The War-Workers

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Bullivant kindly. "How dreadful for you! Miss Vivian's cousin and all, too! But, still, it was better than an absolute stranger, perhaps."

"I don't see how you're ever going to face him again, though – really I don't," giggled Tony.

"Poor man! so awful for him, too," minced Miss Delmege. "He must have been too uncomfortable for words."

"Not he," Miss Marsh told her with sudden defiance. "He brought poor Gracie home, and delighted to have the chance. Come on, Gracie, let's go to bed. You look done for."

She had grown very fond of her room-mate, in spite of all that she regretfully looked upon as an absence of propriety in her conduct; and when they were outside the sitting-room door, she said, without troubling to lower her voice: "Don't you mind their nonsense, dear. You couldn't help it, and that Delmege has only got the pip because she hadn't the chance of being brought home by Miss Vivian's cousin herself."

And when they got upstairs she "turned down" Gracie's bed for her, and put her kettle on to the gas-ring, and brought her an extra hot-water bottle.

"There! Good-night, dear, and don't you worry. I think it was splendid of you to tell the truth. Lots of girls would have fibbed, and said they'd fainted, or something highfaluting of that nature. I should myself."

"Thank you so much. You are nice to me," said Grace warmly. She did not look upon the affair herself as being more than a merely unfortunate incident, but she knew that Miss Marsh regarded it as an overwhelming scandal, and was proffering consolation accordingly.

Miss Marsh bent over the bed and tucked her in. "I'll turn out the gas, and you must go straight to sleep. It's frightfully late. And look here, Gracie, when we're alone together up here, I'd like you to call me Dora, if you will. It's my name, you know."

X

"That settles it," said Char. "If this sort of thing is going to happen, I must be there. With no definite organization, there might be a panic next time an air-raid takes place. According to Mrs. Willoughby, every one made a dash for the basement, as it was. Women are such fools when one leaves them to themselves!"

It was part of Char's policy always to disparage her own sex. It threw into greater relief the contrast which she knew to exist between herself and the majority of women-workers.

She was speaking to Miss Bruce, but, rather to her annoyance, Lady Vivian came into the room in time to overhear her.

"Surely the basement was the most sensible place to dash for?" she inquired, never able to resist an opportunity of attacking her offspring's arrogantly expressed opinions. "As for your being there, in my opinion, it's a very good thing you weren't. You'd only have drilled the poor things out of their senses, which would have taken up more valuable space in the basement."

"I should not have been in the basement," returned Char superbly.

"Then you might have been blown into bits, my dear, unless, as Director of the Midland Supply Depôt, all enemy aircraft has orders to respect your person?"

Joanna was jeering quite good-humouredly, as she generally did, and even Miss Bruce saw some exaggeration in the white, tense silence with which Char received these indifferent pleasantries.

"I hear the car," said the secretary, anxious to create a diversion.

"Miss Jones. Mother, I'm going through the work with her in here this morning. There's no fire in the morning-room."

"Very well, Char. You won't disturb me in the least."

"I thought you were going to sit with father."

"Not yet. Besides, I want to see Miss Jones."

Char sighed patiently. At Plessing only the faithful Miss Bruce gave her work that consideration to which she had become accustomed at the office. She was finding Plessing almost intolerable. There were no interviews, the telephone-bell was not allowed to ring, no one urged her not to neglect the substantial meals which were served for her with the greatest regularity, and Miss Jones daily assured her, with perfect placidity, that the whole work at the office was progressing with complete success without her.

The Director of the Midland Supply Depôt was completely shorn of her glory.

And what was she doing, Char indignantly asked herself, while the organization which she had practically made was thus abandoned to its own resources?

Nothing.

She paid a purely perfunctory visit, morning and evening, to Sir Piers, who hardly ever heard what she said to him, and had the rest of the day at her own disposal. She had no share in the work of nursing, which was divided between Lady Vivian and the professional nurse who had come from London, and when she rather indignantly demanded of Dr. Prince whether he did not think that he had better utilize her hospital experience at Plessing, the doctor merely replied dryly: "Hospital experience, as you call it, acquired on paper only, won't help you much here, or anybody else either. Nurse Williams can do all that's necessary, and Sir Piers doesn't want any one but Lady Vivian when he's awake."

"That's perfectly true," said Char sharply, "and that's why I can't help thinking it's rather waste of time for an able-bodied woman with a certain amount of brains to remain here unoccupied when there is so much to be done elsewhere."

"You can take your mother for a walk every day. She is wise enough to take an hour's exercise every afternoon, and Miss Bruce can't be much of a companion. Besides," maliciously added the doctor, who had suffered considerably under the Central Depôt's arbitrary interference with his Hospital work, "it'll do you a lot of good to keep quiet for six months or so. You've been suffering from overstrain, whether you know it or not, and your work will be all the better for some relaxation. I assure you, we haven't had a wrong enclosure sent us from the office since you left."

Dr. Prince walked off very triumphantly after this parting gibe.

"Serve her right!" he thought to himself. "Conceited monkey! Perhaps I shall get station transport for my cases properly put through now, without her interference. Hospital experience, indeed!"

"Of course," said Char to Miss Bruce, "a country doctor is naturally jealous of the R.A.M.C. men who've come to the fore. He's never forgiven me for getting his Hospital run on a proper military basis."

"I'm sure he really admires your splendid work, dear, as anybody must, but he's known you ever since you were tiny, so I suppose he allows himself a certain amount of freedom."

Char supposed so too, sombrely enough, and prepared herself to extract from Miss Jones an account of panic at the Canteen on the occasion of the air-raid which should justify her in returning to her post, even in the eyes of Dr. Prince.

Needless to say, Miss Jones was unsatisfactory.

"Oh no; there wasn't any sort of panic at all. Captain Trevellyan was there, and asked us to go to the basement, and we just went."

"John tells me that they were perfectly splendid, all of them, and that you set the first example," said Joanna cordially.

"The whole thing didn't last ten minutes," Grace told them. "We heard all the noise, but didn't see anything. The men did, of course. They saw the Zeppelin come down in the far distance. But by the time we came out there was nothing. It was all over."

"What a shame!" exclaimed Joanna.

"I must institute a proper drill for air-raid alarms," said Char, unsmiling. "That sort of haphazard sauve qui peut is most unofficial. I shall see about it directly I get back."

Joanna put up her lorgnon and looked at her daughter.

She did not speak, but something in her expression made Char exclaim very decisively: "I can't desert my post at a time like this. Everybody must see that unless I had any extremely definite call elsewhere, my place is at the Depôt. The work is suffering horribly from this piecemeal fashion of doing things."

She indicated Grace and her sheaf of bulging envelopes with a gesture of condemnation.

Lady Vivian glanced from her daughter's set face to Grace Jones, whose eyes were cast down. Then she left the room without speaking.

Char looked at her secretary, and said, very slowly and stiffly: "I shall probably be back at the office tomorrow or Monday, Miss Jones. You may tell the staff. Sir Piers's condition is not likely to alter at present, and, in any case, the work comes before any personal considerations at a time like this."

There was silence.

"Miss Jones!" said Char sharply.

Miss Jones lifted her great grey eyes and looked straight at the Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.

She was not at all an eloquent person, but perceptions much less acute than those of Char Vivian could have felt the intense, almost violent hostility with which the atmosphere vibrated.

Then Grace dropped her eyes and said gently and coldly, in a tone as remote as it was impersonal: "Yes, Miss Vivian."