"Mother, are you coming to the Canteen again tomorrow? You remember what
a rush it was last Monday, and it'll be just as bad again."
"No, Char, I am _not_," was the unvarnished reply of Lady Vivian.
Char compressed her lips and sighed. She would have been almost as much
disappointed as surprised if her mother had suddenly expressed an
intention of appearing regularly at the Canteen, but she knew that Miss
Bruce was looking at her with an admiring and compassionate gaze.
Sir Piers, who substituted chess for billiards on Sunday evenings
because he thought it due to the servants to show that the Lord's Day
was respected at Plessing, looked up uneasily.
"You're not going out again tomorrow, eh, my dear? I missed our game
sadly the other night."
"No, it's all right; I'm not going again."
Joanna never raised her voice very much, but Sir Piers always heard what
she said. It made Char wonder sometimes, half irritably and half
ashamedly, whether he could not have heard other people, had he wanted
to. The overstrain from which she herself was quite unconsciously
suffering made her nervously impatient of the old man's increasing
slowness of perception.
"And where has Char been all this afternoon? I never see you about the
house now," Sir Piers said, half maunderingly, half with a sort of
bewilderment that was daily increasing in his view of small outward
events.
"I've been at my work," said Char, raising her voice, partly as a vent
to her own feelings. "I go into the office on Sunday afternoons always,
and a very good thing I do, too. They were making a fearful muddle of
some telegrams yesterday."
"Telegrams? You can't send telegrams on a Sunday, child; they aren't
delivered. I don't like you to go to this place on Sundays, either.
Joanna, my dear, we mustn't allow her to do that."
Char cast up her eyes in a sort of desperation, and went into the
further half of the drawing-room, where Miss Bruce sat, just hearing her
mother say gently: "Look, Piers, I shall take your castle."
"Brucey," said Char, "I think they'll drive me mad. I know my work is
nothing, really--such a tiny, infinitesimal part of a great whole--but
if I could only get a _little_ sympathy. It does seem so extraordinary,
when one has been working all day, giving one's whole self to it all,
and then to come back to this sort of atmosphere!"
Miss Bruce was perhaps the only person with whom Char was absolutely
unreserved. In younger days Miss Bruce had been her adoring governess,
and the old relations still existed between them. Char knew that Miss
Bruce had always thought Lady Vivian's management of her only child
terribly injudicious, and that in the prolonged antagonism between
herself and her mother Miss Bruce's silent loyalty had always ranged
itself on Char's side.
"It's very hard on you, my dear," she sighed. "But I have been afraid
lately--have you noticed, I wonder?"
"What?"
"Sir Piers seems to me to be failing; he is so much deafer, so much more
dependent on Lady Vivian."
"He's always _that_," said Char. "I think it's only the beginning of the
winter, Brucey. He always feels the cold weather."
But a very little while later Miss Bruce's view received unexpected
corroboration.
Three Sundays later, when the weather had grown colder than ever, and
Char was, as usual, spending the afternoon and evening at the Depôt,
Mrs. Willoughby paid a call at Plessing.
She was followed into the room, with almost equal unwillingness, by her
husband and a small, immensely stout Pekinese dog, with bulging eyes and
a quick, incessant bark that only Mrs. Willoughby's voice could
dominate.
"Darling Joanna!" she shrieked. "Puffles, wicked, wicked boy, be quiet!
Isn't this an invasion? But my Lewis did so want--I shall smack 'oo if
'oo isn't quiet directly. _Do_ you mind this little brown boy, who goes
_everywhere_ with his mammy? I knew you'd love him if you saw him--but
_such_ a noise! Lewis, tell this naughty Puff his mother can't hear
herself speak."
"Down, sir!" said Lewis, in tones which might have quelled a mastiff
with hydrophobia.
Puff waddled for refuge to his mistress, who immediately gathered him on
to her lap as she sank on to the sofa.
"Did 'oo daddy speak in a big rough voice, and frighten the poor little
manikin?" she inquired solicitously. "Isn't he _rather_ twee, Joanna?"
"I've not seen it before," said Joanna, in tones more civil than
enthusiastic.
"It!" screamed Lesbia. "She calls 'oo _it_, my Puffles! as though he
wasn't the sweetest little brown boy in the whole world. It! You've hurt
his little feelings too dreadfully, my dear--look at him sulking!"
