And she had used it
to the Director, who had thrown it on the floor and trodden on it. "It's my
fault. I must have encouraged him without knowing it. I do like him. He's a
dear."
She would have paid any price to succour him, to
put him back on his pedestal, from which love of her had tragically cast him
down. "If I married him, if I even gave him the least sign, he'd be a new
man. I could make him the greatest man in the world. He might have a
fashionable restaurant of his own. Would not this be the simplest way? I could
go to Sir Henry's and Ceria could find a new place, and then when we'd saved
some money--And he's such a dear! And he worships me--how funny! Me! And he'd
do anything I told him. And I do like him. Nobody could help liking
him."
She softly touched him on the shoulder, bending a
little over him. He could not read her mind. He was in a trance of despair. She
touched him, but he could not touch her; she was unattainable. Naturally she
was unattainable, being peerless among all women.
"Now I'll tell you," she began gently.
"Who have you seen?"
"No one, except Maxon. I walked quickly from
the staff entrance and no one saw me; at least no one spoke to me."
"That's splendid!" she said. "I
don't want you to see anybody--at first." She seemed to convey that he had
been doing her will and was a good boy.
"Have you spoken to the Director?" Ceria
asked timidly.
"Oh yes! I think that will be all
right."
Not only the last words themselves, but her manner
and tone were a deliberate lie. She lied because she could not tell him the
truth. He was at a terrible crisis, in which he needed help very delicately
rendered, and only she could give it. The rough truth might, would, have undone
him. Moreover, she hoped, or so persuaded herself, that what was now a lie
would in the immediate future be the truth. And further, he had put the
question to her in nearly the same accents, tentative, timorous, certainly not
sanguine, in which he had asked her to marry him a few days earlier.
That scene was permanent in her memory. It had
passed in her sitting-room on one of his afternoon visits, in the slack period
when he would have been at Hampstead had not his trio of women gone away and
left him alone. Pathetic, it was to her, that her answer had not astonished
him; it had merely destroyed him, destroyed the man he was. Despite her secret
critical propensity, she did not even in secret criticise his weakness.
Criticism could not live in her pity, and in her totally irrational sense of
guilt, and in her self-depreciation. What, she had wondered again and
again--what in her had attracted him? She was so prosaic, so matter-of-fact:
while he was the mirror of romance. True, though in practice she was
anti-romantic, one part of her, she could appreciate romance, foreignness, the
exotic.
And now, suddenly, in his little office, she
divined for the first time that he felt in her the same romance which she felt
in him. What was prosaic to her was exotic to him. And did he conceive himself
as exotic? She thought not. She was sure not; though here her imagination was
working in unaccustomed ways, and therefore imperfectly. She could put herself
in the place of a laundry-girl or a chambermaid or a housekeeper, but an
Italian was extremely different. Withal, Italian or not, she had laid him low
with her refusal. She had made him into a victim. And the worst was that he was
an apologetic victim. She was ashamed of her strength, her self-control, her
unshakable commonsense; which last, however, had not prevailed to obviate her
feeling of guiltiness towards him. She had warily questioned Perosi about
him--the old man had invented a method of killing two birds with one stone by
imparting to her much information about the hotel and its personnel through the
medium of French conversation--and she had heard measured but genuine praise of
Ceria: his table-side manner, tact, charm, resource, unique skill with the
clientèle, which liked him as sincerely as his own staff liked him. And now--!
She was continually saying to herself that brief phrase, so heavy with
disturbing implications: "And now--!"
Then the thought recurred to her powerfully:
"I could make him." She meant that she could recreate him, and better
than he had been before she had blighted him. And the resolve to 'make'
him--quite apart from any idea of marriage between them--filled her whole mind
and heart, inspired her, and inspirited her, so that she began to be cheerful
and her face lightened. She spoke to him firmly but yet tenderly.
"You must go on just as if you hadn't been
away at all. Everybody will be glad to see you. Don't begin explaining or finding
excuses. You've no call to explain anything to the people under you. It's none
of their business. You can do it all right. Of course you can. In fact it's
quite easy. Whatever you usually do at this time of the morning, do it now, as
if nothing had happened."
"Yes," he interrupted her. "But Mr.
Cousin...and Mr. Orcham? I must tell them I've come back. I shall have to see
one of them, perhaps both of them."
She smiled indulgently.
"Of course you'll have to see them. But not
at once. You go on with your ordinary work and go into the grill-room at
lunch-time as usual. And you'll see--you'll see how nice everyone will be.
You'll feel better. They'll make you feel better. They'll make you feel more
equal to things. And then this afternoon you can go and see Mr. Cousin or Mr.
Orcham. They'll know you're back, then. They'll have heard. And don't you go
and think you haven't been ill, because you have. That motor-accident was
enough without anything else. You are ill; your nerves are ill; and it
would have been more sensible if you'd sent for your maid back and gone to bed
and had a doctor. But as you're here--well, you're here! And if you ask me I
think you've been wonderful. Yes I do, really! You don't know how wonderful you
are. If you'll only do as I say I'm perfectly certain there'll be no trouble.
There can't be. Now I shall rely on you, dear Mr. Ceria. I'll answer for you to
anybody, and I'm sure you won't let me down. Why! I should like to know how
many men who'd been in a motor-accident, in the middle of the night too--"
Her tone changed in an instant, became stern and hostile, and she spoke louder.
"You may have been ill, Mr. Ceria. I don't say you haven't been. I'm
sorry. But I can't help that, and I have to think of the Floors menus. You may
say they're not in my department. But what I say is, the visitors complain just
as much to me as they do to Mr. Perosi. They've been complaints about the short
menus for weeks, and--"
Making an infinitesimal sign to Ceria, she turned
round. In a looking-glass at the end of the room she had seen a figure atthe
door, which had been left open on her entrance.
"Oh! I'm so sorry," she addressed the
figure. "Aren't you Mr. Fontenay? I came to see Mr. Ceria about something
on the Floors. I'm the head-housekeeper. I can come another time. I know I
mustn't interfere with grill-room business." While talking she moved out
of the room, stopping quite close to the door and to Fontenay. But she did not
shut the door.
"Yes, miss," said the Frenchman, who had
heard all that Violet had intended him to hear, and no more, of her remarks to
Ceria. He was a man of middle-age, well favoured, grey-haired, the
second-in-command of the grill-room, of which he had been efficiently taking
charge in Ceria's absence. His attitude to Violet was courteous, reserved, and
receptive.
She continued, still more loudly and clearly:
"You know Mr. Ceria has had a motor-accident.
He wasn't hurt, but he's been rather upset by it. I think he must have fainted,
and I daresay he lost his memory. If he hadn't he'd have telephoned to you or
got someone to telephone. Anyhow,he was too much upset to go home till last
night. I'm afraid I haven't been going the right way to work with him. If you
heard me I do hope you won't say anything. I've had some worry upstairs, but I
know that's no excuse for speaking to him as I did. I believe he's come here
to-day when he really wasn't well enough to come. But he told me he was quite
recovered. If he hadn't I shouldn't have talked as I did talk."
"Yes, miss." The second-in-command
smiled sympathetically, adding in a low voice: "It is Mr. Rocco who wishes
to see Mr. Ceria. He heard that Mr. Ceria was in the hotel. Mr. Rocco--there
has been a misunderstanding--it is urgent."
Violet thought:
"Fancy the poor boy hoping he hadn't been
seen! As if everything wasn't seen in this place!" And she recalled
something of what Perosi had told her of the terrific conferences between Rocco
and Ceria about the bewildering tastes of customers. Then, dismissing all that
as secondary, she made one decided step towards the interior of the office,
showing Fontenay her back, and winked at Ceria and then smiled at him with
enheartening tenderness. A slight vivacity in his answering glance contented
her.
"I think I'd better go," she murmured,
fronting Fontenay. "Least said, soonest mended. I'm sure you understand,
Mr. Fontenay."
"Yes, miss." Fontenay bowed as she
departed.
She was uplifted, even happy. She had
instantaneously seized the situation and saved it. She had given Ceria his cue.
She had changed the complexion of the affair. Her version of the explanation of
his mysterious vanishing would spread through the grill-room staff and thence
to the general staff of the hotel in five minutes. It would have precedence of
other versions. It was plausible, and who could deny its truth? Why had she not
thought of it on the previous afternoon? As for reconciling what she had told
Fontenay with what she had told Mr. Orcham--well, that was a difficulty that
could be met later. Was she proud of herself? She was. And she was pleased with
her final smile to Ceria. At any rate he would admire her for her
quick-wittedness. Of course he would be regretting all the more that he had not
won her... Had he lost her? Could she keep a heart of flint towards him?
She went upstairs in a dream. She was out of the
lift before she knew she had been in it. She walked along the corridor, but
ithad no floor. What Italian girl could have done what she had done?
Conceited--that was what she said to herself she was.
Fluffy Agatha was obediently waiting for her in
the sitting-room, documents ranged on the sofa, note-book in hand, cooing to
the cat.
"Now, my dear," said Violet gaily.
HER
LETTER
The office of Sebastian Smiss was over the Queen
Anne entrance. Of late weeks its importance in the cosmos of the Palace had
greatly increased. Mowlem, the head-hall-porter, and Skinner, head Queen Anne porter,
were continually being asked for its exact location by unfamiliar callers.
Smiss, like other working directors and heads, had of course always had his
secretary, in whose girlish yet sometimes bored eyes he was the real effective
central figure of the cosmos; but now he had two secretaries, and they were
both employed to the full capacity of their eager appetites for hard labour.
Mr. Smiss wou1d be at his desk till ten, eleven, twelve o'clock, night after
night, and the young women took it in turns to stay with him. Thus had it
happened that Evelyn, on the evening of his arrival, had been rung up by Smiss
at something after ten o'clock. Smiss exulted, quietly, in his new excessive
toil; hence naturally the two secretaries exulted, but not always, in theirs.
The Palace indeed had little or no use for retainers who were not ready to
exult in work till they dropped.
Mr. Smiss had somehow, without trying to do so,
got the better of his co-director, Reggie Dacker, in the perhaps unconscious
rivalry between them for a seat on the Board (not yet officially formed) of the
Orcham Merger. He had won, not because of his superiority in foreign languages
and in experience of the Works Department, but because of his higher power of
intense, tireless application, of his voracity for detail. Evelyn had begun by
favouring Dacker for the post. Facts, however, had made Evelyn gradually change
his mind. And now everybody knew that Smiss had mysteriously become, under
Evelyn and Sir Henry Savott, the working chief of the improvised organism which
was creating an organism vaster than itself--the Orcham Merger. "Ask
Smiss. See Smiss. Mr. Smiss will know." Such were the phrases the constant
repetition of which was establishing the young man in his new role.
No one save Sir Henry Savott had realised the
complexity, the enormity, and the difficulty of the mass of detailed manœuvring
which had to be accomplished before the Merger could be floated out on to the
market. Certainly Evelyn had not realised them. Everything had been settled,
all the main contracts signed, and yet it appeared daily afresh to Sebastian
Smiss that nothing had been settled and that no contract duly signed and sealed
and stamped could withstand the warring tug of interests. Smiss was confronted
each morning with whole ranges of mountains of trouble, reared by a mischievous
providence during the night, which it was necessary to raze to the smooth level
of a plain. The more Smiss did, the more remained to do.
And the trouble arose in utterly unexpected
quarters of the compass. The Duncannon Hotel, which all had at first regarded
as the most amenable item of the nine, had proved the toughest; the manager
there created snags almost daily. And as for the Escurial at Madrid--often
Smiss had regretted that he could speak and write Spanish. Eight or ten English
solicitors (including Mr. Lewisohn and Mr. Dickingham) were deep in the affair
of the Merger, besides French, Italian, and Spanish lawyers whose code of
conduct and whose ingenuity in delaying answers to letters and evading the
points of letters notably embittered Smiss's already sardonic estimate of human
nature. And there were accountants, surveyors, valuers, financiers,
sub-financiers, secretaries, secretaries' secretaries, nameless agents of all
varieties to add to the grand confusion of the mêlée. And every one of them
stood for a sectional interest which he fought for without the slightest
apparent consideration for the general welfare.
Happily Mr. Smiss had no wife, mistress, or other
hobby. Happily he lived near the hotel, ate nearly all his meals in the hotel,
and maintained health by orange-juice and fifteen minutes of very
scientifically devised morning exercises naked in his bathroom. Who could
believe, seeing him at work, that he even ate. His meat was the Merger; his
drink was the Merger and orange-juice. What he really lived on was the
consciousness that he was making his reputation with Evelyn and the originator
of the Merger.
Sir Henry Savott, rather imperious in a shapeless
lounge suit, sat by his side at the loaded desk. Sir Henry had magically
arrived from Berlin, via Ostend. He could sleep on trains and in ships, and he
was as energetic as though he had just risen from a feather-bed in some
farm-house a league from anywhere. Sir Henry gazed upon Sebastian Smiss, so
dandiacal, dapper, and quiet. And Smiss gazed upon Sir Henry's masterful face
with the cruel, regular teeth. And they disliked one another. Sir Henry
disliked Smiss because he could never penetrate the six-inch armour of bland
reserve within which Smiss protected himself, could never exasperate Smiss into
raising his meek voice. Smiss disliked Sir Henry because, at work, he had the
demeanour of a bruiser rather than a gentleman. Smiss particularly objected to
Sir Henry's manner of addressing Smiss's defenceless principal secretary, who
was summoned by bell into the room every few minutes either to take down notes
or to produce documents. For Smiss was a perfect gentleman before the Lord, and
could read Cicero's wisdom without a dictionary.
But the two had a mutual respect. Sir Henry saw in
Smiss a marvellous subordinate, a man whose mind was a large chest of tiny
drawers all full and all in order. And Smiss saw in Sir Henry a Titan; brutal,
possibly ill-bred, but a Titan.
Sir Henry glanced at his watch and compared it
with the clock.
"Time's up!" said he curtly. "I
have an appointment. You're safe for a week, Smiss."
"I think so, Sir Henry." Smiss gave a
gentle but chill smile. "If this barbarian had been to Balliol,"
thought Smiss, who had been to Balliol, "he might have been a little more
civilised."
At that moment Evelyn strolled in, and beheld Sir
Henry with extreme astonishment. No greetings from Sir Henry--he had an
appointment.
"I say, Evelyn," said he. "There's
just one nuisance about the Duncannon. You'll be able to straighten the thing
out for me." (Not 'For us.' 'For me.' Smiss was of no account.)
"Yes?" said Evelyn, and to Smiss,
benevolently: "Good morning, my boy. How are you?"
"Good morning, Mr. Orcham," said Smiss,
thinking: "Although he was never at Balliol, or even at Cambridge, the
Director is a civilised being."
Sir Henry violently described the nuisance, and
Evelyn could straighten it out, and did--but only by happy chance. (For
Evelyn's work in the Merger was such as he alone could perform, and had to do
with policy, and rearrangement of staffs, and internal reconditioning and
reorganising. It did not touch the Merger itself; it assumed the existence of
the Merger, which in fact did not yet legally exist and could not legally exist
until the work of Sir Henry and Smiss was completed.) In two minutes Sir Henry
had yet once again demonstrated that the nascent film-merger was not absorbing
him in any way prejudicial to the Orcham Merger. Evelyn admired Sir Henry as
much as Smiss admired him. The Titan's grasp both of essentials and of details
was wondrous.
Nevertheless Evelyn considered that the Titan,
having surprisingly arrived in the Palace, ought to have called first on the
Director thereof instead of going straight to Smiss.
The conference adjourned. Evelyn had come to speak
to Smiss about the Works Department in Craven Street, of which Smiss had had
special charge until the Merger had begun to monopolise his time. But Sir Henry
drew the Director out of the room.
"You're pretty friendly with Gracie, aren't
you?" he said, after explaining the circumstances of his flying visit to
London. His voice was subdued to the confidential.
Evelyn felt a shock.
"Yes," he answered. "I think we are
very good friends." What did Gracie's father know or guess?
"Did she ever say anything to you about Leo
Cheddar?"
"Nothing much. She did once tell me something
about him. She's got a fairly good opinion of him. I liked him myself.''
"Oh! You've met him then?"
"Quite accidentally, in Paris, one day."
"Oh! There you are! She's got a good opinion
of him? I always thought she had, but she's never said so to me. I found
a cable from her here this morning. It had followed me from Berlin. She didn't
say so in so many words, very cautious she is--sometimes; but my notion is she
means to marry Leo. I should rather like it. I want her to marry, and Leo's
quite her sort."
"Really!" said Evelyn. "Well, if it
suits both you and her I'm glad."
"I'm rather excited about it," Sir Henry
added, and hurried off without even shaking hands.
Evelyn returned at once into the room, and,
dragging Smiss's mind from the Merger, discussed the Works Department with him
for a few minutes. The first onset of the news concerning Gracie had produced
no effect at all upon Gracie's lover, except that Sir Henry's admitted
excitement about it surprised him, and that the swift transition in Sir Henry
from the steely financier to the somewhat naïve father had both amused and
pleased him. He liked to see people betraying their humanity. He reflected that
if Sir Henry approved of Leo as a son-in-law there must be qualities in Leo
that he, Evelyn, had not observed at their short interview; for Leo lived
wholly for the arts, whereas Sir Henry would probably have contemplated the
destruction of all the arts--at any rate all the fine arts--with some
equanimity.
As the talk with Smiss proceeded Evelyn began to
think more and more upon the capacity of the hard-headed for self-deception.
Because Sir Henry desired to be rid of every trace of paternal responsibility
for Gracie, he had read a preposterous significance into some word or phrase in
some wild cable of Gracie's. If the arrogant man only knew that his highly
esteemed and serious Evelyn had just spent two nights in the girl's flat, and
had loved her and quarrelled with her and loved her, he might have sung a
different tune. However, papa would one day in due time learn the relations
between them, and then--would he be glad or sorry? Evelyn was inclined to think
that he would be glad; for Sir Henry at worst was not a snob and did not give
tuppence for 'honourables' as such; and to have Evelyn within the fold of the
family might assist the prosperity of the Merger.
Evelyn was in a kind of dream when he left Smiss.
He could not decide what job among many awaiting him he would do next. He went
slowly downstairs in his dream. Then he thought:
"I suppose there is nothing in
it."
The thought startled him for one instant. No more.
The idea that there might be something in the wording of the cable had not
occurred to him before...No! Of course there was nothing in it. Obviously there
could be nothing in it. He had not heard from Gracie, and the absence of a
letter had disappointed him very much indeed. But he knew his Gracie; he knew
women. A girl who would leave ends of lingerie sticking white out of
imperfectly closed drawers in wardrobes was the girl who would miss mails, or
while passionately meaning to write would forget to write or postpone writing
until too late. Besides, the conveyance of letters from St. Cloud to Paris
might be grossly inefficient, no doubt was. France was not England. The
afternoon delivery would assuredly bring a letter and a wonderful
disconcerting, annoying, and enchanting letter it would be...He was in Cousin's
private office. Why had he gone there, how he had reached there, he could not
say; because he was in a dream. Cousin sat alone.
"You have heard about Ceria?" said
Cousin.
"He's returned. He's at work."
"Oh!"
"He hasn't been to see me yet."
"Oh!" Evelyn's voice was blank.
To Cousin's amazement Evelyn walked out of the
room, omitting to shut the door. Cousin wanted guidance as to the treatment of
Ceria; and he had received none. He thought that the attitude of the Director
was very odd, very unhelpful. But how could he divine that Evelyn was in a
dream?
His dream carried Evelyn away to his own office.
No! There could be nothing in the cable. It was a remarkable fact that, though
Gracie was continuously in his mind, though he lived again and again the
marvellous hours in the boulevard flat, though he was most disturbingly in love
with her, he had, for an instant only, the incredible thought: "If there was
anything in it, what a solution it would be, what a simplifying of my
life!" Which thought was as shocking to Evelyn as it would have been to
anybody to whom he might have confessed it. He scorned it, scoffed at it,
routed it ignominiously out of his brain.
Why a fully occupied man, such as Evelyn ought to
have been, should, after spending time in apparently important but really quite
purposeless wanderings into various departments of the Palace, have gone off to
lunch at the Duncannon, Evelyn could not have explained, even to himself. He
had nothing to learn about the food at the Duncannon, which was not quite
first-rate, and would remain not quite first-rate until the well-entrenched
chef and a few other culinary officers had been taken by the scruff of the neck
and ejected with violence from their strongholds. After the lunch he had a plan
for visiting the Laundry, but he abandoned it, deciding that he had no wish to
mix himself up at that juncture in the polemics of the pillow-cases.
He might have summoned Ceria; but wherefore? He
discovered in himself no symptom of interest in Ceria. Besides, Ceria was
Cousin's business. He was much too inclined to relieve Cousin of responsibility
in delicate situations.
He entered Miss Cass's office in the afternoon.
Miss Cass, with her assistant, sat sternly at her desk, and gave her chief an
accusing glance which said: "You aren't taking this hotel seriously. You
are in one of your rare funny moods, and you are shirking. If I shirked,
I should soon be hearing about it."
She spoke sharply to her assistant. She had to
speak sharply to somebody, and to the panjandrum she could not. Evelyn kept her
in idle conversation, under the strain of which she grew restive. No more than
Mr. Cousin could she guess that the panjandrum was in a dream and agitated by
the dream.
The door opened and a page came in with the
afternoon mail: a sizeable bundle of assorted envelopes and packets, tied up
with string. Evelyn had timed his return very well. He held out his hand, and
the white-gloved page delivered the bundle.
"Now let's see," said Evelyn, undoing
the bundle. It was as if he had said: "I happen to be here, so it occurs
to me to amuse myself with this trifling menial task of untying a bundle."
Among the first envelopes he touched was one with
a foreign stamp and the post-mark of Paris. His hand shook. A woman's writing.
To make his manœuvre artistically complete, he chose a few other unbusinesslike
envelopes.
"Here you are!" he said to Miss Cass,
pushing across to her the rest of the mail. "I'll look at these
myself," and retired quickly to his room with the selected few.
Quite a competent bit of acting; but Miss Cass, he
knew, was a perfect she-devil of suspicious insight. He sat down in privacy,
but not on his own monarchical chair. A fine, rather large, distinguished hand,
had Gracie. He was sure it was hers, though he had never seen her handwriting
before. He hesitated to open the cheap, flimsy, foreign envelope. All his body
was trembling. He opened the envelope.
The letter was written on the diaphanous ruled
notepaper of the Café de
"DEAR EVELYN. You will understand. I am deep
in grief. Don't hate me, but I don't think you will, you are so supersensible.
Why say it over again? I said it all yesterday afternoon after we'd been to the
Jolie Laitière. Perhaps you do love me, but not in my way. And it's too early
for you to know for certain in yourself whether you love me or not, even in
your way. You may think you do. I know you will never love me in my way;
you couldn't. Your sense of proportion is too just for that. Yes, I love you,
but I shall cure myself. And it's more important to me to be loved than to
love. To be loved without a shred of any reserve is a necessity for me. I've felt
it for years; but I've never had it--I mean I've never had it to live in, like
an atmosphere day and night. If I'm not absolutely everything to a man, then
I'll be nothing to him. That's how I am made, and I can't help it. I'm an
egotist. Well, I can't help that either. They say there's more happiness in
loving than in being loved. Not for me. I'm not the sort of woman for you. You
need the other sort. And you'll find it, and sooner than you think, perhaps.
You don't wish me to apologise to you, do you? I should never have been content
if we hadn't tried our experiment. I should always have regretted not trying
it, because if I hadn't tried it I should always have suspected that I'd missed
a chance. You'll be miserable, but it was worth it, wasn't it? You'll forget
it. It will fade out of your commonsensical heart. Good-bye, lion. I saw Leo
this afternoon, and I told him I'd marry him. He's asked me several times. He
was very happy. It was touching. I'm not happy yet, of course, but I shall be.
The atmosphere of his love will make me happy. I've sent him away while
I'm writing this. Naturally he knows nothing of us, and won't. Good-bye.
G."
So she had composed this crucial letter, and
written it--with a scratching pen, in the stir and promiscuity of the Café de
He opened the other letters, but did not read
them. Gracie's envelope he tore into little pieces and burned on the fire; the
rest of the envelopes he tore vindictively into little pieces and threw on to
the floor. Her letter must be answered at once. When he had answered it, he
would know better where he was. He went to his own chair and wrote:
"DEAR GRACIE.. Thank you for your letter.
Good-bye. Yours, E. O."
He addressed an envelope--to St. Cloud. He began
to read her letter again, but he could not bear to finish it. He ripped it to
fragments and dropped them carefully on the fire. No vestige left now of his
love-affair.
"Here!" he said curtly to Miss Cass in
the outer office. "You can deal with these."
"Give me a twopence-halfpenny stamp, will
you?" he said to the man at the Enquiries counter in the entrance-hall. He
did not care what the man might think of the spectacle of the panjandrum who
had two secretaries asking in his own person for stamps at the Enquiries
counter. The letter disappeared into the vermilion post-box. "Some
contrast between this one and the one I posted last night!" he thought
grimly, glancing not without an absurd self-consciousness round the hall--as if
everybody in the place was not only staring at him but reading his mind. There
were appreciably more people than usual about, and they had an unusual air of
animation. He beckoned boldly to Mowlem.
"What's going on here?"
