Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 31

There followed a winter of strenuous preparation.

The tourist traffic upon the road had dwindled to a very casual stream, and the Pelican,–during the process of putting on a new plumage, was glad of the respite. As Sorrell had foreseen, Mr. Roland was laying jealous hands upon the Georgian stables and joining them to the main building, and the transformation gave him ten more bedrooms and accommodation for the staff. A new garage was being built, and two tennis courts and a croquet lawn were to be laid out in the little paddock.

Roland had his own particular ideas. One of his first measures was to eliminate the public bar, and to add the space thus gained to the lounge. He decreed that commercial travellers–as such–were not to be accommodated, and the old commercial room became the card and smoking room. The whole place was to be redecorated, and much of it refurnished and recarpeted, and the various colour schemes were of Roland's own planning. He believed in any number of comfortable chairs, and an atmosphere of rich and pleasant simplicity. The china was to be of a plain white biscuit with a dark blue and gold border. The bedrooms were black, white and orange, or white and cerise. He used soft blues and greens with touches of purple and old rose in the living-rooms. All ugly and wasteful furniture was got rid of. Two new bathrooms were installed, and a small library arranged on one side of the hotel office.

One of Roland's most practical innovations was his attitude towards the "staff." He treated the principal members as fellow workers; he challenged their co-operation, and stimulated their keenness. There were queer, patriarchal little meetings in his sitting-room– "My Soviet" he called it laughingly. The committee consisted of Mrs. Marks the housekeeper, Fanny Garland the head waitress, Mrs. Lovibond the cook, Sorrell, and Bowden the gardener. To them Mr. Roland was a figure of encouraging and deliberate frankness. "This is our show. I take it that we are all keen on making a success of our show. We are all going to benefit by it. Suggestions. That's what I want from you. Anything to improve the efficiency or the comfort, or to wash out unnecessary work. My idea is to make the Pelican the most famous roadside inn on the south of the Thames. 'Whereto stay?' 'Why,–the Pelican at Winstonbury. No other place to touch it'."

Within a month he had the whole staff in his pocket. He had extraordinary powers of persuasion; it was the pull of his personality,–his air of calm and deliberate kindness, his assuming the other person to be as interested and as efficient as he was. He never fussed. He had one of those peculiarly pleasant and consoling voices.

The women ran about for him like happy slaves. He treated them all as though they were gentlewomen, and if they did not say it to each other they thought him a very great gentleman.

Mrs. Marks, that little dark woman, silently gliding everywhere, would look at him with the eyes of an intelligent little dog.

Fanny Garland, cheery and big and blonde, spread an atmosphere of smiling efficiency, using a brisk and philosophical tongue.

"A dirty fork's no use to anybody. Doesn't it make you feel all nice inside to see twenty white and glittering tables all laid and to know that there isn't a spot to be ashamed of anywhere? If the job's worth doing–! Yes, and think of the tips, my dears!"

Bowden the gardener, rather a surly person, thawed gradually like the soil on a sunny morning after a frost. He found that Roland was providing him with a strong lad upon whom he could exercise a tongue and a passion for dour thoroughness.

"The idea is, Bowden, that we should be self-supporting as to vegetables."

"We ain't got the ground, sir."

"Well,–you shall have it. I am going to have the market value of all the vegetables sent in–checked. And you will get a percentage on results."

And Bowden's broad and rather Simian back was bent urgently over his spade.

To Sorrell those winter months were full of a steady encouragement. He had good food and a clean bed; he was not overworked; and Kit was happy with Mrs. Garland, and not too unhappy at the town school. Moreover, his job interested him; he was working for a man who was keen on detail and who appreciated thoroughness. Also, the human relationship seemed to matter more and more, and Thomas Roland and his second porter reached a pleasant and solid understanding. Roland talked to Sorrell more than he talked to any of the others, and always it seemed to Sorrell that their words went below the surface into the human realities beneath.

"After all," as Roland said, "a man must have a job, and it is the job that matters. Not so much what it is–but how a man does it. That's how it strikes me."

He made Sorrell feel that he respected him and the work he did.

"An objective, sir."

"Of course. The nice people who want to flatten out all the social hills and bring us all down to a sort of board-school playground! No good."

The work went on, the internal economy of the Pelican being so arranged that the casual few upon the road could be accommodated while the alterations were being carried out.

Roland was spending a great deal of money, and Sorrell appreciated the effect that was being produced. Those sumptuously pleasant rooms, the great chairs and richly coloured rugs, the clean paint and paper, those rows of pleasant bedrooms all so fresh and cosy, the sleekness of the garden, the beautiful cleanness of the freshly appointed kitchen, the bathrooms and pantries–white tiled and white enamelled, the linen, the table silver, the hundred and one nice details!

But was the Pelican going to pay? Had not Roland the musician and artist overwhelmed Roland the hotel keeper?

The problem worried Sorrell not a little. He had begun to identify himself so thoroughly with the Pelican and all that the Pelican stood for–.

He was surprised when Thomas Roland showed him that he had divined his anxiety.

"You think I am overdoing it?"

"I don't know, sir."

For Roland had found Sorrell economizing coal and electric current. He would go about switching off unnecessary lights.

"I am all in on this adventure. Either we touch port–or we founder. I am going to give people the best–the best I have in me. I wouldn't give them shoddy music–. The pride of the craftsman."

Sorrell stood looking at the fire upon which he had been carefully banking a scoopful of "ovoids." His small but intelligent head was bent, and its darkness caught the firelight. His seriousness was a friend's tribute.

"One always likes to believe, sir, that if we give the best that is in us–."

"I do believe it–. After all–it should matter to us most. If the best doesn't pay, it is not our fault."

"All people are not as generous, sir."

"I'm not generous, man. The fact is, I can't bring myself to do a thing meanly. Even the fitting up and the running of an hotel–. Still, I appreciate it–."

Their eyes met.

"Scientific fire building, Stephen!"

He smiled.

"Do you do it because you have a conscience?"

"Partly. There's another reason."

"I think I know it. You and I are mixed up together–somehow, heart and pocket. Well,–I would not have it otherwise."