Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace

“Why do you have American bands here?” she enquired in a new tone, as if conversationally to set him at ease after his curt refusal to dance. Yes, she was the ideal companion. He recalled the obstinacies of his dead wife.

“Because they’re the best,” he replied, in relieved, brighter accents. “We’re miles behind them in this country. You see, the dance craze started earlier over there than here. They’re better disciplined, and they have a better rhythm. They’ve taught us a lot. An English player who takes his work seriously will give his head to play next to an American for a month. Rather! Of course we get the best even of the Americans, because we give the best treatment, to say nothing of the best advertisement—not direct advertisement. Oh no! Never! That tall fellow with the saxophone—he earns fifty pounds a week. We give them a sitting-room and dressing-rooms, and a valet, and two porters to carry their instruments about. We even press their clothes for them free of charge. They behave like dukes, and we behave to them as if they were dukes. But we wouldn’t look at ’em if we could find any English band as good, or nearly as good.”

He had spoken with earnestness, for he was very sensitive on the subject of engaging American bands in a London hotel. Italian and French and Swiss managers, chefs, waiters—yes! They needed no defence. But American bands had to be defended.

“Well, I never knew that,” said Gracie, her voice full of understanding and sympathy. “I thought it was a question of fashion, and pleasing American customers.”

“Not in the least!” said Evelyn with fire. “We make fashions here. We don’t follow fashions. And we don’t kowtow to Americans or anybody else. The Palace is the Palace.” He laughed. “Excuse me,” he added, lightly apologetic.

“I like to hear you,” said Gracie, and Evelyn felt that she did like to hear his vehemence. She was a girl of quick comprehension.

Sir Henry returned to his table. Gracie immediately rose.

“Mr. Orcham and I are going to have just one dance, daddy,” she said calmly. “You get on with your trout. Then we shall be level again.” And she looked down at seated Evelyn with an expectant, beseeching, marvellously smiling glance.

“But——”

Evelyn checked himself, mastering his amazement at her wanton duplicity. As for shamelessness! . . . He might have resisted, but for the half-timid supplication in her smile. No! He knew that he could not anyhow have resisted. He was caught. Mixture of contradictions! She was utterly incalculable! He rose in silence, forced a smile in response to hers, and took the hand of the baffling enigma. And no sooner had he taken her hand than he thought: “After all, why shouldn’t I dance on my own floor? It isn’t as if her father wasn’t here.” They embarked upon the sea of the floor, which was very rapidly filled with craft. From time to time in their circumnavigation they passed close by Mr. Eleazar Schenk, who, neglecting his fingers in a tune which they had been playing twice nightly for six or seven months, looked at Evelyn with a glance of condescending and naughty recognition. “I wish that fellow’s contract was over,” thought Evelyn, ignoring the glance.

At first neither he nor Gracie spoke. Then Gracie said:

“Are you doing it on purpose?”

“What?”

“Holding me off?” She put the question with a cordial, delicately appealing upturned smile. No criticism in it. A mere half-diffident suggestion.

“Sorry,” said Evelyn, and drew her body nearer to his, so that they were touching, so that in the steps his foot was between her feet.

“You are a fibster,” she said, with the same upturned smile. “You dance beautifully.”

“I don’t know any steps except this one,” Evelyn muttered. “It’s too monotonous for you.”

“I’m loving it,” said she, and for a moment shut her eyes, as if to exclude all sensations save those of the music and of being in motion with him, enclosed in his arm.

He could feel her legs against his, her body against his, her back against his right hand, and the clasp of her fingers upon his left hand. But there was nothing of Volivia in her contacts, only a delectable, yielding innocence. Or so it appeared to him. He desired not to enjoy the dance, but he was enjoying it. He would have been resentful of her trickery, but he could not summon resentment. He thought: “Is it possible that she has taken a fancy to me? If not, what can be the explanation of her game?” Then he privately withdrew the word ‘game.’ She was not a flirt, or, if a flirt, she had lifted flirtation to the plane of genius. He was intensely flattered, for, though she had trapped and annoyed him, he admired her tremendously. He admitted to himself that she was the most surprising, wondrous creature he had ever encountered. She was unique. A man cannot be more flattered than by the confiding, devotional acquiescence of a beautiful and stylish younger woman. Yes, her mien was devotional. And all the while he could feel the firmness of her legs under the filmy frock. His emotion was well hidden, but it surpassed anything in his experience.

A voice said behind him:

“Hello, darling!”

“Hello, Nancy darling,” said Gracie.

The much-pictured Nancy Penkethman, dancing with one of the Cheddar brothers. The two couples sailed almost side by side.

“When am I going to see you, darling?” asked Nancy. “I’m perishing to hear all about New York.”

Evelyn could feel upon him the inquisitive peerings of Nancy and one of the Cheddar brothers.

“What’s wrong with to-night, darling?” said Gracie. “Up in my rooms. I’m staying here. So’s father. Eleven-thirty, say. Bring the others along. We’ll have a time.”

“The Lord Harry won’t come. He’s got a political date with the P.M.”

“Never mind. Bring whoever’ll come.”

The two couples separated in diverging curves. (Evelyn’s manœuvre.)

The Big Oak band ceased. Dancers clapped, Gracie hesitated. Evelyn loosed his partner. He had been chilled by the fact that Gracie was capable of being wakened out of the ecstasy of the dance by the sight of a friend, and of being at once sufficiently prosaic to arrange a meeting.

“Thank you very much,” he said conventionally.

“I loved it,” Gracie repeated.

“Good band, eh?” Sir Henry greeted them loudly. He had disposed of his trout, and grouse was being served.

“The best,” said Evelyn.

“I say, daddy. Did you order a sweet?”

“No,” Sir Henry replied. “I ordered nothing, and I never do order a sweet.”

“But I want one,” said Gracie.

“Well, have one. The Imperial Palace is yours.”

“What about a soufflé?”

“That will take twenty to twenty-five minutes,” Evelyn put in.

“What does that matter, sweetie?” (‘Sweetie!’ However, Evelyn knew that in Gracie’s universe the word had no more significance than ‘darling’; and he let it slip away.) “And while we’re waiting couldn’t we just go and see the kitchens? I’ve never seen a hotel kitchen, and I’m crazy about hotels now. ‘Crazy’! Pardon!” Gracie laughed, placing her hand on her mouth. “Reminiscence of New York, of course.”

“ ‘Crazy about hotels now!’ ” Evelyn repeated in his mind.

“That’s not a bad notion,” said Sir Henry, obviously attracted by the notion.

Evelyn said that he would have the greatest pleasure in showing them the kitchens. One of his fibs.

I

The kitchens of the Imperial Palace restaurant were on the same floor as the restaurant itself, and immediately adjoining it. You passed through an open door, hidden like a guilty secret from all the dining-tables, then up a very short corridor, and at one step you were in another and a different world: a super-heated world of steel glistening and dull, and bare wood, and food in mass raw and cooked, and bustle, and hurrying to and fro, and running to and fro, and calling and even raucous shouting in French and Italian: a world of frenzied industry, whose denizens had leisure and inclination for neither the measured eloquence nor the discreet deferential murmuring nor the correct and starched apparelling of the priests and acolytes of the restaurant. A world of racket, which racket, reverberating among metals and earthenware, rose to the low ceilings and was bounced down again on to the low tables and up again and down again. A world without end, a vista of kitchens one behind the other, beyond the range of vision. The denizens were all clad in white, or what had been white that morning, and wore high white caps, with sometimes a soiled towel for kerchief loosely folded round the neck; professional attire, of which none would have permitted himself to be deprived.