The Making of a Soul Part 29

Therefore she was not surprised when Owen broke it to her, gently, that he was thinking of a change of secretary.

"You see, dear,"--he spoke very kindly, feeling indeed very pitiful towards the girl, whose fluctuating colour showed her mental disturbance--"this sort of work demands a special training. You are doing your best, I know, and I am very grateful to you, but you can see, can't you, that I am getting on badly?"

"Yes, Owen." She spoke very slowly, and for a moment Owen wondered whether it would be possible to continue the present arrangement. Then common sense and creative ardour combined to utter a decided negative, and feeling himself to be brutal he hurried on.

"Unfortunately I shan't be able to use my arm for some weeks. That stupid old doctor ought to pay my secretary's fees, oughtn't he, since he's responsible for my helplessness!"

He laughed; but Toni said nothing, and after waiting a second he continued:

"You've been most awfully good and patient, dear, and I'm afraid I've been horribly irritable over the job. But I don't think it's any good our going on. I'm wearing you out, and losing a lot of time into the bargain."

"You are going on with the book?"

"Of course, yes." His matter-of-fact a.s.sent caused poor Toni a pang.

"But I think I shall have to borrow Miss Loder from the office for a few weeks. She is used to the job, you know. She told me she had once taken down an eighty-thousand-word book, typed it, and seen it through the press, because the author was nearly blind. So she would really know all about the work."

"Yes." Toni wondered, dully, why the sunshine which poured over her held no warmth to-day.

"Well, I'll drop a line to Barry and ask him if he can spare her for a bit. There's a rather smart typist in one of the other rooms could take her place, and I might not want her for very long. As far as the book itself is concerned, I can't work fast enough to get it all done."

"Yes." Sitting there, repeating the word, parrot-wise, Toni looked very forlorn; and something in her att.i.tude struck Owen with a perhaps exaggerated feeling of remorse.

"Well, that's settled," he said cheerfully, "and after this you needn't lose your roses sitting indoors so much. I'll tell you what--let's have a day off, shall we?"

She nodded, hoping he would not see the tears in her eyes.

"Right. We'll have the car--Fletcher will have to drive--and go for a good long run into the country. We'll have lunch out and get back for dinner. You'll like that?"

"Very much." She rose. "I'll go and get ready, shall I?"

"Yes. We'll start at once. By Jove, I shall enjoy a holiday myself!"

Throughout the day Owen surrounded Toni with an atmosphere of kindness which he trusted might dispel the soreness he guessed she was experiencing; but somehow he failed in his object.

Although the day was superb, a still, golden August day, when the summer seemed to pause, arrested in its flight by the fulness of perfection to which it had brought the land, neither Owen nor Toni was sorry to return to Greenriver. As the car stopped in front of the door Toni cast a rather wistful look at the jasmine-covered old house she had learned to love; and for a moment she felt as though she saw herself as those other women had seen her--the ignorant, frivolous, common little person whom Owen had married out of pique.

Never in all her life had Toni felt so humble as on this evening, when she entered the house which was her home. What had she in common with the beautiful old hall, with the broad staircase leading to the s.p.a.cious gallery, lighted now by the Ten Little Ladies, whose light pierced the gloom like so many kindly little stars?

The pictures, the bowls of roses, all the inanimate things she had grown to look upon as friends--it seemed to her to-night that they looked coldly to her, resenting her presence as an interloper; and in one queer, horrible flash of insight Toni seemed to visualize the woman who should have been the _chatelaine_ of Greenriver--a tall, dignified, beautiful woman, with the bearing of a princess....

"What's the matter, dear?" Owen had seen her shiver. "Are you cold? Yet it's a warm night."

"No, thank you, I'm not cold." She spoke gently. "I--I think I'm a little tired."

She picked up a brown envelope from the table.

"Look, Owen, here's a telegram for you."

"So there is. Open it for me, will you, dear?"

She did so and handed him the flimsy paper. His eyes brightened as he read.

"Good old Barry! He's wasted no time--Miss Loder will come down to-morrow by the ten o'clock train. I must send the car."

He went out and spoke to the chauffeur, returning to say: "Will you arrange for some lunch to be sent up every day, Toni? She can get off by the four train, I daresay, and that will give us a good long time for work."

"I will see to it," Toni said quietly.