Puff had composed himself into a sort of dribbling torpor.
"That dog doesn't get enough exercise," said Major Willoughby suddenly,
fixing his eyes upon his hostess.
"Surely it--he--is too small to require a great deal," said Lady Vivian
languidly. Lap-dogs bored her very much indeed, and she turned away her
eyes after taking one rather disgusted look at the recumbent Puff
through her eyeglasses.
"Train up a dog in the way it should go. Now, this little fellah--you'd
hardly believe it, Lady Vivian, if I were to tell you the difference in
him after he's had a good run over the Common."
"Lewis!" cried Lesbia, opening her eyes to an incredible extent, as was
her wont whenever she wished to emphasize her words. "I _can't_ have you
boring people about Puff. Lewis is a perfect slave to Puffles, and tries
to hide it by calling him 'the dog' and talking about his training."
Lewis looked self-conscious, and immediately said: "Not at all; not at
all. But the dog is an intelligent little brute. Now, I'll tell you what
happened the other day."
Major Willoughby gave various instances of Puff's discrimination, and
Lesbia kissed the top of Puff's somnolent head and exclaimed shrilly at
intervals that "it was too, too bad to pay the little treasure so many
compliments; it would turn his little fluffy head, it would."
Lady Vivian reflected that she might certainly absolve herself from the
charge of contributing to this catastrophe. The language of compliment
had seldom been further from her lips; but in any case her visitors left
her little of the trouble of sustaining conversation.
It was evident that Puff was a recent acquisition in the Willoughby
_ménage_.
"Where's your dear girl?" Lesbia presently inquired fondly of her
hostess.
"In Questerham, at the Depôt."
"Now, Joanna, I'm going to be perfectly candid. You won't mind, I
know--after all, you and I were girls together. What Char needs, my
dear, is _flogging_."
Lady Vivian was conscious of distinct relief at the thought that her
secretary did not happen to be within earshot of this startling
expression of opinion.
"You are certainly being perfectly candid, Lesbia," she said dryly.
"What has poor Char been doing to require flogging, may I ask?"
"You ask me that, Joanna! Lewis, hark at her!"
Lewis, thus appealed to, looked very uncomfortable, and said in a
non-committal manner: "H'm, yes, yes. Hi! Puff!--good dog, sir!" thus
rousing the Pekinese to a fresh outburst of ear-piercing barks.
When this had at length been quelled by the blandishments of Lesbia and
the words of command repeatedly given in a martial tone by her husband,
Lady Vivian repeated her inquiry, and Mrs. Willoughby replied forcibly:
"My dear, nothing but flogging would ever bring her to her senses. The
way she's treating you and poor dear Sir Piers! He's looking iller and
older every day, and tells me himself that he never sees her now; it's
too piteous to hear him, dear old thing. It would wring tears from a
stone--wouldn't it, Lewis?"
"Down, sir, down, I say!" was the reply of Major Willoughby, addressed
to the investigating Puff.
"Oh, naughty boy, leave the screen alone. Now, come here to mother,
then. What was I telling you, Joanna? Oh, about that girl of yours.
War-work is all very well, my dear, but to _my_ mind home-ties are
absolutely sacred, and more than ever before in such a time as this,
when we may all be swept away by some ghastly air-raid in a night. It's
simply a time when homes should _cling_ together. I always tell my Lewis
it's a time when we should _cling_ more than ever before--don't I,
Lewis?"
Lewis looked at Puff with a compelling eye, but Puff was again
quiescent, and gave him no opening.
Lady Vivian said, very briskly indeed: "Char is not at all a clinging
person, Lesbia, and neither am I. We can each stand very comfortably on
our own feet, and I'm proud of the work she's doing in Questerham. Now,
do let me give you some tea."
"Joanna, I know perfectly well you're snubbing me and telling me to mind
my own business, but Lewis can tell you that I'm perfectly impervious. I
_always_ say exactly what I want to say, and if you won't listen to me,
I shall talk to your good man. I can hear him coming."
The entrance of Sir Piers Vivian was the signal for a frantic uproar
from Puff, who hurled a shrill defiance at him from the hearth-rug,
which he so exactly matched in colour as to be indistinguishable from
it.
"Bless me, Joanna, what's all this?" inquired the astonished Sir Piers,
looking all round him in search of the monster from which so much noise
could proceed.
