The Second Fiddle

THE SECOND FIDDLE




CHAPTER I


On the whole, Stella preferred the Cottage Dairy Company to the People's
Restaurant. It was a shade more expensive, but if you ate less and liked
it more, that was your own affair. You were waited on with more
arrogance and less speed, but you made up for that artistically by an
evasion of visible grossness.

Stella had never gone very much further than a ham sandwich in either
place. You knew where you were with a ham sandwich, and you could
disguise it with mustard.

On this occasion she took a cup of tea and made her meal an
amalgamation. She hoped to leave work early, and she would have no time
for tea. She was going to hear Chaliapine.

All London--all the London, that is, which thinks of itself as
London--was raving about Chaliapine; but Stella in general neither knew
nor cared for the ravings of London. They reached her as vaguely as the
sound of breaking surf reaches the denizens of the deeper seas.

It was her sister Eurydice who had brought Chaliapine home to her. She
had said quite plainly, with that intensity which distinguished both her
utterances and her actions, that if she didn't hear Chaliapine she would
die. He was like an ache in her bones.

Eurydice had never discovered that you cannot always do what you want or
have what you very ardently wish to have. She believed that
disappointment was a coincidence or a lack of fervency, and she set
herself before each obstacle to her will like the prophets of Baal
before their deaf god. She cut herself with knives till the blood ran.

Stella hovered anxiously by her side, stanching, whenever she was able,
the flowing of Eurydice's blood. On this occasion she had only to
provide seven shillings and to make, what cost her considerably more, a
request to Mr. Leslie Travers to let her off at five.

Mr. Leslie Travers had eyed her with the surprise of a man who runs a
perfect machine and feels it pause beneath his fingers. He could not
remember that Stella Waring had ever made such a request before.

Her hours were from nine to five daily, but automatically, with the
pressure of her work and the increase of her usefulness, they had
stretched to six or seven.

Mr. Leslie Travers had never intended to have a woman secretary, but
during the illness of a competent clerk he had been obliged to take a
stop-gap. Miss Waring had appeared on a busy morning with excellent
testimonials and a quiet manner. He told her a little shortly that he
did not want a woman in his office. Her fine, humorous eyebrows moved
upward, and her speculative gray eyes rested curiously upon his
irritable brown ones.

"But I am a worker," she said gently. "If I can do your work, it is my
own business whether I am a man or a woman. You shall not notice it."

Mr. Travers felt confused for a moment and as if he had been
impertinent. In the course of a strenuous and successful life he had
never felt impertinent; he believed it to be a quality found only in
underlings. He stared, cleared his throat, read her testimonials, and
temporarily engaged her. That was two years ago.

Miss Waring had kept her promise; she was a worker and not a woman. She
took pleasure in keeping her wits about her, and Mr. Travers used them
as if they were his own. Sometimes he thought they were.

She had many agreeable points besides her wits, but they were the only
point she gave to Mr. Travers to notice. She deliberately suppressed her
charm. She reduced his work by one half; he never had to say, "You ought
to have asked me this," or, "You needn't have brought me that." Her
initiative matched her judgment.

It did not occur to Mr. Travers to praise her for this most unusual
quality, but he paid her the finest tribute of an efficient worker: he
gave her more to do. He woke up to that fact when she tentatively asked
him if he could make it convenient for her to leave at five.

"Five," he said, "is your hour for leaving this office. Of course you
may go then. You ought always to do so."

A vague smile hovered about Stella's lips; she looked at him
consideringly for a moment, her eyes seemed to say, "It must be nice for
you, then, that I never do what I ought." Then she drew her secretarial
manner like a veil over her face.