THE FIRST TÊTE-À-TÊTE
A rather surprised voice called “Come in!”
In I went—to find the Governor smoking a cigarette and sitting on the
wide red-leather-padded club-fender of a room that was in complete
contrast to the feminine domain I had left. Almost empty, but for
its tall bookshelves, a grandfather’s clock, a couple of solid,
“man-ny-looking” arm-chairs and a grand piano.
I dropped my voice into its meekest Near Oriental tone as I announced:
“Your coffee, Mr. Waters!”
It was exactly the tone in which I’d so often said, “Your tea, Mr.
Dundonald!” and yet I knew that the man before me would guess that this
deference was, under the circumstances, only a subtle form of defiance.
I handed him the cup. Then I stood there, outwardly as mild as milk,
before him. One swift glance into the mirror over the mantelpiece beyond
his broad shoulder—his shoulders are the best thing about him—had shown
me an attractive picture enough—a big, blonde man faced by a _petite_,
graceful girl, with her night-black hair swathed in a silky garland round
her head, and her white shoulders and neck emerging from an admirably-cut
dinner-gown of creamy charmeuse and chiffon patterned by rose-pink
beadwork, whose colour echoed the soft flush in her cheeks.
Just before dinner, Theo, in the school-room, with all her eyes and half
the voice-power at her command, had told me the dress was _divine_, and
that I looked a little _angel_ in it!
“Angel?” H’m. That wasn’t how I _felt_, exactly. Still I know I looked
my best; as pretty as ever I’d looked in the dear old days before I had
anything else to do.
Looking her best always keys a girl up to doing her best.
(Or her worst, as the case may be.)
Besides, another glance at the Governor had shown me that I’d been right
in my suspicion at dinner. He _was_ embarrassed. He was—probably for the
first time in his life—_shy_!
This put the finishing touch to my feeling myself to be—also for the
first time—mistress of this situation.
Therefore, I stood there, still waiting, looking as if it were I who were
paralysed with shyness, deliberately waiting for _him_ to speak.
“Thank you,” he had murmured as he took the cup from me. There was
another pause, which was—as I fully intended—the first of many. Then
he added, in a rather uncertain sort of voice, “I suppose it was my
mother’s—my mother who sent you in here?”
“Yes! Oh, yes,” I said hastily, as if breathlessly flurried and meek
beyond all words. “She seemed to think—I didn’t know what else to do—am
I in your way?” (Here I glanced up at him with scared, appealing eyes as
much as to say, “Is it my fault if I am?”)
Pause.
“I am afraid,” said the Governor, rather as if the words were forced from
him, “that I shall have to ask you to put with up this—er—incongruity for
the next half-hour or so. Won’t you sit down, Miss Trant?” And he wheeled
forward one of those capacious arm-chairs, placing it at a mercifully
wide distance from the fender-stool—where Mrs. Waters perhaps imagined
we were at that moment sitting—Oh shade of everything that’s wildly
impossible!—sitting together like ordinary young engaged people, hand in
hand—or however they _do_ sit. My goodness!
I sat down, dropping my eyes demurely, and folding my hands in my lap.
Another pause.
“I—er——” said the Governor, then stopped and tried to look as if he
hadn’t begun a sentence.
“Yes? Is there anything that I can—that you think I ought to be able to
do for you while I am here, Mr. Waters?”
“Perhaps it might be wiser if you stopped calling me by that name”—dryly.
He seemed to have pulled himself together with a jerk, for he was looking
and speaking more like himself at this. However, it had no effect on _me_.
“Oh, of _course_,” I said obediently, “I shall _always_ remember to call
you B——by your Christian name (_that_ is an abbreviation, too, isn’t it?)
when we are with the others.”
“And then, if you use my other name when we are alone, you may forget,
and let it slip out when the others are here,” he objected, looking down
on me from his perch on the fender-stool, “and—and it’s more than likely
that my sisters might notice. Theodora notices everything.”
“Yes”—gently—“so I gather.”
“And always says out what she thinks,” her brother informed me. “That’s
why—if you don’t mind—I am going to continue calling you ‘Nancy’ even
when we are alone.”