"His highness the Rajah has come, sir. His
highness has gone upstairs, the ladies as well--veiled, sir. And we are expecting
another motor-car yet. But there won't be any more ladies--people are hoping
there will be." Mowlem smiled with due` dignity.
"Oh! That's it, is it?" Evelyn murmured
casually.
He had had news by telephone in Paris of the
suddenly decided visit of the Rajah. Cousin had talked of it, with a shade too
much unction, at last night's dinner. Violet Powler had mentioned it as one of
her excuses for having disobeyed doctor's orders. Her secretary had brought a
special report concerning the Imperial suite. And now the rumour of it had
drawn a regular collection of quidnuncs, gossipers, curiosity-mongers,
journalists, and God knew what into the great entrance-hall. A lot of fuss
about a mere twopenny Oriental, in a hotel which had housed European kings in the
great days when kings still flourished.
Mr. John H. Harbour, the American cigarette-king,
was a much more important visitor--and richer, rich though the Oriental was.
Withal, the Palace was doing pretty well to have the second or third richest
millionaire in the United States and a Rajah with veiled ladies, together on
one floor--and in the dead season too! Immerson would make fine use of the
gorgeous coincidence. And if only the Palace could have boasted of the presence
of Henry Ford stuck away in an attic Immerson's cup of joy would have been run
over. Thus Evelyn reflected sardonically.
But behind these light fancies, far withdrawn in
the dark jungle of his mind, terrible thoughts were crouching and creeping.
Monstrous, her conduct was! Monstrous! When, at precisely what moment, had she
determined to jilt him? No doubt at their tea-colloquy after the Jolie Laitière
escapade. And yet after that, that same night, she had...No doubt she would
defend her false acquiescence by the plea that she had been loyally playing the
game to the end. And the next morning, her wifeliness, her anxiety that he
should return at once to London to do his duty!..She cared not a fig for his
duty; she merely desired to reach the end at the earliest possible moment...
Love him, did she? That would depend on what you
called love. She might be a genius--she was--she might be a miracle of a girl,
but she was a wanton, for all her 'Be-still-and-know-that-I-am-God.' Well, she
had not been very still...She had wept with nobility at the Gare du Nord. Yes,
because she was the world's greatest histrionic performer! She had seduced him,
deliberately; and thereby created a tragedy, and she knew the right spectacular
gesture for the tragedy and at the Gare du Nord had executed it. Why, even as she
wept, she must have been meditating upon the warning cable to her father. She
had probably despatched the cable from the Gare du Nord itself, within five
minutes of the departure of the train. That was the 'sort of woman' she was.
True, she was not 'the sort of woman' for him! Truer than she imagined!..And
the simpleton Leo! Would she ever tell him of her 'experiment'? No fear! Her
duplicity would be inexhaustible. 'They' were all alike! All! The fact was
notorious. And how many 'experiments' had she tried prior to the 'experiment'
with himself?..Never would he have admitted it, even to his most secret soul,
but the direst wound was the wound to his pride...Monstrous! Monstrous!
There was a stirring in the hall. Mowlem had gone
forth into the portico. The belated automobile--last of the Rajah's! Evelyn
impatiently shrugged his shoulders--those strong shoulders which Gracie had
admired. He could tolerate no more fuss about the Rajah, and he walked away,
bitter, ironic, sarcastic. He would allow people to guess his attitude towards
the visit of the Rajah; he simply did not care; but none should get a glimpse
of the thoughts hidden behind the irony and the sarcasm. He went back to his
office, and his face--he convinced himself--was an effective mask, even to Miss
Cass. He was proceeding straight to the inner room, but she halted him.
"Mr. Orcham."
"Well?" He answered with a deceitful
blandness.
"There's just come down a message from the
Royal suite--Mr. Harbour, you know, sir--for Mr. Cousin to go up there at once.
Some difficulty. Miss Tilton has telephoned me that Mr. Cousin is out--she
thinks he's gone to Craven Street about something urgent for the Rajah."
"What's the difficulty with the cigarette
fellow?" Evelyn negligently demanded. To refer thus to a visitor--any
visitor, to say nothing of the second or third biggest American
millionaire--was to outrage the etiquette of the hotel; but Evelyn enjoyed
committing the outrage upon Miss Cass. He felt reckless, and his recklessness
wore an appearance of the gaiety of a man who had not an anxiety in the world.
"I can't say, sir."
"Can't Mr. Pozzi go?"
"Mr. Pozzi isn't in either, sir."
"Well, he ought to be."
"Yes, sir. But Mr. Harbour asked particularly
for Mr. Cousin. It was Mrs. Harbour who telephoned, Miss Tilton
says."
"Oh! Mrs. Harbour, was it? Well, I'll
go up myself."
He used a tone to imply that if he went up
himself, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Harbour would have to deal with someone who would
stand no nonsense from millionaires, Rajahs, or anybody: indeed, they would
have to deal with the head of the unparalleled Orcham Merger. A cynical energy
was rising in him and must be employed somehow. He might have been jilted by a
wanton, he might be in the deep depth of misery, but he was Evelyn Orcham.
There was considerable animation in the broad
second-floor corridor. Evelyn had gone up by the east lift; the west lift had
been reserved for the sole use of the Rajah and his retinue, the Imperial suite
being westerly, while the Royal suite lay easterly. In the western distance
Evelyn saw some piles of baggage of exotic aspect, and two attendants in rich
Oriental costume standing sentinel at two doors. Other attendants, in European
costume, were moving with grave deliberation to and fro. At several doors,
giving on the south or inferior side of the corridor, people, apparently
visitors resident in the hotel, were looking curiously forth. At ordinary
prosaic times they would have been too haughty to permit themselves the role of
inquisitive sightseers; but the exciting rumour of the arrival of a picturesque
Rajah and his court had got the better of their sense of dignity and propriety.
Lady Levering and her daughter were sightseeing. It was fortunate that the
Imperial and the Royal suites between them nearly monopolised Second on this
occasion, so that the number of spectators was small; otherwise the corridor
might have looked like a street full of bystanders when a procession passes
through it or an accident occurs.
The accommodations of the Imperial and Royal
suites varied according to the demands of the occupants. Rooms could be added,
or subtracted, to suit requirement. More often than not there was no Imperial
suite and no Royal suite, but just suites. The Royal suite could be divided
into two first-rate suites, and the Imperial into four. The Rajah, when he
travelled, travelled in sovereign state, and in addition to the four suites
with a northern aspect commanding the park he had taken several trifling
suites, sufficiently important to gratify the taste of most visitors except
film-kings and film-stars, on the inferior side.
As Evelyn knocked at the main door of Mr.
Harbour's Royal suite, he saw one of the Oriental sentinels of the Imperial
suite suddenly stand back and salaam. The aristocratic figure of a very dark and
handsome slim young man in a lounge suit and white turban emerged from a
doorway. The figure paused a moment, and then, followed by two satellites of
almost equal distinction, walked down the corridor towards the west lift. The
Rajah! Although a hundred or more feet away Evelyn could recognise the gait of
sovereignty. So the Rajah was young. Evelyn in his simplicity had always
imagined Rajahs as fat and bearded and venerable.
The main door of the Royal suite was opened by
another young man, in another lounge suite similar in style to that of the
Rajah, but not finished off with a turban.
"Yes, sir."
An American voice and an American jaw. Neckwear
recalling the advertisement pages of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening
Post."
"Mr. Harbour, or Mrs. Harbour, wants to see
the manager," said Evelyn with mildness, feeling uncomfortably that in his
haste he had cast himself for a too minor part.
"But say! You aren't Mr. Cousin. We asked for
Mr. Cousin."
"My name is Orcham. Mr. Cousin is not in. I'm
what you may call Mr. Cousin's superior officer."
"Well, I thought Mr. Cousin was the head-god
here. Will you please come in, Mr. Orcham? Glad to meet you. Boss, this is Mr.
Orcham."
He had turned to address a stout, middle-aged man
who was coming out of a room to the left, where were congregated a miscellany
of persons of both sexes, two of whom, girls, were seated and tapping at
typewriters. The busy room was evidently the cigarette-king's antechamber for
callers and clerks, and the stout gentleman was evidently the cigarette-king
himself.
"Mr. Orcham? Mr. Orcham. This is a great
pleasure, Mr. Orcham," said the cigarette-king very amiably. "Come
right in."The cigarette-king heartily shook hands with Evelyn.
"I was very sorry to miss meeting you when you were over on our side. Mr.
Staten's an old and valued friend of mine. He told me about you. He's a lovely
man. You've got some hotel here, Mr. Orcham. I've not stayed here
before. Mrs. Harbour liked the Majestic."
"That's mine too," said Evelyn.
"Oh, I know. Been a lot of talk down town in
New York about your Merger, Mr. Orcham. You've got a great thing there,
sir."
Evelyn, pleased by the knowledge thus displayed,
at once liked Mr. John H. Harbour, who had a firm grip, a pleasant democratic
smile on his round red face, a jaw surpassing that of his young "Saturday
Evening Post" secretary, a heavy, protruding, hanging lower lip, and a
cigar which depended from his gold-studded teeth as lightly as a cigarette. The
state of being the second or third biggest millionaire in a continent of
millionaires had clearly not demoralised him. Yet he had the air of his high
rank. He would have passed for what he was in any company. Indeed, it was
impossible that he could have been aught else but a major millionaire; and his
glance announced to the observant, without, however, a trace of
self-complacency, that he manufactured twenty million cigarettes a day--and
sold them.
He led Evelyn through a large drawing-room into a
small one. They sat down. A cigar was offered to Evelyn.
"No, thanks," said Evelyn. "But if
I may have one of your cigarettes--"
"You sure can."
Evelyn suspected that Mr. Harbour was not feeling
quite at ease.
"Mrs. Harbour uses this room as her boudoir,
that's why I brought you in here. It's Mrs. Harbour you've come to
see."
Yes, Mr. Harbour was certainly nervous. He called
out loudly:
"Emily!"
After a couple of minutes Emily entered, from the
farther door. She was a lady of perhaps fifty-five, five years younger than her
husband, and a little less stout, but not much; with a gigantic bust tightly
and smoothly encased--no promontories--in a plum-coloured dress which had long
sleeves and a long skirt. Her iron-grey hair surmounted a broad, set, grim,
uncompromising face. No style, no distinction, no powder, no rouge. She had the
stiff inelegance of shyness without the shyness. Her appearance and manner gave
poor support to the widely held sexual theory that women will adapt themselves
to change of class and of circumstances. She was born to be a provincial
matron, and she had remained steadfastly a provincial matron throughout the
astounding series of leaps in the circulation of her husband's cigarettes. She
had had neither the wit to learn nor the wisdom to forget. She was immutable.
And she bestowed upon herself such personal prestige that she compelled
thoughtless beholders to believe that it was Mrs. Harbour, not Mr. Harbour, who
had invented and was manufacturing and selling the famous Harbour cigarettes.
Evelyn detested her gaze, her voice, her
handshake, and the way she received Mr. Harbour's introduction of him and brief
recital of his claim to special notice. And he felt a benevolent contempt for
the cigarette-king's obvious subservience and his cautious fear of her. He
rose, and she did not invite him to sit down again; but he sat down.
Strange that he should immediately transfer some
of his detestation of her to Gracie. 'They' were all alike, and so on, though
no two women could have been more acutely dissimilar than Emily Harbour and
Gracie Savott.
"Well, Mr. Orcham," Emily started,
"I want you to know that I'm from Kentucky--"
The rest of her remarks were in that key. She had
been informed that the new gentleman next door was a Rajah or whatever it was.
And he'd come with a harem. With her own eyes she had seen the harem, or part
of it, on a neighbouring balcony. And she supposed there were eunuchs too. Such
a terrible outrage would never be tolerated in the Mississippi Hotel in
Louisville. And she could not stay, and Mr. Harbour could not stay. It was an
insult to white people, Christians, even Roman Catholics it would be an insult
to. And the Harbours must leave at once. Not another night could they stay,
with a harem next door.
"I am not aware of any harem, Mrs.
Harbour," said Evelyn.
"Then what are all those creatures?"
Mrs. Harbour demanded. "That's all I'd like to know. With their veils and
gauzes and things." It might do for London and Paris, but as for her she'd
made up her mind about it, and if she'd ever had the slightest idea that such
things could be...
At first Evelyn suspected that a wild farce was
being staged for his diversion. But of course the suspicion was ridiculous.
Mrs. Harbour, though utterly incredible, was true. And you might as usefully
argue with her as with a rhinoceros. He settled his policy in an instant; it
was based upon the maxim: The visitor is always right. He said:
"I admire your stand, Mrs. Harbour. Of course
we innkeepers are not quite our own masters. The Rajah comes from one of the oldest
reigning families in the East. His forefathers have lived in what I daresay
they'd think is splendid civilisation for many centuries, long before Britain
was colonised or America discovered. But I admit that all that is beside the
point. Yes, I fully admit it. I would ask his highness to leave, but that might
lead to serious trouble, in fact to international complications, for he will be
lunching with King George tomorrow."
"But not his harem, I hope."
"Certainly not. If harem there is."
"If'! Then what are they? Nautch girls? I
know the world, Mr. Orcham, and I know that there must be immorality, but to
flaunt it openly, and in a respectable hotel where respectable people stay
never thinking, never expecting--"
"Mrs. Harbour," Evelyn ventured deferentially
to interrupt her, "I agree. I agree. And let me say that you have taught
me a lesson which I shall always remember. And I do hope you'll accept my
sincere apologies." He said to himself: "If it's to be a farce, I'll
be farcical." And he went on to be still more farcical, until he feared
lest Mrs. Harbour would rise in fury and strike him for an impudent clown.
Groundless apprehension! The hide of the rhinoceros was undamaged. Mrs. Harbour
grandiosely accepted his humble apologies and the hint that she had deflected
the dangerous curve of his life. Could she have smiled, she would have smiled.
"Now as regards leaving," he said.
"I fully understand your scruples about staying here. I sympathise with
them. You wish to leave at once. We shall be exceedingly sorry to lose you, for
visitors like you and Mr. Harbour mean a very great deal to us. We don't get
them every day, no, nor every year. Still, we have brought your leaving us on
ourselves. Now I have two other hotels, the Majestic and the Duncannon. I think
you'd rather approve the Majestic, and I may say that it is even better now
than it used to be. I will personally guarantee...I will see to everything
myself...I will telephone myself and give instructions--"
In five minutes it was arranged that the Harbour
ménage with its retinue should be transferred to the Majestic.
"I think Mr. Orcham has met us very fairly,
my dear," said Mr. Harbour. These were his first words in the interview.
His relief was touching. He lit a new cigar; its predecessor, scarcely
half-smoked, was extinguished and cold.
Mrs. Harbour nodded assent to her husband's
remark. At the outer door the two men, alone together for a moment, contrived
to maintain an admirable seriousness.
"This Merger of yours is a very interesting
proposition, Mr. Orcham," said the cigarette-king.
They chatted. And at last Evelyn said:
"I've really nothing to do with that side of
it; but I'll speak to Sir Henry Savott. I'm sure he would feel flattered."
Outside in the corridor, which was still busily
astir and now had added the watchful old Perosi to its floating populace,
Evelyn's thoughts followed one another thus:
"This hasn't really happened, because it
couldn't have happened. That Rajah, with two thousand years of civilisation in
his way of walking and holding his head as he walks, shovelled up and thrown
into a corner by the Kentucky squaw from Louisville. Nobody will believe it.
Who could? The cigarette-king's in fear of his life of her. Why make twenty
million cigarettes a day when this is all you get for it? A good stroke--it
will divide the publicity between the Palace and the Majestic. Palace doesn't
need publicity, Majestic does. Must find a good picturesque reason for the
flitting. Immerson will think of one. Immerson will simply go off his head with
joy. He's never had anything to touch it. Monstrous! Monstrous! They're all
alike. She was so damned attentive and efficient yesterday only because she'd
positively made up her mind to get rid of me. No! Well, perhaps she wanted to
make me regret her all the more with her thoughtfulness and her smart
organising; make me realise afterwards what a complete all-round sort of a
creature I'd lost. 'Be still and know that I am God.' How does she make that
square with what she's done? I suppose she thinks that it means being still and
being herself and letting everything else go, and God created her as she is,
and so it's all right, and it doesn't matter what happens to other people so
long as she's herself and acts herself. Doesn't matter about me, for instance,
so long as she's herself. It's enough to make you laugh. I'm miserable, and
what a fool I am to be miserable! She's ruined me. No, she hasn't. I won't let
her. I'll show her. But they're all alike. Monstrous! I'm miserable. Idiot!
"I hope she'll appreciate my letter. My
letter was a masterpiece. There's something tremendous about that girl. There
never was another girl like her. What a mind! What breasts! I'm miserable. She
could make a mackintosh and a sixty-franc chemise de nuit look stylish
and expensive. Says she's in love with me. Well, I believe she is too. And I
hope to God she won't be able to sleep for thinking of me. No. She's only in
love with herself. Didn't she say she was an egotist and they all were? She'll
ruin her Leo Cheddar, though. I've escaped. Not his money. No, she's not mean.
She's magnificent, curse her! She'll draw the soul out of him, and eat it and
drink it, till there's nothing left. What breasts! And what a voice! She's
glorious. I've escaped. What kind of a mess would she have made of me? And I've
escaped and I'm miserable. And nobody knows, except her. I'll send her a
wedding present. Six nightgowns from the Stores. Chaste Anglo-Indian taste.
Then she'll have to explain them to her Leo. 'The Nature of the Universe'! The
Nature of Women! They're all alike. She's terrific, but the Kentucky squaw is
more terrific, because she's got nothing but her self-conceit to do it with.
She's ugly and stupid and old, but she can do it. She's done it, and she'll
keep on doing it until she drops. She ought to be abandoned to a brutal and
licentious soldiery, that squaw ought. Teach her a thing or two. But it'd be no
use. They wouldn't touch her if you bribed them. She's safe. She's safe even
from the cigarette-king. If he doesn't amuse himself with something less like a
female rhinoceros he's the biggest ass that God ever made.
"If she was the mother of the Rajah she'd
rule the Rajah and all Java and Morocco and Cambodia or wherever it is he comes
from. She'd stick behind the purdah, and she'd be the boss of all the Orient.
And nobody could tell how in hell she did it. And wouldn't the odalisques have
a thin time! Like hell they would. But I've beaten her, if she's never been
beaten before. She didn't see I was laughing at her. What a woman! She'd swallow
anything. The top of her bent's higher than the Himalaya. I'm miserable. Fancy
her taking that boulevard flat all on her own! And buying the Baedeker. An
artist! Female Don Juan. Donna Juana. That's it. Donna Juana! Always running
around and making out to herself that she's searching for the ideal. And I
believe she really believes it. A whip might keep her in order. It's the only
thing that would. And I never thought of it. What I ought to do is to go back
with a cane and rip everything off her, and give her a hiding until she fainted
away, and then when she came to make her kneel down and beg my pardon for being
thrashed. That's one argument we always have, muscles, the muscular argument.
Oh! What a rogue and peasant slave am I! And it's the one argument they
understand. I'm dashed if my stomach isn't all cold lead. Curious the
connection between mind and body. It's all imagination, but my stomach's like
lead."
As Evelyn strolled along the corridor and walked
downstairs--he would not take the lift because he wanted to luxuriate in his
sinister thoughts--a lamp burned vividly incandescent in his brain; another
lamp, not either of the old ones; the lamp of destruction, not of creation. But
like the others it was magically invisible. Those who saw him at the end of a
corridor, or on the unfrequented stairs, saw the panjandrum of the hotel and
the Orcham of the Orcham Merger, calm, urbane, reserved, mysterious as became
the acknowledged monarch of the world of luxury hotels.
At the very moment when he was crossing a corner
of the entrance-hall towards his own retreat, he saw Cousin enter in haste
through the revolving doors. And Cousin saw him and hurried to him. Cousin
clearly had something of importance to communicate. But Evelyn had something of
greater importance to communicate, and by right of precedence Evelyn began. He
was in a state to explode with the Kentucky squaw story; there are stories
which cannot be restrained; and this was one, and no one in the hotel would
more finely savour it than Cousin. They turned their faces a little to one of
the pillars of the entrance-hall, and Evelyn narrated the tale.
"Yes," Cousin answered with his aloof
smile, "I could believe anything of these Anglo-Saxon ladies. But it is
necessary that this affair should be arranged."
"At once. I leave all the details to you, mon
cher."
"Hm!" said Cousin musingly, as if
saying: "It's all very well for you to give the order, but it will want
some doing."
"Send up Pozzi or someone to offer any help they
need about packing, and then get busy on the Majestic."
"I've just come from Craven Street,"
said Cousin inconsequently. "I wanted to see you. Collifant is on
strike."
Collifant was the manager of the Works Department.
"On strike? What do you mean?"
"About a lit de repos that the Rajah
has asked for."
"What on earth's a lit de repos? A
day-bed?"
"Yes, that's what you call it. He says he
can't supply it today or to-morrow. He says the Rajah's visit has exhausted
him already, and exhausted the carpenters too, and it can't be done until the
day after to-morrow. He will not listen to the suggestion of overtime. He says
the carpenters were working all last night, and there would be an insurrection.
The Rajah objects to a sofa, or at least they say he objects. It must be a
day-bed. I thought it would be well to buy one. That man Harris in Oxford
Street might have one, and in any case he would know where to find one."
"Not on your life!" Evelyn exclaimed.
(The old lamp was burning afresh.) "What's the point of having a Works
Department, I should like to know!"
"Well, I have done all I could."
"But I haven't," said Evelyn. "I'll
go over to Craven Street myself, and I'll see whether Master Collifant will
strike or not. I never heard of such a thing. If we want a day-bed we'll have
it, and we will have it from Craven Street."
"Thank you," said Cousin drily, half
maliciously. He was conscious of a relief profound and unexpected. He added:
"Ceria came to see me."
"Well, you gave him notice?"
"No. I received no instructions from you. It
seemed to me you had decided nothing--when I spoke to you."
Then what did you say?"
"I listened. He told me that he had not been
in a state to telephone or write. I said to him that he should carry on--for
the present."
"But last night I gave you--Never mind now.
I'm off to Craven Street."
The panjandrum turned sharply away. His head was
full of the Craven Street situation. The Ceria situation could wait. All his
resentment against Gracie, all his blighting contempt for the Kentucky squaw,
were transferred to the preposterous Collifant. He would show Collifant what
was what. Collifant should contrive a day-bed, perhaps out of nothing; but he
should contrive it. And instantaneously. The panjandrum could be as implacable
and as imperious as any rajah.
He passed with careful consideration through Miss
Cass's room. She was alone now. Rajahs. Seraglios. Veiled women. Ancient
Oriental civilisations. Aristocracies of the East. All those things flowed
together and formed--a visitor to the Imperial Palace! The visitor was always
right. What the visitor desired he must and should have. The absurd Collifant
was outraging the cardinal principle of the Palace, of the entire Orcham
Merger. Gracie was naught, curse her! In his private office Miss Cass's meek
assistant was on her knees on the carpet laboriously picking up one by one tiny
fragments of envelopes, lest the disdainer of opulent squaws and the purveyor
to Oriental civilisations functioning only two floors above her head might on
his return be offended by the sight of them.
"Sorry, sir," she apologised for her
conscientiousness.
WORKS
It was Mrs. Oulsnam who told Violet of the Rajah's
imperious demands for a day-bed in the more intimate of his drawing-rooms. Mrs.
Oulsnam flew up to Eighth full of the news and of fun. She gave her opinion
that a nicely covered mattress on the floor would have suited his highness's
reclining habits better than any day-bed. She laughed at his objections to a
mere English sofa, seeing that, like most Oriental potentates, he evidently had
a desire to be as Western as possible while in the West. She laughed also at
the total absence of day-beds in the furniture of a hotel with the
international pretentions of the Palace. Agreeably giggling, she surmised that
the Rajah's fancy for the day-bed must be due to the fact that he had only
quite recently heard of the existence of day-beds as a Western institution, and
was determined to be in the movement.
Violet, who had been conversing on the telephone
with Ceria, said at once that she should attend to the matter personally.
Whereat Mrs. Oulsnam was much relieved; for, as the brightest among the
floor-housekeepers, she had been charged with the delicate responsibility of
satisfying the Rajah's eccentric requirements in the way of furniture, and for
all her gaiety of spirit was beginning to feel the strain.
A certain incoördination of effort, due to Violet
having been laid aside, vitiated the activities of the Floors. Mrs. Oulsnam was
not aware that the power of Mr. Cousin himself had been directly invoked by the
Rajah's French secretary. And Mr. Cousin did not know that Violet had resumed
duty. He would have known, had not her subordinates and others, secretly from
Violet, conspired to conceal her dangerous defiance of Dr. Constam from the
superior authorities. Violet had impulsively taken the day-bed job to herself,
because in a flash, even as Mrs. Oulsnam was speaking, she had an idea. She had
never before heard of a day-bed, but she recalled having seen, amid the litter
of the carpenter's shop on Eighth, an article which now seemed to her to
correspond with Mrs. Oulsnam's description of what a day-bed was.
Off she hurried to the carpenter's shop, and there
it was, with a pile of old chairs and light occasional tables stacked on the
top of it. The only carpenter present in the shop first told her that it was
nothing, then that it was junk, then that he had heard years earlier that it
was supposed to be a bit of 'old Empire.' Anyhow, it was broken, and the part
missing had long since utterly vanished.
