JOAN MEREDYTH, TYPIST
Mr. Philip Slotman touched the electric buzzer on his desk and then
watched the door. He was an unpleasant—looking man, strangely corpulent
as to body, considering his face was cast in lean and narrow mould, the
nose large, prominent and hooked, the lips full, fleshy, and of
cherry—like redness, the eyes small, mean, close together and deep set.
The over—corpulent body was attired lavishly. It was dressed in a fancy
waistcoat, a morning coat, elegantly striped trousers of lavender hue
and small pointed—toed, patent—leather boots, with bright tan uppers.
The rich aroma of an expensive cigar hung about the atmosphere of Mr.
Slotman’s office. This and his clothes, and the large diamond ring that
twinkled on his finger, proclaimed him a person of opulence.
The door opened and a girl came in; she carried a notebook and her head
very high. She trod like a young queen, and in spite of the poor black
serge dress she wore, there was much of regal dignity about her. Dark
brown hair that waved back from a broad and low forehead, a pair of
lustrous eyes filled now with contempt and aversion, eyes shielded by
lashes that, when she slept, lay like a silken fringe upon her cheeks.
Her nose was redeemed from the purely classical by the merest
suggestion of tip-tiltedness, that gave humour, expression and
tenderness to the whole face—tenderness and sweetness that with
strength was further betrayed by the finely cut, red-lipped mouth and
the strong little chin, carried so proudly on the white column of her
neck.
Her figure was that of a young goddess, and a goddess she looked as she
swept disdainfully into Mr. Philip Slotman’s office, shorthand notebook
in her hand.
“I want you to take a letter to Jarvis and Purcell, Miss Meredyth,” he
said. “Please sit down. Er—hum—‘Dear Sirs, With regard to your last
communication received on the fourteenth instant, I beg—’”
Mr. Slotman moved, apparently negligently, from his leather-covered
armchair. He rose, he sauntered around the desk, then suddenly he flung
off all pretence at lethargy, and with a quick step put himself between
the girl and the door.
“Now, my dear,” he said, “you’ve got to listen to me!”
“I am listening to you.” She turned contemptuous grey eyes on him.
“Hang the letter! I don’t mean that. You’ve got to listen about other
things!”
He stretched out his hand to touch her, and she drew back. She rose,
and her eyes flashed.
“If you touch me, Mr. Slotman, I shall—” She paused; she looked about
her; she picked up a heavy ebony ruler from his desk. “I shall defend
myself!”
“Don’t be a fool,” he said, yet took a step backwards, for there was
danger in her eyes.
“Look here, you won’t get another job in a hurry, and you know it.
Shorthand typists are not wanted these days, the schools are turning
out thousands of ’em, all more or less bad; but I—I ain’t talking about
that, dear—” He took a step towards her, and then recoiled, seeing her
knuckles shine whitely as she gripped the ruler. “Come, be sensible!”
“Are you going to persist in this annoyance of me?” she demanded.
“Can’t I make you understand that I am here to do my work and for no
other purpose?”
“Supposing,” he said, “supposing—I—I asked you to marry me?”
He had never meant to say this, yet he had said it, for the fascination
of her was on him.
“Supposing you did? Do you think I would consent to marry such a man as
you?” She held her head very proudly.
“Do you mean that you would refuse?”
“Of course!”
He seemed staggered; he looked about him as one amazed. He had kept
this back as the last, the supreme temptation, the very last card in
his hand; and he had played it, and behold, it proved to be no trump.
“I would neither marry you nor go out with you, nor do I wish to have
anything to say to you, except so far as business is concerned. As that
seems impossible, it will be better for me to give you a week’s notice,
Mr. Slotman.”
“You’ll be sorry for it,” he said—“infernally sorry for it. It ain’t
pleasant to starve, my girl!”
“I had to do it, I had to, or I could not have respected myself any
longer,” the girl thought, as she made her way home that evening to the
boarding-house, where for two pounds a week she was fed and lodged. But
to be workless! It had been the nightmare of her dreams, the haunting
fear of her waking hours.
In her room at the back of the house, to which the jingle of the
boarding-house piano could yet penetrate, she sat for a time in deep
thought. The past had held a few friends, folk who had been kind to
her. Pride had held her back; she had never asked help of any of them.
She thought of the Australian uncle who had invited her to come out to
him when she should leave school, and then had for some reason changed
his mind and sent her a banknote for a hundred pounds instead. She had
felt glad and relieved at the time, but now she regretted his decision.
Yet there had been a few friends; she wrote down the names as they
occurred to her.
There was old General Bartholomew, who had known her father. There was
Mrs. Ransome. No, she believed now that she had heard that Mrs. Ransome
was dead; perhaps the General too, yet she would risk it. There was
Lady Linden, Marjorie Linden’s aunt. She knew but little of her, but
remembered her as at heart a kindly, though an autocratic dame. She
remembered, too, that one of Lady Linden’s hobbies had been to
establish Working Guilds and Rural Industries, Village Crafts, and
suchlike in her village. In connection with some of these there might
be work for her.
