Читать книгу The Second Fiddle - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 8

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It was a very hot morning in July, a morning when work begins slowly, continues irritably, and is likely to incite human paroxysms of forgetfulness and temper. It took the form with Mr. Leslie Travers of his being more definite than usual. He was an extremely intelligent man, and most of his intelligence consisted in knowing where other people were wrong. The heat lent an almost unbearable edge to these inspirations; the office boy, the mayor's secretary, and two typists withdrew from his sanctum as if they had been in direct contact with a razor.

Stella wished, as she had often wished before, that the inner office in which she worked could not be invaded by the manner in which Mr. Travers conducted his interviews. She respected him as her chief, she even considered him with a kind of loyal awe augmented by her daily duty. She pleased him, she catered for him, she never in any circumstances let him down or confused him by a miscalculation or a mistake.

It is impossible to do this for any man for two years and, if he has treated you with fairness and respect, not at the end of that time, to regard him with a certain proprietary affection. This was how Stella regarded Mr. Travers. He was a clever man, and he never expected any one under him to work miracles or to give him trouble. He knew what you were worth, and sometimes he let you see it.

He was handsome in a thin, set, rather dry way, and when he put his finger-tips together and smiled a little ironic smile he had, and leaned forward with his shoulders hunched and his eyes unusually bright, as if they'd been polished like a boot-button, he had an air of intellectual strength which usually brought terror to an opponent. He always knew when his adversary was in the wrong. It sometimes seemed to Stella as if he never knew anything else.

He had reduced life to a kind of game in which you caught the other fellow out. She got very tired of hearing him say, "You see, Miss Waring, the weak point of this case is—" or, "I think we may just point out to him that he renders himself liable to—"

He was a master hand at an interview. To begin with, he always let the interviewer state his case completely. He never interrupted; he would sit there smiling a little with his steady, observant eyes fixed on the man before him, saying in a suave, mild voice, "Yes, yes; I quite see. Exactly. Your point is—" and Stella, listening, would feel her heart sink at the dangerous volubility of his opponent. She would have liked to spring from behind the screen where she was sorting the correspondence and say, "For Heaven's sake! keep that back! You're letting yourself in!" As soon as the usually verbose and chaotic applicant had drawn his final breath, Mr. Leslie Travers gave him back his case with the points eliminated, and the defenseless places laid out before him as invertebrate and unmanageable as a jellyfish. It was hardly necessary for Mr. Leslie Travers to say, with his dry little smile, "I think you see, my dear fellow, don't you, that it would really be advisable in your own interests not to go on any further with the matter? It will be no trouble to us at all if you decide to push it, but if you take my advice, you will simply go home and think no more about it." People usually went home, and if their case had been important to them, they probably thought about it to the end of their lives; but that didn't affect Mr. Travers. It was his business to safeguard the interests of the town hall, and the more cases you could drop, the better. Of course he never dropped a case that could be used against him; he held on to these until they couldn't. He had to perfection the legal mind. He never touched what wasn't a safe proposition. A peculiar idea seized Stella as she listened to him dismissing a worried rate-payer who had asked for lowered rates, claiming the decreased value of his property, "We shall act immediately," Mr. Travers said benevolently. "We receive proof that your property has decreased in value, but it doesn't do, you know, to come here and tell me the neighborhood isn't what it was. No neighborhood ever is. Good morning."

What, she asked herself, would Mr. Leslie Travers be without his impeccable tie, his black coat, and definitely creased gray trousers, the polish on his boots, the office background, and, above all, the law? Was he really very awe-inspiring. Wasn't he just a funny little man? It was curious how she felt this morning, as if she would have liked to see some one large and lawless face Mr. Travers and show him that his successes were tricks, his interviews mousetraps, his words delusive little pieces of very stale cheese. He was too careful of his dignity, too certain of his top-hat. You couldn't imagine him dirty and oily at the north pole, putting grit into half-frozen, starving men. You couldn't, that is to say, imagine him at a disadvantage, making the disadvantage play his game.