He failed to perceive it, and stumbled heavily over the hearth-rug.
There was a howl from Puff; Lesbia cried, "Oh, my little manikin, is 'oo
deaded?" Major Willoughby exclaimed in agonized tones to his host, "By
Jove! the dog got in your way, sir, I'm afraid;" and to Puff, "Get out
of the light, sir; what are you doing there?" and Lady Vivian gave a
sudden irrepressible peal of laughter.
So that Lesbia, taking her departure half an hour later, remarked
conclusively to her Lewis that the strain of this dreadful war was
making poor dear Joanna Vivian positively hysterical.
She repeated the same alarming statement for Char's benefit next time
she saw her at the Canteen. "I shouldn't say it, my dear child, but that
your darling mother and I were girls together, and it's simply breaking
my heart to see how broken up your father is, and no one to take any of
the strain of it off _her_."
Mrs. Willoughby spoke in her usual penetrating accents, and without any
regard for the fact that at least three members of Miss Vivian's staff
were well within earshot.
"No one can be keener than I am about doing one's bit for this ghastly
war, but I do think, dear, that your place just now is at home--at least
part of each day. You won't mind an old friend's speaking quite, quite
plainly, I know."
Char minded so much that she was white with annoyance.
"I can't discuss it here," she said, in a voice even lower than usual,
in rebukeful contrast to Lesbia's screeching tones. "I should be only
too thankful if I could get my place satisfactorily filled here, but at
present it's perfectly impossible for me to leave even for an hour or
two. I very often don't get time even for lunch nowadays."
"Simply because you enjoy making a martyr of yourself!" said Mrs.
Willoughby spitefully.
Char, dropping her eyelids in a manner that gave her a look of
incredible insolence, moved away without replying.
For the next week she worked harder than ever, multiplying letters and
incessant interviews, and depriving herself daily of an extra hour's
sleep in the morning by starting for the Depôt earlier than usual, so as
to cope with the press of business. It was her justification to herself
for Mrs. Willoughby's crude accusations and the unspoken reproach in Sir
Piers's feeble bewilderment at her activities.
Miss Plumtree fell ill with influenza, and Char took over her work, and
arranged with infinite trouble to herself that Miss Plumtree should go
to a small convalescent home in the country, because the doctor said she
needed change of air. She was to incur no expense, Char told her, very
kindly, and even remembered to order a cab for her at the country
station. Miss Plumtree, owning that she could never have afforded a
journey to her home in Devonshire, cried tears of mingled weakness and
gratitude, and told the Hostel all that Miss Vivian had done.
Everybody said it was exactly like Miss Vivian, and that she really was
too wonderful.
Then the demon of influenza began its yearly depredations. One member of
the staff after another went down with it, was obliged to plead illness
and go to bed at the Hostel, and inevitably pass on the complaint to her
room-mate.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Potter won't be coming today," Miss Delmege announced
deprecatingly to her chief, who struck the table with her hand and
exclaimed despairingly:
"Of course! just because there's more to be done than ever! Influenza, I
suppose?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"That's five of them down with it now--or is it six? I don't know _what_
to do."
"It does seem strange," was the helpless rejoinder of Miss Vivian's
secretary.
Char thought the adjective inadequate to a degree. She abated not one
jot of all that she had undertaken, and accomplished the work of six
people.
Miss Delmege several times ventured to exclaim, with a sort of
respectful despair, that Miss Vivian would kill herself, and Char knew
that the rest of the staff was saying much the same thing behind her
back. At Plessing Miss Bruce remonstrated admiringly, and exclaimed
every day how tired Char was looking, throwing at the same time a rather
resentful glance upon Lady Vivian.
But Joanna remained quite unperceiving of the dark lines deepening daily
beneath her daughter's heavy eyes.
She was entirely absorbed in Sir Piers, becoming daily more dependent
upon her.
The day came, when the influenza epidemic was at its height in
Questerham, when Miss Bruce exclaimed in tones of scarcely suppressed
indignation as Char came downstairs after the usual hasty breakfast
which she had in her own room: "My dear, you're not fit to go. Really
you're not; you ought to be in bed this moment. Do, do let me telephone
and say you can't come today. Indeed, it isn't right. You look as though
you hadn't slept all night."
