MR. SLOTMAN ARRIVES AT A MISUNDERSTANDING
At half-past nine on the Monday morning Miss Joan Meredyth walked into
Mr. Slotman’s office, and Mr. Slotman, seeing her, turned his head
aside to hide the smirk of satisfaction.
“Women,” he said to himself, “are all alike. They give themselves
confounded airs and graces, but when it comes to the point, they aren’t
born fools. She knows jolly well she wouldn’t get another job in a
hurry, and here she is.”
But Mr. Slotman made up his mind to go cautiously and carefully. He
would not let Miss Meredyth witness his sense of satisfaction.
“I am glad you have returned, Miss Meredyth. I felt sure that you
would; there’s no reason whatever we shouldn’t get on perfectly well.”
The girl gave him a stiff little inclination of her head. She had done
much personal violence to her sense of pride, yet she had come back
because the alternative—worklessness, possible starvation and
homelessness—had not appealed to her. And, after all, knowing Mr.
Slotman to be what he was, she was forewarned and forearmed.
So Joan came back and took up her old work, and Mr. Slotman practised
temporarily a courtesy and a forbearance that were foreign to him. But
Mr. Slotman had by no means given up his hopes and desires. Joan
appealed to him as no woman ever had. He admired her statuesque beauty.
He admired her air of breeding; he admired the very pride that she had
attempted to crush him with.
A woman like that could go anywhere, Slotman thought, and pictured it
to himself, he following in her trail, and finding an entry into a
society that would have otherwise resolutely shut him out. For like
most men of his type, self made, egregious, and generally offensive, he
had an inborn desire to get into Society and mingle with his betters.
On the Monday morning there had been delivered to Hugh Alston by hand a
little note from Marjorie; it was on pink paper, and was scented
delicately. If he had not been so very much in love with Marjorie, the
pink notepaper might have annoyed him, but it did not. The faint
fragrance reminded him of her.
She wrote a neat and exquisite hand; everything that she did was neat
and exquisite, and remembering his hopes of not so long ago, he groaned
a little dismally to himself as he reverently cut the envelope.
“MY DEAR HUGH,
“I have managed to get the address from aunt. It is ‘Miss Joan
Meredyth, care Mrs. Wenham, No. 7, Bemrose Square, London, W.C.’ I have
been thinking so much about what you said, and hoping that your plan
may succeed. I am sure that you would be very, very happy together....”
(Hugh laughed unmusically.)
“Tom has been here all the afternoon and evening, and aunt has been
perfectly charming to him. Hugh, I know that everything is going to be
right now, and I owe it all to you. You don’t know how grateful I am,
dear. I shall never, never forget your goodness and sweetness to me,
dear old Hugh.
“Your loving
“MARJORIE.”
With something approaching reverent care, Hugh put the little
pink-scented note into his pocket-book.
To-night he would go to Town, to-morrow he would interview Miss Joan
Meredyth. He would offer her no explanations, because the secret was
not his own, and nothing must happen now that might upset or tell
against Marjorie’s happiness.
He would express regret for what had happened, ask her to try and
realise that no indignity and no insult had ever been intended against
her, and then he would offer her his hand, but certainly not his heart.
If she felt the sting of her poverty so, then perhaps the thought of
his eight thousand a year would act as balm to her wounded feelings.
At this time Hugh Alston had a very poor opinion of Miss Meredyth. He
did not deny her loveliness. He could not; no man in his senses and
gifted with eyesight could. But the placid prettiness of Marjorie
appealed to him far more than the cold, disdainful beauty of the young
woman he had called ungenerous, and who had in her turn called him a
cad.
It was Mrs. Wenham herself who opened the hall door of the house in
Bemrose Square to Mr. Hugh Alston at noon on the day following.
Though certainly not dressed in the height of fashion, and by no means
an exquisite, Mr. Hugh Alston had that about him that suggested birth
and large possessions. Mrs. Wenham beamed on him, cheating herself for
a moment into the belief that he had come to add one more to the select
circle of persons she alluded to as her “paying guests.”
Her face fell a little when he asked for Miss Meredyth.
“Oh, Miss Meredyth has gone to work,” she said.
“To work?”
“Yes, she’s a clerk or something in the City. The office is that of
Philip Slotman and Company, Number sixteen, Gracebury.”
“You think that I could see her there?” asked Hugh, who had little
knowledge of City offices and their routine and rules, so far as
hirelings are concerned.
“I suppose you could; you are a friend of hers?”
He nodded.
“Well, I don’t know that it is usual for visitors to call on lady
clerks. If I might make a suggestion I’d say send in your card to Mr.
Slotman, and ask his permission to see Miss Meredyth.”
“Thanks!” Hugh said. “If that’s the right thing to do, I’ll do it.”
Half an hour later Mr. Slotman was examining Hugh’s card.
“Who is he?”
“A tall, well-dressed gentleman, sir; young. Looks as if he’s up from
the country, but he’s a gentleman all right,” the clerk said.
“Very good, I’ll see him.”
Slotman rose as Hugh came in. He recognised the man of position and
possessions, a man of the class that Slotman always cultivated.
“I wish to ask your permission to interview Miss Meredyth. I understand
that, in business hours, the permission of the employer should be asked
first.”