It was in truth a two-ended lit de repos,
not Empire but Louis Philippe; lacking one of its ends; with bronzes on its
mahogany sides; upholstered in worn and faded green and gold silk; a pitiable
object. The carpenter said that to restore it properly would involve very
expert labour and a fortnight's time. Violet's reply was to request him to
extricate it and get it down to the goods-entrance instantly. She explained
that she was going to take it herself to Craven Street in a taxi. The carpenter
said that it would not hold in a taxi. Violet said that it would hold in a taxi
if the taxi was open.
Pleased with her own initiative, she ran off to
prepare for the street. She descended in the goods-lift with the day-bed and
the carpenter. A brilliant Laundry motor-van was unloading baskets in the dark tunnel
of the goods-entrance. Violet had some acquaintance with the driver. Knowing
that he must have to wait there for an hour or more for his cargo of afternoon
soiled linen, she instructed him in a friendly, firm tone of assured confidence
to drive her and the day-bed to Craven Street, and to help the carpenter to
stow the day-bed into his van. The driver hesitated and yielded. Violet felt
triumphant. Heaven was aiding her enterprise. She admitted privately that to
travel through West End streets in winter in an open taxi with the end of a
French day-bed protruding backwards beyond the hood would have been rather
ridiculous.
The porter hoisted her into the van after the
day-bed, upon which she had the happy notion of sitting down. Then the porter
banged the doors of the van, and Violet found herself in a darkness blacker
than that of the tunnel. The darkness was total save for slits of very faint
light at the jointure of the double doors and below them. A jerk, and she was
thrown violently against the remaining arm of the day-bed, to which thenceforth
she clung for her life. The voyage began thus stormily, and the storm
increased; now and then it attained the rank of a tempest. The day-bed crawled
to and fro in the vast, mysterious interior of the van. While the van was in
motion she could hear nothing but its tremendous roar and the rattle of its
vibration. When it stopped she was frightened by the menacing thunder of
circumambient traffic.
"It's worse than being on the blasted
ocean," she muttered. Not till that memorable journey had she realised the
awfulness of the perils of the central thoroughfares of London. And the van was
infested with icy draughts. And less than twenty-four hours earlier she had
been a bedridden invalid. And trouble might be awaiting her at Craven Street,
for Mr. Collifant, the new Works-manager, was notoriously a pernickety fellow.
But she was content, and she felt equal to anything. Mr. Ceria had informed her
by telephone that he had paid a formal visit to Mr. Cousin, and that Mr. Cousin
had not pitched him out of the hotel. She felt sure that the worst of the Ceria
affair was over. She had saved Ceria. His voice on the telephone was as
beautiful and as wistful and as grateful as the meek smile he had given her in
his little office. He was her victim, and she had rescued him from ignominy and
ruin. Never could she desert him.
The distance from Birdcage Walk to Craven Street
appeared to be about a hundred miles. Either that, or the driver was abducting
her. Then the van came to a definite halt. She tried to open the doors, but
they were fastened on the outside. She shook them, and tore a glove. She called
aloud. No answer. At last the doors opened to the rattle of a chain and pin.
Blessed were the gleams of electricity after the black darkness. The driver
stood below her. She put her hands on his uniformed shoulders and jumped down.
"Well," she laughed, looking at her
damaged glove. "I've arrived--what's left of me!"
The Works Department of the Imperial Palace was
reallynot in Craven Street at all, but in Craven Place, beneath the immemorial
shadow of Charing Cross Station, which rose above it like some gigantic relic
of an extinct race of Titans. The van had come to rest under another archway
cut out of two storeys of what had once been a modern town residence. No one
came to greet the van.
"Can we get it down?" Violet asked.
"I can't, miss."
"You can if I help you."
They got the day-bed down.
"That's all, thank you," she said.
"Good night."
The driver backed into the Place, and was gone.
Solitude with the forlorn day-bed. Not a sound except the low hum of the motor,
within, which worked the sewing-machines, and fitful booming echoes from the
heights of Charing Cross Station. She began to climb up the flight of stone
steps leading to the offices on the first floor. Luck favoured her once again.
The junior carpenter from the workshop on Eighth, who had come on a
professional errand to the Works Department, appeared at the top of the steps
on his way back to the hotel.
"Frank," she cried, "just get
someone. Tell them I want the lift for a piece of furniture to go to the
Upholstery."
Frank touched his cap. It took nearly ten minutes
to transport the day-bed to the Upholstery on the second-floor, but the
operation was at last successfully achieved.
"Mr. Collifant about?" Violet asked a
girl who, with some dozen others, men and girls, was busy in the large, bare
room, covering the nakedness of assorted chairs.
"I think he's in his office seeing someone,
Miss Powler," said the girl.
"Then run and find Mrs. Rowbotham for me,
will you? Iwant her this minute." Violet spoke with authority because she
had authority. The head-housekeeper of the Palace herself bought all materials
for the Upholstery, and gave her own orders for the fashioning of it. And Mrs.
Rowbotham, forewoman of the Upholstery, was her washpot.
Thin, anxious Mrs. Rowbotham, whose ambition was
to resemble an under-housekeeper of the Palace as closely as possible, appeared
with a face of apprehension. She quite unconsciously loved difficulties,
therefore created them if they did not exist. She beheld the forlorn and
ancient piece of cumbrous furniture with alarm. That, for the Rajah's
suite? Which room of the suite was it meant for? Violet having given her the
number, Mrs. Rowbotham opened a shallow drawer in a huge chest of such drawers,
and produced the plan of the room, accurate and full of minute detail, scale
half an inch to a foot. And she measured the dimensions of the sofa. Where was
it to be in the room? In what spot could it be placed without a general
disturbance of the rest of the furniture? Yes, well, it might do on the
south wall. But of course everything had to be thought of--Miss Powler would
admit that.
Miss Powler admitted that; but she would not be
fussed. The fantastically elaborate organisation of the Works Department, while
it always impressed her, was apt to make her impatient, especially in a crisis
of haste; but now she was not to be made impatient. She felt the blandness of
an assured conqueror. She had found the day-bed, brought it to Craven Street in
a Laundry van; there it was, and it was going to be upholstered immediately and
in accordance with her own ideas. The material--she described it to Mrs.
Rowbotham, who was afraid that not enough of it remained in stock. A girl
fetched the material, and there was enough of it. But what about the broken
wood at the damaged end of the day-bed? Did Miss Powler really mean that the
stuff must be flounced at the end to hide those old scars? Miss Powler did. And
then the polishing of the visible wood?
And so on. And then finally Mrs. Rowbotham's great
question:
"What about Mr. Collifant? I take my orders
from Mr. Collifant. And you know, Miss Powler, he's--"
"Mr. Collifant's engaged just now, and the
day-bed's very urgent. It must be started at once, and finished somehow in one
hour. I shall stay here till it's done, and I shall take it back with me. I'll
settle with Mr. Collifant. If Mr. Collifant isn't available, I can't help that.
I've got my own responsibilities as head-housekeeper, and if I say a thing's
wanted it is: and Mr. Collifant knows that as well as anybody. It's not
as if the Rajah was an ordinary visitor."
Mrs. Rowbotham was hemmed in on both flanks. She
yielded with a sigh, but she yielded. A man and a girl were drawn away from
other work; a table was cleared for cutting out the material. Furniture-paste
was brought for the summary polishing of exposed wood. Not a moment to be
wasted, not a second.
Violet was uplifted by the sense of dominance. She
was not in the least ill, could not credit that she had ever been ill. Why was
she so eager and so arbitrary in her resolution to get the day-bed restored? If
she had not happened to recall the existence of the day-bed, if she had not
been a girl of unusual character and resource, the Rajah might have had to do
without his day-bed, were he ten times a rajah. But because she was she, the
Rajah should have his day-bed, and with astounding promptitude. She could
perform miracles by mere volition, and she was performing one now, and everyone
of importance in the Palace would hear of it.
Then a man of thirty-five or so, with a dark face
and a heavy dark moustache and rough dark hair and a thick defiant figure
appeared in the doorway. Mr. Collifant himself. He was scowling. Violet
marshalled her nerves for another conflict. David against Goliath.
Mr. Collifant perceived at once that something out
of the ordinary was afoot. He saw a piece of furniture that he had never seen
before; and he had had no official notice of its arrival. He saw employees
engaged on a task which was obviously not in the schedule of the day. Was he no
longer master in the Works Department? Every employee in the room had a guilty
or a constrained look. He turned on agitated Mrs. Rowbotham like a tiger. Mrs.
Rowbotham glanced at Violet for help.
"I'm afraid it's all my doing, Mr.
Collifant," said Violet, placatory, and briefly explained the situation.
She did not know that Mr. Collifant had just emerged from a very trying interview
with his superior, Mr. Cousin, nor even that Mr. Cousin had been to Craven
Street or had interested himself in the affair of the day-bed. She thought that
she alone had the grave matter in hand. She did not know that Mr. Collifant had
told Mr. Cousin that the creation of a day-bed was absolutely impossible. Mr.
Collifant turned on Violet, and in doing so he threw a curt, savage order to
the man and the girl to stop the new work and go back to their scheduled jobs.
Mr. Collifant did not usually behave thus; he usually controlled himself to
correspond with the Imperial Palace tradition of a quiet courtesy under all
provocations. But under a provocation quite unparalleled and quite inexcusable,
the real Mr. Collifant was coming out.
"Can I speak to you a moment?" said
Violet, and left the room.
Mr. Collifant murderously followed her. Beyond the
door, unheard by the staff, Violet explained further. Mr. Collifant shook his
head angrily. Violet continued:
"I'm very sorry I couldn't consult you. But I
couldn't. This day-bed job is really urgent. I tell you so as head-housekeeper.
I've come here on purpose. If you stop it I shall hold you responsible and I
shall go at once to Mr. Cousin and report." And she thought: "And a
nice mess I'm getting myself into! It'll be war between him and me now for ever
and ever."
"I shall report to Mr. Cousin too," said
Mr. Collifant, but he went back into the room and growled: "Here! You!
You'd better get ahead with this thing."
Violet having heard him thus announce his own defeat,
set out on a stroll through the other rooms; for she could not stay with Mrs.
Rowbotham and the day-bed; to watch the processes of upholstering would have
been as exasperating as to wait, watching, for a kettle to boil. And she could
not stand still. She was too excited to stand still, and too happily excited.
She had an attack of moral pride, and her individuality was extended so that
the entire Works establishment could hardly contain it. If there were to be
endless altercations with Mr. Collifant, let there be endless altercations. She
had stronger weapons than he had...She was in the largest room of the
department, on the first floor--the carpet-room. A large carpet (for No. 141 at
the Palace), having been sewn, was being finally pared at the edges, prior to
the definite hemming. Women were on their knees all around it.
Violet observed, and said not a word. How romantic
was everything! The day-bed was thrillingly romantic...She was in the
mattress-room, where a man was arranging ten thousand springs within a small
oblong...She was in the eiderdown-room, where eiderdowns were being filled and
stitched in patterns with the initials "I. P. H." in the centre. One
girl bending upon a table had her mouth protected by a pad...She was in the sewing-machine-room,
where a dozen women were loosing and withholding the power of electricity in
needles upon all manner of stuffs...She was in the window-blind-room, and in
the furniture-repairing-room. She spoke to none.
Then she saw a mirror, and examined herself, her
face. She deemed it a plain sort of a face, but the eyes were very bright
indeed, flashing, challenging eyes. She smiled, in order to judge whether or
not her smile had winning charm. She decided that it had. Victory seemed to
enhance her appearance. She fancied that she looked younger. She was
excessively conscious of herself. It was not the meek who were blessed...
Ceria! She must cure Ceria of his present
meekness. She would endow him with a supply of confidence from her own private
overwhelming store. Of course Mr. Orcham had been quite right in a way. She could realise that now, in her serene
triumph. Mr. Orcham cared only for his hotel, and he was right. The hotel must
come first and come last. Loyalty to the hotel! Terrible retribution for
disloyalty, even if you couldn't avoid it! Same as in war, if you lost your
head and deserted, you had to be shot, and it would be silly to say you didn't
know what you were doing when you deserted...What shocking wicked nonsense! In
another way Mr. Orcham was most frightfully wrong, and well he must know it. As
if a hotel counted for more than a human being!
However, she had got Ceria back at his post, and
all difficulties would settle themselves. They always did. It was not in her
character to exaggerate difficulties. Her tendency was to minimise them. Some
employees were continually worrying about frictions between members of the
staff. Others worried about their work and its value to the hotel. She belonged
to the second class. Frictions were easiest lubricated by ignoring them.
Unexpectedly arriving at a door, she opened it and
saw the day-bed. She was re-entering the upholstery-room from the other end.
Mr. Orcham, of all people, was conversing with Mr. Collifant. Both men were
very serious. Mr. Orcham glanced at her and glanced away. The mantle of moral
pride slipped from her shoulders; it did not fall to the floor; it was
annihilated; there was no mantle. Kind of conjuror's trick.
THE
SCENE
"I think you and I can go now," said
Evelyn, calling across the room to Violet, who came forward at the words.
He had already decided exactly what he would do
and how he would do it. Violet could not decipher even his general mood, so
reserved was his voice in its urbanity. But she felt sure that he would support
her in the attitude which she had adopted towards Mr. Collifant, who after all
was only an executive officer whose principal duty was to carry out the instructions
of, among others, the head-housekeeper.
Mr. Collifant said nothing, and looked at nobody,
but he glared resentfully at senseless objects such as the window.
"I thought I would stay, sir, and take it
back myself." Violet glanced at the day-bed, which under the hands of
three workers was already losing its appearance of incurable antiquity.
"I've arranged all about that," said
Evelyn, with decision. "You quite understand, don't you, Collifant?"
"Yes, sir," Mr. Collifant reluctantly
mumbled.
"You can come with me in my car, Miss Powler.
I left word for it to follow me. I came here in a taxi."
"Yes, sir," said Violet, feeling herself
now under the sway of a higher power.
Evelyn, who was in hat and overcoat, walked
quickly out of the room. Violet followed submissively. She had no idea why the
panjandrum had paid a visit to the Works Department at just that crisis, nor
could she guess what had passed between him and Mr. Collifant--except in so far
as the manager's appearance gave a clue. The car was waiting.
Evelyn stood aside and asked her courteously to
get in. When Brench had shut the door, Evelyn bent down and extinguished the
interior light in the car, which drove off.
Violet said:
"I see the house next door is to let. You'll have
four hotels now to deal with, and perhaps the Works Department will have to be
enlarged."
She thought that this suggestion was rather
bright, had value. Evelyn thought the same; he had not been aware that the next
house was to let, nor had he considered the probable necessity of enlarging the
Works Department to cope with the needs of the Merger. But he concealed his
appreciation of the girl's brightness. He was in no state to award any good
marks to her. Moreover, he was in Paris driving in another semi-dark car
through other winter streets, with another young woman by his side. The
sensation of the nearness of a girl in a car had delivered him into the past
and into Gracie's treacherous, delicious arms. He thought grimly, of Miss
Powler: "If she knew!..
He said aloud, with negligence: "Yes. We've
got it in view." One of his daily allowance of fibs. He thought:
"I'll mention that to old Dennis. She has a head on her, no mistake! Curse
her!"
The conversation, after an interval, shifted to
the damnable weather, then lapsed.
In the entrance-hall of the Palace, Violet,
content to have been seen arriving with the panjandrum in the panjandrum's car,
had a surprise.
"I'd like you to come to my office if you can
spare a minute," said Evelyn to her.
"Certainly, sir. Now?" She was mystified
by his tone, which was unexceptionably polite, even amiable, but somehow blank,
like a windowless and doorless high wall. She had a qualm: anything might be on
the other side of that wall; anything! Still, she could accuse herself of no
sin in her professional work. On the contrary her notion was that she merited a
little commendation for enterprise and despatch.
As they went through Miss Cass's room, Evelyn said
coldly to his chief secretary:
"I'm engaged, and I don't want to be
disturbed."
Miss Cass thought:
"Hello! What's this?" And, silent, she
gave him a slow,stern nod; and a tiny quick nod to Violet. Through the secret
channels of the vast organism of the hotel she had already learnt something of
the day-bed business and had heard of the strange impending departure of the
cigarette-king for the Majestic.
"Sit down, will you?" said Evelyn in the
inner room, removing his hat and overcoat and lighting a cigarette.
Violet knew then--what she had known before while
refusing to admit it to herself--that trouble existed, and that she was
concerned in it. She took off her gloves, and loosed the black coat which she
had bought to wear with her housekeeper's dress when she went out on hotel
errands. But really, instead of divesting herself, she was putting on
the invisible armour of defence. She had an uncomfortable feeling of perplexity
and pique. She was still worried about her protégé Ceria and resentful of
Evelyn's attitude to him. According to Dr. Constam, who stood officially for
the hotel, she was ill, and therefore deserved the treatment due to an invalid
and an invalid who in the interests of the hotel was displaying all the
activity of perfect health. (Incidentally she now began to be fatigued.) And
finally she had done a wonder for the hotel, and the hotel ought to be grateful
to her, for really she need not have--etc., etc. And the panjandrum was
evidently preparing himself to be unpleasant. She had no grounds for this
assumption. She simply directed her feminine X-ray apparatus into the
Director's brain by way of his glance and his gestures and his tone (all
irreproachable), and knew with absolute knowledge that things were so! Ah! The
last time they had been together it was midnight and she wore her green frock,
not this prim black affair, and he had given her a cigarette and their clouds
of smoke had mingled. Her X-ray apparatus, however, furnished no information as
to the condition of her own nerves. She believed that they were normal and in
excellent order.
Evelyn was regretting that he had given her the
cigarette that night. He was painfully absorbed in thoughts of Gracie and her
wickedness. Or rather, he wanted to be painfully absorbed, but the hotel would
not let him. He was much exercised about Ceria. He blamed himself for not
having instructed Mr. Cousin that Ceria must leave. Ceria might go to the
Majestic or wherever else Cousin chose to send him. Evelyn had been weak,
irresolute. And to allow Ceria to stay at the Palace as though nothing had
happened would show further weakness. What on earth did Ceria mean by his
pranks of an operatic tenor? Monstrous! Monstrous! That girl was larking around
in Paris, smiling at Leo Cheddar and returning his kisses. And only
yesterday--or was it the day before?--she had...He, Evelyn, had dashed off to
the Works Department to put the fear of God into Collifant, and to command that
a day-bed should be created in a moment out of nothing. And he had found that
another person had had the infernal cheek to put the fear of God into Collifant
and to cause a day-bed to be created out of nothing--well, you might say almost
nothing! Without saying one word to anybody! And there were other matters.
Enough to make a man lose his temper! Not that Evelyn would lose his temper.
No. His nerves, thank heaven, were in ideal order.
He took the seat of authority behind his desk, and
made some notes on a pad of the topics which he had to discuss with the
head-housekeeper. He wrote with deliberation. Let the woman wait!
Suddenly he looked up and began:
"You were ill last night, Miss Powler, in the
doctor's hands. But to-day you are up and about. I was amazed to see you at
Craven Street. Was it wise? We don't keep a doctor here for him to be
defied." He smiled, to soften his words. Weakness again. But he was so
absurdly good-natured. "You might easily have a relapse. Serious. And then
where should we be? Where would the Palace be? The first duty of everyone on my
staff is to keep healthy. There's such a thing as too much zeal, especially
with you women."
Was his tone right--the proper mixture of urbanity
and severity? He really must watch over his tongue. That playful phrase which
he had used to her last night, about whether her mother knew that her daughter
was a wicked and deceitful woman--that phrase was silly; it was mischievous; it
made a wrong atmosphere between employer and employed; familiarity was a
mistake, even with the best of 'em. She hears a phrase like that, in his
accursed nice tone, and naturally she thinks she can go and do what she likes!
Violet answered mildly:
"I quite see what you mean sir. But perhaps
you don't know that Dr. Constam sent a nurse last night to give me violet rays
for my sciatica. And they made me sleep as well, and really when I woke up this
morning the sciatica was quite gone and I haven't felt it since, not one
bit." She smiled, with correct submissiveness, thinking: "Well,
what's come over him? He brought me into his precious hotel, and I'm sure I've
worked for him. And now he..! I'm the best one to tell whether I'm well
enough to work or not. Does he take me for one of those hysterical creatures
who'll go on till they drop, simply because they haven't any sense and they
think it's grand? If he does, he's mistaken. Still, he isn't going to make me
lose my head. And my tone's perfect. Last night he was charming, and to-day
he's all nerves. Something else has upset him, and I'm to bear the brunt of it.
All right! All right! He'll recover. But if he thinks he can put me in the
wrong and make me play the idiot--"
"At any rate," Evelyn went on, after a
judicial pause, "there's one thing you ought to have done. You ought to
have seen the doctor before you got up this morning, and obtained his
permission. If you have a doctor in, you must show some respect for him.
There's a code, and all sensible people obey it. I wonder what Dr. Constam
would have thought if he'd seen you out of bed--again. I know what he thought
when he heard you'd been out of doors yesterday. A doctor is somebody.
You know what savoir vivre means. You haven't been practising it."
But he smiled once more.
"Dr. Constam mightn't have been able to
come," Violet argued.
"Did you ask?"
"No, I didn't."
"Well then!"
"I did send him a message," she said,
thinking: "What's all this about codes and things? And savoir vivre?
He's making a fuss over nothing. I'm well, and here I am!..He's trying to be
nice. And he's worth working for. I do wish he'd stop his lecturing. If this is
all he has to say, I might as well go and get on with my business. That day-bed
ought to be here soon. He looks at you in a nice way. His smile's nice. Every
now and then he looks a bit like a boy--just for a second. And yet he's so hard
about Mr. Ceria!" She smiled, and she felt as if she was knowing the
panjandrum better.
Evelyn pored over his notes: a formality quite
unnecessary, indeed a somewhat puerile showing-off by the man of affairs; for
he knew perfectly what his next topic was.
"Now about Ceria." He paused.
"Yes, sir?"
At the mere name of Ceria the restive animal in
Violet's mind jibbed and reared. She controlled it masterfully, and with a
calm, superior inward smile. She had come to a very definite decision about
Ceria. She had a duty to Ceria, and it was the most important of all her
duties. She realised again, almost exultantly, her power over him. She could make
Ceria: her relation to him was that of a creative goddess...Unguided, unaided
by her, he might well sink into ruin. With her moral help there was hardly any
limit to the potentialities of his achievement. He possessed all the qualities
necessary for brilliant success, except one, and that she could and would
supply. She would stop at nothing to supply it.
She thought of him tenderly. She recalled all his
words, tones, glances hopeful and despairing, smiles, gestures, attitudes, when
he and she had been together. He was innocent of evil, and she would not see
him crushed. He was in her heart. Not that she loved him as a woman is supposed
to love a man. And yet, so very tender were her thoughts of him, she did love
him, with the softest affection, as a goddess can love a mortal martyrised by
fate. He was more to her than anybody or anything in the world. If she could
not save and recreate him otherwise she would marry him and take the risks of
life with a mysterious and incalculable foreigner, who would not understand her
and whom her reason would not understand. But her heart would understand and
enfold him. And, for him, she would abandon the dream of a thoroughly English
home ruled by English habits and customs and ideals, and submit herself to one
of those uncomfortable compromises which were an unavoidable consequence of the
mixed marriage. She would exist for ever with an essential stranger. She would
have hybrid children by him, children who also at moments would be strangers to
her, and incomprehensible by her Englishness. She had had glimpses of mixed
marriages: there was one in Renshaw Street, on which her fretful mother had
often made carping comments; it was the wife there who was foreign, a serious
and economical woman; but the whole street sympathised with the English
husband, to whom it attributed a special virtue because he was English. Well, a
whole street might sympathise with her if circumstances rendered
marriage the only method of carrying out her duty to Ceria--she didn't care.
And she looked at the panjandrum's maleficent face, and secretly defied him.
"I'm bound to tell you," said Evelyn,
"I think you were wrong yesterday afternoon. As soon as you got Ceria's
letter you ought to have gone straight to Mr. Cousin and told him you knew
Ceria was back at home. Your first duty was to the hotel. It isn't even as if
you were engaged to Ceria. Personally I don't think that even that should have
made any difference, but I admit the thing might be argued. However, you
weren't engaged to him. You refused him, and he was nothing to you. So there
was no excuse. I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's best for me to speak
plainly."
"Oh yes, sir," she said with coldness.
"I much prefer that. Then we know where we are."
"And I must tell you something else. You
remember what I said to you last night about Mr. Ceria when you were lying
onthat sofa in your room. I abide by it. My opinion hasn't changed in the
least." He was about to add: "And I intend to act on what I
said." But a new expression on Violet's features stopped him from
finishing. A dangerous expression; it intimidated him; he feared, not her, but
a scene. And he would not have a scene.
"But Mr. Ceria is there to-day, working as
usual. And he's seen Mr. Cousin," said Violet firmly.
"Who told you?" Sharply, like a
cross-examining barrister.
"He did. On the telephone."
"I am aware that he has seen Mr.
