VII
"Mother, are you coming to the Canteen again tomorrow? You remember what a rush it was last Monday, and it'll be just as bad again."
"No, Char, I am not," was the unvarnished reply of Lady Vivian.
Char compressed her lips and sighed. She would have been almost as much disappointed as surprised if her mother had suddenly expressed an intention of appearing regularly at the Canteen, but she knew that Miss Bruce was looking at her with an admiring and compassionate gaze.
Sir Piers, who substituted chess for billiards on Sunday evenings because he thought it due to the servants to show that the Lord's Day was respected at Plessing, looked up uneasily.
"You're not going out again tomorrow, eh, my dear? I missed our game sadly the other night."
"No, it's all right; I'm not going again."
Joanna never raised her voice very much, but Sir Piers always heard what she said. It made Char wonder sometimes, half irritably and half ashamedly, whether he could not have heard other people, had he wanted to. The overstrain from which she herself was quite unconsciously suffering made her nervously impatient of the old man's increasing slowness of perception.
"And where has Char been all this afternoon? I never see you about the house now," Sir Piers said, half maunderingly, half with a sort of bewilderment that was daily increasing in his view of small outward events.
"I've been at my work," said Char, raising her voice, partly as a vent to her own feelings. "I go into the office on Sunday afternoons always, and a very good thing I do, too. They were making a fearful muddle of some telegrams yesterday."
"Telegrams? You can't send telegrams on a Sunday, child; they aren't delivered. I don't like you to go to this place on Sundays, either. Joanna, my dear, we mustn't allow her to do that."
Char cast up her eyes in a sort of desperation, and went into the further half of the drawing-room, where Miss Bruce sat, just hearing her mother say gently: "Look, Piers, I shall take your castle."
"Brucey," said Char, "I think they'll drive me mad. I know my work is nothing, really – such a tiny, infinitesimal part of a great whole – but if I could only get a little sympathy. It does seem so extraordinary, when one has been working all day, giving one's whole self to it all, and then to come back to this sort of atmosphere!"
Miss Bruce was perhaps the only person with whom Char was absolutely unreserved. In younger days Miss Bruce had been her adoring governess, and the old relations still existed between them. Char knew that Miss Bruce had always thought Lady Vivian's management of her only child terribly injudicious, and that in the prolonged antagonism between herself and her mother Miss Bruce's silent loyalty had always ranged itself on Char's side.
"It's very hard on you, my dear," she sighed. "But I have been afraid lately – have you noticed, I wonder?"
"What?"
"Sir Piers seems to me to be failing; he is so much deafer, so much more dependent on Lady Vivian."
"He's always that," said Char. "I think it's only the beginning of the winter, Brucey. He always feels the cold weather."
But a very little while later Miss Bruce's view received unexpected corroboration.
Three Sundays later, when the weather had grown colder than ever, and Char was, as usual, spending the afternoon and evening at the Depôt, Mrs. Willoughby paid a call at Plessing.
She was followed into the room, with almost equal unwillingness, by her husband and a small, immensely stout Pekinese dog, with bulging eyes and a quick, incessant bark that only Mrs. Willoughby's voice could dominate.
"Darling Joanna!" she shrieked. "Puffles, wicked, wicked boy, be quiet! Isn't this an invasion? But my Lewis did so want – I shall smack 'oo if 'oo isn't quiet directly. Do you mind this little brown boy, who goes everywhere with his mammy? I knew you'd love him if you saw him – but such a noise! Lewis, tell this naughty Puff his mother can't hear herself speak."
"Down, sir!" said Lewis, in tones which might have quelled a mastiff with hydrophobia.
Puff waddled for refuge to his mistress, who immediately gathered him on to her lap as she sank on to the sofa.
"Did 'oo daddy speak in a big rough voice, and frighten the poor little manikin?" she inquired solicitously. "Isn't he rather twee, Joanna?"
"I've not seen it before," said Joanna, in tones more civil than enthusiastic.
"It!" screamed Lesbia. "She calls 'oo it, my Puffles! as though he wasn't the sweetest little brown boy in the whole world. It! You've hurt his little feelings too dreadfully, my dear – look at him sulking!"
