Читать книгу Imperial Palace - Arnold Bennett - Страница 14

I

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 8.20 a.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.