Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 4

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The two principal public rooms of the Splendide were the lounge and the restaurant. They lay side by side, separated by a wall of glass, and they were both vast and both ultra-or super-gorgeous. Every square foot of their walls and ceilings was decorated with the last extreme of ornateness in either oils, fresco, mosaic, porphyry, gilt, or bronze. On the ceiling alone, of the lounge, were depicted, in various mediums, over seventy slim and beautiful young women in a high state of physical development and chiefly in the fashion of Eden, perilously tasting the dubious society of thirty or forty fauns and satyrs whose moral code seemed to illustrate the joyous effrontery of a past age and who had no preoccupations about rates, taxes, bad weather, or class-warfare. The colours of this ideal world were rich, fresh, and brilliant, for it was only in the previous year that the designers had finished spending two-million lire in the creation of the Splendide: which was meant to respond, and indeed did respond, to the secret aspirations of the élite of Cincinnati, Leeds, Buenos Ayres, Philadelphia, Bath and Boston (Mass).

From the lounge, through the gilded crystal partition, could be seen the equally opulent restaurant, full of tables richly set with napery, cutlery, glass and flowers, and perambulated by many restless waiters. And not one diner at any of the tables, though the hour was after half-past eight!

While the forlorn restaurant held waiters but no guests, the lounge held guests but no waiters. Twenty-three guests were congregated together in the middle of the huge parqueted floor upon which, on normal evenings, they were accustomed to dance. A small number for so large an hotel; but the season had scarcely started; moreover, the Splendide much depended for its customers upon the arrival and departure of Transatlantic and Transmediterranean steamers, and no important boat had arrived or departed now for several days. The present guests were chiefly not mere migrants but steady supporters of the hotel and the city, whose purpose was to stay, and see, and leave quantities of good money behind them. Of the twenty-three, fifteen were American, five English, and the rest of doubtful origin; seventeen were women and the rest men. Their anxious and perturbed demeanour was in dismal contrast with that of the gaudy, carefree inhabitants of the ceiling-kingdom overhead.

Alone among them a tall, dark, massive, romantic gentleman of forty years or so seemed to be enjoying life. He was fat, and it might have been said that the pores of his stretched skin, being open, exuded gaiety, and that gaiety escaped frothing from his lips. As, lightly, with little mincing steps of his small toes, he moved about gesticulating and chatting with an inner group of ladies, he had the air of being continuously animated by a private and particular zest of his own. His manner was easy and affable to the point of patronage, for he knew that he was adored. Suddenly this gentleman noticed afar off, in one of the arched entrances to the great lounge, a solitary hesitant individual in a tweed suit.

“Ha!” exclaimed the gentleman of zest. “Ha!” he called out, more loudly, smiling as it were secretly to himself.

And all the company turned and gazed at the individual under the arch, inimically and yet with respect. His tweed suit, exhibited at such an hour in such a place as the lounge of the Splendide, of course offended the sense of propriety of every swallow-tail, dinner-jacket and evening frock on the floor. Also, the company beheld a man who, during the fortnight of his mysterious stay in the hotel, had systematically, by the blank repudiating look on his superior face, discouraged the advances of those visitors who liked to be sociable and who resented a repudiating look. The man, indeed, had not exchanged a word with a single soul in the hotel, servants excepted. Why was he in the hotel at all? He seemed never to indulge in any of the usual and proper sight-seeing excursions. Who was he? Nobody knew anything about him beyond his name. What justification had he for being so stand-offish? ... Nevertheless the company had respect for the man, if only because he was so strictly loyal to the dying British tradition of keeping oneself to oneself. And further, the company somewhat pitied him for the shyness and diffidence which obviously were mingled with his amazing self-complacency.

The man thus criticized was Septimius, who had been to the managerial offices and found them deserted. The gaze of the crowd certainly incommoded him and made him wish for the gift of invisibility. Like most persons, however, Septimius had not one mind but quite a number of minds. And while in one of his minds he felt abashed, in another of his minds he was saying: “What an ignorant lot they are. They don’t guess that I once stroked Cambridge. They don’t guess that I was once called to the Bar. They haven’t a suspicion in their silly heads that I am the Sutherland, Septimius Sutherland, who abandoned the bar for finance and became something of a power in the City and richer and more important than anybody else in this hotel, I lay. Probably they’ve never heard of Septimius Sutherland. It hasn’t occurred to them that I’m here on what’s called ‘big business’—indeed the biggest, and that I’ve been taking risks that would frighten the boldest of ’em. And won! And won! Well, it amuses me—their ignorance does. And it amuses me to look a bit bashful and awkward. What do I care, really? Fact is, I rather like being taken for a nobody by nobodies.”

And still another of his minds held the thought: “I may be the great Septimius Sutherland, but I am also a perfect ass! It’s a holy nuisance to be self-conscious like this.”

He kept a tactical silence.

“You know what’s happened, of course?” the gentleman of zest proceeded.

“I do not,” Mr. Sutherland replied, bland, amiable, and now rather less self-conscious under the bombarding stares. After all, he was not unaccustomed to handling shareholders of limited companies at annual meetings.

Because he did not care to talk across a great empty space of floor he unwillingly advanced towards the crowd in the centre of the lounge. The gentleman of zest went to meet him. Mr. Sutherland had on previous occasions taken this individual for a foreigner, but his English was impeccably that of Kensington.

