“I know, I know! It all makes it the more impossible for me to stay here with her and at the same time try to carry on the work.”
“Then you won’t consider the idea of making this place into a hostel?”
“I’ve already said that it’s out of the question.”
Quite evidently, the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt was herself again.
She rose, and was meekly followed by Miss Bruce into the hall, where sat Lady Vivian and Captain Trevellyan.
“Mother, I’m going to bed,” said Char calmly. “With regard to your scheme of making this place into a hostel, by the way, I’m afraid it wouldn’t answer. I’m most grateful to you, but as Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, I must refuse the offer.”
Joanna shrugged her shoulders.
“Then, my dear, as Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, I’m afraid you must go on living uncomfortably in rooms, since I suppose you won’t want to stay here when the place is full of convalescent soldiers.”
“Not in the circumstances,” said Char gravely.
Miss Bruce advanced valiantly.
“I have told Miss Vivian that I’m quite sure that you — you will see your way to letting me go and be of what use I can to her in Questerham, Lady Vivian.”
“Leave Plessing?”
Lady Vivian’s voice held surprise only, but the unfortunate Miss Bruce was again obliged to struggle with divided feelings. She gazed miserably round, but Captain Trevellyan returned her look with one of unmistakable reproach, and Char was fixing her eyes persistently upon the fire. And then reassurance came to her from Joanna’s voice, unusually gentle.
“I’m very glad, dear Miss Bruce. I shall like to feel that some one is looking after Char who has known her all her life, and cared for her as you have. And you won’t be far away, so that I shan’t feel I’ve lost sight of you. You must come out and see me struggling with my convalescents.”
She stretched out her left hand, and Miss Bruce, answering her smile only with a convulsive pressure and a sort of sob compounded of mingled relief, gratitude, and compunction, hurried upstairs with her handkerchief undisguisedly held to her eyes.
“Poor Miss Bruce! We shall make an exchange, Char,” said her mother, “for I’m hoping that Grace will stay here and help me.”
“In what capacity?”
“Any capacity she likes.”
“I hope,” said Char, in tones which held more of doubt than of hopefulness, “that you will find her more accurate than I have. Good-night.”
She went upstairs in her turn, feeling oddly tired and with a disquieting sense of finality. Her way and her mother’s had parted, and although Char knew little regret for a separation which had long held them apart in all but physical nearness, she felt to the full the disturbing element introduced by a definitely spoken renunciation.
She would return to her work on the morrow, and make the move from Plessing as speedily as might be. But even in thinking of her work Char felt, that evening, no solace, for the recollection of her mother’s words as to the frame of mind in which the staff might receive her left her strangely bereft of her usual armour of self-confidence.
In the hall, Trevellyan asked Joanna rather wistfully: “Do you mind very much?”
“Exchanging Miss Bruce for Grace? Do you think I shall lose by it?”
They both laughed a little, and then Trevellyan, looking into the fire, observed: “I’m glad you’re going to have her. I shall like thinking that she’s working with you here.”
“I’m glad, Johnnie.”
There was the ghost of a flicker in Joanna’s voice.
“She’ll be a comfort to you.”
“Yes, indeed she will. The difference of age hasn’t prevented our being friends.”
“And — and you’ll look after her?”
“I hope so. At all events, I shan’t allow her to do any nursing of wounded, since we know the unfortunate effect that the sight of blood has upon her.”
Joanna was laughing outright now.
“Oh, did she tell you?”
“Yes.”
“I think that was the first time she and I ever had any real conversation.”
“Was it? It was rather talented of you, in the circumstances.”
“Cousin Joanna.”
“Yes, John.”
Captain Trevellyan bent a yet more ardent scrutiny upon the fire.
“It seems the wrong time to say anything about it, but you always understand, and she and I could neither of us bear that you shouldn’t know it at once. I couldn’t go away without telling you. Not,” said Johnnie, suddenly turning round and facing her, “that anything is settled, you know.”