Puff had composed himself into a sort of dribbling torpor.
"That dog doesn't get enough exercise," said Major Willoughby suddenly, fixing his eyes upon his hostess.
"Surely it – he – is too small to require a great deal," said Lady Vivian languidly. Lap-dogs bored her very much indeed, and she turned away her eyes after taking one rather disgusted look at the recumbent Puff through her eyeglasses.
"Train up a dog in the way it should go. Now, this little fellah – you'd hardly believe it, Lady Vivian, if I were to tell you the difference in him after he's had a good run over the Common."
"Lewis!" cried Lesbia, opening her eyes to an incredible extent, as was her wont whenever she wished to emphasize her words. "I can't have you boring people about Puff. Lewis is a perfect slave to Puffles, and tries to hide it by calling him 'the dog' and talking about his training."
Lewis looked self-conscious, and immediately said: "Not at all; not at all. But the dog is an intelligent little brute. Now, I'll tell you what happened the other day."
Major Willoughby gave various instances of Puff's discrimination, and Lesbia kissed the top of Puff's somnolent head and exclaimed shrilly at intervals that "it was too, too bad to pay the little treasure so many compliments; it would turn his little fluffy head, it would."
Lady Vivian reflected that she might certainly absolve herself from the charge of contributing to this catastrophe. The language of compliment had seldom been further from her lips; but in any case her visitors left her little of the trouble of sustaining conversation.
It was evident that Puff was a recent acquisition in the Willoughby ménage.
"Where's your dear girl?" Lesbia presently inquired fondly of her hostess.
"In Questerham, at the Depôt."
"Now, Joanna, I'm going to be perfectly candid. You won't mind, I know – after all, you and I were girls together. What Char needs, my dear, is flogging."
Lady Vivian was conscious of distinct relief at the thought that her secretary did not happen to be within earshot of this startling expression of opinion.
"You are certainly being perfectly candid, Lesbia," she said dryly. "What has poor Char been doing to require flogging, may I ask?"
"You ask me that, Joanna! Lewis, hark at her!"
Lewis, thus appealed to, looked very uncomfortable, and said in a non-committal manner: "H'm, yes, yes. Hi! Puff! – good dog, sir!" thus rousing the Pekinese to a fresh outburst of ear-piercing barks.
When this had at length been quelled by the blandishments of Lesbia and the words of command repeatedly given in a martial tone by her husband, Lady Vivian repeated her inquiry, and Mrs. Willoughby replied forcibly: "My dear, nothing but flogging would ever bring her to her senses. The way she's treating you and poor dear Sir Piers! He's looking iller and older every day, and tells me himself that he never sees her now; it's too piteous to hear him, dear old thing. It would wring tears from a stone – wouldn't it, Lewis?"
"Down, sir, down, I say!" was the reply of Major Willoughby, addressed to the investigating Puff.
"Oh, naughty boy, leave the screen alone. Now, come here to mother, then. What was I telling you, Joanna? Oh, about that girl of yours. War-work is all very well, my dear, but to my mind home-ties are absolutely sacred, and more than ever before in such a time as this, when we may all be swept away by some ghastly air-raid in a night. It's simply a time when homes should cling together. I always tell my Lewis it's a time when we should cling more than ever before – don't I, Lewis?"
Lewis looked at Puff with a compelling eye, but Puff was again quiescent, and gave him no opening.
Lady Vivian said, very briskly indeed: "Char is not at all a clinging person, Lesbia, and neither am I. We can each stand very comfortably on our own feet, and I'm proud of the work she's doing in Questerham. Now, do let me give you some tea."
"Joanna, I know perfectly well you're snubbing me and telling me to mind my own business, but Lewis can tell you that I'm perfectly impervious. I always say exactly what I want to say, and if you won't listen to me, I shall talk to your good man. I can hear him coming."
The entrance of Sir Piers Vivian was the signal for a frantic uproar from Puff, who hurled a shrill defiance at him from the hearth-rug, which he so exactly matched in colour as to be indistinguishable from it.
"Bless me, Joanna, what's all this?" inquired the astonished Sir Piers, looking all round him in search of the monster from which so much noise could proceed.
