Miss Vivian, needless to say, had never felt anything of the sort, but there was something rather gallantly pathetic in the half-laughing turn of the phrase, and it sufficed for a weighty addition to Miss Delmege’s treasured collections of “Glimpses into Miss Vivian’s Real Self.”
She received yet another such a few minutes later, when Captain Trevellyan began to urge Miss Vivian to come out with him in the new car waiting at the office door.
“Do! I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, and I really do want you to see how beautifully she runs. Come and lunch somewhere?”
“I’d love it,” declared Char wistfully, “but I really mustn’t, Johnnie. There’s so much to do.”
Either the cousinly diminutive, or something unusually unofficial in Miss Vivian’s regretful voice, caused the discreet Miss Delmege to rise and glide quietly from the room.
“Miss Vivian really is most awfully human,” she declared to a fellow-worker whom she met upon the stairs. “What do you think I’ve left her doing?”
The fellow-worker leant comfortably against the wall, balancing a wire basket full of official-looking documents on her hip, and said interestedly:
“Do tell me.”
“Refusing to go for a motor ride with a cousin of hers, an officer, who wants her to see his new car. And she awfully wants to go — I could see that — it’s only the work that’s keeping her.”
“I must say she is splendid!”
“Yes, isn’t she?”
“I think I saw the cousin, waiting downstairs about a quarter of an hour ago. Is he a Staff Officer, very tall and large, and awfully fair?”
“Yes. Rather nice-looking, isn’t he?”
“Quite, and I do like them to be tall. He’s got a nice voice, too. You know — I mean his voice is nice.”
“Yes; he has got a nice voice, hasn’t he? I noticed it myself. Of course, that awful Miss Collins made eyes at him like anything. She was taking letters when he came in.”
“Rotten little minx! I wonder if he’s engaged to Miss Vivian?”
“I couldn’t say,” primly returned Miss Delmege, with a sudden access of discretion, implying a reticence which in point of fact she was not in a position to exercise.
She did not go upstairs again until Captain Trevellyan and his motor-car had safely negotiated the corner of Pollard Street, unaccompanied by Miss Vivian.
This Miss Delmege ascertained from a ground-floor window, and then returned to her corner table, wearing an expression of compassionate admiration that Char was perfectly able to interpret.
“I’m afraid that was an interruption to our morning’s work,” she said kindly. “What time is it?”
“Nearly one o’clock, Miss Vivian.”
“Oh, good heavens! Just bring me the Belgian files, will you? and then you’d better go to lunch.”
“I can quite well go later,” said Miss Delmege eagerly. “I — I thought perhaps you’d be lunching out today.”
“No,” drawled Char decisively; “in spite of the inducement of the new car, I shan’t leave the office till I have to go to the Convalescent Homes. I’ll send for some lunch when I want it.”
Miss Delmege went to her own lunch with a vexed soul.
“I do wish one could get Miss Vivian to eat something,” she murmured distractedly to her neighbour. “I know exactly what it’ll be, you know. She’ll sit there writing, writing, writing, and forget all about food, and then it’ll be two o’clock, and she has to see the M.O. of Health and somebody else coming at three — and she’ll have had no lunch at all.”
“Doesn’t she ever go out to lunch?”
“Only on slack days, and you know how often we get them, especially now that the work is simply increasing by leaps and bounds every day.”
“Couldn’t you take her some sandwiches?” asked Mrs. Bullivant from the head of the table. “I could cut some in a minute.”
“Oh, no, thank you. She wouldn’t like it. She hates a fuss,” Miss Delmege declared decidedly.
The refusal, with its attendant tag of explanatory ingratitude, was received in matter-of-fact silence by every one.
Miss Vivian’s hatred of a fuss, as interpreted by her secretary, merely redounded to her credit in the eyes of the Hostel.
