Miss Plumtree wriggled with confusion, and had no mind to betray how much the unaffected little bit of praise had restored her spirits. But she sat down on Grace’s bed in her pink cotton kimono in a distinctly more cheerful frame of mind than that in which she had entered the room.
“Are you in the blues, Gooseberry-bush?” was the sympathetic inquiry of Miss Marsh.
“Well, I am, rather. It’s Miss Vivian, you know. She can be awfully down on one when she likes.”
“I know; you always do seem to get on the wrong side of her. Grace will sympathize; she’s just been abusing her like a pickpocket,” said Miss Marsh, apparently believing herself to be speaking the truth.
Miss Jones raised her eyebrows rather protestingly, but said nothing. She supposed that in an atmosphere of adulation such as that which appeared to her to surround Miss Vivian, even such negative criticism as was implied in an absence of comment might be regarded seriously enough.
“But even if one doesn’t like her awfully much, she has a sort of fascination, don’t you think?” said Miss Plumtree eagerly. “I always feel like a — a sort of bird with a sort of snake, you know.”
The modification which she wished to put into this trenchant comparison was successfully conveyed by the qualifying “sort of,” an adverb distinctly in favour at the Hostel.
“I know what you mean exactly, dear,” Miss Marsh assured her. “And of course she does work one fearfully hard. I sometimes think I shall have to leave.”
“She works every bit as hard as we do — harder. I suppose you’ll admit that, Gracie?”
“Oh yes.”
“Don’t go on like that,” protested Miss Marsh, presumably with reference to some indefinable quality detected by her in these two simple monosyllables.
“I only meant,” said Grace Jones diffidently, “that it might really be better if she didn’t do quite so much. If she could have her luncheon regularly, for instance.”
“My dear, she simply hasn’t the time.”
“She could make it.”
“The work comes before everything with Miss Vivian. I mean, really it does,” said Miss Plumtree solemnly.
Miss Jones finished off the end of a thick plait of dark hair with a neat blue bow, and said nothing.
“I suppose even you’ll admit that, Gracie?”
Grace gave a sudden little laugh, and said in the midst of it:
“Really, I’m not sure.”
“My dear girl, what on earth do you mean?”
“I think I mean that I don’t feel certain Miss Vivian would work quite so hard or keep such very strenuous hours if she lived on a desert island, for instance.”
The other two exchanged glances.
“Dotty, isn’t she?”
“Mad as a hatter, I should imagine.”
“Perhaps you’ll explain what sort of war-work people do on desert islands?”
“That isn’t what I mean, quite,” Gracie explained. “My idea is that perhaps Miss Vivian does partly work so very hard because there are so many people looking on. If she was on a desert isle she might — find time for luncheon.”
“My dear girl, you’re ab-solutely raving, in my opinion,” said Miss Plumtree with simple directness. “There! That’s my kettle.”
She dashed out of the room, as a hissing sound betrayed that her kettle had overboiled on to the gas-ring, as it invariably did.
After the rescue had been effected she looked in again and said:
“I suppose you wouldn’t let me come in for some of your tea tomorrow morning, would you, dear? Ours is absolutely finished, and that ass Henderson forgot to get any more.”
“Rather,” said Miss Marsh cordially. “This extraordinary girl doesn’t take any, so you can have the second cup.”
“Thanks most awfully. I can do without most things, but I can’t do without my tea. Good-night, girls.”
It was an accepted fact all through the Hostel that, although one could do without most things, one could not do without one’s tea.
This requirement was of an elastic nature, and might extend from early morning to a late return from meeting a troop-train at night. Grace every morning refused the urgent offer of her room-mate to “make her a cup of nice hot tea,” and watched, with a sort of interested surprise, while Miss Marsh got out of bed a quarter of an hour earlier than was necessary in order to fill and boil a small kettle and make herself three and sometimes four successive cups of very strong tea. She was always willing to share this refreshment with any one, but every room in the Hostel had its own appliances for tea-making, and made daily and ample use of them.