“Except the only thing that matters,” said Joanna softly.
“One thing that makes us both care so much,” he said diffidently, “is that we both care so much for you.”
She gave him both hands, regally, and he stooped and kissed them as he might have a queen’s.
Presently she said: “I’m so glad, dear Johnnie. Nothing in the world could make me happier.”
It was past eleven o’clock before John left her, and his final inquiry, standing at the hall door, made her laugh outright.
“You don’t think any one will guess, do you? She doesn’t want anything said till her father knows, and unluckily I can’t get down to Wales and see him now. There won’t be time. But you didn’t guess till I told you, did you?”
“My dear Johnnie,” said Joanna, with a singular absence of any emotion but her habitual kindly satire in her voice, “you really remind me very much sometimes of an ostrich!”
XIX
Grace Jones went back to the Hostel soon after the New Year in order to pack up and to make her farewells before going for a month’s holiday to her home in Wales.
“And then Plessing!” said Miss Marsh in an awed voice.
“And then Plessing,” Grace assented. “Lady Vivian hopes that it will be properly started by that time as a convalescent home.”
She looked across the sitting-room to where Mrs. Bullivant was sitting, with a smile that held inquiry and congratulation.
“Fancy!” ejaculated Mrs. Bullivant, with a sort of timorous pleasure, “Lady Vivian actually thought of me, and suggested my taking over the work of quarter-mistress there. You know, looking after the stores and all that sort of thing. I must say, it’s very good of her, and I shall like working there — and Gracie as secretary and all, too. It’ll be quite like old times.”
“I hate changes,” observed Miss Henderson gloomily.
“This place will be extraordinary, with you gone, Mrs. Bullivant, and Gracie, and probably Tony and Plumtree as well.”
“Tony isn’t leaving, is she?” cried Grace.
“Yes, she is. Sent in her resignation two days ago. The fact is, she was altogether upset by that fuss we had about Miss Vivian the other day, and so she’s decided that she wants a change. And Greengage says she won’t stay without her. They always did hang together, you know.”
“I don’t altogether wonder at poor old Plumtree,” Mrs. Potter observed thoughtfully. “Miss Vivian has always had a down on her, hasn’t she? But she and Tony will be a loss to the Hostel, and so will you, dear.”
“I don’t like leaving a bit,” Grace declared; “you’ve all been so nice to me, and I’ve been very happy here.”
It was undeniable, however, that happiness was not destined to be the prevailing characteristic of Miss Jones’s last day in the office.
Miss Vivian, seated at her paper-strewn table with all the old arrogance, if not actually with an additional touch of it to counteract the humanizing effect of the crêpe mourning band on her left arm, ignored her junior secretary as far as possible, but inspected her work with a closeness of attention that almost argued a desire to find it defective.
“You can hand over your work to Miss Delmege, Miss — er — Jones. She will take it over on Monday next.”
“Yes, Miss Vivian.”
“And bring me your files.”
Char ran over the papers in the old way, with the murmured running commentary that denoted her utter unconsciousness of all but the task in hand, and at the same time made the extensive area covered by her official correspondence fully evident to the perceptions of whoever might be in the room with her.
“Papers relating to that man Farmer’s pension — those must go up today. That contract for the milk — send it up to the Commissariat Department, and I should like to know why they haven’t sent me down the balance-sheets for the month. Nothing is ever properly checked, it seems to me, unless I do it myself, though Heaven only knows when I’m to find time for it. I’ve got to go through the accounts today, some time or other.... What’s this? One of the nurses from the Town Hospital wants to see me, and calmly writes to say so! I never heard such unofficial nonsense in my life, as though I had time to give personal interviews to every wretched little V.A.D. who chooses to ask for them! Miss Delmege!”
“Yes, Miss Vivian?”
“Take this letter and answer it in the third person. Make it quite clear that any application of that sort is entirely out of order. If she wants to speak to any one, she can go to Matron; and if it’s necessary, Matron can write to me about it.”
