Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  The same fear was also taking very definite possession of Char’s mind.

  She pulled up a low cane-seated chair to the table and began the soup and bread. The cocoa, already poured out, must, it was evident, be allowed to get cool until the arrival of a next course. This proved to be a dish of scrambled eggs, and was followed by one large baked apple.

  Char felt thankful that she had refused her maid’s solicitations to come with her. Preston confronted by such a meal, either for herself or for Miss Vivian, was quite unthinkable.

  Char thought of Plessing and the dinner that had awaited her there every evening, with Miss Bruce hovering anxiously round the other end of the table, with something like homesickness.

  Then she derided herself, half laughing. What did food matter, after all?

  But she decided that Miss Delmege must be told to find her rooms in Questerham as soon as possible. Then Preston could join her.

  This last thought was prompted by Char’s strong disinclination to unpack, a duty which she realized now would, for the first time, devolve upon herself.

  It would not be facilitated by the prominent position given to her trunk in the hall of the Hostel.

  “Mrs. Bullivant,” said Char, when the Superintendent returned, “my trunk must be taken up to my room, please.”

  Her tone was unmistakably, and quite intentionally, that of the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt issuing instructions to a member of her staff.

  “Yes, Miss Vivian,” automatically replied the little Superintendent, and added desperately: “But I’m afraid that cook and Mrs. Smith won’t do it — not if they’ve once said they won’t.”

  Char raised her eyebrows.

  “If the servants don’t obey your orders they must leave,” she said. “But isn’t there any one else?”

  “Perhaps two of the girls—” Mrs. Bullivant hesitated, and then left the room.

  Char heard her open the door of the next room, which she knew must be the sitting-room, and a babel of voices immediately became audible.

  She waited, rather annoyed.

  Mrs. Bullivant came out into the hall, followed by quite a large group.

  “This is it. Look, dears, can you manage it? Miss Henderson, dear, you’re tall.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s only up one flight, and it isn’t a very large box — only an awkward shape. Will some one give me a hand?”

  Miss Plumtree, who was sturdy, came to assist, and between them, with a great deal of straining and pulling, and many anxious ejaculations from the door-way of the sitting-room, they slowly lifted the box.

  “Don’t hurt yourself, now!” cried Mrs. Bullivant. “Get it from underneath, Henderson!”

  “Mind the paint on the wall!”

  “Mind the banisters!”

  “Oh, mind what you’re doing, Greengage!”

  Similar helpful ejaculations resounded, as the two girls carried the box up the first flight of narrow stairs.

  Just as they reached the top step, Char heard the small, clear voice of her secretary, standing in the hall.

  “Can you manage, or shall I help you?”

  There was a general laugh, echoed from above, as Miss Henderson’s voice came briefly down to them: “Thanks, Delmege; just like you, dear, but we happen to have finished.”

  They all laughed again.

  Char, through the half-open door, saw Miss Delmege tossing her fair head. “I’m afraid I don’t quite see the point of the joke,” she observed acidly.

  “Now go in to the fire again, all of you,” Mrs. Bullivant exclaimed. “Miss Vivian will hear you if you chatter like this in the hall. I’ll tell her the box is safely upstairs.”

  When she returned to impart the information, Char had shut the door of her little room again.

  “Wouldn’t you like to come upstairs, Miss Vivian?” the Superintendent asked her timidly. “They’ve managed to get your box up all right, and I expect you’ll be wanting to unpack.”

  Char wanted nothing less, but she realized that the unwelcome task must of necessity precede her night’s rest, and went upstairs with Mrs. Bullivant.

  The bedroom seemed to her very tiny, and, indeed, what space there was, her box and dressing-bag mainly occupied. It was also exceedingly cold.

  When Mrs. Bullivant had wished her good-night, with a certain wistful air of expecting an enthusiasm which Char felt quite unable to display, she slipped on her fur coat and began to tug at the strap of her trunk.

