“I see,” she said coldly. “Well, you can set your mind at rest. I know that a great deal of responsibility has been thrust upon you lately — perhaps rather more than is good for a girl of your age. You mustn’t let it make you conceited. That’s all. I won’t keep you any longer.”
Lucy withdrew, in a transport of indignation, telling herself that Emil, Lady Frances, Mr. Mildmay and the Institute could all go to hell. Conceited! When she had taken such pains to be diplomatic! When she had tried so hard not to injure her cause by putting herself forward too much!
Hayter was waiting in the corridor and she saw at once that he knew it all. She would have marched past him, but he detained her to express regret about Comus.
“Comus?” said Lucy in surprise.
“Didn’t she tell you? I’m afraid it’s been turned down. A little too ambitious, she thought. I’m so sorry.”
Lucy stared at him and then laughed, for no reason at all except that a laugh might be likely to disconcert him.
A punishment for a naughty girl, she thought, as she returned to her office. A warning to keep off the grass. He knows what I’m after and he’s warning me. If I pipe down and give no trouble I’m safe. If not, I’ll be out on my ear. But I won’t pipe down. No, I won’t pipe down. I’ll go to Charles. I’ll spill all the beans. I’ll tell Charles everything. It’s Hayter or me.
There was nothing for it now but to come into the open and say what she thought of Hayter. She had already decided that, if she was driven to do this, she would go to Charles. She believed that he too had his suspicions, ever since the lunch at Cyre Abbey. To go to Charles was the last shot in her locker, and she must act at once, before Hayter, who worked fast, got another move ahead of her.
3
SHE caught a bus down the hill to the Works. She had not seen Charles since their parting in Sheep Lane, but one of the last things that he had said on that occasion had been to beg that she would let him know if there was ever anything that he could do for her. He had spoken very earnestly and she had no reason to suppose that he did not mean what he said. She needed his help now and she went to him without hesitation. He might not agree with her, might think that her suspicions were nonsense, but she expected him to be cordial, and had no fear that he would resent her sudden reappearance in his life.
This confidence sustained her through all the difficulties of reaching him. Barricades of gate men and secretaries enquired her business, telephoned to one another, left her waiting on benches, and sent her wandering through the endless labyrinth of the Works. So far was she from having ever thought of him as a millionaire and a motor magnate — as, in his way, terrific — that she was inclined to giggle at all this fuss. Had she strolled into the Vatican and demanded an audience with the Holy Father there could scarcely have been more astonishment. But at last, by sheer persistence, she achieved the ante-room of his office where a super-secretary was persuaded to tell the great man himself, through a house telephone, that Miss Carmichael, from the Institute, wished to see him immediately on important business. After a few seconds of respectful listening, this final Cerberus informed her, in hushed tones, that Mr. Millwood could see her.
A door was opened for her. She walked through it into a large light room which contained a perfectly enormous desk — the largest desk she had ever seen, with nothing at all upon its polished surface save a massive silver inkstand, a telephone and a perfectly clean blotting-pad. A formidable stranger was rising from behind this object and coming round to shake hands with her. He looked so much older and harder than the Charles she knew, that she felt quite shy. Nor was he friendly. His greeting was perfectly civil. He shook hands. He asked how she did. He settled her in a chair on one side of his mammoth desk before returning to the other, but he scarcely smiled. His eyes were cold and watchful, as though he was on his guard. It flashed across her that he might think she had changed her mind and was now going to insist on marrying him. This idea would have been funny, if she had not been so much distracted.
“I badly need your advice,” she told him. “You are the only person who can tell me what I ought to do; you’ve always been very kind to me. Can you spare a few minutes and listen, while I explain?”
He thawed a little at that, and said:
“Tell me.”
Lucy told him. She spoke well for she had arranged her story beforehand, when she was considering what she should say if ever she should appeal to him. She gave him the facts clearly and in the right order, without digressions or repetitions. Having summarised her reasons for suspecting Hayter of some large-scale intrigue, she outlined the Angera situation and ended with an account of her scene with his mother.
He listened closely and nodded from time to time. She felt that she was impressing him. She was also aware that her former power with him was gone. She got none of those agonised stares which had been wrung from him in Slane forest. But this was as it should be. She did not want him to be in love with her, nor had she come to ask for anything personal. Her appeal, she felt, was in the public interest, and former passages between them had nothing to do with it, apart from a legacy of goodwill which might help them to co-operate.
So she talked on, pale and resolute and, in her anxiety to make her points, a trifle over-emphatic. Charles watched her, and reflected on the magnitude of his escape. He had never seen her looking so plain; in her haste to catch the bus she had not troubled to change her shabby old suit or to renew her make-up.
“I believe,” she finished, “that Mr. Hayter thinks I’m trying to put a spoke in his wheel, and means to get rid of me. So I decided to tell you all this first, before I’m sacked.”
Charles was looking much more genial. He said at once:
“That’s all right, Lucy. I’ll look after that.”
“Charles! Will you? Oh, what a relief! Then you think my suspicions about Mr. Hayter are not all nonsense?”
“Not at all. I think you’re absolutely right about him. I’ve been watching him for some time.”