“Oh, certainly,” I said softly. “And I suppose I must practise trying not
to feel afraid of you.”
He looked sharply at me, but I know there was no expression in my face,
and my eyes seemed fixed upon the hands in my lap, upon the ring I was
turning, idly, round my engagement-finger.
“Afraid of me?” he took up. “You?”
“Oh, Mr. Waters—I _beg_ your pardon, I didn’t mean to use that name
again. I was going to say, you know that we are all terrified to death of
you—at the office.”
I know he guessed that I meant “_but this is not the office, and I’ve
lost all the wholesome awe that I still had of you only yesterday, and
I’m no more terrified of you than Cariad is, now!_” Without looking
directly at him, I saw his keen, blonde face flush a little under its
tan—this City-fied young man is oddly sunburned—and his firmly-fitted
lips moved as if he were going to say something but thought better of it.
After a pause he opened them again and asked:
“Do you smoke—er—Nancy?”
“No, thanks very much,” I said primly.
Silence fell.
The Governor cleared his throat.
I knew he literally couldn’t think what to say next, and I exulted
inwardly. I felt as if I really were getting a little of my own
back now—not only for the awkwardness and unpleasantness due to the
“engagement,” but for everything I’ve loathed while I’ve been at the Near
Oriental—the dreary journey there morning after morning, the monotony,
the irksomeness, the daily looming terror of “the sack,” the hated
hoverings round me of Mr. Dundonald and his “_talk_-ing!”
_Oh_, how my employer was longing for me to “talk” at _that_ moment! to
say something—anything!
But I wouldn’t. I think I could have let that lagging silence last for
quite another five minutes as far as I was concerned, only I was afraid
I might break into wild laughter unless I spoke. So I gave it up, and
suggested gravely and helpfully:
“I _have_ got some fancy-work with me, but I left it in the drawing-room.
Shall I go back and fetch it? Or—wouldn’t that quite _do_?”
“Afraid not,” said the Governor grimly.
“It seems so stupid to sit here doing nothing; for you, too,” I added
sympathetically. “If you have brought any letters down here from the
office, you might, perhaps, care to dictate them to me——”
“Thank you, no,” said Mr. Waters firmly. “I seldom do any business out of
business-hours.”
I turned my ring again ostentatiously. I hope he knew I was pointing out
to him how _my_ “business” had to go on all day long—the woman’s work, in
fact, being never done!
My next mild suggestion was, “Do you play picquet?”
“Don’t know one card from another.”
I sighed, as if with mingled regret and boredom.
It was a very insincere sigh! for, to begin with, I loathe any form of
card-playing myself; _I_ don’t believe the story that cards were invented
to please a mad king. I believe he was _driven_ mad by the card-games
of the period! Secondly, I wasn’t one bit bored. I was revelling in the
spectacle of this wretched young man—imagine being able to employ such a
phrase to the Grand Panjandrum himself!—this _wretched_ young man looking
so acutely uncomfortable and at such a loss.
Gleefully I allowed yet another long and awkward pause to take place.
Then, I put my hand—the left one—up to my mouth as if to stifle a yawn.
Then I glanced at the ship in full sail that rocked to and fro on the
face of the grandfather’s clock, and murmured resignedly: “Only twenty
minutes past nine?”
“I am afraid that clock is always kept ten minutes fast,” said my host.
I sighed again, more deeply.
Then I allowed my eyes to wander, as if vainly seeking the way of
escape!—round the comfortable, masculine-looking room. Actually, my
glance was caught by an odd-looking arrangement of wires across the
ceiling.
“Oh, what are those for?” I asked. “Telegraphy?”
“No; I had those put there to improve the acoustics of this room. It was
otherwise so bad to play and sing in.”
“Oh!” I said, and wondering why Blanche didn’t use the drawing-room to
sing in, I glanced at the somber shape of the piano at the other end of
the den.
“I wonder if you would allow me to practise in here sometimes—of course,
only in the mornings?” I requested meekly. “When I go back to London, I
shall want to see about a situation as music-teacher or something of that
kind. I must have some definite work to do—besides yours, I mean!—and I
ought to furbish up my playing.”
