The War Workers Part 34

"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 s.p.a.ce 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."

"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 bra.s.s 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 un.o.bserved, 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.