They ate indifferent pressed beef and tepid milk-pudding, and those who could afford it — for the most part accompanied by those who could not afford it — supplemented the meal with coffee and cakes devoured in haste at the High Street confectioner’s, and then hurried back to the office.
It was nearly three o’clock before Miss Delmege ventured to address her chief.
“I’m afraid you haven’t had lunch. Do let me send for something.”
Miss Vivian looked up, flushed and tired.
“Dear me, yes. It’s much later than I thought. Send out one of the Scouts for a couple of buns and a piece of chocolate.”
“Oh!” protested Miss Delmege, as she invariably did on receipt of this menu.
Char Vivian did not raise her eyes from the letter she was rapidly inditing, and her secretary retreated to give the order.
Miss Plumtree, counting on her fingers and looking acutely distressed, sat at a small table in the hall from whence the Scout was dispatched.
“Is that all she’s having for lunch?” she paused in her pursuit of ever-elusive averages to inquire in awestruck tones.
“Yes, and she’s been simply worked to death this morning. And it’s nearly three now, and she won’t get back to dinner till long after ten o’clock, probably; but she never will have more for lunch, when she’s very busy, than just buns and a penny piece of chocolate. That,” said Miss Delmege, with a sort of desperate admiration— “that is just Miss Vivian all over!”
IV
Char looked wearily at the clock.
The buns and chocolate hastily disposed of in the intervals of work during the afternoon had only served to spoil the successive cups of strong tea, which formed her only indulgence, brought to her at five o’clock. They were guiltless of sustaining qualities. It was not yet seven, and she never ordered the car until nine o’clock or later.
Her eyes dropped to the diminished, but still formidable, pile of papers on the table. She was excessively tired, and she knew that the papers before her could be dealt with in the morning.
But it was characteristic of Char Vivian that she did not make up her mind then and there to order the car round and arrive at Plessing in time for eight o’clock dinner and early bed, much as she needed both. To do so would have jarred with her own and her staff’s conception of her self-sacrificing, untiring energy, her devotion to an immense and indispensable task, just as surely as would a trivial, easy interruption to the day’s work in the shape of John Trevellyan and his new car, or an hour consecrated to fresh air and luncheon. Necessity compelled Char to work twelve hours a day some two evenings a week, in order that the amount undertaken by the Midland Supply Depôt might be duly accomplished; but on the remaining days, when work was comparatively light and over early in the evening, she did not choose to spoil the picture which she carried always in her mind’s eye of the indefatigable and overtaxed Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.
So Miss Vivian applied herself wearily, once again, to her inspection of those Army Forms which were to be sent up to the London office on the morrow.
Presently the door opened and Miss Delmege came in with her hat and coat on, prepared to go.
“I thought I’d just tell you,” she said hesitatingly, “that Miss Jones has come — the new clerk. Shall I take her over to the Hostel?”
Char sighed wearily.
“Oh, I suppose I’d better see her. If it isn’t tonight, it will have to be tomorrow. I’d rather get it over. Send her up.”
“Oh, Miss Vivian!”
“Never mind. I shan’t be long.”
Miss Vivian smiled resignedly.
As a matter of fact, she was rather relieved at the prospect of an interview to break the mo
notony of the evening. The Army Forms in question had failed to repay inspection, in the sense of presenting any glaring errors for which the Medical Officer in charge of the Hospital could have been brought sharply to book.
She unconsciously strewed the papers on the desk into a rather more elaborate confusion in front of her, and began to open the inkpot, although she had no further writing to do. The pen was poised between her fingers when Miss Delmege noiselessly opened the door, and shut it again on the entry of Miss Jones.
Char put down her pen, raised her heavy-lidded eyes, and said in her deep, effective voice:
“Good-evening, Miss — er — Jones.”
She almost always hesitated and drawled for an instant before pronouncing the name of any member of her staff. The trick was purely instinctive, and indicated both her own overcharged memory and the insignificance of the unit, among many, whom she was addressing.
