_His Official Fiancée_
_His Official Fiancée_
_By Berta Ruck (Mrs. Oliver Onions)_
[Illustration]
_TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS
1914_
_Printed in Great Britain_
DEDICATED TO THE TWO GRANNIES
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I.—THE SUMMONS 1
II.—THE PROPOSAL 12
III.—THINKING IT OVER—— 21
IV.—ACCEPTED! 29
V.—THE FIRST LUNCH TOGETHER 47
VI.—WHAT THEY SAID 67
VII.—CHOOSING THE RING 77
VIII.—THE ENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED! 88
IX.—THE LOVER WHO CAME TOO LATE 101
X.—“HIS” MOTHER’S INVITATION 118
XI.—MEETING “HIS” PEOPLE 130
XII.—THE FIRST DINNER 140
XIII.—THE FIRST TÊTE-À-TÊTE 149
XIV.—THE FIRST QUARREL 160
XV.—“THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS” 177
XVI.—THE ORDEAL BY INSPECTION 189
XVII.—THEO SITS UP 193
XVIII.—THE FIRST KISS 211
XIX.—THE FIRST HANDSHAKE 222
XX.—FRIENDS 253
XXI.—THE FIRST LETTERS 277
XXII.—THE WOODEN WOMAN 287
XXIII.—“MANY WATERS——” 305
XXIV.—THAT GIRL 317
XXV.—THE FIRST AVOWAL 324
XXVI.—“ALL CHANGE HERE” 330
XXVII.—PARTING COMPANY 343
XXVIII.—THE FIRST GLEAM 362
POSTSCRIPT.—FULL MOON 381
HIS OFFICIAL FIANCÉE
CHAPTER I
THE SUMMONS
“‘_A girl without a sweetheart_,’ girls—(I was readin’ something about it
this very morning ’s I was coming along in the Toob),” chattered little
Miss Holt over her work. “_A girl without a sweetheart is like a ship at
sea, without knowing what port she’s to put in at_——”
“Accounts for the way a lot of ’em seem to pick their sweethearts on the
principle ‘_Any port in a storm!_’” said Miss Robinson, with her little
sniff.
“Well! Seems to me there’s a good deal in the idea that a poor husband
is better than none,” came philosophically from Miss Holt, whose back
is always curved like a banana over her typing-table, and who “smarms”
her dull brown hair down under a hair-net until her head looks like a
chocolate. “After all, my dear, if you’re married, you’re married; and
nobody can say you aren’t. But if you _aren’t_ married, you aren’t. And
nobody can say you _are_!”.
“How true,” said Miss Robinson dreamily. “Got that, Miss Trant?”
And she gave a sardonic glance towards me, to see if I was thoroughly
taking this in. I was trying not to. The buzz of Cockney whispering which
goes on, intermittently, all day long in our murky “typists’-room” was
beginning to get on my nerves again almost as badly as it did in the
first week that I worked at the Near Oriental Shipping Agency. I didn’t
raise my eyes. Then, above the click and the buzz, came a shriller:
“Miss Trant, if you please?”
My fingers fell from the typewriter, and I looked up with a start into
the sharp little South-London face of our smallest office-boy.
“Yes? What is it, Harold?”
“Miss Trant, Mr. Waters says he wishes to see you in his private room at
two o’clock.”
“To see _me_?” I asked in a panic; hoping that it might not be true, that
by some lucky chance my ears had deceived me. They hadn’t.
“Yes; at two o’clock sharp, miss.”
“Very well, Harold,” I heard myself say in a small, dismayed voice.
Then I heard the door of our room shut upon the office-boy’s exit.
I turned, to meet the shrewd, sympathetic brown eyes of Miss Robinson
over her machine.
“Governor sent for you?”
I nodded dismally.
“Any idea what it’s about, Miss Trant?”
“Oh, it might be about _anything_ this last week,” I sighed. “It might be
about my forgetting to enclose those enclosures to the Western Syndicate.
Or for leaving out the P.T.O. at the bottom of that Budapest letter. Or
for spelling Belgium B-e-l-g-u-i-m. Or half a dozen other things. I knew
Mr. Dundonald was going to complain of me. It’s been hanging over me for
the last three days. Anyhow I shall know the worst to-day.”
“P’raps he’ll give you another chance, dear,” said little Miss Holt.
“That’s not very likely,” I said. “He’s such an abominably accurate
machine himself that he’s ‘off’ anybody in this office who isn’t a
machine too, girl or man.”
