Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  The visit of this enthusiast had ruffled her more than she would have owned to herself, and it was almost instinctively that she strove to readjust the disturbed balance of her own sense of competence and self-devotion by waving aside all Miss Delmege’s proposals of lunch.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got time for anything of that sort today. I’ve had a most interrupted morning. No, Miss Delmege, thank you, not even a bun. You’d better go to your own lunch now.”

  “I’m not in any hurry, Miss Vivian.”

  “It’s one o’clock,” Miss Vivian pointed out, quite aware that her secretary would now seek her cold mutton and milk-pudding with an absolute sense of guilt, as of one indulging in a Sybaritic orgy while her chief held aloof in austere abstention.

  Miss Delmege, in fact, looked very unhappy, and said in low tones to her colleague at the other end of the room: “Miss Jones, if you care to go to lunch first, I’ll take my time off between two and half-past instead, at the second table.”

  The second table for lunch was never a popular institution, the mutton and the milk-pudding having lost what charms they ever possessed, and, moreover, the time allowed being abridged by almost half an hour. Miss Delmege, in virtue of her seniority and of her own excessive sense of superiority, always arranged that Grace should take the second luncheon-hour, and Miss Jones looked surprised.

  “Do you mind, because really I don’t care when I go?”

  “I’d rather you went first,” repeated Miss Delmege unhappily.

  “Thank you very much. I’m very hungry, and if you really don’t mind, I shall be delighted to go now,” said Grace cheerfully, in an undertone that nevertheless penetrated to Miss Vivian’s annoyed perceptions.

  It was evident that Miss Jones had no qualms as to enjoying a substantial lunch, however long her over-worked employer might elect to fast, and the conviction was perhaps responsible for the sharpness with which Char exclaimed: “For Heaven’s sake don’t chatter in the corner like that! You’re driving me perfectly mad — a day when one simply doesn’t know which way to turn.”

  Miss Delmege sank into her chair, looking more overwhelmed than ever, and Grace said gently, “I’m sorry, Miss Vivian,” disregarding or not understanding Miss Delmege’s signal that apologies were out of place in Miss Vivian’s office.

  Char drew pen and ink towards her, purely pour la forme, and began to make mechanical designs on the blotting-paper, while her mind turned over and over the question of Mrs. Willoughby’s proposed canteen.

  Char thought that her staff’s time was fully employed already, as indeed it was, and had no wish to arouse any possible accusation of overworking. At the same time, she had hitherto succeeded in taking over the management of almost every war organization in Questerham and the district, and was by no means minded to allow a new Canteen, on a large scale, to spring into life under no better auspices than those of Mrs. Willoughby.

  If she allowed her staff to go down to the Canteen in instalments, Char decided it would have to be definitely understood that the organization of the Canteen was entirely in the hands of the Midland Supply Depôt. She surmised shrewdly that such details of practical requirements as a boiler, tea-urns, kitchen utensils, and the like, had not yet crossed the sanguine line of vision of Mrs. Willoughby. It would be easy enough for Char to assume command when she alone could supply all such needs at a minimum of expenditure and trouble. The staff, she decided, should be sent down in shifts of five or six at a time, five nights a week.

  Then, Char reflected considerately, no one could have more than one night in the week, whereas she herself would always put in an appearance, even if only for a few minutes. It would encourage her staff, and would also show Mrs. Willoughby quite plainly the sort of position held by the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.

  That afternoon she sent for Miss Collins and dictated a short letter to Mrs. Willoughby, in which she declared, in the third person singular, that the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt had considered the proposed scheme for the opening of a Canteen in Pollard Street, and was prepared to help with the practical management of it. She would also supply six voluntary workers between the hours of 7 and 11 P.M. for every night in the week, Saturday excepted. As she took down these official statements, Miss Collins’s light eyebrows mounted almost into the roots of her red hair with surprise and disapproval.

