Читать книгу Imperial Palace - Arnold Bennett - Страница 37

II

“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 8 a.m. only two waiters with one valet and one chambermaid were on duty for all the hotel, and they ranged from floor to floor according to demand. Among them they contrived to make good the quiet boast of the Palace that hot and cold dishes and cold and hot drinks could be served in any apartment at any hour of the night; for the grill-room kitchens, unlike the restaurant kitchens, were open all night as well as all day. The sole difference between night and day on the Floors was that in the night, instead of ringing for a waiter, guests had to telephone their orders to the central telephone office, which transmitted them.

Evelyn minutely inspected and tested the impeccably tidy service-room: the telephone to the central switchboard, the telephone 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 nightdress—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 hatstand. 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 that 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.