  The process of unpacking at least succeeded in warming her. But there was hardly any room to put away even the limited number of belongings that she had brought, and Char told herself rather indignantly that Mrs. Bullivant seemed to be a most incompetent manager, and might at least have provided her employer with a respectably sized bedroom in her own Hostel.

  Towards ten o’clock she heard the sitting-room door opened, and a general whispering and rustling proclaimed that several people were coming upstairs. Char did not, however, at once realize the full significance of the fact that her own room adjoined the bathroom. A thin but incessant stream of conversation began, punctuated by the loud hissing of a kettle which had overboiled upon the gas-ring.

  “How’s the water tonight?”

  “Fair to middling. I don’t know who is having baths, but there won’t be enough water for more than two.”

  “It’s only tepid as it is.”

  “I am hungry,” proclaimed a plaintive voice in incautiously raised tones.

  “H’sh-sh! You’ll disturb Miss Vivian. Why are you hungry at this hour, Tony?”

  “Well, we didn’t have anything frightfully substantial for supper, did we? and I had to go after the scrambled eggs, because I was on telephone duty. So I didn’t even have any pudding.”

  “Oh, poor kid! Couldn’t Mrs. Bullivant have got you something?”

  “I didn’t like to ask her; she’s so worried tonight, what with Miss Vivian’s coming and everything. Besides” — Tony’s voice sounded very serious— “there never is anything, you know. Only tomorrow’s breakfast.”

  “Hasn’t any one got some biscuits?”

  “I’ll go down to the kitchen and find some milk for you,” said the peculiarly distinct tones of Grace Jones. “I know where it’s kept.”

  “Oh, why should you bother?”

  “It isn’t at all a bother. You must be starving.”

  Char heard Miss Jones going downstairs again, and then a triumphant voice proclaimed: “I know who has some biscuits! Plumtree. She brought them back from her holiday. I’ll go and ask her.”

  “Come on!”

  Evidently Tony and Miss Marsh felt an equal certainty that Miss Plumtree’s biscuits could be looked upon as community goods.

  There was a silence, before a voice from the next story cried urgently down the stairs: “I say, is my kettle boiling? I put it on the gas-ring ages ago, as I went upstairs. Will some one have a look?”

  “It boiled over some time ago,” Miss Delmege proclaimed very distinctly. “I took it off for you.”

  “Thanks very much. I’ll come.”

  There was a hasty descent, evidently in bedroom slippers, and then a long whispered colloquy of which Miss Vivian heard only her own name. Evidently Miss Delmege, at least, had not forgotten the proximity of her chief. Char several times heard her “H’sh!” her companions in a sibilant and penetrating whisper.

  “You can’t want to wash brushes at this hour!”

  “My dear, I simply must. Just let me have the basin half a minute; I’ve got the water all ready.”

  “This your kettle?”

  “Yes, dear, thank you.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Potter, have you actually got some ammonia in that water? I wish you’d let me do my brushes with yours.”

  “Of course, Miss Marsh. There’s plenty of room.”

  “Well, good-night, girls,” from Miss Delmege. “It may seem strange to you, me going to bed before ten o’clock, but it’s the life. One gets tired, somehow.”
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br />   “Good-nights” resounded, and one door banged after another.

  There was splashing in the bathroom for a little while, and then silence.

  Char realized with dismay that she had no hot water, and that the brass kettle on her washing-stand was empty. After reflection, she filled it from the jug, and decided that she must go to the bathroom where the gas-ring was.

  She would not have been averse to being seen by her mother just then. War-work under these conditions could not be mistaken for anything but the grim reality that it was.

  Lady Vivian, however, not being present, Char performed her domestic labours unobserved, and went shivering to her bed.

  She wondered if any one would call her in the morning. This, however, proved not to be necessary.

  The walls were thin and the stairs only carpeted with oilcloth, and before seven o’clock Char was startled out of sleep by a prolonged whirring sound overhead, which she only identified as that of an alarm-clock, when footsteps hastily crossed the floor above, and it ceased abruptly.

