It was a very hot morning in July, a morning when work begins slowly,
continues irritably, and is likely to incite human paroxysms of
forgetfulness and temper. It took the form with Mr. Leslie Travers of
his being more definite than usual. He was an extremely intelligent man,
and most of his intelligence consisted in knowing where other people
were wrong. The heat lent an almost unbearable edge to these
inspirations; the office boy, the mayor's secretary, and two typists
withdrew from his sanctum as if they had been in direct contact with a
razor.
Stella wished, as she had often wished before, that the inner office in
which she worked could not be invaded by the manner in which Mr. Travers
conducted his interviews. She respected him as her chief, she even
considered him with a kind of loyal awe augmented by her daily duty. She
pleased him, she catered for him, she never in any circumstances let
him down or confused him by a miscalculation or a mistake.
It is impossible to do this for any man for two years and, if he has
treated you with fairness and respect, not at the end of that time, to
regard him with a certain proprietary affection. This was how Stella
regarded Mr. Travers. He was a clever man, and he never expected any one
under him to work miracles or to give him trouble. He knew what you were
worth, and sometimes he let you see it.
He was handsome in a thin, set, rather dry way, and when he put his
finger-tips together and smiled a little ironic smile he had, and leaned
forward with his shoulders hunched and his eyes unusually bright, as if
they'd been polished like a boot-button, he had an air of intellectual
strength which usually brought terror to an opponent. He always knew
when his adversary was in the wrong. It sometimes seemed to Stella as if
he never knew anything else.
He had reduced life to a kind of game in which you caught the other
fellow out. She got very tired of hearing him say, "You see, Miss
Waring, the weak point of this case is--" or, "I think we may just point
out to him that he renders himself liable to--"
He was a master hand at an interview. To begin with, he always let the
interviewer state his case completely. He never interrupted; he would
sit there smiling a little with his steady, observant eyes fixed on the
man before him, saying in a suave, mild voice, "Yes, yes; I quite see.
Exactly. Your point is--" and Stella, listening, would feel her heart
sink at the dangerous volubility of his opponent. She would have liked
to spring from behind the screen where she was sorting the
correspondence and say, "For Heaven's sake! keep that back! You're
letting yourself in!" As soon as the usually verbose and chaotic
applicant had drawn his final breath, Mr. Leslie Travers gave him back
his case with the points eliminated, and the defenseless places laid out
before him as invertebrate and unmanageable as a jellyfish. It was
hardly necessary for Mr. Leslie Travers to say, with his dry little
smile, "I think you see, my dear fellow, don't you, that it would really
be advisable in your own interests not to go on any further with the
matter? It will be no trouble to us at all if you decide to push it, but
if you take my advice, you will simply go home and think no more about
it." People usually went home, and if their case had been important to
them, they probably thought about it to the end of their lives; but that
didn't affect Mr. Travers. It was his business to safeguard the
interests of the town hall, and the more cases you could drop, the
better. Of course he never dropped a case that could be used against
him; he held on to these until they couldn't. He had to perfection the
legal mind. He never touched what wasn't a safe proposition. A peculiar
idea seized Stella as she listened to him dismissing a worried
rate-payer who had asked for lowered rates, claiming the decreased value
of his property, "We shall act immediately," Mr. Travers said
benevolently. "We receive proof that your property _has_ decreased in
value, but it doesn't do, you know, to come here and tell me the
neighborhood isn't what it was. No neighborhood ever is. Good morning."
What, she asked herself, would Mr. Leslie Travers be without his
impeccable tie, his black coat, and definitely creased gray trousers,
the polish on his boots, the office background, and, above all, the law?
Was he really very awe-inspiring. Wasn't he just a funny little man? It
was curious how she felt this morning, as if she would have liked to see
some one large and lawless face Mr. Travers and show him that his
successes were tricks, his interviews mousetraps, his words delusive
little pieces of very stale cheese. He was too careful of his dignity,
too certain of his top-hat. You couldn't imagine him dirty and oily at
the north pole, putting grit into half-frozen, starving men. You
couldn't, that is to say, imagine him at a disadvantage, making the
disadvantage play his game.
His games were always founded on advantages. He wasn't, in fact, at all
like Julian Verny, nor was there any reason why he should be. But
yesterday Stella had seen Julian Verny, and to-day she saw, and saw as
if for the first time, Mr. Leslie Travers.