He failed to perceive it, and stumbled heavily over the hearth-rug.
There was a howl from Puff; Lesbia cried, "Oh, my little manikin, is 'oo deaded?" Major Willoughby exclaimed in agonized tones to his host, "By Jove! the dog got in your way, sir, I'm afraid;" and to Puff, "Get out of the light, sir; what are you doing there?" and Lady Vivian gave a sudden irrepressible peal of laughter.
So that Lesbia, taking her departure half an hour later, remarked conclusively to her Lewis that the strain of this dreadful war was making poor dear Joanna Vivian positively hysterical.
She repeated the same alarming statement for Char's benefit next time she saw her at the Canteen. "I shouldn't say it, my dear child, but that your darling mother and I were girls together, and it's simply breaking my heart to see how broken up your father is, and no one to take any of the strain of it off her."
Mrs. Willoughby spoke in her usual penetrating accents, and without any regard for the fact that at least three members of Miss Vivian's staff were well within earshot.
"No one can be keener than I am about doing one's bit for this ghastly war, but I do think, dear, that your place just now is at home – at least part of each day. You won't mind an old friend's speaking quite, quite plainly, I know."
Char minded so much that she was white with annoyance.
"I can't discuss it here," she said, in a voice even lower than usual, in rebukeful contrast to Lesbia's screeching tones. "I should be only too thankful if I could get my place satisfactorily filled here, but at present it's perfectly impossible for me to leave even for an hour or two. I very often don't get time even for lunch nowadays."
"Simply because you enjoy making a martyr of yourself!" said Mrs. Willoughby spitefully.
Char, dropping her eyelids in a manner that gave her a look of incredible insolence, moved away without replying.
For the next week she worked harder than ever, multiplying letters and incessant interviews, and depriving herself daily of an extra hour's sleep in the morning by starting for the Depôt earlier than usual, so as to cope with the press of business. It was her justification to herself for Mrs. Willoughby's crude accusations and the unspoken reproach in Sir Piers's feeble bewilderment at her activities.
Miss Plumtree fell ill with influenza, and Char took over her work, and arranged with infinite trouble to herself that Miss Plumtree should go to a small convalescent home in the country, because the doctor said she needed change of air. She was to incur no expense, Char told her, very kindly, and even remembered to order a cab for her at the country station. Miss Plumtree, owning that she could never have afforded a journey to her home in Devonshire, cried tears of mingled weakness and gratitude, and told the Hostel all that Miss Vivian had done.
Everybody said it was exactly like Miss Vivian, and that she really was too wonderful.
Then the demon of influenza began its yearly depredations. One member of the staff after another went down with it, was obliged to plead illness and go to bed at the Hostel, and inevitably pass on the complaint to her room-mate.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Potter won't be coming today," Miss Delmege announced deprecatingly to her chief, who struck the table with her hand and exclaimed despairingly:
"Of course! just because there's more to be done than ever! Influenza, I suppose?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"That's five of them down with it now – or is it six? I don't know what to do."
"It does seem strange," was the helpless rejoinder of Miss Vivian's secretary.
Char thought the adjective inadequate to a degree. She abated not one jot of all that she had undertaken, and accomplished the work of six people.
Miss Delmege several times ventured to exclaim, with a sort of respectful despair, that Miss Vivian would kill herself, and Char knew that the rest of the staff was saying much the same thing behind her back. At Plessing Miss Bruce remonstrated admiringly, and exclaimed every day how tired Char was looking, throwing at the same time a rather resentful glance upon Lady Vivian.
But Joanna remained quite unperceiving of the dark lines deepening daily beneath her daughter's heavy eyes.
She was entirely absorbed in Sir Piers, becoming daily more dependent upon her.
The day came, when the influenza epidemic was at its height in Questerham, when Miss Bruce exclaimed in tones of scarcely suppressed indignation as Char came downstairs after the usual hasty breakfast which she had in her own room: "My dear, you're not fit to go. Really you're not; you ought to be in bed this moment. Do, do let me telephone and say you can't come today. Indeed, it isn't right. You look as though you hadn't slept all night."
