Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 18

Sorrell was leaning against one of the white Ionic pillars that supported the bow window when the claret-coloured car drew up outside the Angel Hotel. The car was a two-seater, and in it sat a man wearing a grey suit and a soft grey hat. He was very brown. He beckoned to Sorrell.

"Any rooms here?"

"Yes, sir."

The quality of Sorrell's voice surprised the man, and he showed his surprise by looking at Sorrell for half a second longer than was necessary.

"Right. The car won't be in the way here?"

"No, sir. Would you care to go straight into the garage?"

"Presently," said the man.

He climbed out and stood on the pavement, glancing up at the windows of the hotel. He appeared to be about Sorrell's age, one of those square men, but not too square, with a fresh brown skin, blue eyes, and a firm but human mouth. He moved easily, and you gathered from his steady eyes and his rather measured movements that he was a deliberate person, no great talker, a man with courage, but one who never rushed at life haphazard. There was something about the man that attracted Sorrell, his freshness, his obvious strength, the calm way his eyes looked at you and then gave you a sudden and pleasant smile. Sorrell had known one or two such men in the war. They had made good soldiers.

The man entered the hotel, and Sorrell remained by the car. He liked the colour of it, and the compact brightness of the dash-board, and the neatly covered leather hood. He himself would have liked to possess such a car, but he did not grudge the man in grey the possession of it.

Sorrell heard the pleasant and deliberate voice at his elbow.

"All right. I'll drive in."

From the way the newcomer looked about him in the Angel yard, Sorrell divined his disapproval. Nor did Sorrell approve of the yard.

"No lock ups?"

"No, sir."

"I want an inner tube mending."

"I'll take it round to a garage for you, sir. Luggage in the dicky?"

"Yes."

Sorrell extracted the luggage, a massive leather kit-bag, a suitcase, and an attache case.

"Do you know the number of your room, sir?"

"Fifteen."

The visitor paused at the office window to sign his name in the registration book, while Sorrell carried the luggage upstairs. No. 15 was no better and no worse than the average bedroom at the Angel, and though Sorrell had grown accustomed to the rooms, there were moments when he appreciated their depressing casualness. He unfastened the straps of the kit-bag, and went downstairs, to find the visitor talking to Mrs. Palfrey, and Sorrell came by the impression that it was the woman who had begun the conversation.

He turned to Sorrell.

"Which way?"

"This way, sir. First floor, second room on the left."

The man disappeared up the stairs, and Sorrell glanced at the visitors' book.

"Thomas Roland. London."

The handwriting was like the man, broad and deliberate and without affectation.

Five minutes later Sorrell, who was rearranging the magazines and papers in the lounge, fancied that he heard a bell ringing with aggressive persistency. It was an upstairs bell, and on going to investigate he found Mr. Roland standing outside the door of No 15.

"Isn't there a maid on duty?"

"There should be, sir."

"I have no towels and no soap, and no one has brought me any hot water."

"Sorry, sir."

"And look here–at this."

Sorrell looked, and gave a little lift of the shoulders.

"These confounded wenches–. I'll see to it myself, sir."

He went out on to the landing calling "Maggie–Maggie," but no Maggie materialized, for she was somewhere below at one of the many back doors, and busy with the other sex, so Sorrell went to the chambermaid's closet, and collected towels and hot water, and purloined a new cake of soap from another bedroom.

Mr. Roland was unpacking his kit-bag and had thrown a pair of orange and blue striped pyjamas on the bed.

"Thanks."

That was all he said, but he smiled at Sorrell and gave him one of those quietly observant glances, and Sorrell went below feeling warmed by something pleasant and human and wholesome in the man. He wondered who Thomas Roland was, and what he did.

Meanwhile, Roland had paused in his unpacking, and was sitting on the bed and examining the room as though it interested him. Its deficiencies, its perfunctory slipshodness interested him. He happened to be interested in rooms, and he was a man of detail.

His mental comments followed immediately upon his visual perceptions.

"No wardrobe. Now–where the devil–? Faded green paint–dirty paper–strings of pink roses between black and white lines. One hook off door. Carpet–h'm–I wonder what a vacuum cleaner would fetch out of it. Brass bed, one knob missing. Yellow chest of drawers, one handle missing."

He got up.

"I bet the drawers stick, and that the paper inside them is last year's Daily Mail."

He was right.

His observations ran on.

"Swing mirror plugged into place with a wad of paper. Blind torn. Japanese mats on floor need burning. Slop pail minus a handle. Marble top of wash-hand stand stained. Tooth glass smeary. Over washing-stand advertisement of Jeyes' Fluid. Over mantelpiece, tariff and advertisement of local tradesmen. Sheets need mending. Blankets–yes–just so!"

He resumed his unpacking and his meditations.

"How many of these places have I stayed in during the last month? A dozen–I suppose. And only one decently run place in the dozen. Slovenly holes, especially in these cathedral places. Here's a great opportunity under the noses of our innkeepers, and all they seem to think of is the booze and the 'bar'!"

He put out his boots.

"The cheek of them–too. Give you every sort of slovenliness and inattention, and bad food, and then charge you top prices. Now take this place. Nobody seems to care a damn, except that porter chap. No supervision, no discipline, no conscience."

His sponge-bag was extracted from a brightly polished cavalry mess tin, the two halves of which found receptacles for his sponge, washing gloves, nail-brush and tooth-brush. He glanced at the cracked sponge-basin belonging to the inn.

"No thanks! Obviously–no. Now–if that tow-headed female downstairs did her job properly instead of–. O, well, that's the curse of these places; a lot of soaking fools, and yellow-headed women. But what I never can understand is–why–if people take on a job–they can't do it properly. And yet–not three in ten can. Socialism! What rot!"

He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window into a back yard that contained the rotting relics of an old brougham, a pile of bottles, and a derelict dog-kennel.

"Cheerful prospect! I wonder what that porter fellow is doing here? Queer chap. Takes trouble, but looks ill. A gentleman's voice–and eyes. Does his job."

It was five o'clock, and Mr. Roland went downstairs into the lounge, and rang for the waitress, for he desired tea. He had to ring twice before a girl appeared as though the last thing in the world she was expected to do was to answer a bell.

"Tea, please."

"For one?"

"For one."

She went away, and Mr. Roland waited twenty minutes, and when the tea tray did arrive he noticed that the girl had forgotten to fill the milk jug.

"I take milk with my tea."

She whisked the jug away. Sorrell was tucking letters under the tapes on the green letter-board, and he happened to turn and catch Mr. Roland's eye. A faint, sympathetic and understanding smile seemed to pass between them.

"You haven't forgotten that tube?"

"No, sir. It has been done. I put it in the dicky."

"Did you pay?"

"Yes, sir. Two shillings."

"Thanks."

A two-shilling piece passed from Roland's hand to Sorrell's and again their eyes met and smiled.

Sorrell felt cheered, though he had no great reason for feeling cheered. He went upstairs to No. 15, possessed himself of Mr. Roland's brown shoes, two pairs of them, and cleaned them as they had not been cleaned for a month.