“A strike in the kitchens!” explained the gentleman of zest, and his zest seemed to ooze forth from him. Apparently he saw in the situation a rich and juicy humour that he thought nobody else could see. He paused and looked humorously at the floor, as if sharing the joke with the parquetry. Then: “Or perhaps not a strike, because strikes are forbidden by law in this country. But at any rate an omission to work. Some trouble with the management. Plenty of cold food in the kitchens, but the waiters will not serve it. Sympathetic inaction no doubt. Hence we are all hungry, with no prospect of a dinner. I am Count Veruda.”

Septimius felt a great relief. He had been vaguely suspecting, upstairs, some kind of a machination against himself, a powerful man whom unprincipled opponents might find it convenient to put away. He now saw that the machination, if any, was directed against all the guests equally. Moreover, the performance of the incomprehensible floor-waiter upstairs stood explained. Septimius pleasantly savoured the situation.

“I see,” said Septimius, almost at ease. “Where is the manager?”

“Ha!” said Count Veruda. “The manager has prudently disappeared.”

“I see,” Septimius repeated, quite at ease. “Now supposing we went into the kitchens and fetched this food for ourselves?” Already he had began to scheme out the organization of such a raid.

“I am told by the maître d’hôtel, who is entirely on our side, that that might cause really serious complications.”

“I see,” said Septimius, for the third time. “But there are restaurants in the city.”

“Not a good one. And we could hardly go in a body to any one restaurant. We should burst it. And as for going separately, many single ladies would not care to venture on such a course—in a town like this.” The Count smiled within and without, and his body seemed to vibrate with rich fun.

“There are other hotels.”

“If we went to another hotel, the fact would be instantly known, and the kitchen staff there might adopt the same tactics as the kitchen staff here. Solidarity! Solidarity!” The Count had completed his case very happily.

Mr. Sutherland had frequently noticed the word ‘solidarity’ in newspaper accounts of altercations between labour and capital, and now for the first time really understood its significance. He glanced around at the stricken faces of the well-dressed, well-fed, but hungry crowd. In every face he saw precisely what he was beginning to feel in his own heart, namely, the gradual, terrible, disturbed realization of the utter instability and insecurity of society. All had been well, and now all was ill. The members of the groups, and Septimius, had been nurtured in the beautiful, convenient theory that anything could be had by ringing bells and settling bills. They did naught for themselves, and could do naught for themselves, and were somehow proud of their helplessness. With them, to ask was to have, and to pay was the solution of all difficulties. And now they were hungry and thirsty; they were in the grip of the most powerful of human passions; and no amount of bell-ringing and bill-paying could procure their satisfaction. No wonder they were perturbed. The situation was horrible. It seemed to announce blood in the streets and the downfall of kingdoms and of the entire social order.

“But,” said Count Veruda, triumphant in his sense of the dramatic. “I have suggested a remedy. My yacht, the Vanguard, has come into harbour this afternoon. I invite everybody to dinner on board. If I may say so, I think I can offer as good a dinner as could be had in any hotel in the town, if not a better ... And the Bay of Naples! ... By moonlight!”

This was the Count’s grand climax.

“You are most hospitable,” said Mr. Sutherland blandly.

“Not at all,” the Count deprecatingly protested, without, however, any attempt to be convincing. “But there are ladies who hesitate. Perhaps naturally!” The Count shared his polite amusement with the parqueted floor. “I hope I may count on you, Mr.——?”

“Sutherland.”

“Mr. Sutherland, to give me your support.”

“Count,” called a masculine old lady imperiously, at this important juncture.

Count Veruda left Mr. Sutherland and humorously shot backward to the old lady.

A dark, youngish and stylish woman thereupon came up to Mr. Sutherland, who bowed to her smile.

“I don’t think he’s what we should call a real Count,” murmured the dark young woman, confidentially, and with a certain assurance of manner. “Count of the Holy Roman Empire, or something like that. Official of the Papal Court. Probably when he’s on duty he wears a uniform designed by Michael Angelo. He imagines he’s a humorist, but he’s funnier even than he thinks he is. However, even if he isn’t a real Count, he has a real yacht, because I’ve seen it, and it’s like a liner, and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t oblige him by eating his dinner. But, of course, no unattached woman will go unless all the others go, too.”

“Of course not,” Mr. Sutherland concurred very calmly, though he was somewhat disturbed and overset by the young woman’s extraordinary directness of approach. He comprehended, however, that the strike had altered everything.

He definitely and immediately liked her. She was downright, humorous, and attractive, if not strikingly beautiful. She was young, but not too young; virginal, but not too virginal. She was not over-jewelled. The shingling of her hair fascinated him, and her tone flattered him. He found pleasure in her nearness to him. She was the finest creature in the lounge. “I might sit next to her at the dinner,” he thought adventurously. He was the very pattern of propriety. He had a wife and grown-up daughters; but in that moment he suddenly grew younger than his wife, younger, even, than his daughters; and his one regret was that he had to catch the midnight train. The cynic says that all women are alike; it would be still more true to say that all men are alike, and that no man is old until he is dead.

“Then you agree?” said she.

Septimius answered with due gravity.

“I agree. I think we might quite properly accept the Count’s invitation. After all, he is very generous.”

“He may be an adventurer,” said the young woman.

“Quite.”

Count Veruda returned to Mr. Sutherland.

“Well, Mr. Sutherland?”

“I am with you, Count,” said Septimius gaily, in a loud voice that all might hear.

“Hurrah!” exclaimed the dark young woman under her breath.

The whole company signified approval, and the affair was decided. Mr. Sutherland’s reputation in the hotel for keeping himself to himself, together with his unmistakable air of prudent respectability, had carried the waverers.