Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace

“That’s good,” said Evelyn. “I know there’s no beef better than yours. I didn’t know you had a restaurant. I’ve often noticed the Shaftesbury. One night I shall come in. I’m rather interested in restaurants.” He laughed.

“Thank you, sir. It’ll be a great honour when you do.”

General handshaking, which left Charlie Jebson well satisfied with the scheme of the universe. The three proceeded along the avenue.

II

“That’ll be all right now, I think,” Gracie heard Evelyn murmur to Jack Cradock. And she recalled what Evelyn had said to her about an instinct for handling people. As it was extremely difficult to walk three abreast in the thronged avenues, Jack, now elated, walked ahead. But sometimes he lagged behind. Everybody knew him. Everybody addressed him as Jack. (The Smithfield world was as much a world of Christian names as Gracie’s own.) Nevertheless the affectionate familiarity towards Jack was masked by the respect due to a man who was incapable of being deceived as to the quality of a carcass, who represented the swellest hotel in London, who had a clerk, who spent an average of a hundred pounds sterling a day, and who would take nothing but the best.

Cradock stopped dead, in the rear.

“Hello, Jim. I want a hundred pounds of fat.”

“Two and four,” was the reply.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Two shillings.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong.”

“Two and two,” said Jack.

“Oh,” said Jim, with feigned disgust. “I’ll give it you for your birthday. I know how hard up you are.”

Jack scribbled in his book and strode after the waiting pair. But a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Hello, Jack. Not seen you lately. Had a fair holiday?”

“Yes,” said Cradock. “I have had a fair holiday. I’m not like some of you chaps. When I go for a holiday I take my wife.” He hurried on.

“Excuse me, miss,” he apologised to Gracie.

The trio arrived at a large fenced lift.

“Miss Savott might like to go down,” Evelyn suggested.

Cradock spoke to the guardian, and the chains were unfastened.

“If you’ll excuse me, governor. I’ll see you afterwards.” And to Gracie, with a grin: “I’ve got a bit to do, and time’s getting on. If I don’t keep two ton o’ meat in stock down at the Imperial Palace the governor would pass me a remark.” With a smile kindly and sardonic, benevolent and yet reserved, Jack Cradock stood at the edge of the deep well as the rough platform, slowly descending, carried the governor and young lady beyond his sight.

“What a lovely man!” said Gracie, appreciative.

“You heard that phrase in America!” was Evelyn’s comment.

They smiled at one another. The hubbub and brightness of the vast market vanished away above their heads. The lift shuddered and stopped. They were in silence and gloom. They were in a crypt. And the crypt was a railway station, vaster even than the Market, and seeming still vaster than it was by reason of the lowness of its roof.

“As big?” said the lift-attendant disdainfully in response to an enquiry. “It’s a lot bigger than Euston or St. Pancras or King’s Cross. If you ask me, it’s the longest station in London. . . . No, the meat trains are all come and gone an hour ago.” An engine puffed slowly in the further obscure twilight. “No, that’s only some empties.”

Vague, dull sounds echoed under the roof: waggons being hauled to and fro by power-winches, waggons swinging round on turn-tables. Men like pigmies dotted the endless slatternly expanse. The untidy platforms were littered with packages: a crate of live fowls, a case of dead rabbits, a pile of tarpaulins. The pair walked side by side along a platform until they were held up by a chasm through which a waggon was being dragged by a hawser. When the chasm was covered again they walked on, right to the Aldersgate end of the station, whence the Farringdon Road end was completely invisible in the gloom. Neither spoke. Both were self-conscious.

“What are you thinking about?” Gracie asked curtly.

“If you want to know, I was thinking about that split ship of yours. And you?”

Gracie’s low, varied voice wavered as she replied:

“I was only thinking of those lambs, when they were in the fields, wagging their silly little tails while they sucked milk in.”

Evelyn saw the gleam of tears in her eyes. He offered no remark. Nervously Gracie pulled her cloak off and put it on her arm.

“It’s so hot. I mean I’m so hot,” she said.

She had indeed for a moment thought of the lambs. But the abiding sensation in her mind, in her heart and soul, was the sensation of the forlorn sadness of the deserted dark crypt, called by the unimaginative a railway station, and of the bright, jostling back-chatting world of men suspended over it on a magical system of steel girders. All the accomplishment of adventurous and determined laborious men—men whom her smart girl friends would not look twice at, because of the cut of their coats, or their accent, or their social deportment! She wanted ardently to be a man among men; she felt that she was capable of being a man among men. Her ideals, shaken before, were thrown down and smashed. She liked Evelyn for his sympathetic silence. She persuaded herself that he knew all her thoughts. By a shameless secret act, she tried to strip her mind to him, tear off every rag of decency, expose it to him, nude. And not a word said.

“Ah!” she reflected with a yearning. “His instinct for handling people! Could he handle me? Could he handle me?” . . .

When they regained the surface, Jack Cradock was waiting for them. She was astounded to see by the market-clocks that the hour was after half-past six. Then something disturbingly went out. A whole row of electric lights in the broad arched roof of the central avenue! New shadows took the place of the old. She glanced at the roof. Grey light showed through its glass. Dawn had begun. Never in Gracie’s experience was a dawn so mysterious, so disconcerting, so heartrending. Jack Cradock was very amiable, respectful, self-respecting, and matter-of-fact.

Outside she resumed her dark cloak, tipped the policeman before Evelyn could do so, and slowly climbed into the car. She drove to the hotel slowly, not because of the increased traffic in the lightening streets, but as it were meditatively.

“I might write down my impressions of all that,” she murmured to Evelyn once, half-emerging for an instant from her meditation.

I

In the courtyard of the hotel a lorry loaded with luggage was grinding and pulsating its way out. The courtyard had dried after its morning souse.

“That’s the last of the big luggage for the ‘Leviathan,’ ” Evelyn explained, as Gracie brought the car to a standstill in front of the revolving doors and the two janissaries. “Special train leaves Waterloo at 8.20. Passengers hate to have to catch it, but they always do manage to catch it—somehow.”

Gracie made no reply. A chauffeur, who had been leaning against the rail of the luggage-hoist in a corner of the yard, advanced towards the car.

“Good morning, Compton,” Gracie greeted him, as she followed Evelyn out of the car. “How long have you been here?”

“About an hour, miss.”

“Have you had the big stuff sent upstairs?”

“Oh yes, miss.”

“There’s the beginning of a rattle in the bonnet here. Have a look at it.”

“Yes, miss. Certainly, miss. Any orders, miss?”

“Not to-day. But I don’t know about Sir Henry.”

“No, miss.”

“Better put the car in the hotel garage, and tell them to clean her. If I want her I’ll get her out myself. I’m going to bed. You ought to get some sleep, too.”