THE PROPOSAL
The large, light room, with its handsome furniture, seemed to stretch
for miles between the door and the big writing-desk, covered with green
leather, at which Mr. Waters himself sat, frowning over a letter. The
desk was generally bare but for the note of his day’s appointments, with
the hours, on the turnover date-ticket.
“Two o’clock,” and a heavy “X” marked this coming interview, as I could
not help seeing when I finished what seemed like a long and tiring walk
over the thick crimson carpet, and stood meekly at his elbow.
He looked up, alert, clean-shaven, his fair hair brushed as sleek and
shiny as the nap of his own silk hat, his mouth closed as tightly as his
own cash-box; he was the very picture of a successful young City man,
whose one and only interest is his business.
“Ah! That you, Miss Trant?” he said, in the quick, curt, business-like
voice that Miss Robinson can imitate so perfectly.
He wheeled round in the chair to face me.
“Sit down, please.”
I was thankful to sit down. Although I don’t think my panic showed in
my face, my knees were actually beginning to give under me. Mr. Waters
pointed to a plump, green morocco-covered chair. Down I sat, on the very
edge of it. I set my teeth to listen to what this office tyrant had to
say.
(How extraordinary that he and Sydney Vandeleur should _both_ be “men”!)
If he only wouldn’t keep me; if he’d only just tell me to go, and get it
over....
But his first remark took me absolutely by surprise.
“Now, Miss Trant. If you don’t mind, I want to ask you a few questions.
Don’t think them impertinent, for they are not so intended, and they are
necessary to the matter in hand. And—please don’t misunderstand them.”
Here his alert face grew even more business-like. His keen grey eyes
met my startled brown ones steadily for a moment. Then he added, in an
emphatic, “_underlined_” sort of tone:
“There is nothing in these questions to which your father, or anyone
belonging to you, could take any exception. You understand?”
“Understand”—No! I certainly didn’t. What could he mean me to understand?
I hadn’t grasped it even when he repeated the question a trifle
impatiently.
“You do understand that, Miss Trant?”
“Oh—er—yes—of course,” I murmured, in duty bound.
But I was so utterly dazed by this unlooked-for flight-off-at-a-tangent
of the Governor’s that I heard myself answering as if in a dream the
questions he put next.
“Twenty-one. You’re of age, then,” I heard him saying through the daze.
“Both parents dead: m’m. No one else belonging to you?”
“One brother in South Africa,” my lips answered mechanically. And my
inward wonder, “_What on earth has that got to do with Mr. Waters?_” was
mingled with an added dull twinge of anxiety. For I haven’t heard from
poor old rolling-stoney Jack for three months or more.
“No one belonging to you in London? M’m. And you’re dependent for your
living upon what you earn here?”
(Yes! or else I shouldn’t have to sit here answering questions about
things that are absolutely no business of yours! was what I thought
rebelliously.) I said aloud, reluctantly, “Yes.”
“Where do you live, then—alone?”
“I share rooms with another girl in Battersea,” I had to tell him,
still wondering resentfully what in the world might be the meaning of
this catechism. _Wasn’t_ it the prelude to dismissal, after all, then?
_Wasn’t_ he preparing to be hateful and sarcastic, and to tell me he felt
my talents were being wasted at the Near Oriental (this is one of Mr.
Dundonald’s pet _clichés_), and that he advised me to look out elsewhere
for a better position at a higher salary—if I could get it? What _would_
be the next question, then?
It was _the_ last thing that I should have dreamed of his asking.
“Do you mind telling me, Miss Trant, whether you are engaged to be
married?”
Engaged? I? What _could_ he want to know that for?
That was less his business, even, than any of the other questions he’d
put!
It seemed doubly odd, since I _had_ been meditating on the possibility
of “getting engaged” that very morning. Ever since twelve o’clock, the
mental image of Sydney Vandeleur’s picturesque, dark face, with his
small Vandyke beard and gentle, adoring brown eyes, had been very near
me. There was always Sydney in the background, of course. Backgrounds
don’t count, presumably. Even if they did, though, what concern was it
of my business employer’s? I did wish I had enough self-assurance to
announce frankly, “Well, I _do_ mind telling you, as a matter of fact!”
But ... twenty-five shillings a week don’t provide a girl with much
self-assurance!
I could only let him have the literal answer in return for his direct
(and unwarrantable) question.
“Oh, no; I’m not engaged.”
“Good!” said Still Waters briskly. (Why “good”?)
“Now, Miss Trant, I can tell you the reason—or part of the reason—I
sent for you this afternoon. I must begin by impressing upon you very
definitely that”—here he paused, and at each word of the announcement
tapped solemnly on the big desk with his finger—“I don’t want to get
married myself.”
“Of course not!” I almost gasped, wondering what in the world this very
obvious truth (for one _could_ not imagine Still Waters in connection
with marriage or engagements) had got to do with me?
