It is disconcerting to believe that you are the possessor of one kind of
temper--a cold, deadly, on-the-spot temper--which cuts through the
insignificant flurries of other people like a knife through butter, and
then to find a sloppy explosiveness burst from you unaware.
Mr. Travers had never dreamed that in the town hall itself he could ever
be led to lose a thing he had in such entire control as his temper. He
did not lose it when the blushing Mr. Belk had the audacity to stop him
in mid-career, on his way to his sanctum through No. 7, the outer office
of his assistant clerks, though they were, as a body, strictly forbidden
to address him while passing to and fro. Mr. Belk was so ill advised as
to say:
"If you please, sir, it's four o'clock, and Miss Waring hasn't been out
to lunch yet." Mr. Travers merely ran his eye over Mr. Belk as a
fishmonger runs his eyes over vulnerable portions of cod laid out for
cutting, and brought down his chopper at an expert angle.
"Since when, Mr. Belk," he asked, with weary irony, "has Miss Waring's
lunch been on your list of duties?"
Then he passed swiftly into his office and faced Stella, closing the
door behind him. Temper shook him as a rough wind shakes an
insignificant obstacle. He could not hold it; it was gone. It blew
inside out like a deranged umbrella. He glared at Miss Waring. There was
nothing in her slight, bent figure, with its heavy, brown hair neatly
plaited in a crown about her head, which should have roused any town
clerk to sudden fury.
"It's abominable," Mr. Travers exclaimed, bringing his trembling hand
down with a bang upon Stella's table, "how women behave!"
Stella said out loud, "One hundred pounds, ten shillings, and sixpence,"
and then looked up at her employer. She asked very quietly who had vexed
him. There might have been a fugitive gleam of laughter at the back of
her eyes, but there were shadows under them that made her look too tired
for laughter.
"You, of course," he cried. "How are we ever to get through with our
work if you won't eat? It's so silly! It's so tiresome! It's so uncalled
for! Why are you doing these wretched lists now?"
"Because," said Stella--and now the laughter ran out at him unexpectedly
and tripped him up--"the town clerk has a meeting at five o'clock at
which these statistics must be at hand to justify him in having his own
way!"
"Put them down!" said Mr. Travers savagely. Stella laid down her pen
with the ready obedience which can be made so baffling when it proceeds
from an unconsenting will. "Now go out and get something to eat," he
went on, "while I do the wretched things. And don't let this occur
again. If you have too much to do,--and I know the correspondence gets
more and more every day,--mention it. We must get some help in."
She was gone before he had finished his sentence--gone with that absurd
dimple in the corner of her cheek and the sliding laughter of her eyes.
She had left behind her a curious, restless emptiness, as if the very
room itself waited impatiently for her return. It was half an hour
before she came back. The town clerk had had to answer three telephone
messages and four telegrams. If the outer office had not known that he
was there and Miss Waring wasn't, he would have had more interruptions.
Nevertheless, the figures had helped Mr. Travers to recover his temper.
He was an expert accountant, and you can take figures upon their
face-value. They are not like women; they have no dimples.
Mr. Travers was prepared to be the stern, but just, employer again. He
remained seated, and Stella leaned over his shoulder. He had not
expected that she would do this.
"What have you had to eat?" he asked. It was not at all what he had
intended to say to Stella.
"A cup of tea, two ham sandwiches, and a bun:--such a magnificent spread
for seven-pence!" replied Stella, cheerfully. "You've forgotten to put
in what the insurance will be--there at the bottom of the page."
Mr. Travers rose to his feet. He was taller than Stella, and he
considered that he had a commanding presence. Stella slid back into her
seat.
"You ought to have had," said Mr. Travers, with labored quietness,
"beefsteak and a glass of port."
"Anybody could tell," said Stella, tranquilly, "that you are an
abstemious man, Mr. Travers. Port! Port _and_ steak! You mean porter.
All real drinkers know that port is sacred. Bottles of it covered with
exquisite cobwebs are kept for choice occasions; they are brought in
softly by stately butlers, walking delicately like Agag. It is drunk in
companionable splendor, tenderly ministered to by nothing more solid
than a walnut, and it follows the courses of the sun. There, you did
quite a lot while I was away, and if you don't mind just looking through
those landlords' repairing leases on your desk, I dare say I shall have
finished this before five."
Mr. Travers opened his mouth, shut it again, and returned to his
repairing leases. He was not an employer any more. He was not an icy,
mysterious tyrant ruling over a trembling and docile universe: his own
secretary had literally told him to run away and play!
But it was in the night watches that the worst truth struck him. He had
been furious with Miss Waring for not spending more upon her lunch, he
had upbraided her for it, and she had never turned round and said, "Look
what I earn!" The opportunity was made to her hand. "How can women
secretaries earning a hundred a year eat three-and-sixpenny lunches?"
That ought to have been her answer. Why wasn't it? She hadn't been too
stupid to see it. She had seen it, and she had instantly, before he had
had time to see it himself, covered it up and hidden it under that
uncalled-for eulogy on port. It was not fear. She hadn't been afraid to
stand up to him (uncalled-for eulogies _were_ standing up to him);
besides she had previously called him unfair to his face. It was just
something that Miss Waring _was_--something that made the color spring
into Mr. Traver's face in the dark till his cheeks burned; something
that had made Mr. Belk dare his chief's displeasure to get her lunch;
something that wasn't business.
"She wouldn't take an advantage, because I'd given it to her," he said
to himself. "I thought everybody took an advantage when they had the
sense to see it; but she doesn't, though she has plenty of sense. But
the world couldn't go on like that."
This brilliant idea reassured Mr. Travers; he stopped blushing. He was
relieved to think that the world couldn't go on like Stella; but there
was something in him, a faint contradictory something, that made him
glad that Stella didn't go on like the world.
He went to sleep with these two points unreconciled.