Читать книгу Imperial Palace - Arnold Bennett - Страница 9

II

At Ludgate Circus, a white-armed policeman was directing traffic under electric lamps just as in daylight.

“How funny!” she said, swinging round to the left so acutely that Evelyn’s shoulder touched hers.

In no time they would reach their destination. For this reason and no other he regretted the high speed. The fresh wind that precedes the dawn invigorated and sharpened all his senses. He recalled Dr. Johnson’s remark that he would be content to spend his life driving in a postchaise with a pretty woman. But the pretty woman would not have been driving. This girl was driving. She profoundly knew the job. Evelyn always had a special admiration for anybody who profoundly knew the job. She even knew the streets of commercial and industrial London. Before he was aware of it, the oddest thoughts shot through his mind.

“Her father might object. But I could handle her father. Besides—what a girl! Lovely, and can do something! No one who drives like her could possibly not have the stuff in her. I’ve never met anybody like her. She likes me. No nonsense about her! What a voice! Her voice is enough. It’s like a blooming orchestra, soft and soothing, but so. . . . Here! What’s this? What’s all this. It isn’t an hour since I met her. I’m the wildest idiot ever born. Marriage? Never. A mistress? Impossible. Neither she nor any other woman. The head of a ‘show,’ as she calls it, like mine with a mistress!”

He laughed inwardly, awaking out of a dream. And as he awoke he heard her beautiful voice saying, while her eyes stared straight ahead:

“What I admire in you is that you don’t act. I know you must be a pretty biggish sort of a man. Well, father’s pretty big—at least I’m always being told so—but father can’t help acting the big man, acting what he is. He’s always feeling what he is. You’re big and so you must know you’re big; but you just let it alone. It doesn’t worry you into acting the part. I know. I’ve seen lots of big men.”

“Oh!” murmured Evelyn, cautious, non-committal, and short of the right words. But he was thinking rapidly again: “And she hadn’t met me an hour ago! What a girl! No girl ever said anything as extraordinary as what she’s just said. And it’s true, what she says. Didn’t I see it in her father? I was afraid I might have seemed boastful, the way I talked about me and my ’show.’ But apparently she didn’t misunderstand me. Most girls would have misunderstood. Really she is a bit out of the ordinary.”

Smithfield Markets with their enclosed lighted avenues shone out twinkling in the near distance, on the other side of a large, dark, irregular open space of ground. Gracie glanced to right and left, decided where she would draw up, and, describing a long, evenly sustained curve, drew up in a quiet corner, slow, slower, slowest—motion expiring without a jar into immobility. She clicked the door and jumped down with not a trace of fatigue after a bedless night nearly ended. Her tongue said nothing, but her demeanour said: “And that’s that! That’s how I do it!”

“Well,” remarked Evelyn, still in the car. “You said something about me. I’ll say something about you. You can drive a car.”

Gracie answered: “I don’t drive any more.”

“What do you mean—you don’t drive any more?”

“I mean race-track driving. I’ve given it up. This isn’t driving.”

“Had an accident?”

“An accident? No! I’ve never touched a thing in my life. But I might have done. I thought it wasn’t good enough—the risk. So I gave it up. I thought I might as well keep the slate clean.” She smiled ingenuously, smoothing her cloak.

“And what a slate! What a nerve to retire like that!” Evelyn reflected, and said aloud: “You’re amazing!” He had again the sensation of the romantic quality of life. He was uplifted high.

“So here we are,” said Gracie, suddenly matter-of-fact.

A policeman strolled into the vicinity.

“Can I leave my car here, officer?” she questioned him briskly, authoritatively.

The policeman paused, peering at her in the dying night.

“Yes, miss.”

“It’ll be quite safe?”

“I’ll keep an eye on it, miss.”

“Thank you.”

Evelyn, accustomed to take charge of all interviews, parleys, and pow-wows, had to be a silent spectator. As he led her into the Market, he trembled at the prospect of the excitement, secret and overt, which her appearance would cause there.