  Char, being observant, saw these symptoms of astonishment, as she was meant to do, but few thoughts were further from her mind than that of consulting the views of her stenographer on any subject. She even took a certain amount of satisfaction in dictating a rather imperiously worded document, which informed each department in the office that those workers who lived in Questerham would be required to report for duty one night a week for emergency work (7 to 11 P.M.) at the new Canteen which would shortly be opened in Pollard Street under the direction of Miss Vivian and Mrs. Willoughby. Followed a list of names, with a corresponding day of the week attached to each group of six.

  “Cut a stencil and roll off six copies for each department and two or three extra ones for filing,” commanded Miss Vivian. “You can add at the end: ‘(Signed) Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.’”

  “Yes, Miss Vivian.”

  Miss Collins went away with her eyebrows still erect.

  The new field of enterprise was loudly discussed by the staff, as they took the usual half-hour’s break in the afternoon at tea-time.

  “Isn’t Miss Vivian wonderful?” said Tony excitedly. “She’d take on anything, I do believe.”

  “And make a success of it, too!”

  “Yes, rather.”

  Hardly any one grumbled at the extra four hours of hard work coming at the end of the day, and there was a general feeling of disapproval when Mrs. Bullivant at the Hostel said timidly: “If you’re to be down there at seven, it’ll be rather difficult to arrange about supper. Cook won’t like having to get a meal ready for half-past six, and, besides, you’ll be so hungry by eleven o’clock.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t think of that, Mrs. Bullivant,” observed Miss Delmege severely. “Not when we remember that Miss Vivian practically never gets her supper till long after ten every night, and she doesn’t get much lunch, either. In fact, sometimes she simply won’t touch anything at all in the middle of the day.”

  And Mrs. Bullivant looked very much rebuked, and said that she must see what she could do. “Anyhow, it won’t be just yet awhile,” she exclaimed with Irish optimism.

  “Things move very quickly with Miss Vivian.”

  “I think they mean the Canteen to open some time in December,” said Grace. “That’s not so very far off.”

  “Time does fly,” sighed Miss Plumtree, wishing that the Monthly Averages were divided from one another by a longer space of time.

  “Never mind, Sunday is all the nearer.”

  Sunday was the day most looked forward to by the whole Hostel, although an element of uncertainty was added to the enjoyment of it by the knowledge that the arrival of a troop-train might bring orders to any or every member of the staff to report for duty at the station at half an hour’s notice.

  One or two of the girls were able to go out of Questerham home, or to their friends, for the week-end, but the majority remained in the Hostel. Mrs. Bullivant tried to make the day “bright and homey” at the cost of pathetic exertions to herself, for Sunday was her hardest day of work.

  A certain laissez-aller marked the day from its earliest beginnings.

  Almost every one came down to breakfast in bedroom slippers, even though fully dressed.

  “A girl here — before you came, Gracie,” Miss Marsh told her room-mate, “used to come down in a kimono and sort of boudoir-cap arrangement. But I must say nobody liked it — just like a greasy foreigner, she was. All the sleeves loose, you know, so that you could see right up her arms. Myself, I don’t call that awfully nice — not at the breakfast-table.”

  “It would be very cold to do that now,” sa
id Grace, shivering. She disliked the cold very much, and the Hostel was not warmed.

  “Yes, wouldn’t it? It’s a comfort to get into one’s own clothes again and out of uniform, isn’t it, dear? That’s what I like about Sundays — dainty clothes again,” said Miss Marsh, fiercely pulling a comb backwards through her hair so as to make it look fluffy.

  “I like you in uniform, though,” said Miss Jones, who had received several shocks on first beholding the Sunday garbs known to the Hostel as “plain clothes.”

  “Very sweet of you to say that, dear. You always look nice yourself, only your plain clothes are too like your uniform — just a white blouse and dark skirt you wear, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got,” said Grace apologetically; and Miss Marsh at once thought that perhaps poor little Gracie couldn’t afford many things, and said warmly:

  “But white blouses are awfully nice, dear, and crêpe de Chine always looks so good.”

  Then she thrust her stockinged feet into her red slippers and shuffled across the room. “How lucky you are! You never have to back-comb your hair, do you?”

