Читать книгу Imperial Palace - Arnold Bennett - Страница 29

I

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.