"I haven't, much," said Char hoarsely. "I have a cold, that's all."
"Miss Vivian was coughing half the night," thrust in her maid, hovering
in the hall laden with wraps.
"You mustn't go!" cried Miss Bruce distractedly.
"You really aren't fit, Miss."
Lady Vivian appeared at the head of the stairs.
"What's all this?"
"Oh, Lady Vivian," cried the secretary, "do look at her! She ought to be
in bed."
Char said: "Nonsense!" impatiently, but she gave her mother an
opportunity for seeing that her face was white and drawn, with heavily
ringed eyes and feverish lips.
"You've got influenza, Char."
"I dare say," said Char in tones of indifference. "It would be very odd
if I'd escaped, since half the office is down with it. But I can't
afford to give in."
"It would surely be truer economy to take a day off now than to risk a
real breakdown later on," was the time-worn argument urged by Miss
Bruce.
Char smiled with pale decision.
"Let me pass, Brucey. I really mean it."
"Lady Vivian!" wailed the secretary.
Joanna shrugged her shoulders. She, too, looked weary.
"Be reasonable, Char."
"It's of no use, mother. I shouldn't dream of giving in while there's
work to be done."
Miss Bruce gave a sort of groan of mingled admiration and despair at
this heroic statement. Char slipped her arms into the fur coat that her
maid was holding out for her.
Lady Vivian stood at the top of the stairs looking at her with an air of
detached consideration, and left Miss Bruce to make those hurried
dispositions of foot-warmer, fur rug, and little bottles of sulphate and
quinine which, the secretary resentfully felt, a more maternal woman
would have taken upon herself.
But Lady Vivian's omissions were not destined to provide the only one,
or even the most severe, of the shocks received by Miss Bruce's
sensibilities that morning.
As Char extended her hand for the last of Miss Bruce's offerings, a
small green bottle of highly pungent smelling salts, Lady Vivian's
incisive tones came levelly from above.
"You'd better stay the night at Questerham, Char. It will be very cold
driving back after dark."
"Oh no, mother. Besides, I don't know where I could go. I hate the
hotel, and one can't inflict an influenza cold on other people."
"You can go to your Hostel. Surely there's a spare bed?"
The ghost of a smile flickered upon Lady Vivian's face, as though in
mischievous anticipation of Char's refusal.
"It's quite out of the question. The Hostel is for my staff, and it
would be very unsuitable for me, as Director of the Midland Supply
Depôt, to go there too."
"Bless me! are they as exclusive as all that?" exclaimed Joanna
flippantly. "Well, do as you like, but if you come back here, you're not
to go near your father, with a cold like that."
Miss Bruce, almost before she knew it, found herself exchanging a glance
of indignation with Char's maid, but she was conscious enough of her own
dignity to look away again in a great hurry.
"You will certainly want to go straight to bed when you come in," she
said to Char, pointedly enough. "We will have everything ready and a
nice fire in your room."
"Thank you, Brucey."
Char bestowed her rare smile upon the little agitated secretary, and
moved across the hall.
She felt very ill, with violent pains in her head and back, and shivered
intermittently.
Leaning back in her heavy coat, under the fur rug, Char closed her eyes.
She reflected on the dismay with which Miss Delmege would greet her,
and wondered rather grimly whether any further members of her staff
would have succumbed to the prevailing illness. She knew that only a
will of iron could surmount such physical ills as she was herself
enduring, and dreaded the moment when she must rouse herself from her
present torpid discomfort to the necessity of moving and speaking.
As she got out of the car, Char reeled and almost fell, in an
intolerable spasm of giddiness, and her progress up the stairs was only
made possible by the remnant of strength which allowed her to grasp the
baluster and lean her full weight upon it as she dragged herself into
her office.
She was, however, met with no wail of condolence from the genteel
accents of Miss Delmege.
Grace Jones, composedly solid and healthy-looking, said placidly:
"Good-morning. I'm sorry to say that Miss Delmege is in bed with
influenza."
"In bed!"
"She had a very restless night and has a temperature this morning."
"She was all right yesterday."
"She had a sore throat, you know," remarked Grace, "but she didn't at
all want to give in, and is very much distressed."
Char raised her heavy eyes.
"You all seem to me to collapse like a pack of cards, one after another.