“D’you suppose the Governor even knows which of us _is_ a girl and which
is a man? because I don’t,” put in Miss Robinson. “I bet you he——”
“Talking in theyairr!” interrupted the grating Scotch accent of Mr.
Dundonald, as he passed through to the Governor’s room, where, alas! I,
Monica Trant, was soon to present myself.
A deathly silence, broken only by the clicking of the four typewriters,
fell upon our department.
But I’m pretty sure that all the work _I_ did from then on until
lunch-time was of very little good.
That gloomy typists’ room, looking over the “well” of the great buildings
in Leadenhall Street, and so dark that we worked always by electric
lights, switched on one over each machine, faded away from me. I ceased
to know I was breathing in that familiar smell of fog and mackintoshes
and dust and stuffiness. I ceased to hear the muffled roar of the City
outside, and the maddening “click! click-a-click-pprring!” of the
typewriters within, as I shut myself into my own mind.
Dismally I reviewed my own situation.
* * * * *
Here was I, “alone in London,” all my poor little capital spent on the
business-training which I had joyfully hoped was going to bring me in
a nice “independent-feeling” income of at least two pounds a week. At
the offices of William Waters and Son, of the Near Oriental Shipping
Agency, a post I had obtained after weeks of weary searching for work, my
salary was twenty-five shillings a week. _Now_, in all probability, I was
going to lose even that. And then what was I to do? How was I to go on
contributing my half of the rent of the Marconi Mansions flat; how was I
to pay for even my cheap meals and my “these’ll-have-to-do” clothes? How
_was_ I to earn my living?
Obviously, I’m not cut out for a business-girl!
My three months in the office has plainly shown me that.
“You lack method, Miss Trant”—as Mr. Dundonald, the head of our
department, has told me more than once. “You lack _concentrrayshn_. You
are intelligent enough, for a young lady, but when I think I can rrely
on you, what happens? I find ye out in some rideeclus mistake that
the rrrawest student from Pitman’s wouldn’t make. And this after I’ve
warrrned you times and again. What do you think is going to be the end of
it?”
Evidently the sack.
And what else _is_ there I can do?
Nothing!
I can’t draw fashion-plates or write articles for the magazines.
Go on the stage—no, I never _could_ remember my cue, even in private
theatricals. I love children—but people want diplomas and Montessori
Systems with their nursery-governesses. For serving in a shop I don’t
suppose I’m tall enough. That’s one of the inconsistencies of men—they
quote poetry about a girl being “just as high as their hearts,” and then
advertise for parlour-maids and mannequins who must stand well over five
foot nine, which I don’t. Though, even if my nickname _is_ “Tots,” thank
goodness I’m not dumpy, like little Miss Holt, who thinks a poor husband
is better than none....
What about the principal profession open to women—getting married?
Well, but I never see any men, now a days—you can’t call
things-in-the-City _men_, exactly—whom I could get married _to_. Besides,
there’s nobody, now that I’m an unbecomingly-dressed pauper, who would
want to marry me.—Except, perhaps ... Sydney Vandeleur ...? Dear old
Sydney is a friend left over from the days before the smash in our
family when “_the world was more than kin when we had the ready tin_.”
I’ve seen him several times since, and he was just the same as ever, so
sympathetic and amusing; such a “pal,” and with something about him that
made me quite certain he’d be ready to become something more, the minute
I encouraged him.
“Encouraging” him wouldn’t be too unpleasant either, though I never was
in love with Sydney. By this time I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m
not a bit the falling-in-love type of girl. Major Montresor, of father’s
regiment in the old days, told my brother Jack once that “little Monica
had the makings of a first-class flirt; she belonged to the successful
Order of the Cold Coquette.” After listening to the dodderings and
drivels and despairs of girls who _aren’t_ cold, I’m rather thankful that
I _am_. At least I can be fond enough of people in a sensible sort of
way. I could be of Sydney.
I suppose it will end in my getting him to marry me....
But not yet. I haven’t even got his address! He and his mother have gone
on a tour to Japan, and they won’t be within reach for so much as a
dinner for about a year. Whereas it’s to-day, _this afternoon_, that I’m
to get the sack without knowing what else is to happen to me!
A pretty depressing outlook!
* * * * *
At one o’clock I went out to lunch at what the typists here call “The Den
of Lyons,” with Miss Holt and Miss Robinson.
Our fourth typist, pretty, anæmic Miss Smith, had evidently made other
arrangements to-day. She wore another hat; a fresh bunch of violets was
tucked into her long coat, and she monopolized the looking-glass while
she attended to her complexion with a pot of face-cream, a clean hankie,
and a book of _papiers poudrés_.