  “I never do back-comb it, because it’s so bad for it,” said Grace seriously. She had a book open on the dressing-table in front of her, but was characteristically quite as much interested in Miss Marsh’s conversation as in her own reading.

  “‘Daniel Deronda’?” said Miss Marsh, looking over her. “Never heard of him. How fond you are of reading, Gracie! I love it myself, but I don’t ever have time for it here.”

  The plea being one which never fails to rouse the scorn of every book-lover, Grace remained silent. Her solitary extravagance was the maximum subscription to the Questerham library.

  “There’s the bell,” said Miss Marsh; “I must come up and make my bed afterwards. Thank goodness, there’s no hurry today.”

  They went down together, Miss Marsh’s heelless slippers clapping behind her on every step.

  In the sitting-room after breakfast the girls clustered round the tiny smoking fire.

  “It’s going to rain all day. How beastly!” said Tony. “Who’s going to church?”

  “I shall probably go to evensong,” remarked Miss Delmege, upon which several people at once decided that they would risk the weather and go to the eleven o’clock service.

  There was only one church in Questerham which the Hostel thought it fashionable to attend.

  The day was spent in more or less desultory lounging over the fire. Miss Delmege wrote a number of letters and Tony darned stockings. Grace Jones read “Daniel Deronda” to herself.

  Lunch was protracted, and Mrs. Bullivant, to mark the day, exerted herself and made some rather smoked coffee, which she brought to the sitting-room triumphantly.

  “Isn’t there going to be any music this afternoon?” she inquired.

  Every one declared that music was the very thing for such an afternoon, but no one appeared very willing to provide it.

  “Do sing, somebody,” implored Miss Henderson. “Plumtree?”

  Miss Plumtree had a beautiful deep voice, utterly untrained and consequently unspoilt. She stood up willingly enough and sang all the songs that she was asked for. The taste of the Hostel was definite in songs. “A Perfect Day” and “The Rosary” were listened to in the absolute silence of appreciation, and then some one asked for a selection from the latest musical comedy.

  Grace played Miss Plumtree’s accompaniments, and loved listening to her soft, deep tones. She tried to make her sing “Three Fishers,” but Miss Plumtree said no: it was too sad for a Sunday afternoon, and it was some one else’s turn.

  Musical talent in the Hostel was limited, and the only other owner of a voice was Miss Delmege, the possessor of a high, thin soprano, which, she often explained, had been the subject of much attention on the part of “a really first-rate man in Clifton.”

  It might remain open to question whether the energies of the really first-rate man could not have been turned into channels more advantageous than that of developing Miss Delmege’s attenuated thread of voice. Whatever the original organ might have been, it was now educated into a refined squeak, overweighted with affectations which to Miss Delmege represented the art of production. She sang various improvident love-songs in which Love — high F, attained to by a species of upwards slide on E and E sharp — was all, When eventide should fall — slight tremolo and a giving out of breath rather before the accompanist had struck the final chord.

  “You should take the finale rather more à tempo, dear,” said the singer, in a professional way which finally vindicated the first-rateness of the man at Clifton.

  Every one thanked Miss Delmege very much, and said that was a sweetly pretty song; and then Grace Jones played the piano while Tony and Miss Henderson made toast for tea and put the largest and least burnt pieces aside for her. Tea, with the aid of conversation and the making of innumerable pieces of toast over the least smoky parts of the fire, could almost be prolonged till supper-time.

  “I must say, I do enjoy doing nothing,” said Miss Henderson, voicing the general sentiment at the end of the day of rest.

  “Poor Mrs. Potter is on the telephone. How cold she’ll be, sitting there all the evening!”

  “I hope she saw to Miss Vivian’s fire,” said Miss Delmege solicitously. “I particularly reminded her to build up a good fire in Miss Vivian’s room. She does feel the cold so.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t come this afternoon,” said Grace. “There was nothing left over in her basket last night.”