I think _my_ bed would prove a bed of thorns while there's so much work
to do, and so few people to do it. In fact, I can't imagine wanting to
go there."
She made an infinitesimal pause, shaken by one of those violent,
involuntary, shivering fits. Miss Jones gazed at her chief.
"I think I can manage Miss Delmege's work," she observed gently.
"Oh, I shall have to go through most of it myself, of course," was the
ungrateful retort of the suffering Miss Vivian.
The day appeared to her interminable. The air was damp and raw; and
although Miss Jones piled coal upon the fire, it refused to blaze up,
and only smouldered in a sullen heap, with a small curling column of
yellow smoke at the top. A traction-engine ground and screamed and
pounded its way up and down under the window, and each time it passed
directly in front of the house the floor and walls of Char's room shook
slightly, with a vibration that made her feel sick and giddy.
There were no interviews, but letters and telephone messages poured in
incessantly, and at about twelve o'clock a telegram marked "Priority"
was brought her. With a sinking sense of utter dismay, Char tore it
open.
"A rest-station for a troop-train at five o'clock this afternoon. Eight
hundred. Miss Jones, please let the Commissariat Department know at
once. The staff should be at the station by three. I'll make out the
list at once, and you can take it round the office."
By four o'clock a fine cold rain was falling, and Char's voice had
nearly gone.
As she hurried down to her car, which was to take her to the station,
she heard an incautiously raised voice: "She does look so ill! Of course
it's flu, and I should think this rest-station will just about finish
her off."
"Not she! I do believe she'd stick it out if she were dying. No lunch
today, either, only a cup of Bovril, which I simply had to force her to
take."
Char recognized the voice of Miss Henderson, who had received her order
for lunch in place of Miss Delmege, and had ventured to suggest the
Bovril in tones of the utmost deference.
She smiled slightly.
The troop-train was late.
"Of course!" muttered Char, pacing up and down the sheltered platform
with the fur collar of her motoring coat turned up, and her hands deep
in its wide pockets.
In the waiting-rooms, given over to the workers for the time being, the
staff was active.
Sandwiches were cut, and heavy trays and urns carried out in readiness,
while orderlies from the hospitals put up light trestle tables at
intervals along the platform.
Char paused, turned the handle of the waiting-room door, and stood for a
moment on the threshold.
Every one was talking. Trays piled with cut and stacked sandwiches were
ranged all round the room; tin mugs, again on trays, stood in groups of
twelve; and the final spoonfuls of sugar were being scooped from a tin
biscuit-box into the waiting bowl on each tray. Even the cake was
already cut, sliced up on innumerable plates.
They had been working hard, and had more work to come, yet they all
looked gay and amused, and were talking and laughing as though they did
not know the meaning of fatigue. And Char was feeling so ill that she
could hardly stand.
Suddenly some one caught sight of her, there was a sort of murmur, "Miss
Vivian!" and in one moment self-consciousness invaded the room. Those
who were sitting down stood up, trying to look at ease; little Miss
Anthony, who had been manipulating the bread-cutting machine with great
success all the afternoon, at once cut her finger with it, and some one
else suddenly dropped a mug with a reverberating clatter.
"Miss Cox!"
She sprang forward nervously.
"Yes, Miss Vivian?"
"How many sandwiches have you got ready?"
"Sixteen hundred, Miss Vivian. That'll be two for each man, and they're
very large."
"Cut another hundred, for reserve."
"Yes, Miss Vivian."
They began to work again, this time speaking almost in whispers.
Char turned away.
Her personality, as usual, had had its effect.
Nearly twenty minutes later the station-master came up to her on the
platform.
"She'll be in directly now, Miss Vivian. Just signalled."
Char wheeled smartly back to the waiting-room and gave the word of
command.
Within five minutes the urns and trays were all in place on the tables,
and each worker was at her appointed stand. Char had indicated
beforehand, as she always did, the exact duties of each one.
"That's a smart bit of work," the station-master remarked admiringly.
"Ah, well, you see, I've been at the job some time now," said Miss
Vivian, pleased. She never pretended to look upon her staff as anything
but a collection of pawns, to be placed or disposed of by a master hand.
And it was part of that strength of personality that lay at the back of
all her powers of organization, which had given the majority of her
staff exactly the same impression as her own of their relative positions
with regard to the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.