Although Miss Jones did not drink tea, she often washed up the cup and saucer and the little teapot. Miss Marsh suffered from a chronic inability to arrive at the office punctually, although breakfast was at nine o’clock, and she had only to walk across the road. But she frequently said, in a very agitated way, as she rose from the breakfast-table:
“Excuse me. I simply must go and do my washing. It’s Monday, and I’ve left it to the last moment.”
This meant that the counting and dispatching of Miss Marsh’s weekly bundle for the laundry would occupy all her energies until the desperate moment when she would look at her wrist-watch, exclaim in a mechanical sort of way, “Oh, damn! I shall never do it!” and dash out of the house and across Pollard Street as the clock struck ten.
“I’ll wash the tea-things for you.”
“Oh, no, dear! Why should you? I can quite well do them to-night.”
But Grace knew that when her room-mate came in tired at seven o’clock that evening she might very likely want “a good hot cup of tea” then and there, and she accordingly took the little heap of crockery into the bathroom. Standing over the tiny basin jutting out of the wall, Miss Jones, with her sleeves carefully rolled up over a very solid pair of forearms, washed and dried each piece with orderly deliberation, and replaced them in the corner of Miss Marsh’s cupboard.
“I’m afraid you’ll be late. Can’t I help you?”
“Thanks, dear, but I dare say I can just scramble through. What about your washing?”
“Oh, I did all that on Saturday night,” said Grace, indicating a respectable brown-paper parcel tied up with string and with an orderly list pinned on to the outside.
“You’re a marvel!” sighed Miss Marsh. “Don’t wait, Gracie.”
Miss Jones went downstairs and out into Pollard Street. She moved rather well, and had never been known to swing her arms as she walked. Her face was very serious. She often thought how kind it was of the others not to call her a prig, since her methodical habits and innate neatness appeared to be in such startling contrast to the standards prevailing at the Hostel. She had never been sent to school, or seen much of other girls, and the universal liking shown to her by her fellow-workers gave her almost daily a fresh sense of pleased surprise.
Arrived at the office, she signed her name at the door, and proceeded upstairs to Miss Vivian’s room.
Miss Vivian came in, chilled from her motor drive and with that rather pinky tinge on her aquiline nose which generally forecasted a troubled morning. The observant Miss Jones regarded this law very matter-of-factly as an example of cause and effect. She felt sure that Miss Vivian only felt at her best when conscious of looking her best, and hoped very much that the winter would not be a very cold one. It was obvious that Miss Vivian suffered from defective circulation, which her sedentary existence had not improved.
But it was Miss Delmege who solicitously suggested fetching a foot-warmer from the Supplies Department, and who placed it tenderly at the disposal of Miss Vivian.
After that the atmosphere lightened, and it was with comparative equanimity that Miss Vivian received the announcement that a lady had called and desired to see her.
“Please send up her name and her business on a slip of paper, and you can tell the clerk in the outer hall that I won’t have those slipshod messages sent up,” was the reception of the emissary.
“Yes, Miss Vivian.”
Miss Delmege gathered up a sheaf of papers from her table and glided from the room. Grace, whose powers of mental detachment permitted her to concentrate on whatever she was doing without regard to her surroundings, went on with her work.
The interviews conducted by Miss Vivian seldom interested her in the least.
That this one was, however, destined to become an exception, struck her forcibly when the sudden sound of a piercing feminine voice on the stairs came rapidly nearer.
“... as for my name on a slip of paper, I never heard such nonsensical red-tape in my life. Why, Char’s mother and I were girls together!”
Although every one in the office was aware that Miss Vivian’s baptismal name was Charmian, and that this was invariably shortened by her acquaintances to Char, it came as a shock even to the imperturbable Miss Jones to hear this more or less sacred monosyllable ringing up the stairs to Miss Vivian’s very table.
“Who on earth—” began Char indignantly, when the door flew open before her caller, who exclaimed shrilly and affectionately on the threshold:
“My dear child, you can’t possibly know who I am, but my name is Willoughby, and when I was Lesbia Carroll your mother and I were girls together. I had to come in and take a peep at you!”
