Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace (Arnold Bennett) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Passing through the ever-spinning doors into the great hall he gave a benevolent nod to Mowlem, the day hall-porter, who rendered back the salute with equal benevolence and more grandeur.

Mowlem was one of about a dozen members of the staff each of whom considered himself the most important member of the staff—after Evelyn. He was quite as tall as Sam, and broader, but he pretended to no physical prowess. On the very rare occasions when law and order seemed to be in danger in the great hall he had methods subtler than Long Sam’s of meeting the situation. American citizens nearly always became his friends. Once, an ex-President of the United States, suffering from the English climate and insomnia, had caused Mowlem to be roused from bed, and the two coevals had spent a large part of a night in intimate converse. Mowlem was understood to be writing, with expert assistance, a book of reminiscences of the Imperial Palace entrance-hall, for a comfortable sum of money.

While crossing the hall, Evelyn heard his own name spoken in a discreet feminine voice behind him.

“Can you give me one minute?” asked Mrs. O’Riordan, who also had been out on an errand.

The head-housekeeper in her street attire looked as smart and as spry as any visitor, and she was modestly but confidently conscious of this momentous fact.

“Two,” said Evelyn, having glanced at the clock.

He moved towards a corner at the end of the Reception-counter, and the Irish ‘mother’ of the Palace followed him.

“I think I’ve found someone to take Miss Brury’s place,” said Mrs. O’Riordan, confidentially murmuring. “She’s young, but she’s had experience, and—she’s a gentlewoman.”

“That’s good,” said Evelyn, cautiously, recalling the head-housekeeper’s theory about the advantage of engaging gentlewomen as floor-housekeepers.

He divined at once that Mrs. O’Riordan was specially anxious to be persuasive. Her grey hair never prevented her from exercising a varied charm, of which charm she was very well aware. As she stood before him, he could plainly see in her, not the widow aged sixty-two, but a vivacious maiden of twenty-five or so. The maiden peeped out of Mrs. O’Riordan’s bright eyes, was heard in her lively though subdued voice, and apparent in the slight quick gestures of her gloved hands. At her best, and when she chose, Mrs. O’Riordan had no age. The accent which she had put on the word ‘think’ was a diplomatic trick, to hide the fact that she had decided positively on the successor to Miss Brury. And the successor was no doubt a protégée of the head-housekeeper’s, a favoured aspirant. Assuredly Mrs. O’Riordan had not discovered the exactly right girl by chance in the last twenty-four hours. He foresaw complications, a new situation to be handled; the tentacles of his brain stretched out to seize the situation.

II

Then he noticed a young woman in converse with Mowlem. A young woman dignified, self-possessed, neat, carefully and pleasingly clad; but at a glance obviously not a gentlewoman. Withal, Mowlem was treating her as a gentlewoman; for the old man had the same demeanour towards everybody. Never would Mowlem have been guilty of the half-disdainful demeanour which on the previous night Long Sam had adopted to the professional dancers. The young woman was Violet Powler, certainly telling Mowlem that she had an appointment with the Director for noon, and enquiring the way to his office.

Evelyn, because he was tired and had a full day’s work before him, had boyishly determined to straighten out the Brury affair without any delay, and Miss Cass had received early instructions to get Miss Powler on the telephone at the Laundry. He averted his face from the doors so that Violet should not see him.

“Perhaps you would like to have just a look at her?” Mrs. O’Riordan suggested.

“Yes, I should,” he smiled. “But you can take her references and have everything ready in the meantime. Only don’t clinch it. I have someone in mind myself for the job.”

Mrs. O’Riordan did not blench, but that she was somewhat dashed was clear to Evelyn. Inevitably she was dashed.

“Oh, of course,” she said with sweet deference. “If that’s it——”

“Not at all!” Evelyn smiled again, and more lightly. “You go on with yours, and we’ll see. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if yours is far more suitable than mine.”

“Is she a gentlewoman, may I ask?” Mrs. O’Riordan asked. Evelyn’s eyes quizzed her.

“That depends on what you call a gentlewoman. She’s had what I should call a very good education.”

“But her people?”

“Her father’s a great traveller,” Evelyn wanted to laugh outright and boldly add: “A town-traveller.” But prudence stayed him.

“Oh!” murmured Mrs. O’Riordan, indicating that she did not feel quite sure about the social status of great travellers, and indeed that there were great travellers and great travellers.

At this moment Evelyn was excusably startled by a most unexpected and strange sight: Sir Henry Savott talking to Violet Powler, three or four yards down the hall, away from the doors. Sir Henry was smiling; Violet Powler was not; but the two had an air of some intimacy. What next? Evelyn kept his nerve.

“Well, I shall be hearing from you,” he said to Mrs. O’Riordan, and departed quietly in the direction of his office.

Naturally he could appoint whomever he liked to a floor-housekeepership in the Palace. And none would cavil. But peace, real peace, had to be maintained, and immense experience had taught him the difficulty of eliminating friction from the relations between women, even gentlewomen! There was nothing he feared more in the organism of the Imperial Palace than secret friction. Moreover he knew what he owed, of respect and fair dealing, to the faithful and brilliant Mrs. O’Riordan. But he was absolutely set on appointing Violet Powler. The idea of doing so was his, and he had an intuition—he who derided intuitions in other people—that it would prove satisfactory. He admitted to himself that he had his work cut out.

I

“This interview is unofficial,” said Evelyn.

Violet Powler was sitting opposite to him on the other side of the big desk in the Director’s private office. She had loosened her black cloak, and Evelyn saw under it the same blue frock which she had been wearing on the previous afternoon. Her hat was a plain felt. He could see nothing of her below the waist. He remembered that her feet were not small, nor her ankles slim; but he could not recall whether she had high-heeled shoes. As a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace she would have to wear black, and high heels, and he rather thought that the force of public opinion among the housekeepers would corrupt her to make up her face. Those pale pink lips would never do on the Floors of the Palace. If she kept them untinted every floor-housekeeper would say on the quiet to every other floor-housekeeper that poor Violet—what a Christian name! Battersea or Peckham Rye all over!—had been imported from the Laundry, and what could you expect? . . . No!

He had been inclined yesterday to regard her as beautiful; but now, detached, rendered a little cynical by recent events, he decided that she was not beautiful. Her features were regular. She was personable. It was her facial expression—sensible, sober, calm, kindly, contented—that pleased him. She would have no moods, no caprices. She was certainly not one of your yearners after impossible dreams, your chronic dissatisfied, all ups and downs. Even Mrs. O’Riordan had moods, despite her mature age.

“The matter is in the hands of Mrs. O’Riordan, our head-housekeeper,” Evelyn said further. “I’ve really nothing to do with it. But I thought I’d better find out first whether you thought the job would suit you. We want a new floor-housekeeper here. There are eight floors and eight floor-housekeepers.”