Cousin," said Evelyn. "But what's that got to do with it? Naturally
if Ceria comes back he comes back to work. Did you expect Mr. Cousin to prevent
him from working? This hotel has to go on functioning." Evelyn very much
wanted to say more and to say it with sarcasm; but again he was intimidated. He
proceeded, not pausing: "And now about Mr. Collifant. Before you gave
orders to the people under his control, did you make any attempt to see
him?"
"No, sir. I was told he was engaged, and as
my business was very urgent--"
"But was it very urgent? Even if you'd been
kept half an hour, would that have mattered? This hotel wouldn't come to a standstill
because of half an hour's delay in supplying an article that nobody had ever
heard of before. And you wouldn't have been kept. Mr. Collifant was only
engaged with Mr. Cousin, and if Mr. Cousin had had the slightest idea that Mr.
Collifant was wanted on urgent business he would have understood at once, and
perhaps helped too. It isn't as if you didn't know all about the chain of
authority. The chain of authority works upwards as well as down. Suppose
someone came along and gave orders to one of your floor-housekeepers without a
word to you, what would you think? As a result of your interference Mr.
Collifant has given me notice. I haven't accepted his notice, but I may have
to. Now Mr. Collifant is a very good man." Evelyn was thinking: "It's
true I went to Craven Street intending to have a row with Collifant myself, but
she doesn't know that and it's got nothing to do with her. It isn't true that
he's a very good man, and I don't care so much if he does leave; but he's good
in some ways, and anyhow I'm not going to have a lot of women spreading
themselves and upsetting men so that they give notice. I'm being very effective
with her because I'm talking to her so quietly and reasonably; but I'm being
firm too, and I shall go on being firm. I can see she's calming down a bit. Now
with a girl like Gracie you never knew. It's quite on the cards she'll
treat Cheddar as she's treated me, and write to me and ask me to forgive her.
But I shan't. What is off is off--with me. No, I wouldn't make it up. And if
she came over here to vamp me--she might--well, I don't know. She has points.
It's possible I could tame her. Oh, damn!" He said to Violet: "You
see my point, Miss Powler?"
"Yes, sir," Violet answered
perfunctorily. She thought:
"But he doesn't give me a word of thanks for
what I did. I have got the day-bed for them, and nobody else would have got it.
I do get things done. But he says nothing about that. Oh no! No
encouragement to do your best in this place. It's all codes and rules--red
tape. Why did he edge away from the subject of Ceria so quick? I must have
Ceria cleared up. I told Ceria positively I'd spoken to Mr. Orcham and
everything would be all right. Positively. He must let Ceria alone now
he's come back. Ceria's seen Mr. Cousin and he's working and I told him
everything would be all right. Can't the Director see reason? He simply must
see reason. If he doesn't--"
She was filled with a passionate protectiveness
for Ceria. She thought of nothing else. There was nothing else, for her, but
the salvation of Ceria. Her heart and her brain were aflame. She actually felt
hot. Her hands were dry and hot, and then clammy and hot. But she thought:
"I'll be calm and cool. He's excited himself. You can hear it in his
voice. He's only trying to be collected. He's pretending, with his nine
hotels. But I don't care if he's boss of nine hundred hotels--he must see
reason."
Evelyn said:
"You know, more tact, more discretion is
needed in your work than you appear to realise, Miss Powler. For instance,
there's your trouble with Mr. Purkin. However, I'll leave that for the present.
But I must remind you, though I've never mentioned it before, that you didn't
succeed in keeping the peace with either Miss Venables or Miss Prentiss. Both
very good in their way. You were put over them, and you couldn't keep the
peace. I don't say you didn't try. All I say is you didn't succeed." He
was thinking: "I always thought she had plenty of tact. That was why I
brought her here. And now I'm accusing her of no tact. Well, there it is!"
Violet was shocked to the point of utter amazement
by the man's injustice. She thought: "Never mind. All this is nothing.
Ceria's the only thing that matters. I won't let him upset me." And when
she did speak, her tone was almost a cooing. She said:
"But, really, sir, the trouble with Miss
Venables and Miss Prentiss began with Miss Maclaren. They were jealous. And
anyone could understand their being jealous."
"Yes, of course," said Evelyn. "But
Miss Maclaren was sickening for her illness. And as for their being
jealous--"
"And they were still more jealous of me,"
she interjected quietly.
"As I was saying, of course they were
jealous. It was natural. But don't you know that jealousy is a very common
thing indeed in this place? I'm always meeting with it and having to deal with
it. And Mr. Cousin too. When we choose a head-housekeeper, even temporarily, we
choose her partly because we believe she'll be capable of dealing
satisfactorily with such ordinary little things as jealousy. We don't imagine
there won't be any jealousy and the machine will always run smoothly. We know
it won't. If it did there wouldn't be any need for tact and so on. Anyone can
be tactful when there's nothing to be tactful about. That is so, isn't
it?" He thought:
"And hang it! Am I being tactful now? Or not?
This ought surely to be a lesson to the girl."
"Yes, sir," Violet replied, still
perfunctorily. "I'm sorry." She thought: "But you haven't lost
Venables--you've got her at the Majestic. And as for Prentiss, she's a good
riddance, and well you know it!" In the same instant she said aloud:
"And what about Mr. Ceria, sir?"
"Why? What about Ceria?" He
thought: "What the devil has Ceria to do with her?"
"What are you going to do about him, sir?
You'll excuse me asking, but I feel rather responsible."
Evelyn thought:
"Well, I'm dashed! Does she think she ought
to take a hand in running this hotel? However, I've calmed her down. Now's the
time to be firm." He said aloud, with emphasis, and a condescending smile:
"I've told you I haven't changed since last night. And I don't see that
you're responsible--in the least. And even if you were--the managerial policy
of this hotel remains." He thought: "Yes, I'm being hard on Ceria,
and all the grill-room staff will be against me. Perhaps I oughtn't to sack
him; but I've said it, and I shall stick to it. Must!"
Some people would say that the panjandrum was not
now behaving very well. But some people are super-human, whereas Evelyn was
only human; and possibly also his character had been somewhat impaired, under
the years-long ordeal of being an autocrat.
"Well, I think it's very unfair," Violet
exclaimed with bitterness unmasked.
And her thoughts corresponded exactly with her
words. She had no thought of the advisability of restraining herself and
keeping calm and employing tact or any other such paltry device. She had
forgotten all that; forgotten all about prudence and discretion; she was high
above these meannesses; lifted to a new plane, the plane of indignant emotion,
and heedless of all consequences. She thought furiously that the Director was
very unfair.
As for Evelyn, he was tremendously startled. He
admitted to himself with disgust that her previous demeanour had deceived him
into a misjudgment.
"Now please," he began. "Please
don't--"
Violet jumped up from her chair, and her coat fell
a little away from one shoulder, and her bag and gloves fell to the floor. Her
eyes were on fire, her neck flushed; her mouth was half open for an explosion.
"She's not so bad looking. She's magnificent.
She's beautiful." The thought flashed through one part of Evelyn's mind
and was gone. But in another part of his mind glowed dully and steadily the
thought: "Damn these women! They're all alike. All. I had an idea she
wasn't like the rest. But she is. She isn't the girl I took her for. She's
somebody else. Damn her!"
He looked at her and looked away, smiling
awkwardly.
Violet said, her voice rising till Evelyn began to
be afraid that Miss Cass would overhear from next door:
"Last night I spoke the truth, Mr. Orcham. I
don't know why, except that I wanted to be honest with you. It was wasted. I
might have told you the tale that I told to Mr. Fontenay to-day, and you'd have
believed it. And I wish to God I had! Everything would have been all right then.
But I told you the truth. And you've taken advantage of it. I say it's
very unfair, but it's worse than that. It's simply frightful. Frightful!"
Her voice resounded in the hard, masculine room.
Evelyn was dumbfounded, and more than a little overwhelmed. She wasn't like the
rest of them. She was like a Fury. She was transformed from a head-housekeeper
into a Fury. She moved towards his desk and stood above him, shooting angry
darts down on him from her blazing eyes. Mr. Cyril Purkin had never seen her in
such a state, nor her sister Susan. But a couple of recalcitrant laundry-maids
had seen her in such a state once; and her mother once, after a whole Sunday of
complainings, and the spectacle had cured Mrs. Powler of public lamentations
for quite a month.
Evelyn was shaken by the exposure of the woman in
her. Sex will out. But he was not daunted for more than a few seconds. The
exposure of the woman in her suddenly excited him, and led to the exposure of
the man. He had just been preaching in his offensive male way that anyone could
be tactful when there was nothing to be tactful about. And now--he cared no
more for tact than Violet did.
"Miss Powler," he angrily exclaimed,
"will you oblige me by leaving the room?"
"Yes," she answered. "I will. And
please take my notice to leave, Mr. Orcham. You wouldn't take Mr.
Collifant's, but you'll take mine. It won't matter to you. I'm only
'temporary'." She laughed.
He sank slowly into his chair, thinking, aghast:
"This won't do. This is absurd. Tact! Tact!
I'm cleverer than she is. I brought her into the hotel, and it would never do
for me to let her go after a row. There'd be too much talk. Besides, she's a
first-rate housekeeper, and they're rare. She's rather marvellous in a temper.
I hadn't a notion of it. Though she is awful! Mrs. O'Riordan was nothing
compared to her. No, nor Gracie. She's kissing Leo Cheddar before dinner.
Tact!" But his interest in Gracie had suddenly diminished. He recalled a
phrase in her letter--something about it being too early for him to judge yet
whether he was in love with her or not.
He said:
"Please sit down." And, as she
hesitated, "Sit down."
Authority. The man dominating the girl, bringing
her to her senses.
Violet sat down. In her obedience he felt a glow
of masculine conceit. He was happy. She was a woman, was she? Well, he was a
man. Why didn't she burst into tears? He hated women to cry. But now he wanted
her to cry. He would have been happier if she had cried. She did not cry.
"Miss Powler," he said very quietly,
"people like you and me can't behave in this style. It's not worthy of us.
And really you can't give me notice all in a minute because I don't manage my
hotel as you think I ought to. It's not right. Now I want to suggest to you
that you withdraw your notice, and let's forget this. You may think quite
differently to-morrow. And perhaps I shall."
A silence.
"Very well," said Violet. "I
withdraw my notice."
"Thank you. I admire you for doing that. It's
what I expected from you."
Violet picked up her bag and gloves.
"But," she said, gazing at him with face
averted, "when you say you may think differently to-morrow, do you
mean about Mr. Ceria?"
"I make no promise. I can promise
nothing," Evelyn answered firmly.
Violet said:
"I'll stay on. I'll do my best for the hotel.
But things can never be the same between us again. Good afternoon."
EASY-CHAIR
In three months much happens. Though each event
taken by itself may seem small enough, the totality of events always amounts to
a considerable change in the world. It was forenoon on an early day in April.
In the world of the Imperial Palace much had happened since the early day in
January when Evelyn had returned from Paris to London to discover the true
domestic explanation of the mystery of Ceria's disappearance and to quarrel
with Violet Powler.
Dr. Constam's vindictive hope was realised: Tessa
had had twins, thus exceeding the arrangements made for her delivery by Gracie.
Miss Maclaren had surprisingly reached full convalescence, and had left the St.
James's Hospital. But she would never resume duty at the Palace, for the reason
that, the origin of all her troubles having been fashionably diagnosed as
dental, she had caught the fancy of her dentist, a middle-aged Scotsman and a
widower, and was engaged to marry him. Old Mowlem had retired from the
revolving doors of the great entrance-hall, and in some remote spot secret and
withdrawn was holding converse with a spirit in the form of a literary 'ghost,'
who had undertaken the job of putting his invaluable reminiscences into bright
journalistic English; the work was about to appear serially in a morning paper,
and popular success had been predicted for it on its appearance in book-form.
Skinner had been promoted from the Queen Anne entrance to the main entrance in
Birdcage Walk, and was now head hall-porter of the Palace. And already there
were page-boys in the Palace who had never heard of old Mowlem. Reyer, no
longer night-manager, had been promoted to a higher position in the Minerva at
Cannes. Mr. Cyril Purkin had effected a love-match with a superior nurse-maid
just young enough to be his daughter, and was spending himself and his
substance, but not neglecting the Laundry, in a vivacious attempt to satisfy
her appetite for pleasure.
And as if these things did not suffice to prove
that the earth revolves, the Craven Street premises, not under the dominion of
Mr. Collifant, were being enlarged to thrice their former size, and were
supplying some hundreds of new carpets to the Majestic, which needed them.
But perhaps the most sentimentally interesting
occurrence of the three months was the death of a housekeeper who had had
charge of old Dennis Dover's home and whom father Dennis had quite gratuitously
assumed to be immortal. A very severe blow for father Dennis. Deciding that he
could never risk a new, unfamiliar housekeeper, he had installed himself in a
small suite at the Palace, where he had lived as a child. The suite was not the
suite of his infancy, but it bore the same number, and for its number he had
chosen it. On the other hand, among the moveless permanencies, Violet remained
at her post; Ceria, smiling again, remained at his post; and Perosi at his; and
Beatrice Noakes at hers.
Father Dennis, much more than three months older,
was now sitting uneasily in an easy-chair in his suite on Fourth. With him were
Sir Henry Savott, Lord Watlington, and Mr. John H. Harbour. These four men--not
excluding even father Dennis--recked little or nothing of the events above
enumerated. Their thoughts were centred upon an affair which they regarded as
surpassingly momentous. The joint work of Sir Henry Savott and Sebastien Smiss
had been completed; every minor, as well as every major, contract had been
signed; a prospectus had been drafted, re-drafted and finally settled; the
prospectus had become a chief ornament of the financial advertising columns of
the principal newspapers; the Orcham International Hotels Company was before
the public; the List of applications for shares had been opened that morning,
and the four men in father Dennis's sitting-room had just had telephonic
information that the List had been closed at noon, the shares having been
applied for several times over in about a couple of hours. Success! Brilliant
success! Success surpassing all hopes! Three of the men were happy and showed
their happiness. Sir Henry Savott displayed his teeth with glee because he had
unloaded vast responsibilities on to the investing public, and still more
because he had received a cable from Paris to say that his daughter Gracie
expected to be a mother. Mr. Harbour--unaware that to an anxious Sir Henry he
had appeared with his financial backing like an unexpected angel from
heaven--Mr. Harbour carried his abdomen joyously to and fro in the room
because, for a sum trifling to him, he was destined to be a notable figure in
the Europe of luxury hotels, and still more because he was free for at least a
month of Mrs. Harbour--to whose uncompromising puritanism nevertheless he owed
his personal introduction to Evelyn Orcham and to the Europe of luxury hotels.
Lord Watlington, perched nervously restless on a piano-stool, was happy because
he was once again intimately connected with a triumphant flotation, and still
more because he too had grown financially intimate with the titanic Harbour,
and perceived in this friendship prospects of new and larger fortunes and an
increased hidden influence upon the stock-markets of two hemispheres; Lord
Watlington had not invented a cigarette, but he knew himself to be a cleverer
man than the stout, democratic cigarette-king.
Father Dennis, on the score of the Orcham Merger,
was neither happy nor unhappy; he was indifferent, for he suspected that at a
pace ever quicker he was steadily nearing the frontier beyond which mergers
lose all their exciting interest. And he was definitely unhappy on the score of
his easy-chair. It was the easiest chair in the room, but for old Dennis it was
not easy. He had frequently complained of the uneasiness of the Palace
easy-chairs. He had gone so far as to assert that there was not a single truly
easy-chair in the whole hotel. The ground for this criticism lay in the
peculiar conformation of the lower part of old Dennis's backbone. He now sat
and grunted and grumbled and squeaked, trying rather ineffectually to be
cheerful and benevolent, trying to pretend to himself that the Orcham
flotation, not the easy-chair question, was the major question of the day.
The four men were waiting the arrival of Evelyn,
who was strangely absenting himself. After all, he was the head of the Merger,
and ought surely to have been with his colleagues on this sublime occasion.
They thought more than they spoke, and the talk was spasmodic. Sir Henry Savott
was thinking about his unborn grandchild, who would carry on the family if not
the name, and about his profits, actual and potential, from his own child, the
Orcham Merger. And both Lord Watlington and Mr. Harbour were thinking about the
Savott profits. Everything had been made clear, all the cards had been put on
the table again and again. Yet Lord Watlington and Mr. Harbour could conceive
ways in which the astute Sir Henry might have gotten gains which no enquiry
could ever disclose; and that possibly the capital of the Orcham International
Hotels Company was greater than it ought to have been. But also Lord Watlington
and Mr. Harbour had doubts as to this, and at moments secretly admitted that
peradventure they were being unjust to the sole parent of the Merger.
Father Dennis, suddenly ceasing pretence,
interrupted the various reflections of the trio of chams with a hoarse,
whispered:
"I'm damned if I don't try a gridiron!"
And with a frown of exasperation he hoisted himself to his feet.
Everybody assumed a pained expression of sympathy,
and everyone thought: "The old man's getting past it. He won't be Chairman
of the new Board for long."
"But, my dear Dover!" Sir Henry almost
cooed. "Let me find you another easy-chair. Let me telephone to Miss
Powler. She'll discover one."
"You may be able to sell pink for blue, my
lad," said old Dennis with enigmatic, kindly grimness, "but you won't
find what I call an easy-chair in this hotel. I ought to know. Who's Miss
Powler?"
"Head-housekeeper." Savott showed a lenient
surprise at the question.
"Oh! Her! Never set eyes on her. Don't know
her."
"But I do," said Sir Henry gently.
"May I use your telephone, my dear Chairman?" That morning, so
persuaded was he of the goodness of God, he felt ready to obey all the precepts
of the Sermon on the Mount, even the simplest.
Violet was eating her lunch alone, with "The
Hotel-keeper" propped before her, in the housekeepers' section of the
staff restaurants below stairs, when in dashed young Agatha, who was only
convinced that she was doing her duty if she was doing it in a hurry.
"Please, they've telephoned for you to go up
to Mr. Dennis Dover's room at once. It was Sir Henry Savott who 'phoned."
The head-housekeeper, now not 'temporary,' dropped
her spoon and fork into the vestiges of a sweet and, picking up "The
Hotel-keeper," left the table.
This, she thought, must be truly important
business, for on a day so important only important business would be allowed to
arise for discussion. The whole staff of the hotel was more or less excited by
the flotation of the Merger. Some were uplifted, they knew not why; others went
about murmuring that things would never be the same again in the Palace, and
their excitement took the form of qualms concerning the future, qualms which were
sharpened rather than allayed by a vague report that wealthy investing people
were tumbling over one another in a fierce struggle to get hold of shares. Many
members of the staff had applied for shares, with a promise from that
influential gentleman Mr. Smiss of preferential treatment. Among them was
Oldham, who still retained possession of a little more than half of his
thousand pounds.
Violet, whose business it was to know everything
on the Floors, knew that several of the very highest personages were with Mr.
Dennis Dover in his sitting-room. No doubt Mr. Orcham among them. Why had not
Mr. Orcham himself telephoned, instead of leaving Sir Henry to summon her? The
answer seemed obvious to Violet. For three months she had had no contact with
Mr. Orcham. Only twice had she even seen him, by chance in the corridors, on
which occasions they had exchanged non-committal salutations. Once she had been
on the point of entering Mr. Dover's suite to enquire after his comfort, but
the news that Mr. Orcham was with him had altered her purpose, and she had
deputed the official mission to Mrs. Oulsnam.
All her dealings had been with Mr. Cousin, next
upwards in the chain of authority. Her relations with Mr. Cousin were admirably
perfect. His demeanour, like her own, was always reserved, and yet friendly. He
spoke sense, and he listened to sense; and when he had decided he had decided.
Why therefore should she ever have had speech with Mr. Orcham? Mr. Orcham was
beyond her in the firmament. Everybody was aware that Mr. Orcham had been more
and more withdrawing from the actual daily overseeing of the Palace. Mr. Cousin
had told her that Mr. Orcham now had other and greater matters to attend to,
and the fact was evident.
Nevertheless Violet, with her realistic feminine
unreason, was convinced that, but for their calamitous affray, Mr. Orcham would
have continued to meet her, despite his new preoccupations with eight other
hotels. She appreciated Mr. Cousin's adroitness in making excuses for Mr.
Orcham's aloofness without seeming to make excuses. A man who would
gratuitously smooth the rough face of things was the man to please her; for she
too had the instinct thus to smooth. But she saw through the adroitness. She
had at length definitely relinquished the hope of contact with Mr. Orcham, who
had introduced her into the Palace, and whose protégée she had once been!
Her private meditations had often been sombre,
especially in the night. But she was seldom uncheerful, even to herself, for
long. The figure of Mr. Orcham, with his irregular teeth and his sudden funny
movements and tone and phrases, had been her original inspiration to work hard
for the hotel. The inspiration was weakened; but not her ardour. She had
developed a passion for the welfare and the efficiency of the Palace. She
studied its organisation day and evening. She maintained a bright acquaintance
with heads of departments. She was ready to be of use to anybody and everybody.
She knew everybody by name. Out of the Palace she was like a fish out of water,
and her parents noticed this, critically. Mr. Powler had permitted himself to
suggest that she was 'getting morbid' about the Palace, with her late arrivals
in Renshaw Street and her early departures therefrom.
She had quietly ignored the cautious complaints.
And sometimes she would relate with pride how her hints for the betterment of
the working of the hotel had been sooner or later acted upon. For instance, as
to the hours of the housekeepers. After several floor-housekeepers had been
eliminated, in accordance with Mac's plan, an extra one had been engaged, and a
completely new system of housekeeping surveillance devised. (She saw the
hidden, active hand of Mr. Orcham guiding the revolutionary change. Or at least
he had approved, while giving no overt sign.) To have mentioned this at Renshaw
Street was one of her mistakes. Naturally her parents had asked how it came
about, if hours were shorter, that she was never free of the hotel. Question
which she answered but lamely.
On the way to obey the summons, she called in at
her rooms to titivate. Mac's photographs had vanished, and the walls of the
parlour had a forlorn air. She must buy some pictures, and deliberately make
the place a home. For it was to be her home for ever and ever. But was it? Why
had she been summoned? Did the high personages intend to transfer her to some
other hotel more in need than the Palace of her service? Probably. She felt
flattered, but sad. Still, if she was invited to leave the Palace she would
leave it; she was a soldier in the army, and an invitation was a command; she
was in the hotel-world for life.
There was one satisfaction: she knew that Ceria
was secure. Mr. Orcham had yielded there. Not that she was sentimentally
interested in Ceria. She had consistently kept Ceria at a proper distance. She
had sworn to save Ceria, and she had saved him. The Ceria-Violet accounts were
balanced and closed and her role of creative goddess to him was done. If he
continued to sigh for her--well, it couldn't be helped. She would marry no
foreigner, nor any man whom she was not gloriously in love with. She had seen
love glorious on the faces of couples in Battersea Park on Sunday evenings in
the summer. Her conception of love was more negative than positive; she
conceived it as an emotion utterly unlike the tepid excitement which during a
few weeks she had experienced in the society of Mr. Cyril Purkin.
She entered the lobby of father Dennis's suite
without knocking, and then knocked at the sitting-room door. No sound of
talking within. Well accustomed to introducing herself to all manner of
celebrities and notorieties, male and female, titled and untitled, plain and
picturesque, haughty and genial, in the factitious privacy of their temporary
homes, she had lost such trifling nervousness as had ever troubled her. But she
was nervous now, not because of the prestige of the personages to be
interviewed, not even because of the supposed gravity of the interview; rather
because Mr. Orcham would be one of the high personages. She knocked again.
"Come in."
She opened the door, and the next instant was in
the midst of great men.But Mr. Orcham was not among them. Mr. Dover she had
seen once at a distance, Mr. Harbour she had once long ago spoken to while
placating the hardly placable Mrs. Harbour. Lord Watlington she recognised from
his photographs in the papers. Sir Henry of course she knew. Father Dennis gave
her the benevolent smile of an old fellow who has finished with women except as
a spectacle agreeable to behold. Lord Watlington ignored her, looking out of the
window with boredom on his face. Mr. Harbour was ready to be sympathetic. Sir
Henry surprisingly stepped forward and shook hands, saying that he was glad to
see her. She smiled and bowed.
"Miss Powler," said Sir Henry, taking
charge, "you know the suite my daughter had here last year--I forget the
number."
"365," she informed him.
Neither of them knew that whereas Sir Henry was
referring to Gracie's first visit, Violet was referring to her second, of which
Sir Henry had no knowledge. But on each occasion she had had the same suite.
"By the way, you'll be interested to hear
that my daughter is expecting a baby." Sir Henry could not contain the
great news of his approaching grandfatherhood; it came forth with a rush, of
its own volition.
"I'm so glad!" said Violet. Her eyes
said far more than the words. She really was glad, if only because of Sir
Henry's ingenuous delight.
Lord Watlington's boredom seemed to be
intensified.
"Yes, I shall tell her I've told you and how
pleased you are! Well, in the bedroom there was a peculiar sort of
easy-chair."
"I know the one you mean."
"Could you get it for us? This one
here"--he indicated the empty chair--"doesn't suit Mr. Dover, and I
think that that one would. Could you get it for us?" Sir Henry's attitude
was the attitude of an owner of the Palace: at any rate he was the creator of
the Merger!
"Certainly, Sir Henry."
"Now?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you."
