Читать книгу His Official Fiancée - Berta Ruck - Страница 4

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The large, light room, with its handsome furniture, seemed to stretch for miles between the door and the big writing-desk, covered with green leather, at which Mr. Waters himself sat, frowning over a letter. The desk was generally bare but for the note of his day’s appointments, with the hours, on the turnover date-ticket.

“Two o’clock,” and a heavy “X” marked this coming interview, as I could not help seeing when I finished what seemed like a long and tiring walk over the thick crimson carpet, and stood meekly at his elbow.

He looked up, alert, clean-shaven, his fair hair brushed as sleek and shiny as the nap of his own silk hat, his mouth closed as tightly as his own cash-box; he was the very picture of a successful young City man, whose one and only interest is his business.

“Ah! That you, Miss Trant?” he said, in the quick, curt, business-like voice that Miss Robinson can imitate so perfectly.

He wheeled round in the chair to face me.

“Sit down, please.”

I was thankful to sit down. Although I don’t think my panic showed in my face, my knees were actually beginning to give under me. Mr. Waters pointed to a plump, green morocco-covered chair. Down I sat, on the very edge of it. I set my teeth to listen to what this office tyrant had to say.

(How extraordinary that he and Sydney Vandeleur should both be “men”!)

If he only wouldn’t keep me; if he’d only just tell me to go, and get it over....

But his first remark took me absolutely by surprise.

“Now, Miss Trant. If you don’t mind, I want to ask you a few questions. Don’t think them impertinent, for they are not so intended, and they are necessary to the matter in hand. And—please don’t misunderstand them.”

Here his alert face grew even more business-like. His keen grey eyes met my startled brown ones steadily for a moment. Then he added, in an emphatic, “underlined” sort of tone:

“There is nothing in these questions to which your father, or anyone belonging to you, could take any exception. You understand?”

“Understand”—No! I certainly didn’t. What could he mean me to understand? I hadn’t grasped it even when he repeated the question a trifle impatiently.

“You do understand that, Miss Trant?”

“Oh—er—yes—of course,” I murmured, in duty bound.

But I was so utterly dazed by this unlooked-for flight-off-at-a-tangent of the Governor’s that I heard myself answering as if in a dream the questions he put next.

“Twenty-one. You’re of age, then,” I heard him saying through the daze. “Both parents dead: m’m. No one else belonging to you?”

“One brother in South Africa,” my lips answered mechanically. And my inward wonder, “What on earth has that got to do with Mr. Waters?” was mingled with an added dull twinge of anxiety. For I haven’t heard from poor old rolling-stoney Jack for three months or more.

“No one belonging to you in London? M’m. And you’re dependent for your living upon what you earn here?”

(Yes! or else I shouldn’t have to sit here answering questions about things that are absolutely no business of yours! was what I thought rebelliously.) I said aloud, reluctantly, “Yes.”

“Where do you live, then—alone?”

“I share rooms with another girl in Battersea,” I had to tell him, still wondering resentfully what in the world might be the meaning of this catechism. Wasn’t it the prelude to dismissal, after all, then? Wasn’t he preparing to be hateful and sarcastic, and to tell me he felt my talents were being wasted at the Near Oriental (this is one of Mr. Dundonald’s pet clichés), and that he advised me to look out elsewhere for a better position at a higher salary—if I could get it? What would be the next question, then?

It was the last thing that I should have dreamed of his asking.

“Do you mind telling me, Miss Trant, whether you are engaged to be married?”

Engaged? I? What could he want to know that for?

That was less his business, even, than any of the other questions he’d put!

It seemed doubly odd, since I had been meditating on the possibility of “getting engaged” that very morning. Ever since twelve o’clock, the mental image of Sydney Vandeleur’s picturesque, dark face, with his small Vandyke beard and gentle, adoring brown eyes, had been very near me. There was always Sydney in the background, of course. Backgrounds don’t count, presumably. Even if they did, though, what concern was it of my business employer’s? I did wish I had enough self-assurance to announce frankly, “Well, I do mind telling you, as a matter of fact!” But ... twenty-five shillings a week don’t provide a girl with much self-assurance!

I could only let him have the literal answer in return for his direct (and unwarrantable) question.

“Oh, no; I’m not engaged.”

“Good!” said Still Waters briskly. (Why “good”?)

“Now, Miss Trant, I can tell you the reason—or part of the reason—I sent for you this afternoon. I must begin by impressing upon you very definitely that”—here he paused, and at each word of the announcement tapped solemnly on the big desk with his finger—“I don’t want to get married myself.”

“Of course not!” I almost gasped, wondering what in the world this very obvious truth (for one could not imagine Still Waters in connection with marriage or engagements) had got to do with me?