“Ah, you play, do you?” said Mr. Waters, in a tone of the deepest relief.
“Good!”
He got up, switched on some more lights, and opened the piano.
“I wonder if you have a rarer accomplishment still. Can you accompany?”
“I should be able to,” said I, with a little bitter smile to myself.
For I’ve certainly spent hours enough at the piano with Sydney Vandeleur,
practising or transposing his lyrics. He has a gift for pretty, tender
melody-writing; he “sets” all his favourite verses....
“Will you try over a song with me, then?”
(What! It was _he_ who sang?)
“Certainly!”
This was not my subdued, Leadenhall Street office “Certainly.” It was the
way in which I might have spoken to Sydney, or to Major Montresor, or the
Somervilles, or any of the men who came to my father’s house in the old
days, and for whom I played in the evening.
“Wait a minute. This gets in the way; clicks on the keys,” said I,
glancing at those weighty diamonds that blazed on my finger. And I drew
off his ring, pushing it with a careless little flick out of my way on
the glassy black top of the piano. He had put up before me Schubert’s
“_Still wie die Nacht_.”
Appropriate enough, for Still Waters! “Still as the night, deep as the
sea——”
I took up the first chords.
Then came surprise again.
I had expected him to possess a big, bull-dog bass, full of sound and
fury, and without a touch of feeling in it. To my amazement, his voice
turned out to be a particularly sweet, true tenor. Shut your eyes, and
you could imagine that it was the most sympathetic and delightful of men
who was singing, instead of _the Governor_!
Can there be many more surprises about this man? However, I flatter
myself that I’ve given him several. The crushed-looking, deferential
typist in the ready-made delaine blouse, and with the carbon-stained
fingers, that shook with nervousness when he rattled off his
far-too-quick dictation to them, was a distinct contrast to this dainty,
well-dressed young woman, who lays her own plans for him to see that she
is laughing at him in her sleeve.
And it’s his turn to use deference to me.
“Thank you, so much—er—Nancy.” This last word brought out with a jerk of
resolution. “It’s a treat to be accompanied by someone who can do it so
unusually well; it’s like waltzing with a partner whose step just suits
one’s own.”
Good gracious! Where and when has this man learned to dance?
But he _can_ sing. I quite enjoyed playing for it. I think we went
through quite half a dozen songs—“Widdicombe Fair” was one of them—before
I remembered that this wasn’t the form I meant _my_ enjoyment to take.
So, when he put up yet another—“Drake’s Drum” this time—and said, “Shall
we try this?” I relapsed into my wickedly mild manner once more, and
replied hesitatingly: “Don’t you think that would be enough—for Mrs.
Waters? I mean, that she would consider I had stayed the right length of
time? May—mayn’t I get down, now?”
“Oh! Sorry if I have tired you,” said the Governor quietly.
He walked across the room to open the door for me.
There, with his hand on the door-knob, my employer paused and looked down
at me almost as if he were looking at me for the first time.
It was a curious sort of stare, half-amused, half-frowning. I should
think it must have lasted while one could count five. Was there a sort of
_threat_ in it? Yes! I suppose it meant that he wasn’t going to stand any
more of my masquerading impertinences, that somehow he meant to overawe
me, to keep the upper hand over me still. But he won’t. Of course it’s
rather flurrying to be looked at like that, so hard and unexpectedly....
But I wasn’t _really_ flurried——only a little glad when he opened the
door, said “Good night!” and shut it after me.
I was turning towards the haven of the drawing-room when, half-way across
the hall, I heard the door of the “den” open again, and the Governor’s
step behind me.
“I think you forgot this, didn’t you?” he said, holding out to me the
ring I had left lying on the top of the piano.
“Oh, _thank_ you,” I said apologetically. He went back into the den. I
slipped my “engagement” ring on to my finger again.
As a matter of fact I _hadn’t_ “forgotten” it.
And he needn’t imagine that he is ever going to have _me_ “quelled”
again. I intend taking it out of _him_ all the time I am here!