“How do you do?” said Miss Jones.
Her voice possessed the indefinable and quite unmistakable intonation of good-breeding, and Char instantly observed that she did not wind up her brief greeting with Miss Vivian’s name.
She looked at her with an instant’s surprise. Miss Jones was short and squarely built, looked about twenty-seven, and was not pretty. But she had a fine pair of grey eyes in her little colourless face, and her slim, ungloved hands, which Char immediately noticed, were unusually beautiful.
“You are from Wales, I believe?” said Char, unexpectedly even to herself. She made a point of avoiding personalities with the staff. But there appeared to be something which required explanation in Miss Jones.
“Yes. My father is the Dean of Penally. I have had some secretarial experience with him during the last five years.”
Evidently Miss Jones wished to keep to the matter in hand. Char was rather amused, reflecting on the fluttered gratification which Miss Delmege or Miss Henderson would have displayed at any directing of the conversation into more personal channels.
“I see,” she said, smiling a little. “Now, I wonder what you call secretarial experience?”
“My father naturally has a great deal of correspondence,” returned Miss Jones, without any answering smile on her small, serious face. “I have been his only secretary for four years. Since the war he has employed some one else for most of his letters, so as to set me free for other work.”
“Yes; I understood from your letter that you had been working in a hospital.”
“As clerk.”
“Excellent. That will be most useful experience here. You know this office controls the hospitals in Questerham and round about. I want you to work in this room with my secretary, and learn her work, so that she can use you as her second.”
“I will do my best.”
“I’m sure of that,” said Miss Vivian, redoubling her charm of manner, and eyeing the impassive Miss Jones narrowly. “I hope you’ll be happy here and like the work. You must always let me know if there’s anything you don’t like. I think you’re billeted just across the road, at our Questerham Hostel?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send some one to show you the way.”
“Thank you; I know where it is. I left my luggage there before coming here.”
“The new workers generally come to report to me before doing anything else,” said Char, indefinably vexed at having failed to obtain the expected smile of gratitude.
“However, if you know the way I must let you go now, so as to be in time for supper. Good-night, Miss Jones.”
“Good-night,” responded Miss Jones placidly, and closed the door noiselessly behind her. Her movements were very quiet in spite of her solid build, and she moved lightly enough, but the Hostel perceived a certain irony, nevertheless, in the fact that Miss Jones’s parents had bestowed upon her the baptismal name of Grace.
The appeal thus made to a rather elementary sense of humour resulted in Miss Jones holding the solitary privilege of being the only person in the Hostel who was almost invariably called by her Christian name. She enjoyed from the first a strange sort of popularity, nominally due to the fact that “you never knew what she was going to say next”; in reality owing to a curious quality of absolute sincerity which was best translated by her surroundings as “originality.” Another manifestation of it, less easily defined, was the complete good faith which she placed in all those with whom she came into contact. Only a decided tincture of Welsh shrewdness preserved her from the absolute credulity of the simpleton.
Almost the first question put to Miss Jones was that favourite test one of the enthusiastic Tony, “And what do you think of Miss Vivian?”
“I think,” said Miss Jones thoughtfully, “that she is a reincarnation of Queen Elizabeth.”
There was a rather stunned silence in the Hostel sitting-room.
Reincarnation was not a word which had ever sounded there before, and it carried with it a subtle suggestion of impropriety to several listeners. Nor was any one at the moment sufficiently au courant with the Virgin Queen’s leading characteristics to feel certain whether the comparison instituted was meant to be complimentary or insulting in the extreme.
Miss Delmege for once voiced the popular feeling by ejaculating coldly.
“That’s rather a strange thing to say, surely!”
“Why? Hasn’t it ever struck anybody before? I should have thought it so obvious. Why, even to look at, you know — that sandy colouring, and the way she holds her head: just as though there ought to be a ruff behind it.”