  “Oh, she always comes,” Miss Delmege said quickly and rather resentfully. “I’ve never known her miss a Sunday yet. Besides, I know she was there today. I saw the light in her window as I came back from church.”

  “I do believe,” said Tony in a stage whisper, “that Delmege goes to evening church on purpose to look up at the light in Miss Vivian’s window as she comes back.”

  But the joke was received silently, as being in but indifferent taste, and verging on irreverence almost equally as regarded church and the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.

  VI

  The new Canteen in Pollard Street was opened before Christmas.

  Lesbia Willoughby, in an immense overall of light blue-and-white check, stood behind a long buffet and demanded stridently whether she wasn’t too exactly like a barmaid for words, and Char’s consignment of helpers worked for the most part briskly and efficiently, only the unfortunate Miss Plumtree upsetting a mug of scalding tea over herself at the precise moment when Miss Vivian, trim and workmanlike in her dark uniform, entered the big hall and stood watching the scene with her arrogant, observant gaze. She did not ask Miss Plumtree whether her hand was scalded, but neither did she rebuke her very evident clumsiness. She moved slowly and imperially through the thick tobacco-laden atmosphere, speaking to several of the men, and silently observing the demeanour of her staff.

  The following week she issued an office circular in which the precise direction which the activity of each worker was to take was inexorably laid down.

  Miss Plumtree was banished à perpetuité to the pantry, to wash up at full speed over a sink. She worked at the Canteen on Mondays, always the busiest evening. In the same shift were Mrs. Potter and Miss Henderson, to each of whom was appointed the care of an urn, Grace Jones, Miss Delmege, and Miss Marsh. Miss Delmege stood behind the buffet, which position, she said, seemed very strange to her from being so like a counter in a shop, and the other two took orders at the various small tables in the hall, and hurried to and fro with laden trays.

  No one would have dreamed of disputing this arbitrary disposal of energies, but it struck Grace as extremely unfortunate that Miss Marsh and Miss Delmege should select their first Monday together at the Canteen for the form of unpleasantness known as “words.” Miss Jones became the medium by which alone either would address the other.

  “I’m sorry, dear, but Delmege has really got on my nerves lately, and you can tell her I said so if y
ou like. When it comes to suggesting that I don’t do sufficient work, there’s simply nothing more to be said. You heard her the other night saying some people were so lucky they could always get off early when they liked. Just because I’d cleared up by six o’clock, for once in a way!”

  “But she didn’t say she meant you,” urged Miss Jones, who was far too sympathetic not to take any grievance confided to her at the teller’s own valuation, and foresaw besides an extremely awkward evening at the Canteen.

  “Some people aren’t straightforward enough to say what they mean right out, but that doesn’t prevent others from seeing the point of the sort of remarks they pass,” declared Miss Marsh cryptically.

  “If she told you she really hadn’t meant anything personal, wouldn’t it be all right?”

  But Grace did not make the suggestion very hopefully, and her room-mate merely repeated gloomily that Delmege had really got on her nerves lately, and though she did not think herself one to bear malice, yet there were limits to all things.

  Grace’s success with Miss Delmege on their way down the street at seven o’clock that evening, was even less apparent.

  “It’s all very well, dear, but I’ve always been most sensitive. I can’t help it. I know it’s very silly, but there it is. As a tiny tot, mother always used to say of me, ‘That child Vera is so sensitive, she can’t bear a sharp word.’ I know it’s very silly to be thin-skinned, and causes one a great deal of suffering as one goes through life, but it’s the way I’m made. I always was so.”

  This complacent monologue lasted almost to the bottom of Pollard Street, when Grace interrupted desperately: “Do make it up with her before we start this job. It’s so much nicer to be all cheerful together when we’ve got a hard evening in front of us.”

  “I’m quite willing to be friendly, when Miss Marsh speaks to me first. At the present moment, dear, as you know, she’s behaving very strangely indeed, and doesn’t speak to me at all. Of course, I don’t mind either way — in fact, it only amuses me — but I don’t mind telling you, Gracie, that I think her whole way of carrying on is most strange altogether.”