The War Workers Part 36

"It's more than kind of you, but I'm afraid that poor Miss Bruce may be over-anxious--"

"Not another word, Char. Can't we send some one to put your things together at once?"

"Really, I'm most grateful, but I can't accept," said Char decisively.

"It's quite true that my secretary hasn't found rooms for me yet, but meanwhile the Hostel does perfectly well, and I'm glad of the opportunity for being so near my work. I couldn't dream of moving."

She began cordially to wish that she had not sought to relieve her feelings by those letters to Miss Bruce, from which the little secretary would appear to have quoted so freely, and to have derived so much food for anxiety.

"Dearest girl, listen to me!" Lesbia exclaimed, raising her voice more than ever above the increasing din and clatter all round them. "I've been talking the whole thing over with your mother, and she's more than willing that I should have you. You needn't trouble about that for a _moment_. Poor dear Joanna was simply too sweet about it for words. 'I know you'll be a mother to my girl for me,' she said."

Lesbia gazed at Char with the air of one who believes absolutely in the pathos she exploits, and Char was forced to the conclusion that she actually imagined herself to be quoting correctly. For her own part, she attached not the slightest value to Mrs. Willoughby's flights of fancy.

Nevertheless, she was vexed and uneasy. Why could not people leave her alone? It was all very well for Miss Bruce to appreciate the stress of circ.u.mstances under which Char pursued her work, but the voluble importunity of Mrs. Willoughby was as unwelcome as it was unescapable.

Char looked round her, in search of a possible channel into which to direct Lesbia's attention.

"Isn't that your Lance-Corporal?" she rather basely inquired.

"Where?" shrieked Lesbia. "You know, I'm quite, quite blind!"

This was a fiction frequently indulged in by Mrs. Willoughby, whose eye could safely be trusted to pierce the densest crowd when convenient to herself.

"_I_ see him, just come in. Now, I suppose he'll make a bee-line straight for my little corner. Dear thing, he always does! It's too wonderful to hear him describe all that goes on _out there_, you know.

He was out right at the very beginning, all through Mons and the Marne and Ypres and everything. They say the men don't like talking about it; but I've had, I suppose, more experience than any woman in London, what with one thing and another, and they always talk to me. The dear fellows in the hospital I visit simply yarn by the hour--they _love_ it--and it's too enthralling for words. They're so sweetly quaint. One dear fellow always talked about a place he called _Wipers_, and it was simply ages before I realized that he meant _Ypres_! Wasn't that too priceless?"

On this highly original anecdote Mrs. Willoughby hurried away, struggling into her blue-and-white overall as she went.

Char saw her reach the side of the Lance-Corporal and break into voluble greetings, punctuated by hysterical protests from the Pekinese, wedged firmly under her arm.

"Well?" said Trevellyan's voice behind her.

"Well! Nothing will induce me to go and stay there, with that wretched little beast making its hideous noise all day and all night."

They both laughed.

"Seriously, Johnnie, I wish you'd tell Brucey that she really has exceeded her privileges. I can't have plans of that sort made over my head, as she should have known. What on earth possessed her?"

"Your letter worried her. She thought that the Hostel sounded so uncomfortable."

"So it is. But, after all," said Char, torn between a desire to show John how very much she was enduring in a good cause, and at the same time how little she heeded such external conditions, "after all the work is what really matters. It's for the sake of the work I put up with what poor Brucey thinks are hardships."

"But are they really necessary?"

"What do you mean?" said Char, displeased. "It certainly isn't possible for a house built like the Hostel to be either as roomy or as convenient as Plessing is. A certain amount of discomfort is practically unavoidable."

"Dear me! that's very hard on all of you. Don't the others find it trying? They have to be there all the time, don't they?"

"What others?" was the freezing inquiry of the Director of the Midland Supply Depot.

Trevellyan looked at her in surprise, and replied quite simply: "The other workers, of course."

"Oh, I really don't know. I naturally never see anything of them, except at the office; but, of course--well, I suppose they're used to very much that sort of thing at home."

"Surely not. I was really thinking," Trevellyan remarked with some superfluity, "of Miss Jones."

"You and my mother appear to find some recondite quality in Miss Jones which I'm unable to discover!" exclaimed Char, laughing a little. "Of course she's a lady, but really, as far as work goes--which is, of course, all that matters just now--I've had a great many clerks who can be of far more use than she can. It was a mistake having her out to Plessing that time."

She spoke in a reflective tone that had a conclusive quality in it, but the tactless Trevellyan ignored the hint of finality and inquired matter-of-factly: "Why?"

"Because it may make the silly girl imagine that she's on a sort of superior foothold. You know how idiotic some of them are about--well, about me--as Director of the Supply Depot, I mean. They can't look upon me as a human being at all."

"But you don't seem to want them to, Char. If you can live in the same house with them all and yet never see them except at the office, it's no wonder they don't look upon you as a human being."

He spoke so quietly that it was only after a moment she realized the condemnation that lay behind his words.

It hurt her more than she would have supposed possible. Like most complex organisms, she had an unreasoned craving for the approval of the very simple, and she had always thought that Johnnie, easy-going and uncritical, would accept her judgment as necessarily wider and more subtle than his own.

"I see," she said, very low. "You accept me and my work only at my mother's valuation."

"Well, no, Char. It isn't only that."

John's voice held a certain regret, but no retractation.

"It isn't only that evening at Plessing--though you know very well that I didn't see that question of your leaving home as you did--but every time I see you, you say or do something that makes me understand what Dr. Prince meant that evening."

"Thank you," said Char, low and bitterly.

"Perhaps I haven't any business to say anything about it at all. Only,"

said Trevellyan, with his habitual extraordinarily ill-inspired candour, "you know how much I care about Cousin Joanna."

"So much that it blinds you to any point of view but hers, apparently.

Don't you really think that there was anything to be said for me, John?

I don't altogether enjoy giving up my whole life to this office work, you know, under conditions of great difficulty and discomfort, and with the additional pain of knowing how hopelessly misunderstood my motives are. What has my father said about my leaving Plessing?"

"I don't think Cousin Joanna has told him. You see, he's one of the people who would misunderstand your motives, too, isn't he? And it would upset him so much."

"It's only in theory. He doesn't really want me in the least. It's simply that he hasn't moved with the times, doesn't understand the necessity that has arisen for women's work."

"Yes, that's quite true," Trevellyan said, but there was no sound of concession in his voice.

"My mother has given in to that all the time. You know she has. I believe that if it had been possible she wouldn't have let him know there was a war at all. It's--it's like helping an ostrich to bury its head in the sand."

"Don't you see," Trevellyan said, with a curious effect of reluctance, as though aware that she would not see, after all, "that all that is because she cares so much?"

"I'm afraid I don't. To me, the larger issue must always come first.

It's England at stake, John, and our own petty little personal problems don't seem to count any longer."

"I suppose," he acquiesced, "that the difference between your point of view and hers is just that. She thinks that the personal problem still counts, you see."

"And you, of all people, can agree to that?"