Violet made a quick exit. In the lobby she
laughed, partly from relief at the absence of Mr. Orcham, and partly at the comical
difference between what she had been anticipating and what had happened.
Steeled to listen to a proposition unpalatable but epoch-making for her, she
had been asked to supply an easy-chair! Withal, she felt some twinge of
disappointment. The spirited heroine in her would have preferred Mr. Orcham to
be in the room (so that their relations might be defined after a long period of
indefiniteness), even had the result been unpleasant. She always did like to
know where she stood with anybody. And the ambitious, adventurous heroine in
her regretted that no fresh adventure awaited her. Why had they sent for the
head-housekeeper to procure a mere easy-chair? Clearly because despatch was
desired. She slipped downstairs to Third, and abruptly enlisted a valet en
route. The suite comprising rooms 365, 6, 7, and 8 was, she knew, occupied but
the visitors might not be in. She knocked at the bedroom door. No answer. She
entered. The room was empty.
"Here!" she said to the valet.
"Pull that easy-chair out, will you, and take it upstairs in the lift to
Mr. Dover's sitting-room. Get Fred to help you. I'll be up there before
you."
While the chair was leaving, the door between the
bedroom and the bathroom opened, and a magnificent dame in full street attire
began a vexed enquiry.
"Excuse me, my lady. This chair has to be
repaired. I will see that you have another one at once. I thought there was
nobody in."
Violet followed the chair. In Mr. Dover's lobby,
in front of the shut door of his drawing-room, she waited for the easy-chair
and the valets.
"This is the chair you meant, isn't it, Sir
Henry?" she said, having opened the door.
Evelyn had a rendezvous with the others in father
Dennis's room--chosen because the old man had now reduced the fatiguing
transport of his large and heavy frame to the least possible--but he had been
delayed, by an encounter with a man much older than father Dennis--Lord
Levering.
The panjandrum ought to have been cheerfully
happy. He was not. The flotation of the Merger was obviously a triumph of
finance. Savott, Smiss, and--on the purely publicity side--Immerson had
employed the finest technique. The name of Orcham resounded everywhere in the
press. Miss Cass spent much of her time in declining for her chief the specious
allurements of interviewers and photographers. The chief's salary would have
been considered high even in the United States, where according to report no
official worth his salt receives for his salt less than fifty thousand dollars
a year. And his commission on profits might well double his salary. But he was
uneasy about the profits, and he faltered before the immensity of his
responsibilities. He, not Sir Henry Savott, was the Merger. Without him,
nothing! Without that mysterious little contrivance which he carried in his head
and called his brain, the structure of the tremendous Merger would almost
certainly tumble to pieces. Frightening thought! The prospectus of the new
Company was a work of art, the figures in it dazzling, the list of Directors
majestically impressive. But Evelyn whispered to himself:
"What has all that to do with managing
hotels? There isn't a soul on the Board who knows the first thing about hotels,
except Smiss and me. I wouldn't put sixpence on any of the foreign directors.
Except Smiss and me all of them are manipulators of finance, parasites on the
industry, perhaps necessary parasites, but parasites."
And he had recently visited the Escurial at
Madrid, the management of which had engendered apprehensions in his Anglo-Saxon
mind. Apparently the Director of the Escurial believed that if he rose at
midday he was applying himself seriously to business.
Further, the panjandrum had just received from
John Crump, secretary of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company, the draft of the
agenda of a meeting of I.P.H. shareholders, at which was to be passed a
resolution for the winding-up of the Company! To initial the draft agenda was
like ordering a funeral. The I. P. H. Company would cease to exist, and the
Imperial Palace, once a unique individuality, would sink to be a mere unit in a
motley herd of hotels. Not to speak of the little Wey Hotel, which in his late
youth had been all that Evelyn ruled in the world.
Grave matters; grave happenings! And yet they
disturbed him less than another development which had hit him in the face that
same morning. He had seen Savott early and received the news about Gracie from
the excited grandfather-to-be. Savott had proudly shown him the cable:
"Darling daddy, I'm going to have a baby. Gracie." There must be a
genuine attachment between these two, despite the strange separateness of their
lives. Evelyn pictured Gracie in the swelling condition of Tessa, whom he had
twice glimpsed. She would be a handful for a man, especially for a dilettante
such as Leo Cheddar. And Sir Henry would be buzzing around the pair like a
whole swarm of wasps. Sir Henry had already announced his firm resolve that
that invaluable baby should be born on English soil. Evelyn envied Leo. Not
that he was in love with Gracie or had any regrets concerning his loss of her.
He had no regrets, and he was not in love. The conflagration in his heart had
died out as rapidly as it had flared up: like a fire of old newspapers. But it
had left him with a black and empty grate; the great conception of marriage,
companionship, quarrels, domestic anxieties, procreation, parturition had been
implanted in him, and then sterilised so that it could not grow. He was
solitary, continuously dissatisfied. He was the busiest man in London, and he,
really, had nothing to do. He wanted comforting, and none could comfort
him. His secret was still his secret, and Gracie's. Of course he had confided
in nobody. He had a few friends, including particularly father Dennis; but he
could not bring himself to confide in any of them. He was living on dust-sandwiches,
and the dust was his extraordinary material and vocational success.
This was Evelyn when by chance he met Lord
Levering in the bill-office, where the venerable, lusty millionaire was
discharging his last bill, to an accompaniment of forthright remarks on
everything. The sessions of the Licensing Commission were finished, but no date
had been promised for the Report. Both the antagonists had worked hard and
tirelessly, and in the course of months had become superficially quite
intimate. Also they had learnt to admire each other.
"Well, my friend," the teetotal
millionaire accosted Evelyn. "You've made the profit--you've skinned me
alive with these damned bills of yours--but I've won."
He spoke gleefully and loudly, never caring who
might overhear. The correctly dressed bill-clerks, leaning over mahogany and
brass, were thrilled to hear, but they knew their duty of feigned deafness and
practised it.
"Well," said Evelyn. "I have my
shareholders to think of...So you think you'll win?"
"I don't think. I know. And so do you,
sir," insisted the snowy, shaggy, cold-eyed disputant. "I've been
reading reports of Parliamentary Commissions for sixty years, and they're
always sitting on fences and weighing pros and cons in a balance. The present
gang of hair-splitters will make a lot of recommendations with a lot of
reserves, and the result won't be worth a fig to you. And even if they gave you
everything you'd get nothing, because nobody will read the Report, and no party
will touch it. Too dangerous for vote-catchers to meddle with. It will be
postponed again and again until it falls to bits. It will be in every King's
Speech for half a century, and then it just won't be. I'll tell you
something--you'll soon be old enough to learn things. They say that what
England stands for is justice. Infernal nonsense! English justice be hanged.
What England stands for is the status quo. And that's what I stand for,
and that's what you've been up against. But you've put up a good fight, Orcham.
I've smashed you to smithereens, but I like ye. I'm leaving this afternoon.
Come in and say good-bye to Lady Levering. Women love good-byes."
Evelyn laughed gaily. Lord Levering radiated
gaiety at all times, save when he radiated terror. But the panjandrum was
thinking:
"He said I knew he would win. And I daresay I
did."
The admission did not depress him. What was
Licensing Reform to a man without personal interests? And yet a few months ago,
when his personal interests were as negligible as now, he had been capable of
passion about Licensing Reform, and could violently curse D.O.R.A. to hell.
Upstairs he saw two valets manœuvring an
easy-chair out of Mr. Dover's small lobby into the corridor, and he heard a
woman's voice: "Don't forget to put that in the bedroom you took the other
one from--at once." Violet Powler's voice!
"What's all this?" he demanded.
"Miss Powler, sir," replied one of the
valets, and explained what was being done.
Violet had stooped to smooth out a crease in the lobby
carpet, which had been deranged by the passage of the chair. She straightened
herself and beheld Evelyn.
"Oh, good morning, Mr. Orcham," she
greeted him in a light, friendly tone, just as though there had been no sort of
estrangement between them during the whole of the past three months.
The tone startled Violet as much as it startled
Evelyn. The fact was that she had used it without thinking and before she knew
what she had done. The unexpected sight of him had somehow drawn it out of her
subconscious being. Abashed, she hesitated one instant and then went into the
room, from which she had just come.
Evelyn, who was in the outer doorway, hesitated
more than an instant. To him she seemed to be wonderfully at ease. Her habit of
speech to him had always been deferential but never humble. There was perhaps
more of the equalitarian in her attitude towards authority than in that of any
other member of the staff, except Mr. Cousin and the redoubtable Rocco. Evelyn
liked this demeanour, which she had exaggerated only on the unique occasion of
their brief quarrel. He liked to think that she was incapable of the kowtow,
and that she regarded the difference between them as purely official, not in
the least a human difference. If he was democratic by reasoned conviction, she
was democratic by instinct.
What did her tone imply? It must imply, he
reflected, that whereas he had been nourishing a grievance and some resentment,
she had not. She had forgotten; women could forget. He would forget. His mood
was changed; he felt happier, or less unhappy. He had had a glimpse of her
expression--that characteristic air of being ready to consider benevolently and
sympathetically any proposition that was put to her. In her rather high
cheek-bones there was a suggestion of self-reliance and individual power. Her
official frock was conspicuously smart, and she carried it, and herself, with
dignity. Of her methods and deeds as head-housekeeper he had full knowledge
from Cousin, who, while never actually praising her, subtly disclosed his
opinion that she was an improvement on Miss Maclaren in style, and on Mrs.
O'Riordan in tranquil temper. Evelyn had never said anything to Cousin about
the quarrel. As his relations with Gracie were hidden, so was his brawl with
Miss Powler.
Well, the estrangement was apparently ended. He
loathed estrangements either outside or inside the hotel. Yes, he was relieved,
and admitted his relief. He did not think of Miss Powler as a miracle of
enterprising efficiency in hotel-housekeeping, as the woman who had learnt her
job more quickly than any woman ever did in all the history of the Palace. Not
at all. He thought of her as the girl to whom one midnight he had impulsively
offered a cigarette, and whose mere demeanour or way of existing had comforted
and soothed him when his nerves were on edge. Several times he had regretted
offering her a cigarette. Now he was glad that he had offered the cigarette. He
passed into father Dennis's sitting-room.
The old man was testing the chair. Violet bent
over it from behind, and was apparently trying to peer between the sitter's
back and the back of the chair. Mr. Harbour and Sir Henry stood near,
spectators absorbed in the operation of fitting the chair to the man. Lord
Watlington was still perched on the stool, restless and impatient.
"Is that any better, do you think, Mr.
Dover?" Violet asked.
Father Dennis whispered hoarsely:
"I'll say this. It's not worse than the other
torture-rack. Yes, I believe it is better."
"It seems better for the small of your back.
But if it isn't I'll have the back re-stuffed for you to-day. I'll have it done
in the workshop here, Mr. Dover."
"Yes. You're very kind," Mr. Dover
squeaked and growled. "And while it's being done I am to lie on the floor,
I suppose." He twisted his head round and smiled at the head-housekeeper.
"Oh! Mr. Dover. I'll promise to find you
something softer than the floor."
Violet laughed. The other two smiled, but not Lord
Watlington. Evelyn smiled. No one gave attention to him. Violet might have
glanced at him for confirmation of her offer. She did not.
"I think it'll do," father Dennis
whispered.
Violet, unaware of the permanent trouble in his
vocal chords, assumed that he had a very sore throat.
"It isn't easy to tell right away," she
said. "If it isn't just what it ought to be, will you get someone to
telephone me, and I'll come up."
"A cushion would do, anyhow," Lord
Watlington remarked, staccato.
"Only women like cushions," said Violet,
with a new variety of smile, half humorous and half propitiatory.
Sir Henry Savott laughed; he was pleased at his
success in suggesting a particular chair.
"Good morning then, Mr. Dover," said
Violet. "If I don't hear I shall take it it's all right."
"Thank you, my dear," father Dennis
grunted. Violet embraced the rest of the party in one bow, and, passing close
by Evelyn, left the room.
"Evelyn," father Dennis demanded,
"is that the young woman you took from the Laundry?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Nothing. Only she's so damned like a lady,
nobody could tell the difference. I couldn't."
"Her father's a town-traveller--in
proprietary foods," said Evelyn drily.
"Married above him, I expect."
"No. I've seen them both."
Father Dennis said:
"Then he may be one of those nature's
gentlemen you hear so much about. I've never met one myself."
"Why!" said Mr. Harbour. "I said to
my wife when she came in to see us before we left for the Majestic last
time--you remember--" the cigarette-king grinned privately to
Evelyn--"I said to Mrs. Harbour that she'd be an asset anywhere."
"Yes," Evelyn concurred negligently.
Lord Watlington jumped up, unable to wait longer,
and burst out:
"I can buy the Splendide at Brussels for a
million francs. I stayed there two nights last week. What about it?"
"But it was sold," said Sir Henry.
"I know that. It's for sale again. That's
all."
"Isn't that enough to make us not want
it?" said Evelyn, controlling his astonishment.
He had casually improvised the possibility of
including the Splendide in the Merger months ago in Paris to give colour to his
story of a projected journey to Brussels. And in the meantime nobody had even
mentioned the Splendide to him. Savott must have perfunctorily mentioned it to
Lord Watlington and then forgotten it.
Lord Watlington gave a little gesture of
dissatisfaction; but he checked it, and said very quietly:
"But listen here, Evelyn. It was you who
spoke to Henry about it."
"Yes. But I heard things afterwards that put
me off."
Lord Watlington threw up his hands.
Strange how fibs returned to the fibber after many
days!
"We've just had a 'phone message to say that
the lists have been closed, Evelyn," said Sir Henry.
"I had one too," Evelyn answered
lightly, as though such news was naught, as though the absence of such news
would have surprised him. He added: "And I am told that letters of
allotment will open at a premium of one and a half."
"Who's the prophet?"
"Immerson. Not that he'd agree he's a
prophet. He says he knows. And I bet he does. He's very much in with one
or two Stock Exchange clerks."
The conversation drooped. The fact was that the
news, the large, the enormous general success, rendered all embroidering
comment otiose. There it was! The five men fell into an anticlimax of contented
exhaustion. Evelyn's sense of happiness increased. The prospect of the immense
labours which lay before him was now far less intimidating than half an hour
ago, even a quarter of an hour ago. He did not examine himself to discover why.
He had always been averse to self-examination. And as he sat there with his
lounging companions in the triumph he was more averse to it than ever. He, and
all of them--except old Dover--had many urgent calls and tasks, but that day
was to be celebrated in lethargy.
"Say, Evelyn!" Lord Watlington, who had
been walking to and fro, suddenly woke from a reverie and broke the silence.
"What did you hear about the Splendide to put you off it?"
Fibs breed fibs. The fibber had to improvise
again. Evelyn improvised with a very careless disregard for convincingness.
Lord Watlington scowled.
"Let us go down and have some lunch,"
whispered father Dennis.
Issuing from the lips of the venerable Chairman of
the Orcham International Hotels Company, the suggestion amounted to a command.
The party rose, some hungry, some welcoming the meal as a distraction to pass
the time. But Lord Watlington said:
"Can't lunch. I've got to go."
Savott winked at Evelyn. They both guessed that
his lordship's refusal to lunch was merely the sign of a vexation which would
disappear before the day was out. The peer had taken a fancy for the Splendide,
and Evelyn's negligent dismissal of the fancy irked his haughty pride as a
great creative financier.
The other four lunched in a corner, but a
prominent corner, of the restaurant, under the most assiduous vigilance of
Cappone himself. Evelyn had now become a recognised figure in the public rooms
of the Palace; and the other three men were current celebrities, the
cigarette-king not least. As the restaurant gradually filled, the table of
panjandrums grew to be more and more the target of inquisitive eyes. Visitors
nudged one another, leaned together, whispered, and in the game of chatter and
small-talk he won who had the largest supply of secret information, authentic
or invented, concerning the unexampled success of the flotation of the Merger.
The flotation indeed had enlivened the sedate restaurant in such a degree that
it began to rival the free convivialities of Ceria's grill-room. And the
observed table, being human, was not ill-pleased by the shameless curiosity
which it excited.
Evelyn was the first to depart, excusing himself
on the plea of multitudinous, pressing correspondence. The correspondence was a
fact, but the excuse was a white fib. He went straight to the bookstall in the
entrance-hall. This now openly acknowledged prince of the hotel-world was in a
reality a child. He wanted to see what prominence the early editions of the
evening papers gave to the flotation of the Merger in their financial columns.
He bought, and paid for, the three papers which monopolise the nightly
allowance of printed information for seven million people, and put them under
his arm to examine in his office. Then he saw, well displayed, a slim volume in
a green and yellow jacket cubistically designed, with the title:
"Sensations and Ideas."
"Hello!" said he to the clerk in charge
of the stall. "What's this?"
The clerk murmured confidentially:
"There's no name to it, Mr. Orcham. But it's
by Sir Henry Savott's daughter, Mrs. Cheddar. That's why I've got a few
copies."
"Oh!" said Evelyn, with a sardonic
inflection. "Who told you it's by Mrs. Cheddar?"
"The publisher's traveller, sir. He called
here on purpose."
"And do you tell everyone?"
"Well, not everyone, sir."
"Any demand for it?"
"Some, sir. Miss Powler bought a copy
yesterday."
"Did she! I may as well tell you you can't
sell a copy to me--I've read it. Have you?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what do you think of it?"
"Well, sir, between ourselves I don't really
believe there's much chance for it. It's rather queer. Some people won't quite
like it. I have to be very careful in recommending it."
"That's right," said Evelyn, and walked
away.
He felt a desire to possess himself of Gracie's
book, but was mysteriously inhibited from doing so. At any rate he would not
buy it in the hotel. He had known for several days that it was out, from
somewhat sensational newspaper advertisements. But he had thought: "I've
read it. I don't want to buy it." The last statement was still another of
his fibs.
So Violet had bought a copy! Well, why not?
Possibly she had learnt at second-hand through gossip of the hotel
bookstall-clerk that Gracie had published a book. And had she not served in Sir
Henry's house and been acquainted with Gracie as a big girl? And had she not
met Gracie again in the affair of Tessa? Her purchase of the volume might be a
proof only of curiosity. Nevertheless Evelyn found pleasure in the alternative
theory that Miss Powler had a taste for literature.
He entered his office quite gaily, refusing--so
eager was he to scan the three newspapers--to be delayed by a Miss Cass exuding
questions about correspondence. He saw on his desk a solitary letter,
unstamped. At the top of the envelope he read:
"Private. From Miss Violet Powler." As
regards Miss Violet Powler, two things had definitely lodged themselves in his
mind: father Dennis's remark that you couldn't tell the difference between
Violet and a lady. And the cigarette-king's single word 'Asset.' Asset, asset,
asset, he kept repeating. He had always divided women into assets and
liabilities, and for him, as for most men, the second category contained many
more names than the first.
He tore the envelope, thinking: "It must have
cost the excellent Cass something pretty stiff not to open this!"
"DEAR MR. ORCHAM. I feel I should apologise
to you for my behaviour in your office last January. I ought to have apologised
before. Please accept my sincere excuses. Yours respectfully, V. M.
POWLER."
"Dash the girl!" he thought. "I
didn't want her to apologise! I hate being apologised to! Who'd take any
notice of anything said by a woman in a temper? Dash the girl! And why the
devil does she sign 'Yours respectfully'?" He was delighted with the
letter.
THE
DUNCANNON AFFAIR
"Is that Malpass? The Director
speaking." Evelyn was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, in his castle. The
time was
"Yes, sir," was the answer from Malpass
down in the entrance-hall. He was the new Night-manager, who had replaced Mr.
Reyer; a former reception-clerk, he owed his rise to a suggestion to Mr. Cousin
from Adolphe, the Reception-manager
"Have you got the key of the bookstall
cupboard?"
"Yes, sir."
"Just open it. You'll see a book with a funny
cover called 'Sensations and Ideas.' Send it up to my room by the liftman, will
you? And be sure to put a check-slip for it in the cupboard."
"Certainly, sir."
Evelyn glanced at the clock and lit a cigarette.
In four minutes there was a tap on the door of the sitting-room, and he
received a copy of Gracie's book from the liftman. Proof of the efficiency of
the living organism of the hotel, which boasted that you could obtain any food,
any drink, any flower, any book or magazine in stock, at any hour of the night
in the Palace. Evelyn was pleased. His heavy heart lightened somewhat for an
instant.
He returned to his sleepless bed and,
scientifically arranged in every detail for perfect comfort, he began to read
Gracie for the second time--a certain chapter which had been recalled to his
memory by the great sinister event of the earlier night at the Duncannon. Yes,
the book was good, better even than he had deemed it when he read it in
typescript in Gracie's boulevard flat, with Gracie lying at his feet. The
bookstall-clerk--he could not remember the youth's name--was clearly an
unlettered idiot, and could not distinguish between a real book and a Bath-bun.
But he, Evelyn, might have known what would
happen. Instead of sending him to sleep, Gracie completely woke him up. Still,
he could not have rested until he had re-read that particular chapter; so that
in fact he was no worse off than before. He shut the book and put the light
out...A terrible chapter, that chapter.
At a quarter to five o'clock, when he could detect
the first pale tinges of dawn through the blind, he resolutely arose and
selected a suit from the wardrobe-cubicle, and a shirt, and a pair of shoes,
without the aid of Oldham. A surprise for Oldham, it would be! And Evelyn
himself, not for the first time, was rather surprised at the number of trifling
necessary things that Oldham must have to do every morning in order that his
employer should be correctly attired. He revelled in the huge expanse of
leisure that stretched in front of him. No hurry, no haste. Each operation of
the toilet could be conducted at ease. He shaved with meticulous care. He
stayed rather longer than usual in the bath. Nevertheless he shirked his
physical exercises; he was too weary, too discouraged by life, to perform them.
He knotted his necktie as conscientiously as a Beau Brummel. He surveyed
himself in the long mirror and saw that he was perfect. The day had come; the
planet was punctually revolving. He drew back the curtains, lifted the blind,
opened wide the window, and beheld the early, ghostly, half-leafless St.
James's Park, whose gates had not yet been unlocked.
He was dying for some tea, but he would not test
again the efficiency of the organism. Had he done so, the entire Palace would
have known that the panjandrum had rung for tea before six o'clock, and there
would have been gossip. He wrote a short letter, and sat reflective for a few
minutes until he heard Big Ben strike six; and then, picking up the letter and
nerving himself to affront the corridor and the whole world of success, he
emerged from his castle. He was too tired to feel tired. He had no purpose as
to where he was going or as to what he would do. He felt only that he was in a
torment of restlessness, and that if anybody spoke to him the top of his head
might blow off. He said to himself:
"Then why am I out here? I'll go back."
But he was too proud or too cowardly to go back.
The corridor had all the aspects of night. The two electric lamps, one near
either end, burned with their maddening, patient endurance!..(At that season of
the year they ran through their allotted span of a thousand hours in six
weeks). He could hear a snore; it penetrated two doors.
"My God!" he thought. "If that man
has a wife!"
No member of the staff astir yet on Seventh. None
on the stairs. None on Sixth. None on the stairs. On Fifth he glimpsed the
disappearing skirt of the night-chambermaid far away. In the service-room on
Fourth he saw the night-waiter uncomfortably dozing, and an orderly row of
boots and shoes through the open door of the valets' lair. Everything seemed
normal, and life was duly suspended according to schedule.
At the end of Third a large screen, removed from
some suite, hid the herd of round meal-tables which in a couple of hours the
day-waiters would be wheeling into the rooms laden with bacon and fish and newly
baked rolls and coffee and tea. He must get some tea somehow. Idly inquisitive,
he peeped right behind the screen. An easy-chair behind it, no doubt from the
same suite as the screen. He gave way to the sudden impulse to sit down for a
minute in that tempting chair, and watch some sea-gulls from the water of St.
James's Park, circling against grey cloud beyond the window which lit the
corridor of Third. He was safe there for a good hour or more. He knew that
nothing would send him to sleep.
When he awoke, alarmed, his watch showed five
minutes to seven, and he could hear the movement of workers in the corridor.
His head ached now, and he felt very much worse than before. Tea. He must have
tea. But it seemed to him that in an enormous building, where hundreds of
teapots were marshalled to be filled with the sovereign restorer, he could not
get a single cup because he could not ask for one without appearing ridiculous
in the eyes of the person asked. He, the Director, abroad on the floors at
He put his nose round the edge of the
screen--thief in mortal danger!--chose his opportunity, and got away down the
stairs unseen. Narrow escape!
No activity in the vast lugubrious entrance-hall,
where the chandeliers were still obstinately struggling against the light of
the sun. No boat-train that morning. The gang of blue and brown charwomen had
not yet arrived. Malpass was clearing up behind his counter, Sam Butcher was
apparently not on duty, but a janissary stood at the revolving doors. Taking
care not to catch the eye of Malpass, Evelyn descended the steps into the empty
foyer twilit by one lamp. The ladies' cloakroom was brightly illuminated. Then
its lights were extinguished one after another, and a figure emerged: Violet
Powler. She was the last person he wished to see: of course it would be so: but
he had been asking for trouble.
"Good morning, Miss Powler."
"Oh, good morning, sir." She was
frighteningly alert, active, spick-and-span.
"You're up very early."
"No, sir. This is one of my early mornings,
and once a week I come and take a look at the ground-floor, before the cleaners
arrive--it would be too late afterwards."
