Читать книгу Imperial Palace - Arnold Bennett - Страница 5

II

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 said it 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 liftman 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.