"Thanks, dear. Let me see, there's half an hour before dinner. I might go and put everything in order as far as we've gone, so that we can start fair. I mustn't waste her time when she gets here."

"No. Of course not."

Although she tried to speak casually, a note in her voice struck Owen rather unpleasantly. He looked at her sharply in the lamplight; and something in her child-like att.i.tude, as she stood motionless, her hands hanging by her sides, gave him a sudden twinge of something like reproach.

He looked round quickly. They were alone, and acting on impulse Owen stooped, and putting his left hand under her chin, tilted her face upwards until their eyes met.

"Come, Toni." He had seen the tears in those wistful eyes of hers.

"What's the matter? You are not hurt about the work, are you? If you would rather not have the woman, say so, and we will go on as we have been doing. It will get easier in time."

"Oh no!" Toni spoke quickly, though her lips quivered. "Indeed I'm not hurt. I--I'm sorry I'm such a fool. I'm only a hindrance to you instead of a help."

Although he had no conception of the wound dealt to her by two thoughtless women, Owen realized that she was in earnest; that she understood, and regretted, her failure to give him the help he needed; and for perhaps the first time since his marriage Owen pitied his wife sincerely. After all, it was he, not she, who was to blame; and being still in the dark, Owen thanked G.o.d that at least she had no idea he had married her without giving her the love she had had a right to expect.

"Hush, Toni dear." He held her to him with his sound arm. "After all, I want you for my wife, not my typist. Miss Loder may be able to do the work I want done better than you, because she's used to it; but you're my wife, Toni, and what does anything else matter?"

He did not know whether his words brought her any comfort. She smiled, faintly, and returned the kiss he gave her before he let her go; but when she was alone in her quiet room Toni wept till she could weep no more.

She hated Miss Loder from the first.

Her self-possessed manner, her cool, grey eyes, above all the suggestion of competency which lurked in every line of her trim, well-tailored figure, all alike filled Toni with a sharp sense of resentment which she felt to be both childish and stupid.

Without perhaps intending it, Miss Loder conveyed a sense of superiority. Toni was made to feel that this newcomer knew just why she had been sent for--understood that it was in reality to Toni's incapacity that she owed her present position; and Toni felt, with a miserable intensity, that Miss Loder looked upon her as some brilliant sixth-form girl would survey a kindergarten child, with a kindly, half-amused, half-contemptuous tolerance.

Never had Toni so desperately longed to be clever as during that first week of Miss Loder's secretaryship; and never had she felt herself to be so ignorant, so childish, so futile a companion for a man like Owen.

At first Miss Loder had eaten her lunch in solitude. It was Toni's suggestion that she should join them in the dining-room, and Owen, supposing that Toni felt it a little discourteous to condemn the other woman to a lonely meal, agreed cordially to the plan.

Over her luncheon Miss Loder laid aside her rather scholastic, manner, and talked pleasantly in a quite refreshingly frivolous way; but try as she might Toni never felt at ease in her presence; and gradually she dropped out of the conversation until she sat for the greater part of the meal in silence.

Owen, absorbed in his book, did not notice her taciturnity, and though he responded politely to Miss Loder's chatter, it was evident he was not captivated by her undoubted social gifts to the extent of forgetting the purpose of her presence.

As for Miss Loder, Toni had guessed her att.i.tude towards Mr. Rose's wife correctly enough. To the clever, highly-trained mind of the Girton girl Toni's whole personality was so appallingly feeble.

"The brains of a hen, and the soul, probably, of a chorus-girl." So Miss Loder, quite unjustly, summed up Toni. "Married the man to get out of a life of drudgery, I expect, and is as much of a companion to her husband as a pretty little Persian cat would be. Why _will_ these nice men marry such nonent.i.ties, I wonder? She is bound to be a drag on him all her days."

For all her shrewdness Miss Loder never dreamed that her estimation of Toni was clearly evident to the person concerned. In her fatally orderly mind Toni was cla.s.sified as a "type"--the type of the pretty, useless, childish wife; and Miss Loder never looked for any variation of the type when once she had labelled the specimen.

That his now secretary did her work admirably Owen realized with intense grat.i.tude. For all her modern self-a.s.sertiveness Miss Loder was clever enough to realize that in Owen she had met her intellectual master; and being at heart a veritable woman she never attempted to challenge the supremacy of the masculine mind.