“At the same time, there are reasons why for a time, at least—say a
year—it should appear that I was going to be married. I may tell you
those reasons later on; that depends. At present I’ll merely tell
you that it is important to me that I should be officially, that is
nominally, engaged.”
I gazed at him. There was no more expression in his face than in the
pearl pin in his expensive-looking grey tie. What could he mean?
“I wish it to appear to everybody—to my family, to my acquaintances, to
the people in this office—that I am actually engaged,” he explained. “I
wish to find someone who, to outward appearances, could take the place of
my _fiancée_; could go about with me, stay at my home, and be introduced
all round as the girl I meant to marry. She must understand from the very
beginning that it was absolutely a matter of business; that the so-called
‘engagement’ would terminate at the end of the year, and that there could
be no possible question of its ending in marriage. If I found this lady,
I would make it worth her while; paying her at the rate of ten pounds a
week for her services. You follow me, Miss Trant?”
I began to “follow,” but I could scarcely believe that he really intended
to carry out this mysterious scheme. It was more like the plot of a
Gilbert and Sullivan opera than any “business” I’d ever heard of in real
life. Still more incredible was what came next.
“It seemed to me from the first that the most suitable person for the
post would be—yourself.”
“Me?” I echoed, aghast. Oh, this was getting out of comic opera, and into
the realms of nightmare! Was he _really_ suggesting that I——
“Yes; you, Miss Trant. You are a lady in every essential, if I may say
so, of looks and manner. You seem to possess the gift of making yourself
generally liked. You’re distinctly intelligent, in spite of your work,
which is——” here for one instant a gleam of what looked almost like
humour seemed to flash from the Governor’s eyes. But it was gone again
so swiftly that I couldn’t be sure whether it had ever been there. I
must have been mistaken. He went on imperturbably: “I am a very fair
judge of character, and I believe you to be trustworthy. As a mark of my
confidence in you, I shall pay into your account the whole sum of five
hundred pounds so soon as you let me know that you consent to enter into
this arrangement.”
“Five hundred pounds?” I echoed stupidly.
“Yes; that is payment for the entire year at the rate of ten pounds
weekly. I hope you will see your way to accepting it. Think it over
to-night, please,” said Still Waters, in his curtest, most business-like
tone, “and let me have your answer here—if you can, that is” (meaning
“you must!”) “at eleven-fifteen to-morrow morning. I need hardly tell you
that this must remain strictly between ourselves. I think that’s all.”
He glanced at the round-topped mahogany clock above the fireplace, then
put his hand out to the row of electric-bell pushes on his desk. Our
interview was over.
“Good afternoon, Miss Trant.”
“Good afternoon,” I murmured rather feebly, as I retraced my steps over
that long, long stretch of carpet to the door.
I felt furious with myself for lacking the ordinary pluck to tell the
Governor then and there:
“I shan’t need to-night to think the question over. My answer is ‘No!’ I
can’t possibly undertake such an arrangement.”
For how can I? How can I accept such an extraordinary position?
“Officially” engaged to the Governor—the office tyrant, the mummy, the
fault-finding automaton! Fancy “going about” with him, letting everyone
imagine that I was actually going to marry him! Fancy playing that
Gilbertian part, with no rouge and no fun and no footlights to carry
me through it, in a “piece” that went on all day and every day! And
fancy—this was almost the most appalling thought of all—fancy having to
face all the other girls in the office.
Oh, impossible; quite impossible! I can’t do it. I must summon up all my
courage and tell him so to-morrow.
* * * * *
“Well?” whispered Miss Robinson, from the next typing-table. “What _did_
the graven image say? Was he a brute? _Is_ it the sack? Or is he giving
you another chance?”
“I think he means to give me another chance,” I murmured. (Such a
chance!) “I am——”
“_Talking_, ladies!” broke in the warning. “Miss Trant, it’s generally
you, I notice!”
And Mr. Dundonald’s voice brought back the bugbear that has haunted me
since twelve this morning—the terror of being penniless and out of work
once more.
Oh, if I could only attain to some job, _some other job_, that would
bring me in that princely salary of ten pounds a week! Imagine the
blessed relief, the security of knowing that one had five hundred pounds
in one glorious, solid lump at one’s back. But then, imagine accepting
the Governor’s terms before one earned it! Oh, no!
The bogey “_out of work_” haunted me down into the Tube lift, along the
Embankment, all the way back up our grey Battersea street, with the
red-faced pavement-artist who always touches his cap to me, smiles and
points to his lurid chalk-drawing of a wreck with the legend: “_Like the
Artist—On the Rocks!_”
“I’m on the rocks myself, Blossom. This is probably the last penny I
shall be able to give you!” I told him, with a desperate little laugh.
Then I turned in at the entrance to Marconi Mansions, and climbed up our
stone stairs to the cheap but cosy little top-flat which has for six
months meant “Home” to us two bachelor girls.
How long should _I_ be able to afford to share it?