"I have a letter for you," said Evelyn,
and gave her the letter from his pocket; at last he was rid of it.
"Am I to read it now?"
He had not foreseen this question.
"Why not?" he said, without thinking,
and then added:
"Any time," trying to save himself.
Violet gazed at him for a moment, and opened the
envelope. The solitary lamp in the foyer gave hardly sufficient light for
reading. She went to the corner where the switches were and turned on two more
lamps and gazed at Evelyn again. Then she read the letter:
"DEAR MISS POWLER. Thank you for your note. I
appreciate it. Sincerely yours, EVELYN ORCHAM."
Evelyn had the idea of leaving her, but he could
not move.
"Thank you so much," said Violet, with a
warm smile. "You're very kind, Mr. Orcham." And then very quietly:
"Will you excuse me one second?" She
disappeared into the ladies' cloakroom, switching on a light as she entered.
Now he was bound to stay until she came back. He could see her using the
telephone within. When she reappeared she no longer held the letter in her
hand.
"If you can possibly wait a few minutes I've
ordered some tea for you from the grill-room."
"But why?" he smiled; but behind the
smile was resentment at her managingness. As if he could not direct his own
bodily affairs. Still, the prospect of tea was irresistible. And he had not had
to ask for tea. Did he then look so pale, so ill? She must have pushed the
letter down the neck of her frock. Naturally she had no bag, and her key-girdle
was too loose to hold anything.
"It struck me you look a little tired,
sir," she said firmly, ceasing to smile. "And I thought some tea--if
you hadn't had any--"
"I am a bit tired," he admitted. He
lacked the strength to oppose her. He dropped on to a wall-sofa.
"Perhaps you didn't sleep very well,
sir?"
There she was, relapsing into 'sir'!
"I didn't. I suppose you've heard the
news?"
"No, sir. I've only just come down."
"Willingford shot himself last night--or
rather early this morning."
"Willingford?"
"Manager of the Duncannon. On the very day of
our flotation." He need not have said the last words; but he said them;
they disclosed his train of thought. Where now was the glory of the Merger
flotation?
"What a pity!" Violet murmured, her tone
showing that she felt deep pity.
"Yes," said Evelyn. "Of course I'm
very sorry for him, because he was a very decent fellow, and he'd had a lot to
put up with. But that he should have been driven to do it just now...Most
unfortunate. Makes a bad impression. It oughtn't to, but it will."
"Had it anything to do with the new big
Company?"
"No." Then Evelyn modified his negative.
"Well, it had and it hadn't. You see it was like this." He could not
resist the impulse to confide in her; he had no real desire to resist it.
"Willingford was manager, but he had a pretty big block of shares in the
old Duncannon Company. His wife was head-housekeeper there. Not a satisfactory
arrangement. A manager isn't able to control his wife as well as he could
someone not connected with him. It can't be done. Still, I believe she used to
be rather good. She didn't want the Duncannon to be sold. I daresay
Willingford would have given in to her, but he hadn't got a controlling
interest, so he couldn't have stopped the sale anyhow. But I gathered from
Willingford himself that she always maintained he could. They'd had rows, great
rows, at intervals all through their married life. She's a terrific talker--I
had to listen to her last night--this morning. And ever since the sale was
decided upon their quarrels have been very frequent, and the housekeeping has
suffered. I knew that from Willingford--only the day before yesterday. You see
she interfered at every step of the business side of our deal. I heard that
from Sir Henry Savott and from Mr. Smiss too. Willingford couldn't hide it. I
thought he looked a bit queer in the eyes last time I saw him, but I'd no idea--"
"Excuse me, here's your tea, Mr.
Orcham," said Violet, seeing a waiter with a loaded tray coming down the
steps into the foyer. She put a dusty cocktail table into position in front of
Evelyn, and she signed the check for the order: tea, toast,and butter.
"May I pour out for you?"
"Yes, do, please. But you'd better bring a
chair and sit down. I've begun to tell you, and I may as well finish."
He looked at her as she poured out the tea,
watched that benevolent, receptive expression of hers, her quick, efficient
movements, the faint shadows below the prominence of her cheeks, the faint,
reassuring smile on her shut lips. Interrogatively she held up the sugar-tongs
with a piece of sugar between them. Her mouth opened slightly: the smile
increased.
"Yes, please. This morning. One," he
said, as it were yielding himself to her care completely.
She stirred the tea and passed it across the tray.
He sipped nectar, tonic. She buttered some toast. He felt that never before in
all his life had he been softly tended. Gracie had tended him once, and well,
but Gracie had been too conscious of the perfect excellence of her
ministration. He wanted to yield more and more to Miss Powler's care. It was
like eiderdown between him and the stony world; it soothed his positive fatigue
into a comfortable negative quiescence. The difference between her care and the
care of Gracie was as notable as the difference between that of Gracie and that
of the devoted, untidy Oldham.
"When did it happen?" Violet asked.
"They got me out of bed at ten minutes to
one. I went over to the Royal London as quick as I could."
"The Royal London?"
"Yes. I must tell you he didn't do it at the
Duncannon. He went to the Royal London to do it. All that's very strange. Very
strange. But I can understand it. It was the poor fellow's last thought for the
Duncannon. He knew well enough how bad a suicide is for a hotel. So he went to
the Royal London. He always had his knife into the Royal London--I don't know
why." Evelyn smiled sardonically. "Of course it's quite bad enough
for the Duncannon as it is, but it would have been much worse if he'd shot
himself there. It won't do the Royal London any good. That must be why
he chose the Royal London. Very strange. You never know what is in the mind of
a man who has decided to commit suicide. But he meant well by the Duncannon. He
did it in the London lounge. Nobody was there. The night-porter heard the shot.
I saw him lying on the carpet. There was a policeman there by that time, and
the night-porter and the manager. They wouldn't let anyone else in. The doctor
hadn't come. They couldn't get hold of one. So I telephoned for Constam. But
the man was dead all right. Blood on his face. He was all crumpled up. The most
forlorn thing you ever saw. It was so pathetic you could hardly bear to look at
it. I was awfully glad you couldn't hear their orchestra playing, though it was
playing. I could hear it from the hall plain enough. Of course they couldn't
stop the orchestra. That wouldn't have done at all. And there he was, lying
there. He looked very small, all shrunk up."
Tears were in Violet's eyes. She said:
"It reminds you of that piece in Mrs.
Cheddar's book. The motor accident."
"Oh! You've been reading that?"
"I was reading it last night in bed."
Gracie had described how, motoring in France, she
had seen a young woman lying by the side of the road, dead, and blood all over
her. Terribly injured. The woman had been driving her car too quickly down a
hill and must have put the brakes on too suddenly, and the car had turned right
over and thrown her out.
"I've read it too. A pretty good description,
isn't it?"
"It is," Violet agreed. "And her
thoughts about it afterwards."
"Yes. You like the book then?"
"I don't think I've ever read anything as
wonderful. It's all so new. But then of course I haven't done a great
deal of reading. I only got the book because it was by her. But she was always
wonderful, Miss Gracie was--Mrs. Cheddar."
"Yes," said Evelyn sincerely. All his
rancour against Gracie had died out.
A pause.
"When Mrs. Willingford came, not long after
me, they tried to keep her out of the lounge, but they couldn't do it. She made
such a noise she'd have brought everyone in the hotel down to the lounge to see
what was the matter. So they let her in. Naturally I was her dear husband's
murderer and so on. But she knew well enough who it was had driven him to
suicide; you could see that from the self-conscious look in her face. So I had
to be the murderer. She must be about fifty, but she turned on me like a
prize-fighter out of his senses, and the policeman and the manager had all they
could do to keep her off me. It was a simply awful scene. I won't go into
details. And him lying there under her feet all the time! Still, I must say I
felt sorry for her. You couldn't help feeling sorry for her."
Violet made a commiserating sound with her tongue
against her upper teeth.
"It was frightful for you. Frightful! May I
give you another cup?"
"It was fairly bad. However, when Constam
arrived, and just after him the other doctor they'd been trying to get, the two
of them had her taken off to a nursing-home somewhere, and they'll see she
doesn't get out of there in a hurry. Anyhow not till she's calmed down. She'll
have to attend the inquest, if she's fit. And I expect I shall too. But she'll
behave herself at the inquest. They always do, for their own sakes. As soon as
I could leave I went to the Duncannon and gave a few orders. I said she wasn't
on any account to be admitted. Perhaps you don't know what sort of a place the
Duncannon is. It isn't at all like the Palace, I can tell you that. Here they'd
treat a suicide case as rather interesting and picturesque. They'd be shocked,
some of 'em, but not too much. But the Duncannon is very English--you know,
official, services, lieutenant-governors, and that kind of thing. The waiters
are English. It isn't a bit cosmopolitan. And they want quiet decorum before
everything. Doesn't matter so much about the food. Curries and things. It isn't
very smart to look at; but it's dignified. You understand. No band except
during dinner. If there was dancing they'd do the lancers and the polka.
Anything in the nature of a scandal would horrify them. They'll all pretend to
themselves that the trouble had something to do with the Royal London, which
they think's a bit fast. Not that it is, really. There isn't a fast hotel in
London outside Jermyn Street, and even there--"
A troop of blue and brown charwomen equipped with
utensils appeared from the dusk of the restaurant and passed in a file through
the foyer. Violet rose and stopped one of them and, pointing to the ladies'
cloakroom, gave her a few instructions. All the charwomen turned their heads to
see the unique spectacle, at that hour of the morning, of a tea served in the
foyer. Few of them recognised Evelyn for the panjandrum. Violet sat down. The
next moment the foyer was empty again.
Evelyn was thinking:
"She's a better judge of a book than that ass
of a bookstall clerk." He said aloud: "I've decided to put Pozzi in charge
of the Duncannon for the present. He isn't English, but he needn't show himself
much. I must speak to Mr. Cousin. He'll have seen it in the papers before I see
him. At least I hope he will. I don't precisely feel like beginning the story
all over again. That's the worst of it. There's about ten people in this place
who'll consider themselves entitled to hear the whole story first hand from
me."
"Perhaps you could put Dr. Constam on to
telling them," Violet suggested.
Evelyn thought:
"She understands my nerves."
"But what about the housekeeping?"
Violet asked. "If Mrs. Willingford isn't there? And of course everyone
will be in a dreadful state and nobody will know quite what they're
doing."
"Yes," said Evelyn. "What about the
housekeeping? There's only one under-housekeeper. And if I know anything about
Mrs. Willingford's ways, that under-housekeeper has never been allowed one
ounce of responsibility. That's just it: what about the housekeeping?"
"I suppose you wouldn't care for me to go
over?" said Violet.
"What! And leave us to go to rack and ruin
here!" He frowned, holding a last fragment of toast near to his mouth
without putting it in. But he knew that there was nothing he would like more
than for Violet to go over to the Duncannon.
"I only mean for an hour or two a day until
things settle down a little and you know where you are."
"But you couldn't leave here. You couldn't do
both."
"Why not?" Violet smiled sedately.
"The Palace can run by itself for a little while." (Gracie's notion!)
"And besides, Mrs. Oulsnam is very good. And I could be here at any rate
in the evenings, and a bit in the afternoons."
"But you don't know anything about the
Duncannon!"
"I should know a lot more about it than I
knew about the Palace when you put me in charge here," said Violet, drily.
"How soon could you go?" Evelyn demanded
hesitantly.
"I could go now."
"Now? Do you mean now?"
"Yes. Before visitors are up. And if you
could get Mr. Pozzi as well. And if you could come with us, just to introduce
us. You needn't stay long. I'm sure the doctor would say you ought to have a
sedative and go to bed, Mr. Orcham." Violet stood up.
"Well," thought Evelyn, "this young
woman is the goods. She's too managing with her sedatives, but she's the
goods." He said aloud: "D'you know what you are, Miss Powler? You're
the willing horse. You know what happens to the willing horse. You'd better
look out for yourself."
"That will be all right," she said,
serenely confident.
The horrible situation was losing much of its
horror for him. He saw it in a new light. And their relations were absolutely
ideal, far better than they had ever been: complete mutual comprehension. He
was still very tired; but comfortably tired. The casque of steel round his head
had been magically loosened. How marvellously right he had been! What
astonishing instinctive insight into character he had shown (astonishing even
to himself) in carrying her away from the Laundry. He had a conviction, a
religious faith; that nothing serious could happen to the Duncannon while she was
there. Yet what had she said, what had she offered? Nothing but the obvious. It
was her way of existing that affected him, something deeper than either words
or acts.
"It's all so awful it seems as if it would go
on being awful for ever. But these awful things are soon forgotten. I've often
noticed it," said Violet.
He thought she was reluctant to leave him
unprotected. "Yes. That's true," he said musingly. Then louder, in a
new tone: "And supposing that woman, the widow, manages to get into the
Duncannon after all, and she comes across you?"
"Oh! I think I could deal with her," she
answered.
The quietude of her perfect confidence reassured
but to a certain extent daunted him.
NIGHT-WORK
Five days later, and Sunday night. Violet's
sitting-room still lacked pictures, but it had a larger desk, which Violet,
exercising her rights as head-housekeeper, had chosen for herself from store. She
was sitting at it. She needed a larger desk, at any rate temporarily, because
she had taken to doing some of the Duncannon work at the Palace.
The time was about half-past eleven--nearing the
end of a full day. She had toiled for five hours in the Palace--but nothing was
toil for her--and after lunch, and a French lesson from the assiduous Perosi,
she had paid a visit to Renshaw Street and spent several interminable hours
with her parents, who had a parental fore-vision of their daughter as the star
housekeeper of the whole European world of hotels. Then swiftly by a
pre-ordered taxi from Renshaw Street to the Duncannon; and finally to her
boudoir-parlour-office in the Palace.
She was perfectly happy, loving her work, and
aware that she was doing it pretty well. She never felt fatigue, nor boredom,
nor any of the qualms which trouble those who are not fairly sure of
themselves. She went to bed with reluctance, and arose joyous and eager to
start the new, long day. She found a grim satisfaction in overworking both the
loyal Mrs. Oulsnam and the equally loyal Agatha. She argued with herself that
Mrs. Oulsnam's gaiety of mind and Agatha's youth could withstand a few weeks'
overwork without the least harm to their constitutions.
She had established relations with Pozzi, the new
temporary manager of the Duncannon, had indeed almost entered into a league
with the young man for the total reform of the Duncannon organisation on Palace
lines. She liked the Englishness of the Duncannon. She knew where she was with the
members of the staff, and comprehended their cerebral processes; at the Palace,
where nine out of ten of the males with whom she had contact were foreigners,
she was still disturbed by the thought that while they spoke in English they
were thinking in French or Italian or Czecho-Slovakian.
Mrs. Willingford had attempted no invasion of her
former realm, and Mrs. Willingford's possessions had been despatched to a
boarding-house in Cornwall. On the day following the night of the suicide the
afternoon papers had intemperately jubilated in an orgy of sensations
concerning the affair, and the streets of Central London had fluttered with the
white, scarlet, and yellow of their contents-bills announcing horrid mystery.
But the next morning--naught! Not even the shortest paragraph on the front
pages; for a famous and lovely daughter of the peerage had married her
chauffeur and nothing else mattered on earth. The inquest had passed off
quietly. The jury had viewed Willingford's body, cleansed of its red stains,
and Willingford had been buried with more secrecy than had hidden the honeymoon
of the daughter of the peerage; and Willingford was as though he had never
existed, loved, suffered. Sometimes the planet revolves with incredible
rapidity. As for the flotation of the Merger, it continued to be a triumph
untarnished.
Violet's evening at the Duncannon had been
protracted by a very agreeable episode: a personal call from Mr. Cyril Purkin,
who was in the finest benevolent mood, benevolent not only to Violet but to
himself. He had sought Violet first at the Palace, and then had done her the
honour of seeking her at the Duncannon. He had greeted her with such warmth
that the critical Violet had reflected: "Am I such a pleasant change from
his wife?"
But there was good foundation for Mr. Purkin's
mood. It had been decided that the linen of the Majestic and the Duncannon
should go to the Imperial Palace Laundry, and that the Laundry should be
enlarged, like the Works Department. Soon Mr. Purkin would be unable to boast
of the garden of the Laundry in which laundry-girls drank tea al fresco
on suitable afternoons. The garden would be built upon. But Mr. Purkin did not
in the least regret that. He would have new and better boasts than the old one.
Although the existing Laundry premises had hitherto been the acme of
perfection, the additional premises, according to Mr. Purkin, were in some
mysterious way to surpass them, to leave them out of sight as venerable relics
of an inefficient age. Mr. Purkin swelled with pride and importance, but not
offensively--blandly. He had discussed at length with Violet the question of
immediately arranging for deliveries to and by the Laundry from and to the
Majestic and the Duncannon. He was cheerfully convinced that, terribly
antiquated and inadequate though the old premises were, he could easily cope
with the linen of both the Duncannon and the Majestic. Violet had offered him
some ginger-ale, had joined him in drinking ginger-ale, and they had parted on
more friendly terms than had obtained between them at any time since before he
kissed her. Not a reference to pillow-slips!
Agatha Jixon came into the sitting-room, and saw
her principal earnestly bent over the large desk covered with papers and books
of figures, under the light of a green-shaded lamp which illuminated the desk
only, and not even all the desk. The desk and its contents looked very
important, and the head-housekeeper also.
Violet turned to the girl in severe reproof.
"Why aren't you in bed? You know you ought to
be. You know you can't possibly be in trim for to-morrow--and tomorrow's Monday
too!"
"I was in bed, Miss Powler. But I had to get
up again because I'd forgotten to tell you something. Mr. Orcham was asking for
you to-night. He came up here, and he told me to tell you."
"And couldn't that have waited till to-morrow
morning? Run along back to bed now." Then in her felicity Violet relented,
adding: "That's rather a nice dressing-gown you've got."
"Is it?...Your fire's out. Did you
know?"
"Run along!"
"Good night, miss."
Violet, feigning absorption in her very important
work, did not reply. The girl fled.
The news of the panjandrum's call considerably
excited the young woman of whom the younger stood in affectionate awe. She had
been very happy before. She was now happier. She had not set eyes on Evelyn for
several days. The panjandrum had been busy at the Majestic and elsewhere. And
it was the gossip of the Palace on this Sunday that the cigarette-king had
insisted on taking him out for a day's golf. Evelyn had introduced Violet with
marked ceremony into the Duncannon organism; but after two days he had left her
to do as she chose with the housekeeping department of the place. Without
guiding her, he flatteringly trusted her. And he had not concealed his
gratitude to her for so zealously relieving him of an anxiety. The spectacle of
his fatigue on that morning when she poured out tea for him in the foyer had
touched and saddened her; but the talk with him at the small table had filled
her with bliss. 'Bliss' was the sole proper word for her sensations. She had
felt, then, as if his life were in danger and she was saving it by her strong
maternal care of him. No cloud between them!
And, ever since, an old, extinguished lamp had
burned anew in her brain, steadily, brightly, inspiringly: the lamp of loyalty
to Evelyn as an individual. She had worked for the hotels; she was devoted to
the Palace; but she had worked more for him, and to him she was more devoted.
She expected nothing from him in return, except his approbation. He had discovered
her, and lifted her up, and in fact created her; and that richly sufficed. She
desired nothing better than to prove her value. As for the deplorable quarrel,
the reconciliation, hardly perceived, was worth it. She would have been ready
to go through another quarrel for another reconciliation...Was it not
marvellous that he respected her, admired her qualities, chatted with her so
freely?
Her thoughts grew quite sentimental. She pretended
to be proceeding with her very important work. A pretence merely! How could she
check calculations while thinking endlessly the thought of her calm happiness,
under such an employer, in the romantic career of head-housekeeper of the
Imperial Palace? She breathed in a dream of beatitude. She might just as well
have gone to bed for all the good she was doing at the new large desk; but she
hated to go to bed. Then, several seconds after it occurred, she realised that
there had been a tap on the door.
"Come in," she stammered.
She knew that the intruder could not conceivably
be Evelyn; but she knew also that it was Evelyn: hence the hesitant timidity in
her voice. And it was Evelyn. Idyll, with no sex in it! Nothing but work and
loyalty in it!
The panjandrum was no fit sight for a fashionable
hotel on Sunday evening. He wore a thick loose tweed suit, not specially
designed, but not wholly unsuitable, for the game of golf; with thick brown
boots; and he had a rural air. Violet rose at once from her busy desk to
receive him. She smiled to see him so arrayed, thinking maternally that a day
in the country was just what he had needed.
"So you've been down to your mother's and
came back late, and now you're working, and it's after half-past eleven and you
ought to have been in bed long since. How do you expect to be in form for your
work to-morrow morning if you sit up like this? You know you ought never to
work on Sunday nights." He had begun with no sort of greeting, and his
tone was very curt, even harsh.
Violet laughed.
"Yes, you laugh," he went on.
"Don't you remember what I said about the willing horse? I might as well
talk to a post. You're all alike. Miss Cass is just the same. And Miss Tilton
too--from what Mr. Cousin tells me. Why are you laughing?"
"I don't know," Violet answered. But she
did know. She laughed because she was reduced to the role of Agatha, and the
panjandrum had been repeating her own criticism of Agatha in the same
dissatisfied querulous tone. Not that she was disturbed by his tone. She knew
with the certainty of omniscience from which nothing can be hid that he was
using that tone in order to hide constraint arising out of the
self-consciousness due to the lateness and the strangeness of the visit. His
tone gave her pleasure; she delighted in it. She wanted to seem intimidated by
it, and could not. She had never been so happy. The obscurity of the room
(except in the region of the sinful desk), the fact of his presence, the
informal rusticity of his clothes--all this struck her as exquisitely romantic.
She thought, puffed up: "He is in my
room." And she thought:
"I can't help showing how pleased I am. Well,
I don't care. It's rather dark. Perhaps he can't see."
"Well," said Evelyn, walking uneasily
about. "I've been after you all the evening. I shouldn't have come in now,
but I happened to be up here and I saw the light under your door."
"Happened to be up here!" thought
Violet. "I wonder what it is he wants."
"Hello!" exclaimed Evelyn; he had
reached the desk and was glancing at the papers on it. "But this is Duncannon
stuff!"
"Yes, sir."
"That's all wrong, bringing Duncannon stuff
over here. If you can't attend to it in the time you spend over there, you
ought to leave it. Now I won't have it."
"Sometimes it's easier to do things here. I
like to be on the spot in case I'm asked for."
"Oh indeed!" He was sardonic. Then he
changed his tone suddenly. "Mr. Cousin was suggesting you might go to the
Duncannon altogether for six months, and get it all absolutely smooth and
oiled. He says Mrs. Oulsnam and he between them could carry on here. What do
you say?"
So this was what he had come for! Her expression
altered with the swift candour of a child's. The suggestion of leaving the
Palace for six months desolated her. She had been very sympathetic towards the
Duncannon. Now she hated the place. It would be a place of exile. The Duncannon
was dead compared to the Palace. The Palace was her home, far more so than
Renshaw Street. No! The suggestion very seriously alarmed her. Perhaps her
theory in explanation of his tone when he entered the room had been entirely
wrong. Perhaps...
"Of course it's for you to say, sir,"
she muttered cautiously, glumly.
"It isn't for me to say. It's for you to
say," he snapped.
"Well, if you ask me, I don't think it's at
all necessary for me to live at the Duncannon and leave here. But Mrs. Oulsnam
might go. She's very capable. And she's so cheerful. The Duncannon does need
cheerfulness. She might quite enjoy it. And it would be a step up for
her."
"That's enough!" said Evelyn. "If
you don't want to go, you don't. As for Mrs. Oulsnam, we'll see."
The question was settled. Her spirit lightened
instantly. She hoped he was not vexed. No, he could not be. But she felt more
puzzled than ever. It surely could not be about the Duncannon that he had come
to see her in her room at getting on for midnight. He had not troubled to
argue; he had dropped the proposal instantly.
"Look here!" he said brusquely, almost
bullyingly. "If you'll kindly sit down I might sit down. I detest standing
for long."
"Oh, please do! I'm so sorry."
She sat down near the dead fire. This was the
second occasion on which he had had to suggest sitting down when he came to see
her. She was clumsy, no mistake! He was treating her as an equal, and she was
not being equal to the part. He sat down opposite to her.
"Your fire's out," he observed. Violet
smiled again, to herself. "Still, with the radiator the room's quite
warm."
"May I give you a cigarette?" said
Violet.
Evelyn shook his head. "But please smoke if
you want to." Violet shook her head; his permission was too perfunctory to
encourage her. "I scarcely ever smoke," she said, inexactly. She felt
disappointed. To smoke with him, to offer him a match, to light her cigarette
from a match held by him, would have been delicious. However, she put the
notion resolutely aside. What could it matter, really, whether they smoked or
not?
"They're determined to arrange a supper for
me. The upper staff, I mean," Evelyn began. "That's what I've come to
see you about. I must have your opinion." He was talking now in an
ordinary social, friendly tone, man to comprehending woman.
"Oh yes?" she said with bright interest.
"Yes. To-night fortnight it's supposed to be.
