ACCEPTED!
“And when do you think the ‘engagement’ had better be announced? At once?”
This was what the Governor said to me this morning when I again presented
myself at his desk; this time with the timid “acceptance” which, after
poor Jack’s desperate appeal, is my only alternative.
“At _once_?” I gasped. “Oh, but—How could it? The—well—people would think
it so”—I checked a hysterical laugh—“so _funny_!”
“Funny? What’s funny about it?” took up the Governor, as sharply as if
he didn’t see anything at all odd in the whole situation. But he does.
He _must_! What a hateful trick men have of pretending they’re _not_
pretending—when you’re unable to prove, in so many words, that they
_are_! People talk about women being more complicated; good gracious!
It’s we who are simple and straightforward. What was I to make of the
Governor, when he asked me, in quite an annoyed tone of voice, “I suppose
men at the heads of offices have become engaged to their employees before
now Miss Trant?”
“Y-yes—of course—_Become engaged_.”—He was talking now as if _this_ were
_that_!—“But not if——”
“Not if what?”
“Well, not if they have never seen them to speak to!” I explained
falteringly. “You see, Mr. Waters, the three other typists in my room——”
“Oh! Those girls!” said Mr. Waters casually, and I caught my breath.
For in the tone of those two words from the Head of Affairs I heard the
rest of his meaning—“If _they_ think it odd—if _they_ make difficulties,
they can go, at once.”
I saw that nightmare threat of “the sack” looming again, this time over
the heads of three girls who had worked with and always been very decent
to me. They—if they stood the least bit in this young office tyrant’s
way—could go!
“It’s not only the girls,” I urged, clenching my hands to keep them from
shaking, and hating the man who made me so nervous. “It’s—everybody. Mr.
Dundonald, Mr. Alexander, they must all know that you scarcely exchanged
a word with me until you sent for me yesterday, when we—they all thought
you were going to dismiss me——”
“Ah?” said the Governor coolly.
“—S-so I can’t tell them, right on the top of _that_, that we are
actually engaged to be married! There’ll have to be—some—some other sort
of warning!”
“Don’t see the necessity myself,” said Still Waters, fixing those keen
grey eyes upon me as if I were a letter-file or a paper-weight, or some
other inanimate object that they’d happened to fall upon while he was
meditating on other things. I wondered if he were thinking that, sooner
than be bothered over this affair, he would sack Mr. Dundonald, Mr.
Alexander and his whole staff! “Still, if you prefer it. You mean that
there had better be some intermediate stages; that I ought to begin by
singling you out from the others, seeing more of you, and so on. Quite
so.”
It was uncanny, the cut-and-dried way in which he spoke of proceedings
which—well, are always looked upon as so intensely the opposite of
cut-and-dried! This affair was the imitation of something very different;
still, one hardly expected him to be able to map it all out, like the
diagrams in scientific dressmaking!
“Now, how am I supposed to ‘see more’ of you?” he went on, in the same
tone as he might have asked, “_Where must I join this dotted line to
section D?_”
“Ah, I have it.” (The sections were beginning to fit in neatly.) “You
will come into my room here each afternoon in Mr. Alexander’s place, and
take down my letters.”
“Very well,” I agreed, relapsing into my usual outward meekness and
inward rebelliousness.
What a _fearful_ nuisance, to be banished to the Siberia of the
Governor’s private room, after the murky but cheery atmosphere of the
typists’ “glory-hole,” and the society of three other girls!
A couple of years ago I should have used the shibboleth of my set at
home to describe these same girls—“Terrible!—Impossible!” I should
have noticed nothing about them beyond their cheap “stock” clothes and
the Cockney accents that used to be such an hourly jar to my nerves.
I shouldn’t have differentiated the sentimental “Smithie” from Miss
Robinson, who has more capacity in her carbon-stained little finger than
most of the girls who were with me at Wycombe Abbey had in their heads. I
should scarcely have considered them of the same race of being as myself,
and as for being on friendly, talkative terms with them—Well, having
to fend for oneself in the labour-market does knock a good deal of the
nonsense out of one. Here I was, quite annoyed at the prospect of giving
up the companionship of the three for the afternoons!
Still, it would be worth it. My employer would be as good as his word
about the five hundred pounds. He’d open an account for me. And at
lunch-time I shall be able to cable that much-needed hundred to Cape Town.
I’m to begin earning it as private clerk—to a living tape-machine!
“Yes. That will be quite the best plan,” he went on. “That will pave
the way for it.” His tone became if anything more “scientifically
diagrammatic” still as he said, “To-day is May fourteen; let me see—How
long do you suppose it would take before it would be considered the
natural thing for me to fall in love with you?”
“‘Natural’? How could it ever be considered natural” was on the tip of my
tongue, “for you to fall in love with anybody?—You, who think it ought to
be mapped out into a certain number of days, like that sum about ‘_twenty
reapers reaping so many acres in a week_.’”