“Then …”
He put out a hand to stop her.
“But you can set your mind at rest about Angera. He won’t go. My mother was talking about it on the evening after the Council meeting. They merely mean to give him a fright. If he apologises, they’ll accept it. Of course, you must keep this to yourself. They don’t mean to lose such an able man.”
“They mayn’t. But Mr. Hayter may.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. He can’t want to sack the best Art Director they’re ever likely to get. I admit I think you’re right about him in the main. He’s pocketing the Institute as fast as he can.”
“Then he should be stopped.”
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s such a bad thing. It was deplorably run before he came and he’s made a great many improvements.”
“But he’s an underhand schemer. Your mother would throw him out if she knew what he’s really like.”
“Believe me, it’s the way most committees are run.”
“I can’t believe it. Here is all this ill feeling, getting worse every day, and Emil more and more likely to do something silly, and Mr. Hayter could stop it by a word to your mother any time. I believe he’s doing it on purpose. I believe he wants people to think your mother is unfair.”
“Isn’t that rather hysterical?”
This accusation is always annoying. Lucy flushed.
“No, I’m not. A bad man oughtn’t to have power. And I hope you’ll stop it.”
“I? You hope I’ll stop it?”
“You’re President. You could talk to Emil and make him come to his senses and write a proper apology. You could talk to your mother and get her to have a special Council meeting to reinstate him, before things get any worse. If she’s obstinate you could overrule her; you could talk to the Chairman, to Colonel Harding, couldn’t you?”
Charles said nothing. He was getting a unique opportunity of looking at Lucy’s eyes and was not enjoying it. His geniality vanished. She th
ought she must have been too domineering.
“I’m sorry. I expect there are better ways of doing it. You have the experience; you’ll know.”
“I see,” he said at last. “That’s why you’ve come? To tell me that I must interfere?”
“No! To tell you certain facts and my conclusions. You might have thought my conclusions were wrong. But you’ve said you agreed. And in that case I wouldn’t think anybody need have to tell you that you must interfere.”
There was another pause. She cried:
“You said you would! You said it was all right and you’d look after it. I thought you meant you’d put a stop to all this. What did you mean?”
“I’m sorry,” said Charles. “I didn’t understand. I thought you came because you were afraid you’d lost your job and wanted me to intervene.”
“Oh, no! I only meant that was why I came in such a hurry. In case I vanished through a trap-door like Mr. Thornley, without having a chance to tell you all this.”
“I would have exerted myself to see that didn’t happen, though I rather think you’ve brought it on yourself. But more than that I’m not prepared to do. I don’t interfere with Institute matters. I never have.”
Lucy could not speak for a few seconds. She had not thought it possible that he could take her view of Hayter and think no action necessary. He continued:
“I’ve always thought it a most ridiculous place. It gives my mother something to live for and that’s all that can be said for it.”
“Beneath your attention, I suppose?” said Lucy, recovering her breath, “a poky little town like Ravonsbridge. Nothing short of the Cabinet appeals to you. You’re sore because this country doesn’t ask you to be Prime Minister, but you won’t stoop to a job that’s under your nose. You let a mean crook grab the Institute that your father meant for the people. You let your mother be deceived. Why … you aren’t fit to run a kindergarten!”
Charles looked at his wrist-watch with a long-suffering air.
“Don’t pretend you’re busy,” stormed Lucy, “because you’re obviously not. What you do in here all day I can’t think, unless you polish that inkstand. You’ve told me yourself that you’re never allowed to do anything.”
He still would not answer her. He merely looked at her with a kind of detached astonishment, as though asking himself how he could ever have found her tolerable.
“I suppose you think I oughtn’t to have come here, after … after …”
“I can imagine better taste.”
“Oh, taste! It must be a great consolation to have taste, when your life is so boring. Well … I won’t interrupt you any more. I’ll leave you to sit behind this ridiculous object tastefully doing nothing.”
Lucy jumped up with a gesture so vehement that her handbag burst open and fell upon the floor. Its contents were scattered widely over Charles’ beautiful carpet. She had to go on her knees to collect them. Charles, after a slight hesitation, took the long journey round his desk and came to her aid. Together they crawled about in search of hairpins, pennies, lipstick, powder, a comb, a pencil, matches, cigarettes, several used bus tickets and a lot of toffees wrapped in paper. Lucy giggled angrily at this anticlimax, but Charles, even on his knees, maintained an expression of frigid distaste, especially when he handed her the toffees.
“Thank you,” she said, when they were on their feet again, “it’s all very undignified, I’m sure.”
He opened the door for her and she took herself off, miserable for a great many reasons. She was furious with him and in despair over the Institute, but the bitterest memory was that of the toffees on the carpet. She told herself that it would be all the same a hundred years hence. Some day she might be able to think calmly of Emil, Hayter, Charles and Lady Frances. But she was sure that she would never, not if she lived to be a hundred, be able to remember those toffees without blushing.
4
THE next day, however, was a good day — a day which sent her sanguine spirits soaring. It appeared that most of her colleagues had also come to the conclusion that something ought speedily to be done, and that her fears had not been as peculiar to herself as she had supposed.