Miss Delmege took the letter, and mentally framed to herself the sentences in which she would later on make it clear to Gracie Jones that Miss Vivian’s manner never really meant anything, and that her summary dismissal of any such appeal was only the necessary concomitant to official authority. It had become increasingly clear to Miss Delmege that Gracie was somehow, by the very reticence of her unspoken judgments, at the bottom of the extraordinary prejudice with which so many members of the staff now viewed the arbitrary ways of Miss Vivian.
The clear, rapid undertones continued:
“Boiler at the Hospital burst; they should have reported it sooner, but I’ll send an order to the shop people. Another list for transfer! Dr. Prince transfers his men without rhyme or reason — all cases of myalgia and trench feet, too. I shall have to write and tell him to reconsider half of them, before I should dream of letting them leave.
“What’s all that? — case for massage, case for Shepherd’s Bush, five transfers for convalescent homes.... Send me up the Transport Officer. Miss Delmege, what are my appointments for today?”
“The new Superintendent for the Hostel is coming for an interview at two o’clock, and Dr. Prince rang up to say that he would come in for a moment at three.”
Char raised her eyebrows.
“If I happen to be engaged or busy, he will have to wait. Is that all?”
“Yes, Miss Vivian.”
“Thank Heaven!” piously ejaculated Char, entirely pour la forme, since the interviews which cut into her day’s work afforded her the only relief she obtained from its monotonous strain.
“Then I’ll get through these letters at once. Send those to Mrs. Potter; and, Miss Delmege, you can take these — the rest are for the Clothing Department. Miss Jones, kindly deal with these files.... Send for Miss Coll — Mrs. Baker-Bridges, to take down some letters at once.”
Miss Delmege looked rather disturbed, and remained standing at Char’s elbow without speaking.
Miss Vivian, as was customary with her when wishing to display absorption in her work, continued to turn over the papers on the table without raising her eyes.
At last she looked up and said sharply:
“What is it, Miss Delmege? You fidget me very much by standing there in that unmeaning way. Do you want anything?”
Miss Delmege cleared her throat nervously. Too well did she know the peculiar note of crisp asperity now sounding in her chief’s voice.
“I’m afraid the stenographer isn’t here today.”
“And why on earth not?”
“She isn’t well.”
“I’ve had no application for sick leave.”
“She only telephoned this morning to say that she didn’t feel able to come today.”
Char, with the calculated show of temper with which she greeted any departures from discipline, struck the table with her hand, and made the unfortunate Miss Delmege jump.
“I think you’ve all lost your heads completely while I’ve been away. Is this office under military discipline or is it not?”
The question being purely rhetorical, Miss Delmege attempted no reply to it, and merely drooped the more dejectedly over her sheaf of letters.
“You can tell Miss Collins that unless she can apply for sick leave in the proper manner, and with a medical certificate to say that she is unfit for duty, she may consider herself dismissed.”
Miss Delmege, only too thankful to feel that the Director’s wrath was not aimed at herself, hastened to the telephone to deliver the ultimatum. She returned scarlet, and with an air of outraged modesty that made Grace look at her in mild astonishment. Miss Jones’s curiosity, however, only received satisfaction that afternoon, at the close of Dr. Prince’s interview with Miss Vivian, when he casually remarked: “By the way, that pretty little red-haired typist of yours, the one who got married the other day, paid me a call yesterday.”
“Then, perhaps, you can inform me why she thought proper to remain away from duty without leave today.”
“Oh, you’ll have her back tomorrow — for a time, anyway.”
Grace saw Miss Delmege make a hurried plunge into a small stationery cupboard, where she appeared to be searching for something elaborately concealed.
“I can’t have that sort of playing fast and loose with the work,” Char said icily. “If Miss Collins—”
“Mrs. Baker-Bridges,” the doctor corrected her cheerfully.