It's a supper of the hotel, to celebrate the success of the Merger. I don't know
why people want to do these things, but they do. And I can't say no. Directors
and heads of departments--that will be the company. Nobody else--except the
manager of the Majestic. Mr. Cousin thought they couldn't decently leave him
out. Pozzi will come, not so much as manager of the Duncannon as because he's
still in theory assistant-manager here. Old Mr. Dover probably won't come down;
he may, but I shall be surprised if he does. Says he feels too old. Of course
there'll be Sir Henry Savot--the supper ought properly to be for him--and Lord
Watlington, and Mr. Harbour. And then there'll be the Directors of the old
Company, Mr. Dacker and Mr. Lingmell and Mr. Smiss--Mr. Smiss is a director of
the Merger too. And then the heads of departments: Mr. Adolphe, Mr. Immerson,
Mr. Jones-Wyatt, Mr. Crump, Mr. Cappone, Mr. Ceria, Commendatore Rocco, Mr.
Planquet, Mr. Ruffo, Dr. Constam, Major Linklater, Mr. Exshaw, Mr. Ickeringway,
Mr. Stairforth, Mr. Semple, Mr. Pipple--BiIls Department, he's really cashier.
Perhaps that isn't all, but it's nearly all. There's about a couple of dozen
there anyhow. I've agreed the list with Mr. Cousin. But do you know what I
said? I said: 'What about ladies?' Mr. Cousin said it wouldn't do to ask the
wives. He said we know what the men are like, but if we ask one wife we must
ask all, and some of 'em wouldn't do. You know, people are apt to think the
staff of a hotel is all alike. Well, of course it isn't. Class distinctions are
as sharp in a hotel-staff as they are elsewhere--sharper perhaps. So Mr. Cousin
said his idea was to have men only. Now I don't think that's right. If a woman
happens to be head of a department she's just as much entitled to be asked to
take part in that supper as any other head of a department. Women work as hard
as men, and as a rule they're nicer to look at, and they have the vote and they
sit on juries and even in Parliament, and so why shouldn't they sit at supper?
I'm not a fanatical feminist, but I do believe in playing fair. What do you
say?"
Violet trembled. She knew she was the sole woman
head of a department in the hotel. Was she to be invited to share in the
supper? And if so was she to be the one girl among twenty or thirty men,
including millionaires? Or was she to refuse--refuse to be at a supper given in
the honour of the panjandrum? His masculine logic was putting her in a fix. To
refuse would be cowardice. And yet--"I think the principle's quite
right," she said nervously.
"Well, then!"
"Let me see, who are the women heads?"
"There's you."
"But who else?"
"There isn't anybody else," Evelyn
smiled with humour.
"I should love to come, but not by
myself," said the head-housekeeper, whose common sense was after all
stronger than any masculine logic.
"But why not? Would you be afraid to?"
"I couldn't come by myself, Mr. Orcham. But
are you sure there isn't anybody else? What about Mrs. Rowbotham?"
"Works? Certainly not. By the way, I was
forgetting the new head at Craven Street. No, Mrs. Rowbotham isn't a head. And
what's more, she isn't presentable. We might as well ask Skinner; he considers
himself now the greatest man in the entire show. No. Everyone must be
presentable--that's cast-iron."
"Lady Milligan. She'd adore to come."
"I daresay she would. But she doesn't happen
to be on the staff," said Evelyn drily.
"But for the sake of old times? No?"
"The old times when her ladyship ran off and
left us. No, thanks."
There he was again, the panjandrum, with his tone
all hardened by the mere thought of a disloyalty to the Palace. He was surely
the strangest man!
"Well, Mrs. Oulsnam?"
"She isn't head of a department. If we had
her we should either have to ask about twenty more second-in-commands or
there'd be such a flare-up of jealousies as never was seen."
"But if you made her head-housekeeper at the
Duncannon, and she sort of belongs here and Mr. Pozzi is coming, couldn't you
squeeze her in?"
"That's an idea," the panjandrum
admitted. And to Violet's astonishment he added: "And there'd be four of
you if we roped in Miss Cass and Marian Tilton. Both those two are perfectly
convinced that they run the hotel. Yes, four wouldn't be so bad, would it?
Might even have some dancing."
"Four would be lovely," said Violet.
"I'll see Mr. Cousin first thing
to-morrow," said Evelyn; and stood up.
"It's awfully nice of you to come and ask
me," said Violet, scarcely audible.
And she too rose. The affair was finished, and he
was going. She wanted him to stay for ever in her room. But also she wanted him
to leave her, because it was urgently necessary for her to indulge in her
sensations, and to find answers to certain questions. Had this man who was not
a fanatical feminist come up to her solely from an abstract sense of fairness?
If another than Violet Powler had been head-housekeeper would he have spent the
evening in trying to get hold of that other, just in order to satisfy his
desire to play fair? It was plain that he was pleased with her, that he thought
rather well of her, that her work had earned his approval. She returned to her
theory that the harsh curtness of tone at the beginning of the interview was
affected in order to cover his self-consciousness--say his nervousness. He was
capable of being very boy-like. She must buy a new frock for the supper; there
was that new place in Shaftesbury Avenue that Mrs. Oulsnam had told her of.
The panjandrum leaned against the mantelpiece.
"Isn't it about time you had some pictures
here?" he demanded, as it were casually.
Violet was ashamed of her bare walls with their oblong
marks of vanished pictures that had belonged to her predecessors.
"It is," said she. "I've been
intending to get some, but I've been so busy."
"We have some good etchings somewhere,"
said the panjandrum. "I'll give you a few. I mean they're the hotel's, but
that needn't worry us. I'll ask Miss Cass where they are. I'll have them sent
up to you. And I think these rooms of yours ought to be done up. I suppose
visitors come in here sometimes to see you, don't they?"
His tone was still casual; he had started by
grumbling at her; the constitution of the supper was a hotel matter; the
furnishing of her rooms was another hotel matter. But Violet had not been
talking about, nor listening to, any of these subjects. She was, without quite
knowing it, in the groves of the isle of Cythera. Her eyes saw the groves of
the isle; her vague shining smile confirmed her eyes. Her sensations frightened
her to the point of speechlessness.
"Thank you," she said at last, coldly.
"Don't mention it," he said with the
most casual negligence of manner.
Their hands wavered, hand approaching hand. She
felt the pressure of his. She glanced shyly up at his funny, kindly face. Her
hand was limp. But she thought: "If he presses mine it's only right for me
to press his." And she pressed it. And by the channel of their hands her
whole body seemed to her to flow into his. He nodded. She smiled steadily. Not
another word. He went.
She was alone. She had meant to think clearly as
soon as she was alone. But she could not think clearly, or think at all. She
was too happy to think, and too profoundly unhappy to think. She obscurely
realised that the man who had gone was set apart from all other men in her
sight. The conception of his existence filled her mind until there was no room
for anything else. But he was the panjandrum, the head and heart of the great
Merger, the monarch of the hotel world. And she was a daughter of Renshaw
Street. (An old story, though she did not identify it as an old story.) Still,
he had been to see her in her own room. And their relations were, to her,
idyllic.
She looked at the reproachful desk.
"Not to-night," she said to the desk.
"To-morrow morning, early. I really couldn't to-night. Shall I even be
able to take my things off and get into bed? I'm done in for ever. And I shall
never have a moment's peace again." But she was saturated with a hardly
tolerable bliss. Through the terrifying felicity shot the thought: "I must
find time to go up to Shaftesbury Avenue--to-morrow. Something's bound to want
altering, and you never know how long they'll take over it."
QUEEN
ANNE
One morning, nearly a week later, it happened to
Evelyn while at breakfast under the care of Oldham, to perceive a small round
hole prominently situated in the middle of his waistcoat. Oldham suffered, not
because of the hole, which had been made by incandescent tobacco from a
cigarette, and which even a more perfect valet than Oldham might have missed,
but because Evelyn had slept ill (having youthfully lain awake thinking about
the precise nature of his feelings towards Violet Powler). Oldham, who ought to
have suffered in silence, committed the vain error of trying to defend himself
by quite preposterous excuses. Evelyn had to change his suit, which involved
changing his necktie, and he went downstairs to his office in a state of mind
unworthy of a philosopher and a gentleman.
Nevertheless he hid his mood, as effectively as he
could, from Miss Cass, until Miss Cass, confessing that she had omitted to
obtain an order to view a certain Queen Anne house close to the hotel, gave her
opinion that there was no hurry and that Mr. Orcham could just as well view the
Queen Anne house on Saturday or even Monday. It was perhaps the 'even Monday'
that broke the back of Evelyn's self-control. Miss Cass was icily requested to
go forth and obtain the order to view from the agents, and not to return
without it.
Miss Cass, who feared neither God nor Evelyn, answered
icily:
"Yes, Mr. Orcham. I'll go at once. By the
way, there's some trouble about that staff-supper."
"Never mind the staff-supper. Run off and get
that orderto view."
"Certainly, Mr. Orcham," said the
indomitable Miss Cass, continuing: "But several secretaries, especially
Mr. Smiss's senior secretary, are complaining because they haven't been asked
to join in, and Mr. Smiss thinks--"
"Will you oblige me very much by going
instantly for that order to view? I really cannot be bothered with all these ridiculous
jealousies when I'm as busy as I am now. You've been asked to the supper, and
Miss Tilton has been asked, and Mr. Cousin has decided that no other
secretaries shall be asked."
"Yes, Mr. Orcham. I only thought you'd like
to know."
"Well, I don't like to know. It's not I who
am giving the supper."
"Quite, Mr. Orcham." The frigid and
inimical calmness of the woman's tone was a blighting commentary on the
panjandrum's tone.
"I'm sick to death of all these women!" Evelyn
exclaimed aloud when Miss Cass had triumphantly departed and he was alone with
the morning's documents on his great desk. "Let 'em go to the devil!..That
supper isn't beginning very auspiciously."
Then he dismissed the piffling matter from his
thoughts, and turned to the charts of business at the Palace, which were still
from old-established custom brought daily to his notice, though as head of the
Orcham Company he was now supposed to see them only weekly and as part of a
more comprehensive tabular conspectus embracing the business of all the Orcham
hotels. The fact was that his activities were still in transition. He was
Managing Director of the vast Orcham Company, without, somehow, having ceased
to be Managing Director of the old, smaller, dissolving Imperial Palace
Company.
Largely if not exclusively as the result of unique
indirect advertisement due to the flotation of the Orcham Company, business at
the Palace had considerably increased, and business at the Majestic had
increased a little also. Excellent! Very encouraging! But something had to be
done to define with exactitude the panjandrum's actual position as between the
Orcham group and the unit of the Palace within the group. And Evelyn himself
was the only person to do it. And he was determined to do it. After all, was he
not the supreme and unchallengeable autocrat? Of course there was the Orcham
Board of Directors; but he was used to imposing his will on Boards. Hence the
idea of the Queen Anne house whose back-garden abutted on Birdcage Walk. The
Orcham Company must clearly have offices of its own. It clearly could not
continue for ever to watch over and direct the careers of nine important hotels
in a scattered makeshift lot of rooms in the Imperial Palace. The notion was
grotesque.
Only on the previous day had Evelyn heard of the
beautiful spacious mansion to let on long lease within a hundred yards or so of
the Palace. He had beheld its exteriors, and had immediately decided, with all
the impulsiveness of a creative artist, that that building and no other would
suit the purposes of the Orcham Company. Damn it! A company with a capital of
more than five millions was entitled to be housed in dignity. So ran his
grandiose thoughts.
At this juncture the door of his private room
opened, and Sir Henry Savott imperiously walked in, unannounced. Outrage! Who
did the fellow think he was? What would he have said if Evelyn had stamped into
his private office unannounced? Of course the invasion was one
consequence of Miss Cass's absence on a job which she had inexcusably forgotten
to execute yesterday. Her subaltern could not arrest the arrogant Sir Henry on
his way. But Miss Cass would have arrested him. Yes, she would!
"Morning, Evelyn."
"Morning, Henry." Evelyn deceitfully
smoothed his forehead and softened his voice. "Sit down. Glad to see you.
What's up? How are the talkies?"
"Talkies are going some," answered Sir
Henry, in a voice to indicate that naturally the talkies were going some and
that even to ask about their welfare was to cast a slur. "I say. I've been
seeing Smiss. He tells me you're thinking of taking new offices for
Orcham." ('Orcham' was now Sir Henry's habitual abbreviation of the Orcham
International Hotels Company Limited.)
"The idea has crossed my mind," said
Evelyn, an ironical tinge in the colour of his tone. "I expect to submit a
proposal at the next Board Meeting."
"Do you think it's quite necessary?"
"I certainly wouldn't dream of doing anything
without submitting it to the Board," said Evelyn, naughtily
misunderstanding the Titan.
"I mean, to take special offices," Sir
Henry explained with impatience. Evelyn tranquillised himself, as always when
an opponent began to show excitement.
"How else do you expect Orcham is to carry on
business?" he enquired, in a drawl.
"Well, in a big place like the Palace I
should have thought you might have found room--"
"Just listen to me, my dear Henry. The Palace
is big because it's doing a big business. And it isn't too big for its
business. And a big place isn't any more elastic than a little place. If you
can't pour a quart into a pint pot, it's just as true that you can't pour
fifteen hundred gallons into a thousand-gallon cistern. Even as it is, the
Palace is being very seriously cramped by Orcham work. Why should the Palace be
inconvenienced for the advantage of all the other hotels in the group? I don't
know of any other business that's run without offices. Proper offices make for
efficiency--or ought to."
"I was thinking of the expense. Someone has
to think of it," said Sir Henry, not without resentment.
"Quite, my dear chap!" Evelyn answered
soothingly. "And I'm much obliged for the hint. But I'm doing a certain
amount of cerebration over the expense myself. That's part of my job. Only I
feel sure you'll agree with my maxim that one can't have something for nothing.
The Orcham staff isn't fully organised yet: the sooner it's organised the
better, and it can't be organised until definite offices are organised. Anyhow
the decisions will be with the Board. Have a cigar, old man." Evelyn was
perfectly at ease, because he was well aware that he had a majority of the
working Board in his pocket.
"Not now, thanks, Evelyn. I'm in a hurry. I
just looked in--that's all." Sir Henry refused with slight vexation.
Evelyn did not know that the Titan had been
embroiled in intimate dissensions with the beautiful and stylish Nancy
Penkethman, and was not satisfactorily himself.
"Well, thanks very much." Evelyn gave
him God-speed. "I shall bear in mind what you say. Au revoir."
Sir Henry departed.
Evelyn reflected:
"He's gone off with a flick in his ear. If
anybody thinks I'm not the real Simon Pure boss of this show, he's wrong. And I
don't care who he is."
The panjandrum forced himself to work. After
something like half an hour Miss Cass's assistant--not Miss Cass--came in with
the order to view and the keys of the Queen Anne house. Evidently Miss Cass was
indicating to her employer who she was.
"Oh! Here they are at last!" said Evelyn
mildly to the girl. He put on his hat and picked up his stick and twirled the
same in an airy manner.
"You'd better come over with me," he
said curtly to Miss Cass in her office.
Miss Cass was affecting to be monstrously busy.
She infinitesimally tossed her head. But she obeyed the order. She left her hat
behind, however, and Evelyn had the experience of accompanying a hatless girl
in Birdcage Walk and in an April wind. (You could never get the better of
them.) Fortunately the distance was very short.
"There surely ought to be a caretaker
here," observed Evelyn, after they had contrived between them to open the
front door of the mansion.
"It's Crown property," Miss Cass
retorted.
Evelyn led the way into the first room.
"Excuse me, Mr. Orcham. But you told me that
Report on the Escurial must be finished in triplicate by twelve o'clock."
She might have made this unemotional announcement
in the office. But she had delayed it in order to serve him right. Evelyn had
forgotten. He thought with exceeding rapidity.
"Very well, go and get it done. And see you
have fresh carbons. Send--er--Miss Powler to me, and ask her to bring a
tape-measure with her. I must have someone. And she may be more useful than
you."
Either Miss Cass or the April wind banged the
front door. At the end of five minutes, when Evelyn had made a complete tour of
the mansion and left one cigarette to expire on the marble staircase, he began
seriously to expect the arrival of his head-housekeeper. At the end of another
five minutes a new grievance had taken possession of him. Surely it could not
take her nearly a quarter of an hour (his grievance had turned ten minutes into
nearly a quarter of an hour) to run across from the hotel. Nothing had gone
well with him that morning. First the gross negligence of the ass Oldham. Then
Miss Cass, in one of her moods of severity. Then Henry Savott with his
interfering impudence. Then Miss Cass in a still severer mood, but of course as
usual exasperatingly correct in her stiffness. And now his ideal
head-housekeeper dallying! The mansion, too, had a damp chill in its unoccupied
air, and Evelyn was without overcoat. He lit a third cigarette. He had peered
into every corner of the mansion, and now could only stare through the windows
of the main drawing-room, and fidget and fume. If the telephone had not been
removed he might have passed the time in worrying the hotel by captious
enquiries. But in the absence of the telephone he must either resign himself to
tedium or go back to the Palace and demand caustically whether all the members
of the directorial staff thought perchance that he had nothing on earth to do
but kick his heels in a cold and empty house. Such was his philosophic
condition.
Then a taxi drove into Old Queen Street, on which
the drawing-room fronted, and his head-housekeeper descended from the taxi. She
seemed a bit hurried and breathless, and (said Evelyn to himself) well she
might be! He went cautiously down the slippery marble stairs to open the door
for her.
"I was at the Duncannon," she greeted
him.
That she might be at the Duncannon had not entered
his tired, harassed head.
"Can you pay the taxi?" she asked.
"I came away without my bag."
At any rate she was properly dressed for the
street--not like Miss Cass.
"Certainly," he answered, and crossed
the pavement and paid her taxi. Strange that women never had the price of a
taxi-fare. They were all the same. They would forget their bags. It was not as
if she would be expected to pay the taxi out of her own money; she would have
charged it to petty cash. But there you were! He was paying her taxi, just as
though he had invited her to lunch or something!
He said in a colourless business voice, as soon as
they were secure within the mansion:
"I wanted you to look over this place from
the practical point of view and tell me what you think of it." He might
have added that the notion of sending for her had only occurred to him when
Miss Cass became restive and unanswerable. But he refrained from his
explanation. To have betrayed that he had acted impulsively would have been
unwise. The meeting was to be purely technical, official; therefore it had been
planned.
He described to her the use to which he proposed
to put the place. She said 'Yes' and 'Yes.' They started their visitation with
the basement, for the reason that it was scientific to start with the basement.
Violet, although she had wasted not a minute in
obeying the summons, had not hurried herself, nor was she breathless, nor had
she forgotten her bag through any haste. She had forgotten her bag because the
sudden summons had put her into an emotional turmoil. Since the Sunday night tête-à-tête
she had seen Evelyn but once, and for a few moments and by chance. Each day she
had wakened with the hope and with the fear that she would encounter him, and
each night (save one) she had gone to bed disappointed and relieved that she
had not encountered him. Each hour of each day she had been happy and she had
been unhappy. She had blamed herself and she had held herself innocent. She had
interpreted his demeanour towards her in a dozen mutually quite contradictory
ways. The summons to join him at the Queen Anne house was like a thunderclap in
her ear at the telephone-receiver. It had the intensity of violent drama.
She had hoped and she had feared that others would
be present in the house in Little Queen Street. Nobody else was present, and
she was delighted and she was frightened--equally. No! More delighted than
frightened. No! More frightened than delighted. She studied every inflection of
his voice as he spoke. But he said nothing that was not banal, and she could
read no significance whatever in his tones. Except that his nerves were in a
sensitive state. She divined positively that something had happened to vex him.
She thought:
"I ought to soothe him; he needs soothing. I
know I can soothe him, because I've done it before." Yet how should she
soothe him? To soothe, one must be calm oneself, one must be in full possession
of oneself. And she was not calm nor self-possessed.
Their voices uttering banalities resounded and
reverberated as the pair ascended the broad, marmoreal stairs. Their voices hit
the hard walls and were flung back. Now they were on the first floor. A vast
drawing-room at the front, a smaller but still large drawing-room giving on
Birdcage Walk and the Park, with the Palace obstructing a considerable section
of the view. Large folding-doors between the two saloons.
"Just look at that ceiling!" said Evelyn
enthusiastically in the front room.
"Yes," she said. "Beautiful."
She was thinking: "But you couldn't always be craning your neck to look at
a ceiling, however beautiful it was."
"This would be the Board Room," said
Evelyn.
"Yes?" she queried. "What about the
double doors? Anyone in the back room would hear everything you were saying at
the Board meetings."
"Oh no!" he protested. "Besides, we
could do away with those things and continue the wall all across. Quite simple.
Lovely fireplaces, aren't they?"
"Lovely," she agreed. "But they'd
never warm these rooms enough in winter. I don't know how people managed in these
old houses in winter. They must have been starved to death sometimes."
"Well," he said impatiently, "we
could soon fix that. Central heating. Of course. Or electric radiators."
"There aren't enough switches. You'd have to
re-wire it all."
She really did desire to soothe him, humour him,
yield to him. But what could she say? She had to be honest. Although she tried
to soften her tone she somehow could not soften it sufficiently. Nervousness.
Self-consciousness. Withal, there was one heavenly advantage. They were all
alone together in the immense mansion. Wander as they pleased, they would be in
privacy. Which was pleasant, even delicious, thrilling to her. And if she vexed
him it would still be thrilling.
"Obviously a lot of re-wiring would have to
be done," said Evelyn stiffly. What the deuce was the matter with the
girl, with everybody? She seemed determined not to be pleased. She was not
genuinely pleased even with the marvellous ceilings. She was in a queer mood.
He regretted having sent for her. Still, he would have regretted not having
sent for her. So it was as broad as it was long. No luck! But if she kept on
with her carping he would tick her off. He would rather enjoy ticking her off,
for the fun of seeing her hot and upset. Exciting, to see her upset. Something
fine came out that you'd never see otherwise. And they were all alone together.
They were free, beyond the rule of social laws and usages.
"Well," he said, sinisterly, "we'll
go a bit higher." And they climbed to the next storey.
"I thought I might live myself on this
floor," he said; but he felt as he spoke that he was very daring.
"There's a splendid bathroom. Come and see it...How's that for a
bathroom?"
"But the kitchen's in the basement," she
objected, amazed at his scheme. "And the service-stairs are frightfully
narrow and twisty."
"Oh!" Staccato. Yes, he was annoyed. He
was allowing himself to be annoyed. "Where's your tape-measure?"
"Tape-measure? I haven't got one."
"I told Miss Cass to tell you to bring
one."
"I'm sorry. I didn't hear anything about any
tape-measure."
A pause.
"Well, we may as well see the top
floor." Tone weary and disgusted.
On the top floor were apparently numberless small
rooms.
"These would make excellent offices,"
Evelyn said with brightness.
"But you'll want a room for Oldham. To say
nothing of a caretaker and a cook and a maid."
"Now look here!" he addressed her
harshly, defiantly. "I've got you here to have your opinion. Well, let me
have it, straight out. I don't want all these 'buts.' You've said nothing but
'buts' up to now. Say something positive. You simply don't like the
house."
He would break down her guard. And he didn't give
a damn. They'd had one row, and if she couldn't behave decently, show some
sympathy, be less cursedly stiff, she'd be letting herself in for another row.
She was as bad as Miss Cass. He admitted that his character had changed since
the adventure with Gracie. Never mind. He was sick of all women.
"Yes, I do like the house," said
Violet, in darkest despair. wondering how she might have avoided this imminent
catastrophe. "But it isn't offices. It would be as if you were
trying to make a thing do--for something else. If I was in your place and I
wanted offices I should build offices. And fancy the kitchen in the
basement and you living up here! And I don't think it'd be a good thing
for you to live where you work. I know you do, at the
Palace--but--but--" She gave it up. Disaster was upon her and she was
helpless. There he stood in front of her on the landing in the great bare,
empty, echoing house--there he stood as hard and stony as Satan.
Evelyn was touched by her solicitude for his
welfare. Which solicitude, however, struck him as rather comical. What could
she know about what was good and what was bad for a mature single man? He was
at least fifteen years her senior, and she was treating him as an inexperienced
youth without sense. He was touched, too, by the mysterious emergence of the
girl in her; not the protesting girl, but the weak, perplexed, defenceless
creature, this time. Not efficient, not 'commonsensical.' Her embarrassment
brought out her beauty and gave a strange glistening transparency to her brown
eyes...Dressed primly in black. But the black was romantic; it suited her and
the moment. He felt all his steely armour melting. "What am I going to do
next?" he asked his soul, and then abandoned himself.
"'But'--'but'--'but,'" he quoted her, in
a gentle, teasing, yet tremulous, voice. "You are a dear!"
And he advanced two steps, smiling and masterful,
smiling at her delicious but comical solicitude, and just kissed her. Instead
of resisting him with all her sturdy maidenliness, she began softly to cry.
None could say whether he or she was the more
astounded by this remarkable example of emotional instability in the male.
THE
SUPPER
On Sunday nights both the restaurant and the
grill-room closed, theoretically, at midnight. The restaurant in fact did close
at midnight, because the restaurant had its orchestra, and the orchestra played
"God Save the King" on the stroke of the hour, and though the
National Anthem may mean different things at different times, people always
know exactly what it does mean and they obey it exactly. The patrons of the
grill-room, having no Nunc Dimittis to scatter them, were sent away home only
by their consciences and the significant demeanour and activities of the
waiters; and some of them had been known to stay as late as one o'clock.