“Delighted!” Slotman said. “You are a friend of Miss Meredyth’s?” He
looked keenly at Hugh, and the first spark of jealousy was ignited in
his system.
“Hardly that, an acquaintance only,” said Hugh.
Slotman felt relieved.
“Miss Meredyth is in the outer general office. You could hardly talk to
her there. If you will sit down, I will go out and send her to you,
Mr.—Alston.” He glanced at the card.
“Thanks, perhaps you would be so kind as not to mention my name to
her,” said Hugh.
“Something up!” Slotman thought. He was an eminently suspicious man; he
suspected everyone, and more particularly all those who were in his
pay. He suspected his clerks of wasting their time—his time, the time
he paid for. He suspected them of filching the petty cash, stealing the
postage stamps, cheating him and getting the better of him in some way,
and in order to keep a watch on them he had riddled his suite of
offices with peepholes, listening holes, and spyholes in every unlikely
corner.
A small waiting office divided his private apartment from the General
Office, and peepholes cunningly contrived permitted anyone to hear and
see all that passed in the General Office, and in his own office too.
He found a young clerk in the waiting office, and sent him to Miss
Meredyth.
“Ask Miss Meredyth to go to my office at once, not through this way,
and then you remain in the General Office till I send for you,” said
Slotman.
This gave him the advantage he wanted. He locked both doors leading
into the waiting office, and took up his position at the spyhole that
gave him command of his own office.
He could see his visitor plainly. Hugh Alston was pacing the room
slowly, his hands behind his back, his face wearing a look of worry.
Slotman saw him pause and turn expectantly to the door at the far end
of the room.
Slotman could not see this door, but he heard it open, and he knew by
the look on the man’s face that Joan had come in.
“Why are you here? How dare you follow me here?”
“I have dared to follow you here, to express my deep regret for what is
past,” Hugh said. He looked at the girl, her white face, the hard line
made by a mouth that should be sweet and gentle.
It seemed, he thought, that the very sight of him roused all that was
cold and bitter in her nature.
“Am I to be tormented and insulted by you all my life?” she asked.
“You are unreasonable! You cannot think that this visit is one that
gives me any pleasure,” Hugh said.
“Then why do you come?”
“I asked permission of your employer to see you, and he kindly placed
his office at our disposal. I shall not keep you long.”
“I do not intend that you shall, and in future—”
“Will you hear what I have to say? Surely I am not asking too much?”
“Is it necessary?”
“To me, very! I wish to make a few things plain to you. In the past—I
had no intention of hurting or of disgracing you—”
Slotman started, and clenched his hands. What did that man mean? He
wondered, what could such words as those mean?
“But as I have shamed and angered you, I have come to offer the only
reparation in my power—a poor one, I will admit.”
He looked at her, paused for a moment to give her an opportunity of
speaking, but she did not speak. She looked at him steadily.
“May I briefly explain my position? I am practically alone in the
world. My home is at Hurst Dormer, one of the finest old buildings in
Sussex. I have an income of eight thousand a year.”
“What has this to do with me?”
“Only that I am offering it to you, myself and all I possess. I am
asking you to do me the honour of marrying me. It seems to me that it
is the one and the only atonement that I can make for what has passed.”
“You are—very generous! And—and you think that I would accept?”
“I hoped that you might consider the offer.”
Slotman gripped at the edge of the table against which he leaned.
He could scarcely believe his own ears—Joan, who had held her head so
high, whom he had believed to be above the breath of suspicion!
If it were possible for such a man as Mr. Philip Slotman to be shocked,
then Slotman was deeply shocked at this moment. He had come to regard
Joan as something infinitely superior to himself. Self-indulgent, a
libertine, he had pursued her with his attentions, pestered her with
his admiration and his offensive compliments. Then it had slowly dawned
on the brain of Mr. Philip Slotman that this girl was something better,
higher, purer than most women he had known. He had come to realise it
little by little. His feelings towards her had undergone a change. The
idea of marriage had come to him, a thing he had never considered
seriously before. Little by little it grew on him that he would prefer
to have Joan Meredyth for a wife rather than in any other capacity. He
could have been so proud of her beauty, her birth and her breeding.
And now everything had undergone a change. The bottom had fallen out of
his little world of romance. He stood there, gasping and clutching at
the edge of the table, while he listened to the man in the adjoining
room offering marriage to Joan Meredyth “as the only possible
atonement” he could make her!
Naturally, Mr. Philip Slotman could not understand in the least why or
wherefore; it was beyond his comprehension.
And now he stood listening eagerly, holding his breath waiting for her
answer.
Would she take him, this evidently rich man? If so, then good-bye to
all his hopes, all his chances.
Within the room the two faced one another in momentary silence. A flush
had come into the girl’s cheeks, making her adorable. For an instant
the coldness and hardness and bitterness were all gone, and Hugh Alston
had a momentary glimpse of the real woman, the woman who was neither
hard, nor cold, but was womanly and sweet and tender.
And then she was her old self again, the bitterness and the anger had
come back.
“I thank you for making everything so clear to me, your wealth and
position and your desire to make—to make amends for the insult and the
shame you have put on me. I need hardly say of course that I refuse!”
“Why?”
“Did you ever expect me to accept? I think you did not!”
She gave him a slight inclination of the head and, turning, went out of
the room, and Hugh Alston stood staring at the door that had closed on
her.