Feeling on the Staff had been shifting steadily in favour of Emil. The strongest impulse was undoubtedly compassion for poor Nancy, but there were other motives. Among the seniors there was a growing impression that the Council was liable to be misled, that Lady Frances had lost touch with the Institute, and that Hayter could not be entirely trusted to set her right.
Mr. Mildmay, though unworldly, was not a fool. Upon reflection he became convinced that Lucy had been perfectly right to consult him, that he had been justified in his intervention, and that he ought not to have allowed himself to be shut up in so peremptory a manner. He consulted Miss Frogmore, who was next to him in seniority, and found her very ready to second him in any effort on Emil’s behalf which he might be disposed to make. She did not like Emil, but she liked the behaviour of the Council less. She had expected to join it, on Thornley’s departure, and considered that she had been slighted. Her assent was warm when Mildmay suggested that Lady Frances, nowadays, seemed to know very little about the Staff.
Together they determined to call all their colleagues to an informal meeting in the library on the following day. Means of conveying to the Council their point of view on l’affaire Angera were to be discussed. Emil was to be invited but not Hayter, on the grounds that Hayter’s membership of the Council might put him in an ambiguous position.
They met, and their hardest task was to bring Angera to reason, force him to write a proper letter to the Council, withdrawing his foolish resignation, and persuade him to hold his tongue about Miss Foss. This, for some time, he refused to do. He asserted mysteriously that he had friends in the town who would see him righted, and that it was the Council which would be sent packing. But at last, with a very ill grace, he yielded.
A round robin was then composed, addressed to Colonel Harding and circulated to the whole Council, in which they expressed their esteem for Angera, their hope that his apology would be accepted and their desire for an early Council meeting to settle the matter, on the grounds that the present state of affairs was very damaging to the Institute. There was some talk among the bolder spirits of a mass resignation should this request be ignored, but this was felt by the majority to be a move which the occasion did not warrant. It was agreed that nobody should bind himself, but that Mildmay should write an unofficial letter to the Chairman stressing the urgency of the matter, and hinting that they had this weapon in reserve if the Council persisted in ignoring them.
To Lucy it seemed that the battle was as good as won. Charles had assured her that the Council really wished to keep Angera and an early meeting would forestall any further follies and misunderstandings. Such a proof of solidarity from the Staff, moreover, might mean a general turn for the better and a check to the influence of Hayter.
For a week she was able to believe that all would be well. But, when a fortnight had passed with no rumour of a Council meeting, she began once more to worry. Colonel Harding had acknowledged Mildmay’s unofficial letter in a pleasant but non-committal note, and that was all.
Three weeks went by. Lucy grew frantic, — the more so because nobody else would admit any cause for anxiety. Nobody wanted to believe that the Staff had been snubbed, since to do so would have been to acknowledge that they had put themselves into a very difficult position. If it had not been for Lucy, who insisted on counting the days, they need not have noticed how time was passing. Her white face and sharp nose began to irritate them, and Rickie at last took it upon himself to read her a lecture.
“Honestly, Lucy, you’re letting it get into an obsession. Everybody says so. Nobody else is worried.”
“Then they ought to be.”
“Don’t be hysterical. Pull up your socks and think of something else. That’s the only thing to do when you’ve got something on your mind.”
“You’re so awfully good at
doing that yourself, aren’t you, Rickie?”
“Yes,” said Rickie complacently. “When I was going through that bad time, about Melissa, I had to do it.”
Lucy burst out laughing, felt better, and rushed off to report this latest Rickie-ism to Melissa. It was some time since she had found anything funny to tell Melissa, who needed to be cheered up because Hump was returning to Africa. He was working for a while in Paris before joining a party sent by the French Government to the Dandawa. Melissa was in despair at losing him again so soon, and because she thought he was being exploited.
Though what Melissa knows about despair, thought Lucy, when she had finished a lively letter, wouldn’t fill half a sheet of note-paper. It’s just a word one uses. It ought to be reserved for people like poor Nancy, waiting and waiting for good news that never comes, and being driven out of the few senses she ever had.
She remembered, with a pang of guilt, that she had not been to see Nancy lately. She ought to have gone much oftener, during these grinding weeks of suspense. But the house was so squalidly cheerless, Emil so moody, that a visit was something of an ordeal. She braced herself to go that evening and console her poor friend. That Nancy was by now beyond reach of consolation had not been perceived by anybody in Ravonsbridge, and the sight of the baby, asleep on the stairs, did not startle Lucy as much as it might have done in any other household. The child had never led a very regular existence. She carried him up to his cot before joining Nancy, who was sitting, as usual, in her dirty kitchen staring at nothing.
“I’ve just put Brian to bed,” said Lucy cheerfully. “He woke up for a minute while I was undressing him, and said: Has God got teef?”
Nancy picked at a knot-hole in the kitchen table and presently said that she thought she would go to Kidderminster.
“To your mother?” asked Lucy. “For a holiday?”
“She has a little business … well, it’s newspapers, you know, and sweets and tobacco….”
Nancy’s voice trailed off. She picked at the knot-hole and then added:
Lucy Carmichael Page 30