Primly I answered aloud, “I should think you could please yourself, Mr.
Waters.”
“Well, we will see about that presently,” said my employer, turning to
the desk. “And now there is this——” After speaking about “the time it
took to fall in love,” I thought he’d reached his limit. But no. He went
further.
From a drawer that he unlocked he took out a paper that he handed to me.
“I have taken the precaution of having our whole arrangement put down in
black-and-white, if you will kindly sign it here.”
—“In _black-and-white!_”—“_sign——!_”
I felt the angry colour surging up into my face; I was all the more
furious because I dare not show the real rage I was in.
“Oh, yes. I’ll sign it,” I said, with desperate meekness, “if you really
think it’s necessary. If you imagine that I am the kind of girl who might
take advantage of our—our contract afterwards, sue you for breach of
promise, or——”
“Come, come!” Still Waters interrupted briskly, peremptorily. “It’s
just because I didn’t think you were ‘that kind of girl,’ amongst other
reasons, that I selected you for my post. This instrument is drawn up
largely on your own account. You have a pen——?”
I took it out of the case fastened to the front of my very utilitarian
blue delaine blouse. I hate wearing it there. I always look upon it as
the sign of servitude and the mark of the beast, but it’s the custom—and
business-like.
“Right. Now, Miss Trant, I think that’s all for this morning. You can
arrange to come in and take down my letters each afternoon at a quarter
to three, beginning to-morrow.”
“Yes,” I said, in my meekest tone.
* * * * *
Loud were the murmurs of commiseration that broke from my three friends
in my own room when they heard of this novel arrangement.
“What, my dear? _You_ to take down his old letters? That’s the Governor’s
idea of giving you one more chance, I suppose,” sniffed Miss Robinson,
“before he sacks you! Pity he didn’t tell you to go, and get it over
yesterday!”
“He’s simply impossible to please. Why, when I come here first,” said
Miss Holt, “he had had three girls at it in one week and they all came
out in tears because the Machine had snapped their heads off. For one
thing, he dictates at such a rate that I don’t know how he expects anyone
to follow him without they have to ask him to repeat it, and _then_ he
glowers at you like a Gordian! See if he doesn’t!”
“It’ll be ‘_Now, Miss Trant!_’” mimicked Miss Robinson, gabbling at
top-speed. “‘_Got that? Go on_—
“‘_We can offer no further explanation of same beyond facts already
supplied, and are of opinion that there is nothing to be gained by
prolonging this correspondence._’ Certainly nothing to be gained by you,
my poor dear!”
“No, he’ll be sending for that stolid Scotch Sandy back before the
afternoon’s over!”
“Don’t discourage the girl too much before she starts. Still, I wish you
weren’t forsaking our room for the afternoons, Miss Trant. We shall miss
your merry prattle and your footstep on the stair.”
“Yes, and there won’t be much prattling for you in there,” said Miss
Smith. “More like sitting among the mummies and sphinxes and things in
the British Museum. Girls, can you imagine Still Waters ‘prattling’ to
anybody, even as a little boy?”
“That man was never anything so human as a little boy,” declared Miss
Robinson. “He was created grown-up and ready-made and put together like a
Remington. Probably in the very act of clicking out—
“‘_Contract B.954. Our buyers advise us as under_,’ and so on.
“I wouldn’t mind what I betted that _he_ never cried over going to school
for the first time, or began to fancy himself more when he’d sat out at a
dance and flirted——”
“_Flirted!_ The Governor!” I put in—quite forgetting What would
presumably be my cue very soon, and laughing with the others.
“You might just as well think of him falling really desperately in love
with——”
“_Talk_-ing, ladies,” broke in the usual voice, followed by the usual
lull.
But the usual twinge of fear didn’t visit me this time.
Let Mr. Dundonald report me; let him complain of me, bitterly, to the
Governor if he likes! All Caledonia, stern and wild, can’t get me turned
out of the Near Oriental _now_. To-morrow sees me unshakably installed
as—the Governor’s private clerk!
* * * * *
I must say Mr. Waters is even more paralysingly alarming to work for in
this capacity.
His dictation—Well! Miss Robinson described it. He simply doesn’t
realize, doesn’t _mean_ to realize, that “a clerk” is composed of
anything more than a pad and a scurrying pencil. He literally does not
_see_ that these objects may be trembling in the grasp of the anxious
slip of a young woman, who has to guide them! He’s excruciatingly
particular about the transcribing of his sheaf of letters. And I
shudder—that is, I _should_ have shuddered only last week—to think what
would happen to Miss Trant, typist, if she brought in anything to be
signed one second after four-thirty, which is his time for leaving.