“If my stenographer can’t attend to her work regularly, she is of very little use to me.”
“She’s probably going to be of more use to the nation, let me tell you, than all the rest of you put together,” said Dr. Prince.
Miss Delmege’s agony of mind reached its culmination, and she let drop an armful of heavy ledgers with a clatter which effectually covered any further indelicate precision of utterance of which the doctor might have been guilty.
By the time that Grace had extinguished her own laughter in the cupboard, and had assisted Miss Delmege to pick up her books, the Doctor had slammed the door behind him, with a disregard for Miss Vivian’s presence which might perhaps be accounted for by the searching cross-examination to which she had just subjected his proposed Medical Board cases.
“A doctor’s profession, I suppose,” Miss Delmege said to Grace in tones of outraged delicacy as they left the office together, “destroys the finer feelings altogether. I’m not prudish, so far as I know, but really, after what passed in the office today—”
“I wish you’d tell me what Mrs. Baker-Bridges said to you over the telephone.”
Miss Delmege coloured and tossed her head.
“Some people don’t seem to mind what they say. I never did like her, but I certainly didn’t think she had a coarse mind.”
“And has she?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it to any one but you, dear, and I know you won’t repeat any of it, but she was actually so pleased and proud at the mere idea that she said she couldn’t keep it to herself, though she isn’t even in the least certain.”
The virtuous horror expressed in Miss Delmege’s whole person at such deplorable outspokenness was so excessive that Grace dared not make any reply for fear of producing an anti-climax.
That evening, Grace’s last at Questerham Hostel, her room-mate became disconsolate.
“I don’t know what I shall do without you, Gracie, and this room will be simply awful. You’ve always been such a dear about my being so untidy and everything, and put up with all of it, and done such heaps of little things. I shall never forget how you washed up the cups and tea-things after our morning tea, dear, never.”
“But I was only too pleased,” protested Grace. “You’ve done a lot for me, if it comes to that. Look how
often you’ve boiled your kettle for me, and had everything ready on nights when I came back late. I shall miss you very much, but don’t forget that if ever you’re in Wales you’re coming to stay with us.”
“I say, do you really mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“You are a brick, Gracie. The thing I like about you,” said Miss Marsh instructively, “is that you don’t put on any frills.”
“Well, why should I?”
“Oh, I don’t know — staying at Plessing, and knowing Miss Vivian’s people, and so on. There are others I could name,” Miss Marsh said viciously, “who take airs for a good deal less — in fact, for nothing at all, that any one but themselves can see.”
Miss Jones knew from much previous experience the subject denoted by that particular edge in her room-mate’s voice.
“Are you worried?” she asked sympathetically, selecting a euphemism at random.
“My dear, I’ve got an awful fear that Delmege means to move into this room when you’re gone. You’ll see if she doesn’t get round the new Superintendent. She’s always resented being put in with two others, and that room of theirs will always be a three-bedded one.”
“But Tony and Miss Plumtree are both leaving.”
“Not yet, and, anyway, two others will be put in instead. Mark my words,” said Miss Marsh tragically, “that’ll be the next thing. Delmege and me stuck in here tête-à-tête, as they say.”
“I do hope not.”
“I shall resign, that’s all. Simply resign. And give my reasons. I shall say to Miss Vivian right out, when she asks me why I want to leave—”
“But she never does ask why any one wants to leave. Besides, you know you wouldn’t leave for such a ridiculous reason as that.”
“Well, perhaps I wouldn’t! After all, I should be sorry to think I couldn’t get the better of Delmege, when all’s said and done. I’ve a very good mind to tell her quite plainly that if she’s got her eye on that corner bed she’ll have to come to an understanding with me first, both as to the use of the screen and who’s to make tea in the morning and turn the gas out at night. I’ve heard tales about Delmege’s trick of getting into bed in a hurry and leaving everybody else to do the work. And she and I have had words before now.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 55