  “Who on earth wants to get up at this hour, when they none of them start work before half-past nine!” she reflected rather disgustedly.

  But she remembered that Mrs. Bullivant’s duties as Superintendent might include the supervision of Mrs. Smith’s arrival every morning and the preparation of breakfast, when a step stole past her door, and the reflection of a lighted candle was flung for a moment on the wall.

  Conversations in the bathroom were much briefer in the morning than at night. Evidently every one was too cold, or in too much of a hurry, to talk, although there were sounds of coming and going from half-past seven onwards.

  Char went to the bathroom herself at eight o’clock, selecting a moment when it appeared to be empty. She went behind the curtains that screened off the bath from the rest of the room, and found the water very cold.

  “Very bad management somewhere,” she reflected austerely, and wondered why it should be difficult to provide boiling water by eight o’clock in the morning.

  She felt chilled, and not at all rested.

  In the little sitting-room downstairs she found a rapidly cooling plate of bacon, uncovered, but solicitously placed on the floor close to the gas-fire, and some large, irregular slices of toast. Marmalade stood in a potted meat jar.

  It cannot be denied that Miss Vivian flung an agonized thought to the memory of the admirably furnished breakfast-tray provided for her each morning by the agency of the invaluable Preston at Plessing.

  Still very cold, and feeling utterly disinclined for the day’s work, Char donned her fur coat over her uniform and went out.

  She was not unconscious of the likelihood that her exit from the Hostel might be observed from the windows, and reflected that it would be incumbent on her for the present to take advantage of her new quarters by starting for the office at least an hour earlier than any one else.

  But again she found here inconveniences which she had not taken into consideration. The fire in her office was not yet lit, and the charwoman who had charge of keeping the building in order greeted her with frank dismay.

  “Your room isn’t done yet, miss.”

  Miss Vivian, exasperated, and colder than ever, set her lips together in a line of endurance.

  “You can leave it for today, and in future I wish it to be ready for me by nine o’clock. Please light the fire at once.”

  The stage of lighting the fire, however, was further off than she realized, and she was obliged to sit huddled in her fur coat, opening letters with mottled, shaking hands that were turning rapidly purple, while the charwoman made an excruciating raking sound at the grate, put up an elaborate and exceedingly deliberate erection of coal, sticks, and newspaper, and finally applied to it a match which resulted in a little pale, cold flame which did not seem to Char productive of any warmth whatever.

  She sat at her table and wrote:

  “DEAREST BRUCEY,

  “Will you send me every woollen garment I have in the world, please? Preston will find them. The cold here is quite appalling, and, of course, one feels the absence of proper heating arrangements at the Hostel terribly. It is, however, naturally much more convenient for me to be able to give more time to the work, which is fearfully heavy after my absence, and will probably increase every day now. I am writing from the office, having been able to get in very early. It might not be a bad plan, later on, to put in a couple of hours’ work before breakfast, but please don’t let the suggestion dismay you! I shall move into rooms as soon as my secretary can find some, and probably send for Preston. She could be quite useful to me in several ways.

  “There is a mountain of papers on my table, all waiting to be dealt with, so I can’t go on writing; but I know how much you wanted to hear if the Hostel had proved at all possible. Don’t worry, dear old Brucey, as I really can manage perfectly well for the present, in spite of the bitter cold and poor Mrs. Bullivant’s hopeless bad management. She had not even arranged for my box to be taken upstairs; and as for hot water, decently served meals, or proper waiting, they are simply unknown quantities. I dare say I shall have to make one or two drastic changes. You won’t forget to ring me up if there is any change in father’s condition, of course. I could come out at once. This anxiety underlying all one’s work is heart-breaking, but I know that I was right to decide as I did, and stick to my post.

  “Yours as ever,

  “CH. VIVIAN.

  “P.S. — Do as you like about reading this letter to my mother.”

  It was fairly certain in what direction Miss Bruce’s “liking” would take her on the point, and it was not without satisfaction that Char felt the certainty of her voluntarily embraced hardships becoming known at Plessing.