But now I’m secure in the knowledge that however much that machine of a
young man with the closed cash-box of a mouth may long to sack me as a
typist, my other, more lucrative, post could not be so easily filled.
Hurray!
* * * * *
To-day is Friday: that Day of Terror in the office, the day of the
outward mails. But it’s brought no terror to me. My week’s salary, if you
please, has amounted to eleven pounds, five shillings.
Twenty-five shillings of that was paid out to me in the usual way by Mr.
Wallis, our cashier—little dreaming that my purse was already bulging
with ten more than welcome sovereigns that I got in exchange for my own
cheque (The grandeur of that!) at the Bank where that providential five
hundred pounds (four hundred since) has been put down to the account of
“Miss M. Trant.”
I daren’t allow myself to think what would have happened if it hadn’t
been for that.
As it is, I am able to take home quite a lot of invalid dainties to
Cicely (left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Skinner) as well as a lovely
lemon-coloured azalea in a pot, and a brand-new novel (four-and-six—half
her share of the house-keeping money!).
Spending this fortune will come fatally easily to me, I know. But I’ve
a dim presentiment that the earning of it isn’t going to be as easy as
that!
This morning, which now seems about a year since I began my
“supplementary duties,” Harold summoned me to appear at twelve o’clock,
instead of after lunch, before the Governor.
First of all I was seized with nervous flurry, wondering what on earth
I’d done. Then I remembered that it wouldn’t really matter about that.
What mattered was what I should _have_ to do next?
There was another cut-and-dried plan for this in the very tone of
the Governor’s “Good morning” when he glanced up to see me standing
submissively beside his desk again.
“Now, Miss Trant, you have been working in here exactly a fortnight,” he
reminded me.
“Exactly a fortnight.” I wonder if he is going to keep count of every
one of the three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the year which must
elapse before I shall be able to say a gleeful good-bye to him and his
diagrammatic “engagement?” I expect so: I expect there’s a time-table for
each one, drawn up and carefully put away for reference in one of the
locked drawers of his big cleared desk.
“I think that something more might be done at once about this arrangement
of ours.”
“Oh, yes?”
(A fortnight! Neither too long nor too short a time, he probably
considered, for some “fresh development” to take place.)
“So what about my taking you out to lunch to-day?”
What about it? A vivid mental picture of the expression on the faces of
Miss Robinson, Miss Holt and Smithie rose before me. What—_what_ would
they look like when——Well! They’ve _got_ to look it sooner or later, so
it might as well _begin_ to-day.
“Certainly,” I nearly said. Then I hesitated. No! Why _should_ he be able
to “fit in” every single detail of his plans, with the ease of a born
jig-saw genius? Why shouldn’t he have to make some rearrangement, consult
someone else’s convenience for _once_ in his life? I would just try to
put my tiny little spoke in his wheel here, to _see_.
“Mr. Waters, would you mind making it to-morrow instead?”
“Much the same to me,” returned my employer rather unexpectedly—still,
I suppose he _would_ allow a twenty-four hours’ margin in these
arrangements, in case of accidents. “But why wait?”
“Oh, because”—No woman ever does anything for _one_ unadulterated motive;
a thing men won’t understand! So I had my second choice of reasons quite
ready, and it was quite naturally, as well as truthfully (for I _was_
thinking of Smithie’s preparations for an outing), that I suggested—“it
would seem more ‘natural’ if I were to have on a new—my best hat to go
out to lunch in instead of the little old cap I put on because of this
drizzle to-day.”
“Ah! Very well,” said Mr. Waters, with his succinct nod. He added, “I
suppose that sort of thing is what they mean when they say—when _women_
say—that women have a much better eye to detail in business than men
have?”
(I don’t _quite_ know how he meant that. But never mind, Mr.
Cut-and-Dried. I _have_ altered your time-table by a day, at least!)
“To-morrow, then,” said Mr. Waters, after I had said “Is that all?” And I
went.
* * * * *
The next day was a regular “new-hat” day. Just the sort of day to go out
to lunch with a “hovering” _fiancé_—a real one!—I thought, as I set off
down the Embankment, leaving Cicely, whose foot isn’t quite right even
yet, at the open sitting-room window with a novel.
It was brightly sunny, but, although we’re nearly in June now, there was
a nip of cold in the breeze; the smile of a flirt—of a “cold coquette,”
as Major Montresor described me once. I wonder what _he’d_ think if ever
he met me again? Probably that it was just like little Monica to “pull
off” making a good match with another froggy-natured person.
I laughed at this as I was walking along to the corner where I get the
motor-bus. After all, there’s nothing to do but laugh at it—at the whole
affair. Actually, it was a momentous choice to have thrust upon any girl;
and it might have cruelly embarrassing side-issues. But what’s the good
of dwelling on momentous and cruel aspects of subjects that _have_ a
comic side to them? The only way is to look hard at that comic side—to
see the joke, the whole joke, and, most important of all, _nothing but
the joke_.
