Public-domain ebook
by Berta Ruck
Language: en459 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Romance·Novels·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #63865.
The opening · free to read
“Accounts for the way a lot of ’em seem to pick their sweethearts on the principle ‘_Any port in a storm!_’” said Miss Robinson, with her little sniff.
“Well! Seems to me there’s a good deal in the idea that a poor husband is better than none,” came philosophically from Miss Holt, whose back is always curved like a banana over her typing-table, and who “smarms” her dull brown hair down under a hair-net until her head looks like a chocolate. “After all, my dear, if you’re married, you’re married; and nobody can say you aren’t. But if you aren’t married, you aren’t. And nobody can say you are!”.
“How true,” said Miss Robinson dreamily. “Got that, Miss Trant?”
And she gave a sardonic glance towards me, to see if I was thoroughly taking this in. I was trying not to. The buzz of Cockney whispering which goes on, intermittently, all day long in our murky “typists’-room” was beginning to get on my nerves again almost as badly as it did in the first week that I worked at the Near Oriental Shipping Agency. I didn’t raise my eyes. Then, above the click and the buzz, came a shriller:
“Miss Trant, if you please?”
My fingers fell from the typewriter, and I looked up with a start into the sharp little South-London face of our smallest office-boy.
“Yes? What is it, Harold?”
“Miss Trant, Mr. Waters says he wishes to see you in his private room at two o’clock.”
“To see me?” I asked in a panic; hoping that it might not be true, that by some lucky chance my ears had deceived me. They hadn’t.
“Yes; at two o’clock sharp, miss.”
“Very well, Harold,” I heard myself say in a small, dismayed voice.
Then I heard the door of our room shut upon the office-boy’s exit.
I turned, to meet the shrewd, sympathetic brown eyes of Miss Robinson over her machine.
“Governor sent for you?”
I nodded dismally.
“Any idea what it’s about, Miss Trant?”
“Oh, it might be about anything this last week,” I sighed. “It might be about my forgetting to enclose those enclosures to the Western Syndicate. Or for leaving out the P.T.O. at the bottom of that Budapest letter. Or for spelling Belgium B-e-l-g-u-i-m. Or half a dozen other things. I knew Mr. Dundonald was going to complain of me. It’s been hanging over me for the last three days. Anyhow I shall know the worst to-day.”
“P’raps he’ll give you another chance, dear,” said little Miss Holt.
“That’s not very likely,” I said. “He’s such an abominably accurate machine himself that he’s ‘off’ anybody in this office who isn’t a machine too, girl or man.”
“D’you suppose the Governor even knows which of us is a girl and which is a man? because I don’t,” put in Miss Robinson. “I bet you he——”
“Talking in theyairr!” interrupted the grating Scotch accent of Mr. Dundonald, as he passed through to the Governor’s room, where, alas! I, Monica Trant, was soon to present myself.
A deathly silence, broken only by the clicking of the four typewriters, fell upon our department.
But I’m pretty sure that all the work I did from then on until lunch-time was of very little good.
That gloomy typists’ room, looking over the “well” of the great buildings in Leadenhall Street, and so dark that we worked always by electric lights, switched on one over each machine, faded away from me. I ceased to know I was breathing in that familiar smell of fog and mackintoshes and dust and stuffiness. I ceased to hear the muffled roar of the City outside, and the maddening “click! click-a-click-pprring!” of the typewriters within, as I shut myself into my own mind.
Dismally I reviewed my own situation.
Here was I, “alone in London,” all my poor little capital spent on the business-training which I had joyfully hoped was going to bring me in a nice “independent-feeling” income of at least two pounds a week. At the offices of William Waters and Son, of the Near Oriental Shipping Agency, a post I had obtained after weeks of weary searching for work, my salary was twenty-five shillings a week. Now, in all probability, I was going to lose even that. And then what was I to do? How was I to go on contributing my half of the rent of the Marconi Mansions flat; how was I to pay for even my cheap meals and my “these’ll-have-to-do” clothes? How was I to earn my living?
Obviously, I’m not cut out for a business-girl!
My three months in the office has plainly shown me that.
“You lack method, Miss Trant”—as Mr. Dundonald, the head of our department, has told me more than once. “You lack concentrrayshn. You are intelligent enough, for a young lady, but when I think I can rrely on you, what happens? I find ye out in some rideeclus mistake that the rrrawest student from Pitman’s wouldn’t make. And this after I’ve warrrned you times and again. What do you think is going to be the end of it?”
Evidently the sack.
And what else is there I can do?
Nothing!
I can’t draw fashion-plates or write articles for the magazines.
Go on the stage—no, I never could remember my cue, even in private theatricals. I love children—but people want diplomas and Montessori Systems with their nursery-governesses. For serving in a shop I don’t suppose I’m tall enough. That’s one of the inconsistencies of men—they quote poetry about a girl being “just as high as their hearts,” and then advertise for parlour-maids and mannequins who must stand well over five foot nine, which I don’t. Though, even if my nickname is “Tots,” thank goodness I’m not dumpy, like little Miss Holt, who thinks a poor husband is better than none....
What about the principal profession open to women—getting married?
Well, but I never see any men, now a days—you can’t call things-in-the-City men, exactly—whom I could get married to. Besides, there’s nobody, now that I’m an unbecomingly-dressed pauper, who would want to marry me.—Except, perhaps ... Sydney Vandeleur ...? Dear old Sydney is a friend left over from the days before the smash in our family when “_the world was more than kin when we had the ready tin_.” I’ve seen him several times since, and he was just the same as ever, so sympathetic and amusing; such a “pal,” and with something about him that made me quite certain he’d be ready to become something more, the minute I encouraged him.
“Encouraging” him wouldn’t be too unpleasant either, though I never was in love with Sydney. By this time I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a bit the falling-in-love type of girl. Major Montresor, of father’s regiment in the old days, told my brother Jack once that “little Monica had the makings of a first-class flirt; she belonged to the successful Order of the Cold Coquette.” After listening to the dodderings and drivels and despairs of girls who aren’t cold, I’m rather thankful that I am. At least I can be fond enough of people in a sensible sort of way. I could be of Sydney.
I suppose it will end in my getting him to marry me....
But not yet. I haven’t even got his address! He and his mother have gone on a tour to Japan, and they won’t be within reach for so much as a dinner for about a year. Whereas it’s to-day, this afternoon, that I’m to get the sack without knowing what else is to happen to me!
A pretty depressing outlook!
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