There was a sort of rustling pounce, and Grace became aware that the outraged Miss Vivian had been audibly and overpoweringly kissed in the presence of a giggling Scout and of her own junior secretary.
V
Mrs. Willoughby, in Miss Vivian’s private office, reversed all rules of official precedent.
“Sit down again, my dear child — sit down!” she cried cordially, at the same time establishing herself close to the table. “I hear you’re doing wonderful work for all these dear people — Belgians and the dear Tommies and every one — and I felt I simply had to come in and hear all about it. Also, I want to propound a tiny little scheme of my own which I think will appeal to you. Or have you heard about it already from that precious boy John, with whom, I may tell you, I’m simply madly in love? I’m always threatening to elope with him!”
“I’m afraid,” said Char, disregarding her visitor’s pleasantry, “that I can really hardly undertake anything more. We are very much understaffed as it is, and the War Office is always—”
“I can turn the whole War Office round my little finger, my dear,” declared Mrs. Willoughby. “There’s the dearest lad there, a sort of under-secretary, who’s absolutely devoted to me, and tells me all sorts of official tit-bits before any one else hears a word about them. I can get anything I want through him, so you needn’t worry about the War Office. In fact, to tell you rather a shocking little secret, I can get what I want out of most of these big official places — just a little tiny manipulation of the wires, you know. [Cherchez la femme — though I oughtn’t to say such things to a girl like you, ought I?”]
Char looked at Mrs. Willoughby’s large, heavily powdered face, at her enormous top-heavy hat and over-ample figure, and said nothing.
But no silence, however subtly charged with uncomplimentary meanings, could stem Mrs. Willoughby’s piercing eloquence.
“This is what I want to do, and I’m told at the camp here that it would be simply invaluable. I want to get up a Canteen for the troops here, and for all those dear things on leave.”
“There are several Y.M.C.A. Huts already.”
“My dear! I know it. But I want to do this all on my little own, and have quite different rules and regulations. My Lewis, who’s been in the Army for over fifteen years, poor angel, tells me that they all — from the Colonel downwards — think it would be the greatest boon on earth, to have a lady at the head of things, you know.”
“My time is too much taken up; it would be quite out of the question,” said Char simply.
“Darling child! Do you suppose I meant you — a ridiculously young thing like you? Of course, it would have to be a married woman, with a certain regimental position, so to speak. And my Lewis is second in command, as you know, so that naturally his wife.... You see, the Colonel’s wife is an absolute dear, but an invalid — more or less, and no more savoir faire than a kitten. A perfect little provincial, between ourselves. Whereas, of course, I know this sort of job inside out and upside down — literally, my dear. The hours I’ve toiled in town!”
“But I’m afraid in that case you oughtn’t to leave—”
“I must! I’m compelled to! It’s too cruel, but the doctor simply won’t answer for the consequences if I go back to London in my present state. But work I must. One would go quite, quite mad if one wasn’t working — thinking about it all, you know.”
“Major Willoughby is — er — in England, isn’t he?”
“Thank God, yes!” exclaimed Lesbia, with a fervour that would have startled her husband considerably. “My heart bleeds for these poor wives and mothers. I simply thank God upon my knees that I have no son! When one thinks of it all — England’s life-blood—”
Char did not share her mother’s objection to eloquence expended upon the subject of the war, but she cut crisply enough into this exaltée outpouring.
“One is extremely thankful to do what little one can,” she said, half-unconsciously throwing an appraising glance at the files and papers that were littered in profusion all over the table.
“Indeed one is!” cried Lesbia, just as fervently as before. “Work is the only thing. My dear, this war is killing me — simply killing me!”
Miss Vivian was not apparently prompted to any expression of regret at the announcement.
