Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace

The drama of Mr. Purkin’s deep but restrained indignation genuinely affected Evelyn. It seemed to produce vibrations in the physical atmosphere of the office.

“What a man!” thought Evelyn appreciatively. “Such loyalty to the I.P.H.L. is priceless. Of course his sense of proportion’s a bit askew; but you can’t have everything.” He said aloud gently: “Why did this Rose walk out?”

“Ah!” replied Mr. Purkin. “I will tell you, sir.” He went to a file-cabinet, and chose a card from two or three hundred cards, and offered it to Evelyn. “That’s why she walked out.”

On the card was a chart of the wicked girl’s mouth, of her upper jaw and her lower jaw. “Look at it, Mr. Orcham. You see the number of bad teeth on it. I ordered her the dentist. She made an excuse twice—something about her mother’s wishes; I’m certain it wasn’t the father. As you know better than anyone, every girl who’s engaged by me here has to promise she’ll allow us to keep her in good health, mother or no mother. On that afternoon I told her I’d made an appointment for her with the dentist for the next morning, and that she positively must keep it. I spoke very quietly. Well, as soon as my back is turned, out of this Laundry she walks! Without notice! Of course it was the staff-manageress’s business to see to it. But as she had failed twice, I had to take the matter up myself. No alternative. Discipline is discipline. And just look at the charts of that mouth!”

“Quite!” said Evelyn. He was laughing, but not visibly. “Quite!”

“The truth is,” Mr. Purkin continued, “there would have been no bother—I’m sure of it—if only I’d had a little more moral support.”

At this point Mr. Purkin pulled out his cigarette-case and actually offered it to the panjandrum. Probably no other member of the Palace staff, no matter how exalted, with the possible exception of Mr. Cousin, would have ventured upon such a familiarity with Evelyn. But Mr. Purkin was exceedingly if secretly perturbed, and the offering of a cigarette to the great man was his way of trying to conceal his perturbation; it was also a way of demonstrating the Purkinian conviction that he was as good as anybody—even Evelyn.

“Thanks,” said Evelyn, taking a cigarette, not because he did not fear Mr. Purkin’s cigarettes, but because he sympathetically understood the manager’s motive—or the first part of it. “You mean support from the staff-manageress?”

“I mean Miss—er,” muttered Mr. Purkin, and he blushed. He would have given a vast sum not to blush; but he blushed, this pawky, self-confident, disciplinary Midlander. He had opened his mouth with the intention of boldly saying Miss Violet Powler, the staff-manageress’s name; but his organs of speech, basely betraying him, refused their office. A few seconds of restraint ensued.

“Sex!” thought Evelyn. “Sex! Here it is again.”

He did not object to sex as a factor in the problems of a great organism. He rather liked it. And he knew that anyhow it was and must be a factor ever recurring in those problems. He had heard, several months earlier, that an ‘affair’ was afoot between Mr. Purkin and Violet Powler. How did these rumours get abroad? He could not say. Nobody could say. In the present case a laundry-girl might have seen a gesture or a glance, or caught a tone—nothing, less than nothing—as the manager and the staff-manageress passed together through the busy rooms. The laundry-girl might have mentioned it slyly to another laundry-girl. The rumour is born. The rumour spreads with the rapidity of fire, or of an odour, or of influenza. It rises from stratum to stratum of the social structure. Finally it reaches the august ear of Evelyn himself. For it could not be lost; it could not die; and it could not cease to rise till it could rise no higher.

Evelyn had gathered that the affair was a subject for merriment, that people regarded as comic the idea of amorous tenderness between the manager and the staff-manageress of the Laundry. In his own mind he did not accept this view. To him there was something formidable, marvellous, and indeed beautiful in the mystic spectacle of Aphrodite springing from the hot dampness of the Laundry and lodging herself in the disciplinary soul of Cyril Purkin. Nor did he foresee harm to the organism in the marriage of Cyril and Violet.

“I wouldn’t say one word against her,” said Mr. Purkin, exerting all his considerable powers of self-control. “I chose her out of scores, and probably a better woman for the job of staff-manageress couldn’t be found. But in this matter—and in one or two others similar—I’m bound to admit I’ve been a bit disappointed. Discipline is the foundation of everything here, and if it isn’t enforced, where are you? I’m bound to say I don’t quite see . . . She’s inclined to be very set in her views.” He lifted his eyebrows, implying imminent calamity.

“Curse this sex!” thought Evelyn. “She’s refused him. Or they’ve had a row. Or something else has happened. He wants her to go. He’ll make her go. He can’t bear her here. She’s on his nerves. But he’s still in love with her, even if he doesn’t know it. What a complication! How the devil can you handle it? Curse this sex!”

But he was moved by the sudden disclosure of Mr. Purkin’s emotion, and he admired Mr. Purkin’s mastery of it. He had never felt more esteem for the man than just then.

Mr. Purkin lit both cigarettes, and the pair talked, without too closely gripping the thorns of the situation.

“Well,” said Evelyn at length gently. “We’d better leave things for a while. If I do get a chance perhaps I might have a chat with Miss Powler——”

“Well, Mr. Orcham, if anybody can do anything you can.” But Mr. Purkin’s accents gave a clue to his private opinion that not even Mr. Orcham could do anything.

Soon afterwards Evelyn left, saying that he would ‘see.’ For the moment he could not ‘see.’ As he walked away, the last batch of girls was quitting the garden. He got into his car.

“Home.”

Brench touched his hat.

“Wait,” said Evelyn suddenly, and descended from the car.

II

He had changed his mind. Why postpone the interview with Violet Powler? Was he afraid of bringing the trouble to the stage of a crisis? He was not.

He re-entered the buildings by the ‘A’ gates, which admitted vans loaded with soiled linen. The linen, having passed through the Laundry and become clean, was basketed and piled into vans which drove out through the ‘B’ gates. He wandered alone, apparently aimless, in the warm, humid, pale departments, until he recognised the door lettered “Staff-manageress.” It was half open.

Without touching it he glanced in. Miss Violet Powler sat facing the window, her back to the door. She was talking to a young, tall woman. A small table separated them, and on this table lay a finished shirt and some coloured threads.

“But, Lilian,” Miss Powler was saying, “you know well enough that a red thread means starched; you know that no articles from No. 291 have to be starched, and yet you put a red thread into this one. Why? There must be some explanation, and I want you to tell me what it is.” Her tone was soothing, persuasive.

“But, miss,” said the woman, holding up a red thread, “this isn’t a red thread—it’s green—not starched.”

“That’s a green thread?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Take it to the window and look at it.” The woman obeyed.

“Yes, miss. It’s green all right,” said she, turning her head and confidently smiling.

Miss Powler paused, and then she began to laugh.

“Very well. Never mind, Lilian. You come and see me before you start work to-morrow, will you?”

Lilian, puzzled, left the room, and Evelyn stood aside for her to pass out.