Neither Cappone nor Ceria appeared in his realm on Sunday nights. On this
particular Sunday night, however, Ceria in a black tie surprisingly did appear
in the grill-room at a quarter to twelve, the reason being that he had arrived
too early at the hotel, and having nothing better to do, thought it well to
give a glance at the directive attitudes of his lieutenant, Mr. Fontenay. He
came, smiled, and vanished.
Still more surprisingly the panjandrum himself
came into the grill-room for a moment, smiled diffidently, and vanished.
Similarly he honoured the restaurant for a moment. The reason for this singular
performance on the part of the panjandrum was merely that he did not know what
he was doing. The hands of his watch would not move, and he had to do something.
There were three very nervous individuals in the
Palace at a quarter to twelve: Amadeo Ruffo, the Banqueting-manager, who had
charge of the great staff-supper and who knew that his arrangements would be
subjected to the criticism, silent but ruthless, of sundry supreme experts;
Violet Marian Powler; and Evelyn Orcham.
Evelyn and Violet shared a unique secret, and it
really was a secret--by the decision of Violet. Violet simply could not
contemplate the announcement of the betrothal in marriage of the Managing
Director of the Orcham Company and the head-housekeeper of the Imperial Palace.
The event was too enormous, too upheaving. It would have had the effect of an
earthquake in the Palace. The staff might have swooned and visitors been shaken
out of their beds. How could she go about her housekeeping work as the
acknowledged fiancée of the panjandrum? She could not. She would have blushed
through a quarter of an inch of powder, and all her underlings would have
behaved to her as unnaturally as she to them. The excellent Beatrice Noakes
would have been completely intolerable. Hence Violet's decree.
Evelyn had smiled masculinely at the decree. He
had told her that she was childish, or at best school-girlish. He had teased
her to death. He had attacked her position with unanswerable arguments. But he
was glad to fall in taking it; for in reality he thought as she did, and shared
all her trepidations. Of course one day the secret must cease to be a secret.
When? How soon?
She had said:
"Not yet, not yet. We'll see."
In other respects Violet showed admirable sense
and dignity. In her bearing towards Evelyn she was a woman with a man. She did
not look up to him, or no more than any woman except a reigning princess or a
film-star would look up to her betrothed. Her engagement was not more wonderful
to her than any engagement is to the woman engaged. She did not regard herself
as the favoured of heaven, nor Evelyn as a silver Lohengrin disembarking from a
swan-drawn boat. She was just Violet, and Evelyn was just Evelyn (though the
perfect man).
As for Evelyn, he had admired her deportment
intensely during the tremendous nine days. It had convinced him, if he needed
convincing--and every man in his circumstances does--that he was making no
mistake. They had seen each other only twice in the tremendous nine days. How
should they see each other? Could he run upstairs to her room when they had a
couple of minutes of leisure and kiss her and ask her how she was getting on?
They both lived in the most transparent glass-house that ever was. True, they
wrote to one another--Evelyn had not the slightest difficulty in composing his
letters--but surreptitiously and by means of the post. Evelyn used a disguised
hand on his envelopes and slipped them into the pillar-box at the end of
Birdcage Walk in Storey's Gate. Violet dropped hers into the letter-shoot flap
on Eighth when no one was looking.
The first occasion of their meeting was in
Victoria Street on a dark Sunday evening. A woman in a taxi stopped the vehicle
at a certain lamp-post. A man who had obviously been waiting jumped in. A plot,
sinister, suspicious! The driver had his ideas about the pair. The driver had
never before heard of Renshaw Street, and when he at length discovered the
street it seemed to him precisely the kind of street where anarchistic
conspiracies or even burglaries and assassinations might well be hatched. Also
he misinterpreted the munificence of his tip. It was Evelyn who had suggested
the trip to Renshaw Street. Violet did not warn her parents. Her father had
opened the door. Violet had said: "Oh, dad, this is Mr. Orcham," as
casually as if Evelyn had been Mr. Smith from next door hut one. Her father and
mother--but especially her father--had received the news with a praiseworthy
imitation of calm. And in fact they were not minded to be overcome. After all,
Violet was Violet, and they had always known that she stood in a class
absolutely by herself. Witness her rise in the hierarchy of the fabled
sumptuous Palace. They gave their consent and blessing to the pair. And they
were much relieved at the departure of the pair. So was Violet. Odious little
snob, she had had social qualms about the introduction of the panjandrum to the
humilities of her home and the lowermiddle-class manners of her parents! Evelyn
had conducted himself like the angel he was. They had refused supper, but
Evelyn had eagerly joined the old man in a bottle of beer.
On the journey to Shepherds Bush Evelyn had
tactfully, and with exaggeration, recounted to Violet the simplicity of his own
early days. Shepherds Bush does not lie between Renshaw Street and Birdcage
Walk; but such was the route they chose. At Shepherds Bush Evelyn paid off the
taxi; they walked arm-in-arm amid the crowd emptying from the big cinema; and
then Evelyn called another taxi. Which taxi did not draw up under the marquise
of the Imperial Palace; nor did the twain re-enter the Palace by the same door
nor at the same moment. It was all superbly exciting, and had the piquant air
of an immoral intrigue.
The second occasion of their meeting had been at
the Duncannon on the evening of the following Wednesday--Pozzi's night off.
Evelyn, carrying a bundle of documents, had been at his curtest with the
Duncannon hall-porter: "I suppose Miss Powler isn't here, by any chance?..Oh,
she is! Well, tell her to come down and see me in Mr. Pozzi's room at once. And
to bring those charts that she was showing me this morning at the Palace.
She'll know which I mean. At once." The hall-porter had concluded that
Miss Powler was in trouble with the panjandrum. Miss Powler did know the charts
that the panjandrum meant. The study of them lasted about an hour and a half
and Miss Powler had emerged therefrom in a somewhat nervous and ruffled
condition. So much so that she had departed immediately home to the Palace,
whereas the panjandrum had remained to work in Pozzi's room till after
midnight. Since the second occasion--nothing but a chance public encounter, and
exchanges of letters. An insufficient diet.
And now Evelyn was waiting for midnight and the
ordeal of the sight of her at the grand staff-supper, and having fluttered into
the grill-room and out again, and into the restaurant and out again, he decided
to walk upstairs, because watches and clocks were still moveless. Not to walk up
to Eighth. No! It was not for him to wander into Violet's sitting-room and have
a private view of her new frock from Shaftesbury Avenue! He went no higher than
Seventh, where he stuck totally and foolishly inactive in his castle, and then
walked down again, floor by floor, from corridor to dimly lit corridor, staring
at the blank faces of the doors of uncounted temporary homes inhabited by
persons who probably had their own estimates of the importance and unimportance
and bliss and misery of love in human life.
He stood in the foyer. Guests were now leaving in
a thin steady stream. He glimpsed the restaurant, and saw that it was nearly
deserted. The orchestra began to play "God Save the King." Midnight,
by God! He was due at the supper. The hands of watches did move.
The Queen Anne room, the largest of the private
dining-rooms at the Palace, was panelled in unpolished wood in what a
celebrated decorative artist stated to be the Queen Anne style. Its lighting,
however, brilliant and yet delicately soft, had none of the characteristics of
the antique. Indeed the lighting was so modern that, going beyond the present,
it foretold the future. The Palace continually rejuvenated its interiors; and
the Queen Anne had just been so treated.
The magnificently floral supper-table was narrow
for its length. And with a purpose. Mr. Cousin, Mr. Ruffo, and Mr. Jones-Wyatt
(the heads of the restaurant and the grill knew better than to poke their noses
into any affair of the banqueting department) had been confronted with one of
the most terrible problems that ever puzzled a majordomo: how to distribute
four girls among a couple of dozen men without causing a riot of grievances.
Mr. Immerson, who was responsible for the illustrated menu-cards, ultimately
solved the problem and prepared the plan of the table. Mr. Cousin (in the
Chair), with Evelyn on his right and Mr. Harbour on his left, sat in the middle
of one side of the board. Opposite Mr. Cousin sat Mr. Stairforth (Stock
Department) and Lord Watlington, flanked by Mrs. Oulsnam and Miss Marian
Tilton. The graver young women, Miss Cass and Violet, were each next but one to
opposite ends of the table, on the same side as the Chair. By this masterpiece
of ingenuity, no girl had to waste herself on a girl opposite, and every man
was at worst either within one man of a girl on his own side or had a girl
opposite or nearly opposite to whom he could talk or listen or on whom he could
gaze: the Chair and its supporters had the pick of the chatterers; but no girl
was monopolised by Directors to the detriment of the staff, each girl having a
Director on one hand and a member of the staff on the other. Cappone sat at one
end of the table and Ceria at the other, and Amadeo Ruffo next to Cappone
facing Violet. Enough of the arrangement of seating; the beauty of its
skilfulness could not be fully set forth in five pages.
The men wore dinner-jackets, symbol of
informality, and a unique sight was seen: Maître Planquet and the Commendatore
Rocco, not in white with white caps, but in evening dress. All the girls had
new frocks. Everybody had foreseen that the dashing Marian Tilton would be the
smartest and daringest of the four; she was. Mrs. Oulsnam made a radiant close
second. Miss Cass and Violet, while smart, were less dashingly effective.
Mr. Ruffo was the last to sit down. He lowered
himself into a chair with the mien of one committing himself to the deep and
trusting in God. He had done everything possible to ensure for the feast an
unparalleled perfection, and he could do no more. He at once began talking to
Violet. Mr. Stairforth and Marian Tilton could utter more words in less time
than Ruffo; but at intervals they paused to take breath. Mr. Ruffo, talking
slowly, could breathe while he talked, and be never paused, save occasionally
from Italian politeness.
Talking, he surveyed his chefs de rang and
his waiters: all was in order. Caviare on miniature crumpets, and vodka.
Abstinence was contrary to the code. All had to drink the vodka. Mr. Ruffo had
a calm, sure belief in the virtue of vodka on an empty stomach as an inspirer
of gay backchat and broad-minded conviviality. The vodka was the best in
London, and had run into money, for Ruffo had not boggled at expense. The bill
for a similar supper to mere visitors would have sufficed to buy a small hotel
in the country. But Ruffo had received instructions from Mr. Cousin that
everything was to be charged at bare cost, so that all the staff, proud girls
included, could pay their scot without inconvenience. This generous precaution
on the part of the Palace authorities proved to be otiose, for the next day Mr.
Harbour got hold of Ruffo, and discharged the entire liability out of his privy
purse. A final gesture. On the following Wednesday the cigarette-king was to
rejoin Mrs. Harbour at Cherbourg.
The waiters were watchful and rapid as if for
their lives; the sub-chefs and lower cooks in Maître Planquet's kitchens were
even more assiduous than if the master's eye had been upon them; and through
the partially opened sliding partition dividing the Queen Anne room from the
Queen Victoria room next door, a diminutive orchestra sent music dreamy and
low, accompanying and not drowning the conversation. All these people, from
first violin to dishwasher, laboured as joyously as though they were present at
the eating itself of the supper. And above, floor after floor of visitors,
unaware of the romantic affair below, prosaically and ignorantly slept.
"Monsieur le Directeur, j'ai l'honneur de
boire à votre santé." The gruff booming voice of Commendatore Rocco suddenly dominated the
table, silencing all conversation. The Commendatore raised his glass of hock,
bowed and drank; and Evelyn ceremoniously responded. Trust Rocco to impose
himself! He had got ahead of his rival, Maître Planquet.
Evelyn, only a moment ago a nervous wanderer over
the carpeted furlongs of the Palace, was now the super-panjandrum. He hated it;
but he had to be, and he succeeded in being, the super-panjandrum, the mighty
guest, mightier than three millionaires. He could act, and he was helped by the
accident that he was not able to catch Violet's eye, nor she his. Had their
eyes met the result would have been to humble them both into a bottomless deep
of self-consciousness. He teased Mrs. Oulsnam and Marian Tilton.
Both girls were a shining success. They did in
truth grace the feast, which would not have been half so festive without them.
See on the table in the midst of the flowers the handbag of Mrs. Oulsnam, the
handbag of Marian Tilton, the cloisonné cigarette-case of Mrs. Oulsnam, the
gold cigarette-case of Marian Tilton! These matters changed the aspect of the
board. See Marian Tilton using her lipstick and showing her teeth, while
dangerously flirting with Lord Watlington (who was a bit jealous of Evelyn's teasing)!
The effect on male spirits was irresistible. Pan
and Bacchus were abroad in the Queen Anne room. The cigarette-king emitted
jolly expletives in the American language. And Evelyn was moved to oblivious
mirth. He had been counting the courses: "That's one finished."
"That's two." "That's three." In his longing for the end of
the ordeal--he missed the passage of one course; and was the more pleased when
he discovered this carelessness...
Coffee, cigars, cigarettes, liqueurs, repletion.
Mr. Ruffo gave a subtle sign and the staff of waiters faded away.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Cousin,
rising. "There will be no speeches. You ought to applaud that."
(Uncertain laughter.) "But I give you the health of our guest." The
revellers stood up. The health was drunk. The revellers sat down.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Evelyn,
rising to applause whose formidable and prolonged uproar of appreciation
frightened him; many seconds which were hours elapsed before he could continue,
his voice shaking a little: "I thank you. I'm not going to forget this
supper. Before I sit down I want to propose the health of our Chairman, Mr.
Dennis Dover, who would have liked to be here, but isn't well enough to join
us. The health of Mr. Dennis Dover." Very loud applause, during which
Evelyn sat down as relieved as a man who has had an aching tooth out.
"C'était chic, ça!" Mr. Cousin murmured to him.
Now Mr. Jones-Wyatt had his moment of glory.
Saying not a word to anyone, he had arranged for the appearance of the cabaret
performers in new turns--turns not shown in the restaurant: a lady-conjurer,
and a French imitator who could imitate a crease in a rug or a woman silently
wondering what shoes would best match her frock, or anything like that. These
turns were more applauded than enjoyed. Bacchus and the wraith of Venus
diverted from them the attention which they merited. Then the music resumed,
and the sliding partition was opened wide into the Queen Victoria room, which
had been cleared for dancing.
"You will dance," Mr. Cousin enjoined
Evelyn.
"Oh, hang it! Well, if I must." He knew
that he must. "Who ought I to dance with first?"
"Miss Powler of course, mon cher. She
is the most important. Les autres--ça ne compte pas."
Mr. Cousin was wrong there. The others did count.
Voices had been heard against the inclusion of secretaries. But both
secretaries, like Mrs. Oulsnam, had indeed definitely triumphed; even Miss
Cass--to-night the mirror of sweet softness--had had her triumph. Not merely
was every man present fully aware of the real importance of these secretarial
girls, of their secret influence and power in the politics of the hotels; but
they were girls among a couple of score men, rare, courted, flattered,
splendid. None of the usual competition of girls for men! The boot was spectacularly
on the other leg this evening. All, girls and men, agreed that the evening was
simply terrific--and it was not yet by any means over!
On the parquet of the Queen Victoria room there
were only four couples, because there were only four girls in the party. But
they fairly well filled the floor. Everything had been thought of. By a
palisade of chairs the space for dancing was limited to suit the maximum number
of dancers. Beyond the palisade were tables equipped for bridge, and one table
labelled in large letters: "Maniglia"--a compliment to the
Commendatore Rocco. Lord Watlington had seized Miss Marian Tilton and was
swirling around with her; Sir Henry Savott was vitalising Miss Cass; Mrs.
Oulsnam was vitalising Mr. Cousin; and Evelyn held Violet, it being right,
proper, expected, and unavoidable that the panjandrum should open the dancing
with the head-housekeeper.
Those two were alone together in the Queen
Victoria room. They spoke low, and none could overhear them; besides, the other
three couples were absorbed in themselves.
"I felt awful while I was on my legs waiting
for the acclamations to stop," said Evelyn, who had been profoundly
impressed, and was still preoccupied, by the reception of the toast of his
health. The furious outburst and din had done more than anything else ever did
do to persuade him that after all he was somebody of some importance in the
world. And now he wanted to hear a word or two from Violet on the subject.
"You looked so sweet I could scarcely bear to
look at you. If it had gone on any longer I should have had to cry," she
said, murmuringly, and not glancing at him. The reply, which be could not in
the least have predicted, entranced him: that is to say, it put him into a
trance. His right hand on her back, his left hand in her right, he could feel
Violet's emotion. Her sober tones were charged with emotion. He just danced.
"Fine little orchestra, Evelyn!" Sir
Henry threw at him in passing. He nodded and smiled in his trance.
So that was how he had struck her in his ordeal!
Well, her reaction was the ideal reaction. It seemed to him to typify their
future existence together. She the efficient, resourceful, hard-working
housekeeper, so moved by the sight of him in his ordeal that she nearly burst
into tears! Not that she ever would have burst into tears: he knew that: in any
circumstances she would be mistress of herself. He had a sense of all the
faculties, capabilities, reserves of strength within that new bright blue
frock. And she was his, and the fact that she was his was the most marvellous
and incredible thing on earth, past, present or to come. And yet it was not
incredible--it was quite natural. He knew his worth as well as he knew hers. He
knew he could give as richly as he received. She could rely on him. And she would
always be there for him to rely on. And she was so excitingly and so subtly
feminine. She radiated femininity, and her femininity was, for him, her most
important attribute. She was far more feminine than those terrific flirts,
Marian Tilton and Mrs. Oulsnam, who were charmingly exploiting what superficial
femininity they had the whole time. She was more feminine, and more dangerously
feminine, than the siren Gracie. What responsive sensibility and what wise
understanding and what mother-wit she would display on the honeymoon! He would
be able to set out on that delicate enterprise with a mind at ease. He recalled
the trials of his first honeymoon.
"Tell me what you're thinking about, my
dear," he whispered under the shelter of the music, slightly squeezing her
hand.
Violet was thinking that this protective male who
held her and guided her about the floor was a great man, really great, far
greater than the assembled millionaires, and that he was a child who needed
protection, and that she could give the protection and would, and that he was
immeasurably her superior in everything except daily commonsense, and that she
was intolerably in love with him, intolerably happy, and that things always did
work out right in the end, and that she wanted to dance with him till she
dropped, and that she wanted to leave the publicity of the dance and the noise
and the chatter and go upstairs by herself and think and think and think about
him and her bliss. She said:
"I had an awful thought that all these
sharp-eyes here are bound to guess there's something between us two."
He pooh-poohed the notion, while admitting to
himself that it might have some basis.
"And what if they do? There is!"
he said, defiantly.
From that moment, however, both of them suffered
under the delusion that the entire company was looking at them in a rather
peculiar way.
The music paused. But they might not dance the
next dance. No couple on the floor might dance the next dance. Justice reigned.
At least sixteen men had to dance with four girls; and as regards the
panjandrum, having danced with Violet he was compelled by the fundamental laws
which hold society together to dance with Miss Cass, Mrs. Oulsnam, and Miss
Tilton. And as regards the two latter, each of them was determined so to
manœuvre as to be in a position to boast on the morrow and for the rest of her
life that she had danced with three millionaires; but the cigarette-king did
not dance. The millionairedom of Sir Henry Savott was doubtful, but not on that
night.
After a very long period, during which the four
girls performed miracles of joyous endurance, the pardonable thirst of the
orchestra brought about an interval, and everyone sat down. There were two
bridge-tables in action, and at another table the Commendatore was playing
manila with Ceria and a few more. The relations between the Grill-chef and the
Grill-manager were now as smooth as a pane of glass.
Mr. Harbour, Evelyn, Sir Henry, and Mr. Immerson
were discussing, not too seriously, a new project for an office-building with
two frontages and two entrances, one for the offices of the cigarette-king's
new European headquarters, and the other for the offices of the Orcham
International Hotels Company Limited. Mr. Harbour had mentioned his scheme for
the complete exploitation of Europe, and Evelyn had suggested a joint
building--of which the cigarette-king would take about eighty per cent. of the
space. Mr. Harbour talked in fabulous numbers of dollars. In all his existence
he had had one idea--for the treatment of tobacco, and he had never loosed it
and never had another idea and never would have another idea. His idea had put
him second or third in the majestic catalogue of American millionaires. He had
swollen his idea to the extent of twenty million cigarettes a day in the United
States, and his ambition was to sell a minimum of ten million cigarettes a day
in Europe. And his share in Orcham was a trifle to him, and he was calmly
prepared to come down with a million dollars for an office building which would
make London stare. But otherwise he was an ordinary decent fellow, and never
said anything, save in figures, that you couldn't forget in five minutes.
Violet, having quitted the whirlwind Stairforth,
approached the table vaguely.
"Do sit here with us," said Evelyn impulsively.
All the men rose. Immerson discreetly departed, and Violet took his place.
"It's a lovely party, Miss Powler," said
Mr. Harbour in the way of small-talk.
"You must have some champagne," said Sir
Henry. "Here, waiter."
The waiters had reappeared, and were generously
dispensing drinks.
"I really couldn't, Sir Henry."
"Oh, but you must," he insisted.
"This evening is an occasion. Champagne won't do you any harm. As an
indulgence it will do you good. It's only when it becomes a habit that it harms
you."
Violet glanced at Evelyn for help, received none,
and sipped at champagne poured out by Sir Henry himself.
"I hear you've read my daughter's book,"
said Sir Henry. "And like it. I'm glad. But I should have left out bits
here and there if I'd been consulted. Only I wasn't. These modern daughters are
very secretive, Miss Powler. However, now she's married and going to have a
baby I suppose it doesn't matter how modem the book is." And thus he went
on.
Lord Watlington came to the table.
"Good night, Evelyn. Good night, everybody.
I'm off. Just had a telephone message." He grinned, and in ten seconds was
gone. He was the first to leave. He knew how to leave a party.
When the orchestra returned, Sir Henry asked
Violet for another dance.
"You're the finest dancer in this room,"
said he. "And I'm not flattering you."
Violet shook her head. But she probably was the
finest dancer in the room, thanks to her stage study and experience in
connection with the Laundry Amateur Dramatic Society. She would not dance; said
she really must go to bed. The example of Lord Watlington had encouraged her
resolve. Sir Henry, realising that he would fail to cajole her, instantly
resumed the subject of the office-building with Mr. Harbour.
"I must go," Violet repeated to Evelyn.
"You're very tired," he agreed. And
added gallantly: "I'll see you to the lift."
Mr. Harbour shook Violet's hand with warmth, and
Sir Henry absent-mindedly.
The corridor of the private dining-room was empty
and dim and miles long.
"Who put them on to that office-building
idea?" Violet asked.
"Well," said Evelyn. "So far as
we're concerned, you did--via me."
She smiled weakly.
"Yes!" said Evelyn positively.
"Darling!" she said as they strolled up
the corridor. "This really can't go on."
"What?"
"Our engagement being a secret. It's too
trying, and it's certain to come out."
"I quite agree."
"But," Violet continued, "it hasn't
got to come out while I'm here as head-housekeeper. I couldn't face it."
"Yes, you could," said Evelyn. "But
you needn't. Why should you?"
"But what shall you do for someone to take my
place?"
"I neither know nor care," Evelyn
laughed grandly. "It's Cousin's affair, all that is. I'm not the manager
of the Palace."
"Then as soon as I can I'll go back to
"I've got a better plan than that," said
Evelyn the great organiser.
He outlined his plan. He would disclose the secret
to Cousin, who could be trusted to keep it, and trusted to make the necessary
arrangements as to staff-appointments. The Orcham Company had several staffs to
choose from, and a considerable list of applicants for minor posts which would
fall vacant when their present occupants went up in the world. In less than a
month he would be going to
"And," he said, "you could give me
a lot of good advice about those hotels."
"Only when we're by ourselves," Violet
said quickly. "I shouldn't be a housekeeper then, darling."
"No, of course not," he concurred.
"Of course not."
Still, he was just the least bit surprised when he
saw that she intended her future role to be solely that of wife. Then he saw
that he was a simpleton to have been surprised. Even the most earnest of 'them'
threw away their business careers for marriage, and without a pang! But what a
career she would make of marriage! She was serious; she knew what work was. And
he too. She was his sort; he hers. Gracie was not his sort and never would have
been, because she was not serious and did not know what sustained work was. He
had learnt one supreme lesson from the brief, violent affair with Gracie:
namely, that Gracie was not his sort. Yes, Violet was indeed his sort, and as
his mind flitted back over the history of their relations, he saw mystically
that from the first he had been destined for her, and she for him.
"And when we come back to
"Oh! We'll fix that later. Plenty of time.
Heaps of time." The lift was up above. He rang for it. She suddenly kissed
him with the abandonment of exhaustion, clung to him, clutched him, kissed him
again. As if she were saying: "You are all I have in the world now! I
haven't even myself now!"
He watched her ascend away from him in the lift.
Marvellous sensations he had, as he returned slowly to the party in his honour.
Heavenly girl; and so touching in her feminine fatigue! Was it for these
ecstasies that he had climbed to his particular pinnacle? Was Violet, or the
perfecting of luxury hotels throughout
THE END
Copyright © 2002,
The content of this file may be downloaded and used by individuals for private
study but copyright is retained by Shropshire County Library and any others
involved in its creation or production. No part may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission from the publisher in writing.
© http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/etexts/E000279.htm
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ana Isabel De La Torre Gallur
aidelato@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press