“As I said to Lewis the other day, I must work or go quite mad. And now this Canteen scheme seems to be calling out to me, and go I must. We’ve got a building — that big hall just at the bottom of the street here — and I’m insisting upon having a regular opening day — so much better to start these things with a flourish, you know — and the regimental band, and hoisting the Union Jack, and everything. And what I want you to do is this.”
Lesbia paused at last to take breath, and Char immediately said:
“I’m afraid I’m so fearfully busy today that I haven’t one moment, but if you’d like my secretary to—”
“Not your secretary, but your entire staff, and your attractive self. I want you all down there to help!”
“Quite impossible,” said Char. “I wonder, Mrs. Willoughby, if you have any idea of the scale on which this Depôt is run?”
“Every idea,” declared Lesbia recklessly. “I’m told everywhere that all the girls in Questerham are helping you, and that’s exactly why I’ve come. I want girls to make my Canteen attractive — all the prettiest ones you have.”
“I’m afraid my staff was not selected with a view to — er — personal attractions,” said Miss Vivian, in a voice which would have created havoc amongst her staff in its ironical chilliness.
“Nonsense, my dear Char! I met the sweetest thing on the stairs — a perfect gem of a creature with Titian-coloured hair. Not in that hideous uniform, either.”
Miss Vivian could not but recognize the description of her typist.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said. “Do you want helpers on your opening day, or regularly?”
“Quite regularly — from five to eleven or thereabouts every evening. I shall be there myself, of course, to supervise the whole thing, and I’ve got half a dozen dear things to help me: but what I want is girls, who’ll run about and play barmaid and wash up, you know.”
“Couldn’t my mother spare Miss Bruce sometimes?”
“Is Miss Bruce a young and lively girl?” inquired Mrs. Willoughby, not without reason. “Besides, I need dozens of them.”
“Yes, I see,” said Char languidly. She was tired of Mrs. Willoughby, and it was with positive relief that she heard her telephone-bell ring sharply.
There was a certain satisfaction in leaning back in her chair and calling, “Miss — er — Jones!”
Miss Jones moved quietly to ans
wer the insistent bell.
“I’m afraid this rather breaks into our consultation,” said Char, deftly making her opportunity, “but may I write to you and let you know what I can manage?”
“I shall pop in again and commandeer all these delightful young creatures of yours. I’m marvellous at recruiting, my dear; every man I met out of khaki I always attacked in the early days. White feathers, you know, and everything of that sort. I had no mercy on them. One lad I absolutely dragged by main force to the recruiting office, though he said he couldn’t leave his wife and babies. But, as I told him, I’d had to let my Lewis go — he was on the East Coast then — and was proud to do my bit for England. I dare say the wretch got out of it afterwards, because they wouldn’t let me come in with him while he was actually being sworn, or whatever it is. Such red-tape!”
Char paid small attention to these reminiscences of Lesbia’s past activities.
“What is it, Miss Jones?”
“The D.G.V.O. is here.”
“The Director-General of Voluntary Organizations,” said Miss Vivian, carelessly tossing off the imposing syllables, with the corner of her eye, as it were, fixed upon Mrs. Willoughby. “In that case, I’m afraid I must ask you to forgive me.”
“I must fly,” said Lesbia in a sudden shriek, ignoring her dismissal with great skill. “Some of those boys from the camp are lunching with me, and they’ll never forgive me if I’m late.”
“Ask the Director-General of Voluntary Organizations to come up, Miss Jones,” drawled Char. “And show Mrs. Willoughby the way downstairs.”
“Good-bye, you sweet thing!” cried Lesbia gaily, agitating a tightly gloved white-kid hand. “I shall pop in again in a day or two, and you must let me help you. I adore Belgians — positively adore them, and can do anything I like with them.”
Mrs. Willoughby’s enthusiasm was still audible during her rustling progress down the stairs.
Char paid full attention to her interview with the opportunely arrived Director-General of Voluntary Organizations, because she wished him to think her a most official and business-like woman, entirely capable of accomplishing all that she had undertaken; but when the dignitary had departed she gave serious consideration to the scheme so lightly propounded by Mrs. Willoughby.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 37