"Now, Miss Waring," Mr. Travers said, looking up from his desk, "the
correspondence, please, if you are ready." He always spoke to her,
unless he was in a hurry, as if he were speaking to a good, rather
bright little girl who knew her place, but mustn't be tempted unduly to
forget it. When he was in a hurry he sometimes said, "Look sharp."
Stella brought the correspondence, and they went through it together
with their usual celerity and carefulness, and all the time she was
thinking: "We've worked together every day for two years except Sundays,
and he's afraid to look at me unless we're discussing a definite
question, and he won't risk a joke, and he'd be shocked if I sneezed.
He's just a very intelligent, cultivated, knowing clerk, and he'd be
awfully upset if I told him he had a smut on his collar."
Mr. Leslie Travers put to one side the two or three letters he had
reserved for himself to answer. Stella gathered hers together into an
elastic band; but as she turned to leave him he said:
"Miss Waring, one moment. You came to me on the understanding that your
work here was to be purely temporary. Circumstances have prolonged your
stay with us until it seems to me that we may fairly consider you,
unless you have other plans, a permanent member of our staff!"
"I hope so," said Stella, with a sudden flicker in her eyes, "unless you
think women shouldn't be permanent."
Mr. Leslie Travers permitted himself a very slight smile.
"That disability in your case," he said, "we are prepared to overlook in
view of your value as a worker. As my permanent secretary I should wish
to raise your salary ten pounds yearly. I have put this before our
committee, and they have seen their way to consent to it."
Stella's eyebrows went up. Ten pounds were worth so much to that
muddled, penurious household standing behind her on the verge of utmost
poverty! The man whose place she had taken had been paid three hundred a
year; her rise brought up her salary to one third of this amount.
"It _is_ a disability, Mr. Travers," she said gently, "being a woman. I
see that it is going to cost me two hundred a year."
Mr. Travers looked at her very hard. He knew that she did her work twice
as well as the man she had replaced. That is why she had replaced him.
He thought of her market value as a worker, and he knew that he was
doing a perfectly correct thing. A hundred a year was a fair wage for a
woman secretary. He said:
"You see, Miss Waring, you have not got a family to support."
Stella flushed. She had a family to support, but she did not intend to
admit it to Mr. Travers.. She said:
"I beg your pardon. I had not understood that wages were paid according
to a worker's needs. I had thought the value of the work settled the
rate of payment."
Mr. Travers was astonished. He had never dreamed that Miss Waring would
argue with him. He had looked forward to telling her of this unexpected
windfall; he had expected a flushed and docile gratitude. She was a
little flushed, it is true, but she was neither docile nor grateful, and
he did not quite see his way to continuing her line of argument. She
had, however, put herself in the wrong, and he pointed this out to her.
"I am afraid I cannot see my way to offering you more than the increase
I have suggested," he said; "but as you were apparently satisfied to
accept a permanent post at my original offer, I may hope that an extra
ten pounds will prove no obstacle to our continuing to work together."
"I do not suppose," said Stella, quietly, "that it will be any obstacle
to you that I do not think it fair."
"Really, Miss Waring, really," said Mr. Travers, "I do not think you are
quite yourself this morning. The heat, the disquieting news in the
papers--Perhaps you had better go on with the correspondence. These
questions are not personal ones, you know--they--"
Stella interrupted him.
"All questions that deal with human beings, Mr. Travers," she said, "are
personal questions, and the heat does not affect them."
For one awful moment Mr. Travers thought that Miss Waring was laughing
at him; there was that strange glint in her eyes that he had noticed
before. She had extraordinarily pretty eyes, usually so gentle. It was
most upsetting.
She disappeared with her correspondence before he could think of a
suitable reply. Legally he had been perfectly justified, more than
justified, because he was under no obligation to offer her ten pounds
more.
This is what comes of generosity to women. If he hadn't offered her that
ten pounds she wouldn't have laughed at him, if she really had laughed
at him.
It was a most disquieting thought; it haunted him all day long, even
more than the possibility of a European war. He couldn't help the
European war if it did come off, but he wished very much that he had
been able to prevent Miss Waring's enigmatic laughter.