“At the same time, there are reasons why for a time, at least—say a year—it should appear that I was going to be married. I may tell you those reasons later on; that depends. At present I’ll merely tell you that it is important to me that I should be officially, that is nominally, engaged.”

I gazed at him. There was no more expression in his face than in the pearl pin in his expensive-looking grey tie. What could he mean?

“I wish it to appear to everybody—to my family, to my acquaintances, to the people in this office—that I am actually engaged,” he explained. “I wish to find someone who, to outward appearances, could take the place of my fiancée; could go about with me, stay at my home, and be introduced all round as the girl I meant to marry. She must understand from the very beginning that it was absolutely a matter of business; that the so-called ‘engagement’ would terminate at the end of the year, and that there could be no possible question of its ending in marriage. If I found this lady, I would make it worth her while; paying her at the rate of ten pounds a week for her services. You follow me, Miss Trant?”

I began to “follow,” but I could scarcely believe that he really intended to carry out this mysterious scheme. It was more like the plot of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera than any “business” I’d ever heard of in real life. Still more incredible was what came next.

“It seemed to me from the first that the most suitable person for the post would be—yourself.”

“Me?” I echoed, aghast. Oh, this was getting out of comic opera, and into the realms of nightmare! Was he really suggesting that I——

“Yes; you, Miss Trant. You are a lady in every essential, if I may say so, of looks and manner. You seem to possess the gift of making yourself generally liked. You’re distinctly intelligent, in spite of your work, which is——” here for one instant a gleam of what looked almost like humour seemed to flash from the Governor’s eyes. But it was gone again so swiftly that I couldn’t be sure whether it had ever been there. I must have been mistaken. He went on imperturbably: “I am a very fair judge of character, and I believe you to be trustworthy. As a mark of my confidence in you, I shall pay into your account the whole sum of five hundred pounds so soon as you let me know that you consent to enter into this arrangement.”

“Five hundred pounds?” I echoed stupidly.

“Yes; that is payment for the entire year at the rate of ten pounds weekly. I hope you will see your way to accepting it. Think it over to-night, please,” said Still Waters, in his curtest, most business-like tone, “and let me have your answer here—if you can, that is” (meaning “you must!”) “at eleven-fifteen to-morrow morning. I need hardly tell you that this must remain strictly between ourselves. I think that’s all.”

He glanced at the round-topped mahogany clock above the fireplace, then put his hand out to the row of electric-bell pushes on his desk. Our interview was over.

“Good afternoon, Miss Trant.”

“Good afternoon,” I murmured rather feebly, as I retraced my steps over that long, long stretch of carpet to the door.

I felt furious with myself for lacking the ordinary pluck to tell the Governor then and there:

“I shan’t need to-night to think the question over. My answer is ‘No!’ I can’t possibly undertake such an arrangement.”

For how can I? How can I accept such an extraordinary position? “Officially” engaged to the Governor—the office tyrant, the mummy, the fault-finding automaton! Fancy “going about” with him, letting everyone imagine that I was actually going to marry him! Fancy playing that Gilbertian part, with no rouge and no fun and no footlights to carry me through it, in a “piece” that went on all day and every day! And fancy—this was almost the most appalling thought of all—fancy having to face all the other girls in the office.

Oh, impossible; quite impossible! I can’t do it. I must summon up all my courage and tell him so to-morrow.

“Well?” whispered Miss Robinson, from the next typing-table. “What did the graven image say? Was he a brute? Is it the sack? Or is he giving you another chance?”

“I think he means to give me another chance,” I murmured. (Such a chance!) “I am——”

“Talking, ladies!” broke in the warning. “Miss Trant, it’s generally you, I notice!”

And Mr. Dundonald’s voice brought back the bugbear that has haunted me since twelve this morning—the terror of being penniless and out of work once more.

Oh, if I could only attain to some job, some other job, that would bring me in that princely salary of ten pounds a week! Imagine the blessed relief, the security of knowing that one had five hundred pounds in one glorious, solid lump at one’s back. But then, imagine accepting the Governor’s terms before one earned it! Oh, no!

The bogey “out of work” haunted me down into the Tube lift, along the Embankment, all the way back up our grey Battersea street, with the red-faced pavement-artist who always touches his cap to me, smiles and points to his lurid chalk-drawing of a wreck with the legend: “Like the Artist—On the Rocks!”

“I’m on the rocks myself, Blossom. This is probably the last penny I shall be able to give you!” I told him, with a desperate little laugh.

Then I turned in at the entrance to Marconi Mansions, and climbed up our stone stairs to the cheap but cosy little top-flat which has for six months meant “Home” to us two bachelor girls.

How long should I be able to afford to share it?