His games were always founded on advantages. He wasn't, in fact, at all like Julian Verny, nor was there any reason why he should be. But yesterday Stella had seen Julian Verny, and to-day she saw, and saw as if for the first time, Mr. Leslie Travers.

"Now, Miss Waring," Mr. Travers said, looking up from his desk, "the correspondence, please, if you are ready." He always spoke to her, unless he was in a hurry, as if he were speaking to a good, rather bright little girl who knew her place, but mustn't be tempted unduly to forget it. When he was in a hurry he sometimes said, "Look sharp."

Stella brought the correspondence, and they went through it together with their usual celerity and carefulness, and all the time she was thinking: "We've worked together every day for two years except Sundays, and he's afraid to look at me unless we're discussing a definite question, and he won't risk a joke, and he'd be shocked if I sneezed. He's just a very intelligent, cultivated, knowing clerk, and he'd be awfully upset if I told him he had a smut on his collar."

Mr. Leslie Travers put to one side the two or three letters he had reserved for himself to answer. Stella gathered hers together into an elastic band; but as she turned to leave him he said:

"Miss Waring, one moment. You came to me on the understanding that your work here was to be purely temporary. Circumstances have prolonged your stay with us until it seems to me that we may fairly consider you, unless you have other plans, a permanent member of our staff!"

"I hope so," said Stella, with a sudden flicker in her eyes, "unless you think women shouldn't be permanent."

Mr. Leslie Travers permitted himself a very slight smile.

"That disability in your case," he said, "we are prepared to overlook in view of your value as a worker. As my permanent secretary I should wish to raise your salary ten pounds yearly. I have put this before our committee, and they have seen their way to consent to it."

Stella's eyebrows went up. Ten pounds were worth so much to that muddled, penurious household standing behind her on the verge of utmost poverty! The man whose place she had taken had been paid three hundred a year; her rise brought up her salary to one third of this amount.

"It is a disability, Mr. Travers," she said gently, "being a woman. I see that it is going to cost me two hundred a year."

Mr. Travers looked at her very hard. He knew that she did her work twice as well as the man she had replaced. That is why she had replaced him. He thought of her market value as a worker, and he knew that he was doing a perfectly correct thing. A hundred a year was a fair wage for a woman secretary. He said:

"You see, Miss Waring, you have not got a family to support."

Stella flushed. She had a family to support, but she did not intend to admit it to Mr. Travers.. She said:

"I beg your pardon. I had not understood that wages were paid according to a worker's needs. I had thought the value of the work settled the rate of payment."

Mr. Travers was astonished. He had never dreamed that Miss Waring would argue with him. He had looked forward to telling her of this unexpected windfall; he had expected a flushed and docile gratitude. She was a little flushed, it is true, but she was neither docile nor grateful, and he did not quite see his way to continuing her line of argument. She had, however, put herself in the wrong, and he pointed this out to her.

"I am afraid I cannot see my way to offering you more than the increase I have suggested," he said; "but as you were apparently satisfied to accept a permanent post at my original offer, I may hope that an extra ten pounds will prove no obstacle to our continuing to work together."

"I do not suppose," said Stella, quietly, "that it will be any obstacle to you that I do not think it fair."

"Really, Miss Waring, really," said Mr. Travers, "I do not think you are quite yourself this morning. The heat, the disquieting news in the papers—Perhaps you had better go on with the correspondence. These questions are not personal ones, you know—they—"

Stella interrupted him.

"All questions that deal with human beings, Mr. Travers," she said, "are personal questions, and the heat does not affect them."

For one awful moment Mr. Travers thought that Miss Waring was laughing at him; there was that strange glint in her eyes that he had noticed before. She had extraordinarily pretty eyes, usually so gentle. It was most upsetting.

She disappeared with her correspondence before he could think of a suitable reply. Legally he had been perfectly justified, more than justified, because he was under no obligation to offer her ten pounds more.

This is what comes of generosity to women. If he hadn't offered her that ten pounds she wouldn't have laughed at him, if she really had laughed at him.

It was a most disquieting thought; it haunted him all day long, even more than the possibility of a European war. He couldn't help the European war if it did come off, but he wished very much that he had been able to prevent Miss Waring's enigmatic laughter.