"I haven't, much," said Char hoarsely. "I have a cold, that's all."
"Miss Vivian was coughing half the night," thrust in her maid, hovering in the hall laden with wraps.
"You mustn't go!" cried Miss Bruce distractedly.
"You really aren't fit, Miss."
Lady Vivian appeared at the head of the stairs.
"What's all this?"
"Oh, Lady Vivian," cried the secretary, "do look at her! She ought to be in bed."
Char said: "Nonsense!" impatiently, but she gave her mother an opportunity for seeing that her face was white and drawn, with heavily ringed eyes and feverish lips.
"You've got influenza, Char."
"I dare say," said Char in tones of indifference. "It would be very odd if I'd escaped, since half the office is down with it. But I can't afford to give in."
"It would surely be truer economy to take a day off now than to risk a real breakdown later on," was the time-worn argument urged by Miss Bruce.
Char smiled with pale decision.
"Let me pass, Brucey. I really mean it."
"Lady Vivian!" wailed the secretary.
Joanna shrugged her shoulders. She, too, looked weary.
"Be reasonable, Char."
"It's of no use, mother. I shouldn't dream of giving in while there's work to be done."
Miss Bruce gave a sort of groan of mingled admiration and despair at this heroic statement. Char slipped her arms into the fur coat that her maid was holding out for her.
Lady Vivian stood at the top of the stairs looking at her with an air of detached consideration, and left Miss Bruce to make those hurried dispositions of foot-warmer, fur rug, and little bottles of sulphate and quinine which, the secretary resentfully felt, a more maternal woman would have taken upon herself.
But Lady Vivian's omissions were not destined to provide the only one, or even the most severe, of the shocks received by Miss Bruce's sensibilities that morning.
As Char extended her hand for the last of Miss Bruce's offerings, a small green bottle of highly pungent smelling salts, Lady Vivian's incisive tones came levelly from above.
"You'd better stay the night at Questerham, Char. It will be very cold driving back after dark."
"Oh no, mother. Besides, I don't know where I could go. I hate the hotel, and one can't inflict an influenza cold on other people."
"You can go to your Hostel. Surely there's a spare bed?"
The ghost of a smile flickered upon Lady Vivian's face, as though in mischievous anticipation of Char's refusal.
"It's quite out of the question. The Hostel is for my staff, and it would be very unsuitable for me, as Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, to go there too."
"Bless me! are they as exclusive as all that?" exclaimed Joanna flippantly. "Well, do as you like, but if you come back here, you're not to go near your father, with a cold like that."
Miss Bruce, almost before she knew it, found herself exchanging a glance of indignation with Char's maid, but she was conscious enough of her own dignity to look away again in a great hurry.
"You will certainly want to go straight to bed when you come in," she said to Char, pointedly enough. "We will have everything ready and a nice fire in your room."
"Thank you, Brucey."
Char bestowed her rare smile upon the little agitated secretary, and moved across the hall.
She felt very ill, with violent pains in her head and back, and shivered intermittently.
Leaning back in her heavy coat, under the fur rug, Char closed her eyes. She reflected on the dismay with which Miss. Delmege would greet her, and wondered rather grimly whether any further members of her staff would have succumbed to the prevailing illness. She knew that only a will of iron could surmount such physical ills as she was herself enduring, and dreaded the moment when she must rouse herself from her present torpid discomfort to the necessity of moving and speaking.
As she got out of the car, Char reeled and almost fell, in an intolerable spasm of giddiness, and her progress up the stairs was only made possible by the remnant of strength which allowed her to grasp the baluster and lean her full weight upon it as she dragged herself into her office.
She was, however, met with no wail of condolence from the genteel accents of Miss Delmege.
Grace Jones, composedly solid and healthy-looking, said placidly: "Good-morning. I'm sorry to say that Miss Delmege is in bed with influenza."
"In bed!"
"She had a very restless night and has a temperature this morning."
"She was all right yesterday."
"She had a sore throat, you know," remarked Grace, "but she didn't at all want to give in, and is very much distressed."
Char raised her heavy eyes.
"You all seem to me to collapse like a pack of cards, one after another. I think my bed would prove a bed of thorns while there's so much work to do, and so few people to do it. In fact, I can't imagine wanting to go there."