“Oh, you mean to look at,” said Miss Marsh, the general tension considerably relaxed as the trend of the conversation shifted from that dreaded line of abstract discussion whither the indiscreet Miss Jones had appeared, for one horrid moment, to conduct it.
“Had Queen Elizabeth got freckles? I really don’t know much about her, except that they found a thousand dresses in her wardrobe when she died,” said Tony, voicing, as it happened, the solitary fact concerning the Sovereign under discussion which any one present was able to remember, as outcome of each one’s varying form of a solid English education.
“Her power of administration and personal magnetism, you know,” explained Miss Jones.
“Oh, of course she’s perfectly wonderful,” Miss Delmege exclaimed, sure of her ground. “You’ll see that more and more, working in her room.”
Whether such increased perception was indeed the result of Miss Jones’s activities in the room of the Director might remain open to question.
Char found her very quick, exceedingly accurate, and more conscientious than the quick-witted can generally boast of being. She remained entirely self-possessed under praise, blame, or indifference, and Miss Vivian was half-unconsciously irritated at this tacit assumption of an independence more significant and no less secure than that of Miss Collins the typist.
“Gracie, I wish you’d tell me what you really think of Miss Vivian,” her room-mate demanded one night as they were undressing together.
Screens were chastely placed round each bed, and it was a matter of some surprise to Miss Marsh that her companion so frequently neglected these modest adjuncts to privacy, and often took off her stockings, or folded up even more intimate garments, under the full light, such as it was, of the gas-jet in the middle of the room.
Miss Jones was extremely orderly, and always folded her clothes with scrupulous tidiness. She rolled up a pair of black stockings with exactitude before answering.
“I think she’s rather interesting.”
“Good Lord, Gracie! if Delmege could only hear you! Rather interesting! The Director of the Sacred Supply Depôt! You really are the limit, the things you say, you know.”
“Well, that’s all I do think. She is very capable, and a fairly good organizer, but I don’t think her as marvellous as you or Miss Delmege or Tony do. In fact, I think you’re all rather détraquées about Miss Vivian.”
Miss Marsh was as well aware as anybody in the Hostel that the insertion of a foreign word into
a British discourse is the height of affectation and of bad form; and although she could not believe Grace to be at all an affected person, she felt it due to her own nationality to assume a very disapproving expression and to allow an interval of at least three seconds to elapse before she continued the conversation.
“Don’t you like her?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I suppose you don’t know her well enough to say yet?” Miss Marsh suggested.
“Do you think that has anything to do with it? I often like people without knowing them a bit,” said Grace cordially; “and certainly I quite often dislike them thoroughly, even if I’ve only heard them speak once, or perhaps not at all.”
“Then you judge by appearances, which is a great mistake.”
Miss Jones said in a thoughtful manner that she didn’t think it was that exactly, and supposed regretfully that Miss Marsh would think she was “swanking” if she explained that she considered herself a sound and rapid judge of character.
“Oh, what a sweet camisole, dear!”
“My petticoat-bodice,” said Grace matter-of-factly. “I’m glad you like it. The ribbon always takes a long time to put in, but it does look rather nice. I like mauve better than pink or blue.”
There came a knock at the door.
“Come in!” called Miss Jones, bare-armed and bare-legged in the middle of the room.
“Wait a minute!” exclaimed the scandalized Miss Marsh, in the midst of a shuffling process by which her clothes were removed under the nightgown which hung round her with empty flapping sleeves.
“It’s only me,” said Miss Plumtree in melancholy tones, walking in. “I’m just waiting for my kettle to boil.”
The gas-ring was on the landing just outside the bedroom door.
Grace looked up,
“How pretty you look with your hair down!” she said admiringly.
“Me? Rubbish!” exclaimed Miss Plumtree, colouring with astonishment and embarrassment, but with a much livelier note in her voice.
“Your hair is so nice,” explained Grace, gazing at the soft brown mop of curls.
“Oh, lovely, of course.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 36