THE FIRST DINNER
Well! the first evening is over.
It hasn’t been nearly as bad as it might, though it certainly has
produced several more quite unexpected developments.
We dined; for the first time for well over a year I sat down at a
luxuriously-appointed round dinner-table with all its conventional
daintiness of perfect napery, silver and glass—instead of the
picnic-supper affair, with every single plate and fork an “oddment,” cast
by the hands of Mrs. Skinner upon the rickety table at Marconi Mansions.
Instead of gossiping with Cicely Harradine clad in the faded green
Japanese kimono that she finds “such a rest to slop into” after all the
fashionable dressing-up at Chérisette’s—for Cicely is rather the type of
girl whom work demoralizes instead of bracing—I was of a party of two
other women and a man in evening-dress.
That dinner-jacket does make the Governor look so much younger—it’s
positively laughable! For another thing, it seems to take him right out
of his isolated Near Oriental niche, and to put him in the same rank of
human beings as men who used to dine at our house when my father was
alive. Positively, I have begun to look upon my once-dreaded employer as
quite an ordinary—though certainly _not_ a likable—sort of young man!
Never again need _he_ expect to keep up, with me, the attitude of a
metallic species of Business-deity who disappears after business-hours to
some vague, chilly and unknown Olympus, of which no glimpse would ever be
vouchsafed to any of us, his grovelling subordinates. Oh, no!
Not now that I’ve seen his people, the pretty things out of which his
mother has made such a nest of a home for him; not after making the
acquaintance of Blanche and of that gift of God, Theodora, and of Cariad.
That little outdoor dog spent the whole of dinner-time cosily curled
up under the table on his “Missis’s” black satin skirt, and not all
the flappings of the Governor’s table-napkin or his curtest “Here! Out
of that, Cariad! Outside, sir!” had the slightest effect in dislodging
him. I would have given at least five of my as yet unearned five hundred
pounds for Miss Robinson to have been granted the sight of Still Waters
cheerfully defied by that small Sealyham! I can see her “potting” the
scene, with Miss Holt’s white feather neck-ruffle commandeered to
represent the little dog who “_knows_ that skirts aren’t there for him
to sit upon!” And _I’m_ not “there to be sat upon” any more, either!
I’m beginning to wonder how the Governor managed to “take me in” for
so long! Why, he is a regular _fraud_! And a fraud found out is never
terrifying—even if it’s exasperating.
If anyone is going to be alarmed now, it’s not his official _fiancée_,
but he himself; for he was—yes, positively!—nervous and embarrassed at
dinner. If that had been the first time I’d met him I should have thought
that the big and blonde and silent young man opposite was _deadly shy
of me_! Of _me_; after all that he had handed out to me in the way of
orders and commands and arrangements during the past fortnight. It is
a good thing if, as he says, a good deal of the “strangeness” will be
put down to the “natural awkwardness of people so recently engaged”—but
it’s a still better thing that I contrived to be rather less “awkward”
and speechless than _he_ was! To myself I seemed to be sitting a little
apart, watching another Mon—Nancy, I mean—smiling and chatting gaily with
his mother and the younger girls.
What dears they are! and how one sees their feminine touch in everything
about the room, from the arrangement of the many and becoming lights, to
the graceful massing of sulphur-coloured pansies and gypsophila in the
centre of the round table!
At dinner it was chiefly, I think, of flowers that we talked—such a
nice, safe subject. It seems that the Governor is actually interested in
gardening. _How_ amazed the staff would be if it were hinted that Still
Waters took the vaguest gleam of interest in anything outside making
money for the firm!
After dinner, when he remained behind in the dining-room to smoke,
his mother slipped one white hand into Blanche’s arm, the other into
mine; and the gesture, I know, was meant to imply that she had “another
daughter now.”
We stepped together across the black-and-white-tiled hall into the
drawing-room, with its ordered chaos of pretty, old-fashioned furniture
and dainty new things, and the unmistakable atmosphere of a homey room
that is lived in.
Mrs. Waters drew me down beside her on the wide, shallow sofa, and I
saw her eyes dwelling on every line of my face, as if she were trying
to learn fresh knowledge of her son from the girl who presumably was
permitted to see him as his own mother never sees a man.
That brought a lump into my throat. I bent my head over my work—a bit of
Richelieu embroidery with which I had taken care to provide myself. I had
remembered some axioms of Miss Robinson at the office:
“_Never you be without a hit of fancy-work, girls, when you wish to
impress. Men seem to think a girl must be so sweet and womanly who can
sit for hours wagging a crochet-hook and a bit of thread at them. As
for the future mother-in-law, she always imagines a girl is more likely
to turn out domesticated if she cannot keep her hands still for ten
minutes. Besides, a bit of drawn-thread work, or whatever it is, gives
you something to look at when you don’t exactly know what to say next._”
The last reason was mine. I certainly did not know what to say when the
Governor’s mother remarked softly:
“You know, Nancy, you are just what I hoped you would be.”
