The War-Workers

"Papers relating to that man Farmer's pension – those must go up today. That contract for the milk – send it up to the Commissariat Department, and I should like to know why they haven't sent me down the balance-sheets for the month. Nothing is ever properly checked, it seems to me, unless I do it myself, though Heaven only knows when I'm to find time for it. I've got to go through the accounts today, some time or other… What's this? One of the nurses from the Town Hospital wants to see me, and calmly writes to say so! I never heard such unofficial nonsense in my life, as though I had time to give personal interviews to every wretched little V.A.D. who chooses to ask for them! Miss Delmege!"

"Yes, Miss Vivian?"

"Take this letter and answer it in the third person. Make it quite clear that any application of that sort is entirely out of order. If she wants to speak to any one, she can go to Matron; and if it's necessary, Matron can write to me about it."

Miss Delmege took the letter, and mentally framed to herself the sentences in which she would later on make it clear to Gracie Jones that Miss Vivian's manner never really meant anything, and that her summary dismissal of any such appeal was only the necessary concomitant to official authority. It had become increasingly clear to Miss Delmege that Gracie was somehow, by the very reticence of her unspoken judgments, at the bottom of the extraordinary prejudice with which so many members of the staff now viewed the arbitrary ways of Miss Vivian.

The clear, rapid undertones continued:

"Boiler at the Hospital burst; they should have reported it sooner, but I'll send an order to the shop people. Another list for transfer! Dr. Prince transfers his men without rhyme or reason – all cases of myalgia and trench feet, too. I shall have to write and tell him to reconsider half of them, before I should dream of letting them leave.

"What's all that? – case for massage, case for Shepherd's Bush, five transfers for convalescent homes… Send me up the Transport Officer. Miss Delmege, what are my appointments for today?"

"The new Superintendent for the Hostel is coming for an interview at two o'clock, and Dr. Prince rang up to say that he would come in for a moment at three."

Char raised her eyebrows.

"If I happen to be engaged or busy, he will have to wait. Is that all?"

"Yes, Miss Vivian."

"Thank Heaven!" piously ejaculated Char, entirely pour la forme, since the interviews which cut into her day's work afforded her the only relief she obtained from its monotonous strain.

"Then I'll get through these letters at once. Send those to Mrs. Potter; and, Miss Delmege, you can take these – the rest are for the Clothing Department. Miss Jones, kindly deal with these files… Send for Miss Coll – Mrs. Baker-Bridges, to take down some letters at once."

Miss Delmege looked rather disturbed, and remained standing at Char's elbow without speaking.

Miss Vivian, as was customary with her when wishing to display absorption in her work, continued to turn over the papers on the table without raising her eyes.

At last she looked up and said sharply:

"What is it, Miss Delmege? You fidget me very much by standing there in that unmeaning way. Do you want anything?"

Miss Delmege cleared her throat nervously. Too well did she know the peculiar note of crisp asperity now sounding in her chief's voice.

"I'm afraid the stenographer isn't here today."

"And why on earth not?"

"She isn't well."

"I've had no application for sick leave."

"She only telephoned this morning to say that she didn't feel able to come today."

Char, with the calculated show of temper with which she greeted any departures from discipline, struck the table with her hand, and made the unfortunate Miss Delmege jump.

"I think you've all lost your heads completely while I've been away. Is this office under military discipline or is it not?"

The question being purely rhetorical, Miss Delmege attempted no reply to it, and merely drooped the more dejectedly over her sheaf of letters.

"You can tell Miss Collins that unless she can apply for sick leave in the proper manner, and with a medical certificate to say that she is unfit for duty, she may consider herself dismissed."

Miss Delmege, only too thankful to feel that the Director's wrath was not aimed at herself, hastened to the telephone to deliver the ultimatum. She returned scarlet, and with an air of outraged modesty that made Grace look at her in mild astonishment. Miss Jones's curiosity, however, only received satisfaction that afternoon, at the close of Dr. Prince's interview with Miss Vivian, when he casually remarked: "By the way, that pretty little red-haired typist of yours, the one who got married the other day, paid me a call yesterday."

"Then, perhaps, you can inform me why she thought proper to remain away from duty without leave today."

"Oh, you'll have her back tomorrow – for a time, anyway."

Grace saw Miss Delmege make a hurried plunge into a small stationery cupboard, where she appeared to be searching for something elaborately concealed.

"I can't have that sort of playing fast and loose with the work," Char said icily. "If Miss Collins – "

"Mrs. Baker-Bridges," the doctor corrected her cheerfully.

"If my stenographer can't attend to her work regularly, she is of very little use to me."

"She's probably going to be of more use to the nation, let me tell you, than all the rest of you put together," said Dr. Prince.

Miss Delmege's agony of mind reached its culmination, and she let drop an armful of heavy ledgers with a clatter which effectually covered any further indelicate precision of utterance of which the doctor might have been guilty.

By the time that Grace had extinguished her own laughter in the cupboard, and had assisted Miss Delmege to pick up her books, the Doctor had slammed the door behind him, with a disregard for Miss Vivian's presence which might perhaps be accounted for by the searching cross-examination to which she had just subjected his proposed Medical Board cases.

"A doctor's profession, I suppose," Miss Delmege said to Grace in tones of outraged delicacy as they left the office together, "destroys the finer feelings altogether. I'm not prudish, so far as I know, but really, after what passed in the office today – "

"I wish you'd tell me what Mrs. Baker-Bridges said to you over the telephone."

Miss Delmege coloured and tossed her head.

"Some people don't seem to mind what they say. I never did like her, but I certainly didn't think she had a coarse mind."

"And has she?"

"Well, I wouldn't say it to any one but you, dear, and I know you won't repeat any of it, but she was actually so pleased and proud at the mere idea that she said she couldn't keep it to herself, though she isn't even in the least certain."

The virtuous horror expressed in Miss Delmege's whole person at such deplorable outspokenness was so excessive that Grace dared not make any reply for fear of producing an anti-climax.

That evening, Grace's last at Questerham Hostel, her room-mate became disconsolate.

"I don't know what I shall do without you, Gracie, and this room will be simply awful. You've always been such a dear about my being so untidy and everything, and put up with all of it, and done such heaps of little things. I shall never forget how you washed up the cups and tea-things after our morning tea, dear, never."

"But I was only too pleased," protested Grace. "You've done a lot for me, if it comes to that. Look how often you've boiled your kettle for me, and had everything ready on nights when I came back late. I shall miss you very much, but don't forget that if ever you're in Wales you're coming to stay with us."

"I say, do you really mean that?"

"Of course I do."

"You are a brick, Gracie. The thing I like about you," said Miss Marsh instructively, "is that you don't put on any frills."