She wrote to all that she could think of, a letter of which she made
six facsimile copies. It was not a begging appeal, but a dignified
little reminder of her existence.
“If you could assist me to obtain any work by which I might live, you
would be putting me under a deep debt of gratitude,” she wrote.
Before she slept that night all six letters were in the post. She
wished them good luck one by one as she dropped them into the
letter-box, the six sprats that had been flung into the sea of fortune.
Would one of them catch for her a mackerel? She wondered.
“You’d best take back that notice,” Slotman said to her the next
morning. “You won’t find it so precious easy to find a job, my girl;
and, after all, what have I done?”
“Annoyed me, insulted me ever since I came here,” she said quietly.
“And of course I shall not stay!”
“Insulted you! Is it an insult to ask you to be my wife?”
“It seems so to me,” she said quietly. “If you had meant that—at
first—it would have been different; now it is only an insult!”
Three days passed, and there came answers. She had been right, Mrs.
Ransome was dead, and there was no one who could do anything for Miss
Meredyth.
General Bartholomew was at Harrogate, and her letter had been sent on
to him there, wrote a polite secretary. And then there came a letter
that warmed the girl’s heart and brought back all her belief and faith
in human nature.
“MY DEAREST CHILD,
“Your letter came as a welcome surprise—to think that you are looking
for employment! Well, we must see to this—I promise you, you will not
have far to look. Come here to me at once, and be sure that everything
will be put right and all misunderstandings wiped out. I am keeping
your letter a secret from everyone, even from Marjorie, that your
coming shall be the more unexpected, and the greater surprise and
pleasure. But come without delay, and believe me to be,
“Your very affectionate friend,
“HARRIET LINDEN.”
“P.S.—I suggest that you wire me the day and the train, so that I can
meet you. Don’t lose any time, and be sure that all past unhappiness
can be ended, and the future faced with the certainty of brighter and
happier days.”
Over this letter Joan Meredyth pondered a great deal. It was a
warm-hearted and affectionate response to her somewhat stilted little
appeal. Yet what did the old lady mean, to what did the veiled
reference apply?
“So you mean going, then?” Slotman asked.
“I told you I would go, and I shall. I leave to-morrow.”
“You’ll be glad to come back,” he said. He looked at her, and there was
eagerness in his eyes. “Joan, don’t be a fool, stay. I could give you a
good time, and—”
But she had turned her back on him.
She had written to Lady Linden thanking her for her kindly letter.
“I shall come to you on Saturday for the week-end, if I may. I find
there is a train at a quarter-past three. I shall come by that to
Cornbridge Station.
“Believe me,
“Yours gratefully and affectionately,
“JOAN MEREDYTH.”
There was a subdued excitement about Lady Linden during the Thursday
and the Friday, and an irritating air of secretiveness.
“Foolish, foolish young people! Both so good and so worthy in their
way—the girl beautiful and clever, the man as fine and honest and
upright a young fellow as ever trod this earth—donkeys! Perhaps they
can’t be driven—very often donkeys can’t; but they can be led!”
To Hugh Alston, at Hurst Dormer, seven miles away, Lady Linden had
written.
“MY DEAR HUGH,
“I want you to come here Saturday; it is a matter of vital importance.”
(She had a habit of underlining her words to give them emphasis, and
she underscored “vital” three times.) “I want you to time your arrival
for half-past five, a nice time for tea. Don’t be earlier, and don’t be
later. And, above all, don’t fail me, or I will never forgive you.”
“I expect,” Hugh thought, “that she is going to make a public
announcement of the engagement between Marjorie and Tom Arundel.”
It was precisely at half-past five that Hugh stepped out of his
two-seater car and demanded admittance at the door of the Manor House.
“Oh, Mr. Alston,” the footman said, “my lady is expecting you. She told
me to show you straight into the drawing-room, and she and—” The man
paused.
“Her ladyship will be with you in a few moments, sir.”
“There is festival in the air here, Perkins, and mystery and secrecy
too, eh?”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the man said. “This way, Mr. Alston.”
And now in the drawing-room Hugh was cooling his heels.
Why this mystery? Where was Marjorie? Why didn’t his aunt come?
Then someone came, the door opened. Into the room stepped a tall girl—a
girl with the most beautiful face he thought he had ever seen in his
life. She looked at him calmly and casually, and seemed to hesitate;
and then behind her appeared Lady Linden, flushed, and evidently
agitated.
“There,” she said, “there, my dears—I have brought you together again,
and now everything must be made quite all right! Joan, darling, here is
your husband! Go to him, forgive him if there is aught to forgive. Ask
forgiveness, child, in your turn, and then—then kiss and be friends, as
husband and wife should be.”
She beamed on them both, then swiftly retreated, and the door behind
Joan Meredyth quickly closed.