I felt satisfactorily strung up to the coming “fun” of the situation when
I got into the typists’ dressing-room at the Near Oriental.
Here I found Miss Holt listening to Miss Smith, evidently a little
headachy and nervous, attempting to “stand up” to Miss Robinson in some
argument.
“The matter with _you_,” she was saying pettishly, “is that you’re
setting up to be a _man_-hater!”
“Setting up? No such luck,” said Miss Robinson, maddeningly
good-tempered. “If _I_ could ever see a fellow I didn’t think was awful,
I’d begin thinking of setting up. But where _are_ all the men, good
gracious? What does a girl ever see, working in holes of offices? Weeds!
Indoor weeds, smelling of stale Virginians and wearing Number Thirteen
collars.”
“Collars aren’t anything!” Miss Smith flushed an angry pink.
“No; but what they go round are. And I must say I like to see a chap with
a good, thick, strong-looking one (that’s why all the _nice_ girls love a
sailor, Smithie) with plenty of sunburn and no spots on it, and—Hul-_lo_,
Miss Trant!”
I had turned up at the right moment to prevent a squabble—I and my
brand-new hat bought out of Chérisette’s window, no less! and provided by
the princely salary.
“I say, Miss Trant, my child, you’re blossoming out!” commented Miss
Holt, all eyes and envy. “How much did that roof cost you? It’s a good
one.”
“It _is_ rather a good one,” I admitted quietly. “I’m so glad you like
it.”
But I said no more until the morning’s work was over and we had trooped
back into the dressing-room to get ready for going out at one o’clock.
Then:
“I can’t come to lunch to-day,” I said, drawing on the deliciously
“fresh”-feeling white gloves I’d bought for myself at the same time as
the hat, and giving a glance round the dressing-room to make sure that
they all took in the next announcement. “I’m going out.”
“Who with?” seemed to burst, of its own accord, from three pairs of lips
at once.
Drawing myself up to what there is of my full height, I smothered an
inclination to giggle foolishly, and answered with starchy dignity,
“Since you _must_ know, I’m going out to lunch with Still Waters.”
“Oh, my dear, give that old joke a rest,” urged the most frequent user
of “the old joke,” Miss Smith, flushing anew with interest, “and tell us
who HE is! This is something quite new, Miss Trant, isn’t it? Doesn’t
she look conscious, girls? Didn’t I know that hat meant something? How
exciting! I’m _so_ glad, dear; but, do tell us! Not his name, of course——”
For in the code of these girls, it’s not fair to ask for names.
“—but just his _Christian_ name!”
“William,” I admitted, smiling as “coyly” as I could.
“William! Sounds a bit—stand-offish,” objected Miss Holt. “D’you call him
‘_Billy_,’ by any chance?”
“Never,” I said solemnly, “not by any chance.”
“Of course not. ‘Billy’s’ no class,” said Miss Robinson. “‘William? Ahem!
_William!_’” in a pompous bass voice. “Dark or fair, Miss Trant?”
“Fair.”
“M’m. Well, I suppose Miss Trant _would_ pick a fair one, her being such
a reel brunette,” commented Miss Holt, “but as for me, I never could
take to a fair man. Puts me in mind of weak tea. About as fair ’s the
Governor, Miss Trant?”
“Ye-es; just about.”
“Anything for a bit of a change,” said Miss Robinson satirically. “I
should have thought you’d have liked another colour to sit opposite to
at lunch, after having to have the same sort of thing staring you in the
face all the afternoon. However!—no accounting for ’em!... I hope he’s
tall, though?”
“Over six foot, I should think.”
“Ah! Well grown, William! Is the young gentleman in the City, may I ask?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Isn’t she a good sort, answering all our impertinent questions like
this! One more, Miss Trant, and we won’t bother you. Where are you going
to meet him?”
I don’t think she expected that I _would_ answer this. But I said quite
frankly, “I am to meet him just outside the front entrance in Leadenhall
Street.” And I whisked out of the room to the lift. I didn’t tell the
girls “Look out of that window on the other side of the landing and
you’ll see him.”
I knew it wasn’t necessary.
In two minutes’ time I was being helped into a taxi by the august hand of
our Governor himself.
I lifted my head and looked straight up at the landing window. Yes, there
they were, all three of them, flattening their noses against the pane.
I nodded and smiled with bravado. My three colleagues were too utterly
taken by surprise to even smile back at me. The expression on their three
faces was even more pronounced than as I had foreseen it. Miss Holt was
standing in front, and as we drove away I saw her eyebrows rise to her
netted hair, while her mouth dropped open.
I could almost _hear_ the gasp that came from it, of:
“_Girls!_ Did you _ever_? She really _is_!—with Still Waters! Well! What
_ever_ next?”