Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace

“As to that,” said Evelyn, “I’ll tell you my motto: Plain, and as perfect as you can get it. I hope it hasn’t been too plain.”

“Couldn’t be,” said Sir Henry tersely. No trace in him of the gourmand whom Evelyn had observed at the dinner in the restaurant.

The meal was finished in less than half an hour—before they had passed beyond small-talk about such trifles as the Stock Exchange, international politics, protection; on all of which, as it seemed to Evelyn, Sir Henry spoke sound, impartial, unsentimental sense. In short, they agreed. Sir Henry tasted port, refused cognac, and drank coffee. Oldham handed Partaga cigars, and, the table having been cleared of all but finger-bowls, ashtrays and cigars, bowed interrogatively, got a nod from Evelyn, and disappeared, closing the door without a sound.

II

“Shall we sit by the fire?” Evelyn suggested, after a pause, and said to himself: “It’s getting time he began.”

They sat in easy-chairs on opposite sides of the hearth, with a smoker’s table between them.

“This is very pleasant,” thought Evelyn; but he felt like an infantryman five minutes before zero-hour. He was of course firmly decided that Sir Henry, and not himself, should be the first to mention business. Sir Henry seemed to be absorbed in the delight of his cigar. He puffed it vigorously, gazed at it as if in ecstasy, and puffed it again. Tranquillity, the hush before wild weather, thought Evelyn.

“I saw from the departure list that Miss Gracie has left us,” said Evelyn, feeling the host’s duty to keep conversation alive.

“Yes,” said Sir Henry, suddenly vivacious. “Yesterday morning. Gone to Paris with Lady Devizes and one of the Cheddars. Decided it all in a minute, as they do.” He gave a short, dry laugh. “Woke me up to tell me she was off. Girls are a problem,” he added confidentially. “Only thing to do is to leave them alone. At least that’s my conclusion. Most of them are fools, if you ask me. But Gracie isn’t. How did she strike you, Orcham?”

“Well,” said Evelyn, careful to appear detached and judicial. “I hardly know her. But I should say she’s about as far from being a fool as any young woman I ever met. I certainly never met one more intelligent.”

Sir Henry leaned forward: “Quite. But do we want a lot of intelligence in a woman?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose we do. Yes, you’re right, we do. . . . We do.” Sir Henry looked at the fire.

“And as for beauty——” Evelyn stopped.

“You know,” said Sir Henry eagerly. “I’m her father and all that. But Gracie really is extraordinary.”

“I can believe it.”

“She’s given up motor-racing. Perhaps she was right. But it would have been just the same if she hadn’t been right. She’s taken to literature now. Writes. Naturally she wouldn’t show me anything. Reads nothing but Shakspere and the Bible. Very strong on the Psalms. You’d never guess what she thinks is the finest thing in the Bible. She quotes it to me. ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ Forty-sixth Psalm.” Sir Henry laughed nervously. “I’m dashed if I understand just what it means, but you know, it sticks in your mind. Mystical, I reckon.” He sniggered. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since. What does it mean? It means something to her. I expect you think I’m making a noise like a father.”

The Biblical phrase fell into Evelyn’s mind like a lighted torch into a heap of resinous wood. Flames burst forth. The whole heap was on fire. He knew, or rather fancied he knew, what the phrase meant. And whatever it meant, it was the most remarkable sign of Gracie’s extraordinariness that had yet been disclosed to him.

“Perhaps,” he said, meditative. “Perhaps we aren’t still enough. Never occurred to me before, but perhaps we aren’t.” He was astonished at the effect of the phrase on him. He too, after all, did not surely know what the phrase meant, but he felt what it meant, and the spiritual emotion which it aroused in him put the whole of his mind—his ideals, his aims, his principles, his prejudices—into a strange and frightening disorder. Saul, smitten on the way to Damascus! The talk had taken an odd, a disconcerting turn. And through that extraordinary girl with her visits to Smithfield before dawn and her 2 a.m. parties and her flight to Paris—all equally impulsive, improvised and unforeseeable even by herself!