She made an infinitesimal pause, shaken by one of those violent, involuntary, shivering fits. Miss Jones gazed at her chief.
"I think I can manage Miss Delmege's work," she observed gently.
"Oh, I shall have to go through most of it myself, of course," was the ungrateful retort of the suffering Miss Vivian.
The day appeared to her interminable. The air was damp and raw; and although Miss Jones piled coal upon the fire, it refused to blaze up, and only smouldered in a sullen heap, with a small curling column of yellow smoke at the top. A traction-engine ground and screamed and pounded its way up and down under the window, and each time it passed directly in front of the house the floor and walls of Char's room shook slightly, with a vibration that made her feel sick and giddy.
There were no interviews, but letters and telephone messages poured in incessantly, and at about twelve o'clock a telegram marked "Priority" was brought her. With a sinking sense of utter dismay, Char tore it open.
"A rest-station for a troop-train at five o'clock this afternoon. Eight hundred. Miss Jones, please let the Commissariat Department know at once. The staff should be at the station by three. I'll make out the list at once, and you can take it round the office."
By four o'clock a fine cold rain was falling, and Char's voice had nearly gone.
As she hurried down to her car, which was to take her to the station, she heard an incautiously raised voice: "She does look so ill! Of course it's flu, and I should think this rest-station will just about finish her off."
"Not she! I do believe she'd stick it out if she were dying. No lunch today, either, only a cup of Bovril, which I simply had to force her to take."
Char recognized the voice of Miss Henderson, who had received her order for lunch in place of Miss Delmege, and had ventured to suggest the Bovril in tones of the utmost deference.
She smiled slightly.
The troop-train was late.
"Of course!" muttered Char, pacing up and down the sheltered platform with the fur collar of her motoring coat turned up, and her hands deep in its wide pockets.
In the waiting-rooms, given over to the workers for the time being, the staff was active.
Sandwiches were cut, and heavy trays and urns carried out in readiness, while orderlies from the hospitals put up light trestle tables at intervals along the platform.
Char paused, turned the handle of the waiting-room door, and stood for a moment on the threshold.
Every one was talking. Trays piled with cut and stacked sandwiches were ranged all round the room; tin mugs, again on trays, stood in groups of twelve; and the final spoonfuls of sugar were being scooped from a tin biscuit-box into the waiting bowl on each tray. Even the cake was already cut, sliced up on innumerable plates.
They had been working hard, and had more work to come, yet they all looked gay and amused, and were talking and laughing as though they did not know the meaning of fatigue. And Char was feeling so ill that she could hardly stand.
Suddenly some one caught sight of her, there was a sort of murmur, "Miss Vivian!" and in one moment self-consciousness invaded the room. Those who were sitting down stood up, trying to look at ease; little Miss Anthony, who had been manipulating the bread-cutting machine with great success all the afternoon, at once cut her finger with it, and some one else suddenly dropped a mug with a reverberating clatter.
"Miss Cox!"
She sprang forward nervously.
"Yes, Miss Vivian?"
"How many sandwiches have you got ready?"
"Sixteen hundred, Miss Vivian. That'll be two for each man, and they're very large."
"Cut another hundred, for reserve."
"Yes, Miss Vivian."
They began to work again, this time speaking almost in whispers.
Char turned away.
Her personality, as usual, had had its effect.
Nearly twenty minutes later the station-master came up to her on the platform.
"She'll be in directly now, Miss Vivian. Just signalled."
Char wheeled smartly back to the waiting-room and gave the word of command.
Within five minutes the urns and trays were all in place on the tables, and each worker was at her appointed stand. Char had indicated beforehand, as she always did, the exact duties of each one.
"That's a smart bit of work," the station-master remarked admiringly.
"Ah, well, you see, I've been at the job some time now," said Miss Vivian, pleased. She never pretended to look upon her staff as anything but a collection of pawns, to be placed or disposed of by a master hand.
And it was part of that strength of personality that lay at the back of all her powers of organization, which had given the majority of her staff exactly the same impression as her own of their relative positions with regard to the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.