  Her letter to Miss Bruce somehow restored to her that sense of her own adequacy which physical conditions of discomfort, against which she had felt unable to react, had almost destroyed.

  When Miss Jones came to work, a few minutes earlier than usual, she noted, with a regret that was not altogether impersonal, the cold, bluish aspect of her employer’s complexion, and wondered if she dared infringe on Miss Delmege’s cherished privilege of producing a foot-warmer.

  But she was not aware that her own excellent circulation, quite unmistakably displayed in her face and in an unusually white pair of capable hands, formed a distinct addition to the sum of calamities that had befallen Miss Vivian.

  XIII

  “Char, I’ve come to warn you,” portentously said Captain Trevellyan a week later, entering the Canteen one evening.

  “That’s very kind of you. Is it another air-raid?”

  “No; besides, you’re all quite blasées about them now. Miss Jones, single-handed, could cope with—”

  “What did you want to warn me about?” interrupted Char, with more abruptness than apprehension in her voice.

  “A rescue-party. Miss Bruce is so much upset about you, because she thinks the Hostel is killing you, that she’s arranged a crusade to deliver you.”

  “Miss Bruce means very well, but surely she knows by this time that I don’t admit of interference with my work. What does she want to do?”

  “You’ll see in a minute. I can hear the rescue-party at the door now, I think. They were close behind me.”

  Char swung round abruptly, and was engulfed in a furry embrace on the instant.

  “My dear, pathetic martyr of a child! I’ve come to take you out of this at once. I hear you’ve been through the most unspeakable time at that Hostel!”

  Char disengaged herself from Mrs. Willoughby’s clasp, and endeavoured to silence the intolerable yapping sound that was going on apparently beneath her feet.

  “That’s Puffles — wicked little boy, be quiet. He would come with me, though I told him that all good little boys went to bye-bye at this hour; but he can’t bear me out of his sight, you know. Isn’t that too quaint? Quiet, Puff! He understands every single word that’s said to him, you know. ‘Oo clever, clever little man, are
n’t ‘oo? Everything except talk, ‘oo can.”

  “Come, come; he makes a pretty good shot at that, doesn’t he?” Trevellyan said dryly.

  “Johnnie, go away and find my precious Lance-Corporal for me. He’ll never forgive me if I don’t go and talk to him; but you’ve such a crowd here tonight I can’t see any one. Besides, I want to talk to this dear thing. Can’t we sit, Char? My dear, never stand when you can possibly sit. That’s been my rule all my life, and so I’ve kept my figure. Not that I’m as slim as you are; but, then, it simply wouldn’t be decent if I were, at my age. My Lewis always says that my figure is exactly right, but I dare say he’s biassed. Now, dear, what about you?”

  “We are particularly busy,” Char said pointedly, “and I haven’t a moment to call my own. I’ve only looked in here tonight just to see that everything’s in order. Then I must go back to the office.”

  “Quite unnecessary, I’m perfectly certain. And your looking in here is all nonsense, dear. They all know the work perfectly, and do it far better by themselves than when you’re just pottering about, getting in the way. If you put on an overall, and really turned into a perfect barmaid, as I do, it would be different, but just to stand and look on helps nobody, and tires you for nothing. You don’t mind my speaking like this? But I know your dearest mother’s girl couldn’t mind anything, from me!”

  Lesbia possessed herself of Char’s unresponsive fingers and squeezed them affectionately.

  “Now I want to have a real heart-to-heart chat,” she proclaimed, lightly but penetratingly.

  Char flung a glance round the hall.

  One of the men was strumming on the piano, and a group gathered round him was singing and humming, all together, “When Irish eyes are smiling.”

  The atmosphere was thick with tobacco-smoke, and the demands upon the tea-urns heavier even than usual. Char saw Mrs. Potter, untidier than ever, handing steaming cups across her buffet with incredible rapidity. The noise of clattered crockery was unceasing. But Mrs. Willoughby’s voice dominated all these sounds.