“Well, well!” Sir Henry murmured, as if to indicate that that was that, and no use worrying your head about it! And Evelyn saw that the subject could not profitably be pursued further. Moreover he had a strong instinctive desire not to discuss it. He preferred to let the phrase burn undisturbed in his mind. But, he thought, how could even a Sir Henry switch off from it abruptly to business? Business—after that mighty and menacing command!

In a new, casual tone Sir Henry said: “I met a friend of mine here yesterday morning.”

“Oh?”

“When I say ‘friend’ I mean I know her. A girl named Violet Powler.”

“Yes,” said Evelyn. “I noticed you talking to her in the hall. She’s staff-manageress in my Laundry.”

“So she told me.”

“I’m thinking of taking her on here. What about her?”

“Oh! Nothing. Only she’s a first-rater, Violet is.”

“She said she’d been acting for a time as your housekeeper at—I forget where. Claygate, did she say?”

“Yes. It was while her sister was ill. Those two sisters were wonderful. It’s a positive fact that inside twenty-four hours Violet had picked up the entire job. I never saw anything like it. Never! I tried to get her back again; but she wouldn’t come. I gave up trying.”

“Why wouldn’t she? I should have thought it was a much better situation than anything I could offer her.”

“Perhaps it was. But of course I don’t know how good your situations are. I know I’d have given her practically any salary she cared to ask. I wouldn’t like to say whether Violet or Susan was the best of the two. Susan was the eldest.”

“Died, didn’t she?”

“She did,” said Sir Henry quietly. And still in a very quiet voice, and with gaze averted, he went on: “When I tell you I very nearly married Susan——” He ceased.

“Well!” thought Evelyn, with more than the notorious swiftness of thought: “If Susan actually was anything like Violet, that’s the best thing I ever heard about you!”

He was indeed astounded. He saw Violet Powler in a new light, as the sister of an exceedingly opulent Lady Savott; but he could not imagine Susan as stepmother to a Gracie. And yet, why not? If she was anything like Violet, she would have been adequate for that or any other rôle. He was flatteringly confirmed in his opinion of himself as a judge of individualities. . . . More ammunition for him in his imminent contest with Mrs. O’Riordan about the selection of Violet Powler as a Palace floor-housekeeper!

“Really!” he breathed sympathetically. He truly felt sympathetic.

As Sir Henry was looking at the hearthrug Evelyn could scrutinise his face at leisure, without rudeness. He saw the Savott reputation in those features. The small eyes with their perforating and yet far-away gaze, the hard jaw, the inhuman regular teeth! (Evelyn’s teeth were somewhat irregular, and he thanked God for it.) But there must be, there was, another facet, unnoticed by the world of affairs, to Henry Savott’s individuality. He could see it now, in the attitude humble and soft. And even if, under the influence of Savott’s confession, he only imagined he saw it, it must still be there: for not merely must Savott have responded to the fineness of Violet’s sister, but she in turn must have found fineness in Savott.

“My private affairs,” said Sir Henry, “used to fill a lot of space in the newspapers. So I daresay you know more about them than I do myself.” He glanced up, with a terrible sardonic smile, then lowered his eyes again. “It was before I got free of Lady Savott that I wanted to come to an understanding with Susan. But she was so afraid she’d be mixed up in the divorce proceedings, and I couldn’t make her see she wouldn’t be, couldn’t possibly be. You know if a woman doesn’t see a thing for herself you can’t reason her into seeing it. No. She wouldn’t give even a provisional consent. Didn’t like the idea of it. And when I was free it was just too late. I did everything I could to save her life. Everything. . . . She was on my side right enough against Lady Savott. She knew the facts. She’d seen ’em. It was seeing Violet yesterday that brought it all back to me. Funny, I don’t know to this day whether Violet knew how things were between her sister and me! I doubt whether Susan ever said a word to a soul. Tremendously reserved; and as for discretion! . . . Excuse me boring you. It came over me, all of a sudden. Well, well!” Sir Henry gave renewed attention to the Partaga.