“Am I?”
I felt an unutterable little _cad_.
Yes, Mr. William Waters! And who forced me into the position of feeling
like this?
“So pretty and gentle and quiet, and yet you ‘see’ things with those
brown eyes of yours,” pronounced Mrs. Waters. “At first I feared it was
impossible that any girl who had only met my boy just in business-hours,
and wearing that office-mask he has to put on, could grow to care for
him as we do; but I see you could understand. You guessed that all
that brusqueness and peremptory manner were just the armour for his
sensitiveness; you would see that he has to put on that manner to hide
the awful truth that at the bottom of his heart he is naturally as shy
and nervous as Blanche and I are. _I_ believe,” she laughed softly, “that
that’s why he _never_ allows us to call at the office while we’re in
town! The staff _might_ suspect, seeing _us_, that he _has_ another sort
of manner than the terrible one he speaks through the telephone with! I
dare say that even you were taken in by it at first, weren’t you? Until
he began to reveal his real self to you, I expect you looked upon him
merely as a business-machine, didn’t you, Nancy?”
“I suppose I did,” I murmured, feeling more uncomfortable at every word
uttered by this dear, innocent lady, who had created such an idealized
version of her son’s character.
“And when did you begin to find out the real Billy?”
_Here_ was a nice question! Thank goodness I was spared the answering of
it!
At that moment the drawing-room door opened to admit the tallest of the
admirable parlour-maids, with the tray bearing a silver coffee-machine
and the dainty Dresden service.
Blanche rose from the cushion where she had been sitting at my feet,
and went to the table to officiate. In her simple white dinner-gown she
looked like a tall lily bending down.
“Mother, plenty of hot milk and a little sugar? Nancy, how do you like
your coffee?”
“I don’t take it, thank you very much.”
“Oh, then here’s Billy’s—black, with plenty of sugar. Will he be coming
in for it?”
Her mother gave a little smile.
“I think perhaps Nancy won’t mind taking in Billy’s coffee to him. Will
you, dear? He’s in his ‘den’; the door just opposite, across the hall.”
Even without her gently mischievous glance I should have realized what
she meant. The unsuspecting, sympathetic creature thought she was being
kind and tactful, making an opportunity for me to have a little time
alone with my _fiancé_.
She imagined that we were longing for a lovers’ _tête-à-tête_, with all
the fond, foolish talk that one could guess at—beaming smiles at each
other, like Smithie’s—Ordinary love-making! Yes, of course, people will
have to be allowed to think that there’s that between us, too. I hadn’t
wasted many thoughts on this aspect of the case. But this “rubbed it in.”
I felt a wave of scorching scarlet rush up my face to the roots of my
hair. However, that didn’t matter: no doubt Mrs. Waters put it down to
the “natural shyness” of a girl in love. She never guessed the _furious_
mixture of feelings that sent that blush into my cheeks.
I kept my head up and my voice quite steady as I replied: “Oh, certainly!”
And I rose, taking up the green-garlanded cup with the small gilt
apostle-spoon in the saucer, and left the drawing-room to face my first
official _tête-à-tête_ with the Governor.
Ever since he’s been the unconscious cause of my having had to give up
the chance of a serene and happy future with the man who really cares for
me, I’ve looked upon my employer with a mixture of resentment and dread.
As I say, the dread’s melted rapidly. But the resentment’s growing!
“_I’ll_ make him pay, somehow,” thought I revengefully, “for all this!”
By “all this” I meant not only for the loss of Sydney, and the castle at
Ballycool, and comfort and position, but for making me look and feel so
acutely foolish before Mrs. Waters.
“I’ll see if I can’t make him rather uncomfortable over it himself,” I
determined.
I crossed the hall, forcing myself to feel as if I were back in the
office, where we typists took it in turn to carry Mr. Dundonald’s cup of
afternoon tea into the inner sanctum, where he glowered over his figures.
(How cross he was if one of us shook the cup so that some of the tea
slopped over and soaked the lump of sugar and the biscuit laid in the
saucer.)
Gingerly I carried the dainty cup of black coffee across to the door of
the “den.”
There, deliberately, I tapped twice.
The sound of my knock on the door reminded me of another occasion—on
which I’d presented myself alone before the Governor, that afternoon at
the Near Oriental; that first interview in his office.
This _tête-à-tête_—the first in his own home—was going to be very
different!