“We’re extremely smart to-day, Smithie,” said Miss Robinson. “What’s on?”
“I’m going out to lunch with Still Waters.”
This was “the” office joke at the Near Oriental.
“Still Waters” meant no one less than Mr. William Waters, Junior, the
head of the firm, who acted as General Manager, and from whom I had just
received that fatal summons. He would as soon think of having a word to
say to one of his typists out of business-hours as of giving a dance in
the office itself. So that the excuse “_I’m going out with Still Waters_”
always means that the speaker intends to keep her engagement to herself.
It’s an open secret in the office that Smithie, who keeps a manicure-set
in her hand-bag and who blushes twice daily down the telephone, has “got
some sort of boy.”
“Oh, all right, haughty! Don’t bother to apologize,” said Miss Holt. And
we left Miss Smith to her preparations.
Presently we caught sight of her again in the crowd outside. She didn’t
see us, or anything else, I think. She was smiling and sparkling and
flushed, and “looked as different as a fortnight’s holiday,” as Miss
Robinson said. All three of us glanced from her to the young man she was
with. To bring _that_ transfiguring light into a girl’s face, wouldn’t
you have expected him to be a mixture of some Greek God and Bombardier
Billy Wells?—Far from it. “Smithie’s boy” was scarcely taller than she;
narrow-chested office-shouldered, with a face as pale and peaked as a
long envelope.
“What a kid!” criticized Miss Holt as we passed.
“All men _are_ awful kids,” pronounced Miss Robinson, “but you do bar
them looking it. Of the two, I don’t know that I wouldn’t rather have ’em
like graven images!”
Which brought us back to the horrible subject of that graven image, our
Governor.
Over glasses of hot milk and the poached-eggs-on-toast, the plates of
which rasped on the marble-topped table of the shop that _always_ smells
of steak-and-kidney pie, the other girls made themselves specially
agreeable to the colleague who was preparing for the sack in another hour.
“It is too bad. We shall miss you from our room,” said good-natured
little Miss Holt. “Still—(Here, miss! I said egg, I didn’t say
sardine-sandwich! I wish you’d attend when anyone speaks!... She would,
if I’d a boy with me! Such is life!)—Still, it isn’t as if there wasn’t
other posts you could get. Easily. Don’t you look so hopeless, Miss
Trant. You’ve a taking way with you, and a nice smile; wasn’t I passing
the remark, only the other day, about what a pretty smile Miss Trant’d
got? And, say what you like, looks _do_ count when a young lady’s in
business!”
“Yes, it’s a pity Miss Trant don’t know she’s good-looking. We ought
to have told her about that, before,” said Miss Robinson dryly. “But
you’re all right. _You’ll_ get taken on somewhere where they don’t make
an international affair of it over one misplaced comma or a tiny smudge
off a new ribbon. _You’ll_ get round the men. I don’t mean Still Waters.
He’s not a man, of course. He’s a machine that can say ‘_Now, Miss
Trant!_’”—here she broke into perfect mimicry of the Governor’s curtest
tone. “And’ _What is the meaning of this evening’s cables being one-fifth
of a second after time?_’ He doesn’t count. You try for something where
there’s a human being at the head of affairs——”
“And if it’s near she can come out to lunch with us just the same as
before she left,” suggested Miss Holt.
“She hasn’t even left yet,” said Miss Robinson encouragingly. “What price
one of those fancy cakes, Miss Trant? Choose the least poisonous-looking,
and I’ll treat you—for luck!”
* * * * *
At a quarter to two we got back to the office.
I went and washed in the dressing-room. I took down all my hair. My
hair’s my pet vanity; it’s very long and thick and silky, and “just
the colour of massed black pansies against her honeysuckle-coloured
flesh-tints,” as Sydney Vandeleur once said. He “puts” everything like
the artist that he is. (Oh, why wasn’t it to meet _him_ that I was
preparing, instead of that young frozen ogre of a Governor?) I wound the
long swathe smoothly round my head again, pinned it firm, and made sure
it was all right at the back, _not_ with any idea of impressing Still
Waters (who would scarcely have noticed the fact had all his typists been
completely bald, so long as they were efficient), but merely because to
feel perfectly neat made me a little less painfully nervous.
The clock, striking two, chimed in with my humble tap at the door of Mr.
Waters’ private room.
“Come in!” called the dreaded voice of our Governor.
And, trembling inwardly, in I went.