The wrong Mr. Right; a novel

Front matter

His Official Fiancee

The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre

The Boy with Wings

CHAPTER I “ wait until Mr* Right comes

Jf along ”

Oh, that pre-War phrase ! How it exasperated me when I was twenty-one!

“Wait” — yes, that was the fascinating occupation offered to all unmarried girls who, like me, did not actually have to work.

And for “Mr. Right !” — I imagine that when the name was first invented (no doubt on some extra wet evening in the Ark, when the Shems got tired of playing Animal Grab with the Hams and began telling fairy-tales instead) it summed up the ideal lover of All-Romance. But since then it has been taken too often in vain. It has been spoilt for lovers ; ruined by 11

THE WRONG MR. RIGHT match-makers and the matter-of-fact. It has come to mean — a bogy and a bore.

To me, Morwenna Beaugard, it came to mean Georgie Settle, the son of the Rector in the next village from the one in which I had been brought up. In that quiet country rectory my great-uncle and guardian arranged to put me — as a paying guest — when my aunt, with whom I’d lived, died.

She had left me two hundred a year of my own, which was a good deal — in those days! Quite enough for me to be very comfortable on, said my guardian, until I married.

I told him I didn’t mean to marry. I didn’t like men. At that time I had met very few; my brother Jim — who was of the type that can only be described as 4 ‘ The Sultan of the Hearthrug” and this Georgie Settle, who laid down the law as only a pre-War Oxford undergraduate could do. No; men were too domineering, and I didn’t want to marry any. Then out it had come, the time-honoured dictum.

“You wait until Mr. Right asks you!” And 12 my guardian had made some arch, old-gentlemanly joke about “ ‘Settle’ — ing down.”

It was the last straw !

It made up my mind for me. . . .

I won’t go into the long and exhausting arguments that preceded my coming up to earn my living in town. They sound too antediluvian now, in the days when every girl treats as a matter of course what was to me a revolution !

I took my business training at Mrs. Herrick- Henderson’s, in the City, determined to get it over, obtain a post, and be well in the way of my independent life in London before my brother came home on leave from the East.

Please realise, I was not naturally an “independent” young woman, nor severe, nor practical! It was a grief to me that I looked, at twenty-two, as if I were seventeen. But I could buckle to. I did. I got through my course in a way that Mrs. Herrick-Henderson said was “highly creditable” when she told me she considered me sufficiently advanced and proficient to send out to work as a clerk.

It was she who gave me the address at which I had to apply; I looked upon it as a passport io my own independence and self-respect, and — to my escape from “Mr. Right!”

The passport read:

Mr. ALLEN,

Mining and Engineering Encyclopaedia.

Frith Chambers,

Palace Road,

Westminster.

( Apply between 2 and 4.)

The Palace Road was a distinct change from Leadenhall Street and the business college.

After that pandemonium of the City, with its crowds of bare-headed Stock Exchange clerks, and its tangle of motor- ’buses, it felt as quiet as a country rectory itself, being an old-fashioned street standing back from the Embankment.

Frith Chambers was the first floor of an old-fashioned Georgian house, without any lift, but just a quaint wooden staircase, with wonderfully carved banisters, and shallow stairs, that 14

A “BEFORE-THE-WAR” BOGY must have been trodden by powdered ladies and gentlemen with cherry-coloured satin kneebreeches. At the top of the first flight there was a beautifully moulded door, with a little brass plate, “Mr. Allen/’ under the circular brass knocker.

Feeling that the whole of my future depended on Mr. Allen’s reception of me, I knocked.

“Come in!” called a masculine voice.

I found myself in a long, low, white-panelled room, corniced and beautifully moulded like the door, and only furnished with book-shelves, two arm-chairs, one revolving chair, and a big roll-top desk.

A man, seeming small and very dark against the bright light from the window, was sitting at the desk, his head bent over some slips of paper.

He crumpled one up, and tossed it into a roomy waste-paper basket as he looked up.

Then he threw the end of a cigar after the crumpled paper, and stood up and looked at me.

As the light fell upon him, I saw that he was 15 a little old gentleman, with hair as white as Great-uncle Joseph’s, my guardian’s.

There was rather less of a self-satisfied expression on his shrewd, wrinkled old face as he looked at me in a surprised sort of way. I rather liked his look, and the kindly voice in which he said :

“What can I do for you?”

“I have been sent to you,” I explained, putting on as experienced and business-like a voice as I possibly could, “by Mrs. Herrick-Henderson, of Leadenhall Street.”

Looking hard at me, he repeated, “Mrs. Herrick-Henderson?” as if he had never heard of such a person.

Rather abashed, I explained :

“I think you applied to her for some one to work for you?”

Light seemed to dawn on him.

“Oh — ah — another clerk!” Then he added, half as if he were talking to himself: “Ah, yes — but I didn’t mean — I am afraid this won’t do at all. No, no, not at all!”

I looked at him, horrified.

What was there about me that should make him make up his mind at the first glance like this ?

I had taken ages to dress and to do my hair ! I know I looked very neat — “a neat appearance’ ’ was always being rubbed into us at the business college, particularly into those girls who were fond of blossoming into imitation aigrettes in their hats, and pearl necklaces, and coral drop-earrings, and much-too-low necks.

There were none of those things about me., My very “good” black costume (mourning for Aunt Susan) fitted me perfectly. My black velvet hat was small, and “lady-like,” and becoming.

The only drawback was that all-black does make me look rather absurdly pink-and-white, like a baby; perhaps the old gentleman thought I was quite young — too young ?

Yes, that would seem to be it, from the question that he put next.

“I don’t suppose you have ever been out to business before, have you? No, quite so! I

thought not. You know, Miss ”

He paused here for my name, which I gave him.

“You know, Miss Beaugard,” he went on, “that business life is very different from what most of you young ladies imagine it to be. And though you may think that coming here would not be like going to an office in the City, I assure you that it is just as important that the young ladies who work for me should be business-like. It is of no use, for instance, my saying that the hours are from half-past nine to five, and then having you turn up at a quarter to ten. A quarter to ten is not good enough ! f ’

He spoke as if I had contradicted him, and said it was !

“Not good enough!” he repeated. “Nor is it good enough, 9 9 he went on, ‘ 4 to have my telephone number engaged at frequent intervals during the day, and other calls held up because the line is blocked by friends of one of my clerks, who ring her up at all hours of the day. I can’t have that kind of thing.”

“Of course not,” I murmured, wondering why he should find it necessary to impress this 18 upon me. “I shouldn’t allow any one to ring me up on the telephone in business hours — I shouldn’t dream of it!”

“ Another thing,” added the old gentleman, looking at me — ‘ ‘ afternoons off ! Now, the only afternoon off which I give them here is on Saturdays. No use coming to me at other times and saying you want to go to a matinee, or an afternoon concert, or out shopping with an aunt. I disapprove of ‘ aunts’ in business hours. Aunts, or whatever you choose to call them, are like matinees, for Saturdays only.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“So you see, Miss Beaugard,” he went on conclusively, “I am afraid this post would not be at all the kind of thing for a young lady like you.”

Why not? I gazed at him in startled despair. Why should he think I wanted a post where they didn’t require people to be business-like?

“I have a very good recommendation,” I faltered. “Won’t you at least look at it?” And 19

I handed him the testimonial which I had brought with me.

He took it, and glanced at it, while I felt my heart beating furiously.

This was my first application for a situation. I knew some girls applied half a dozen times before they were taken on; but I had a queer, agonised feeling that if I did not get this post I should get nothing! I should have to say good-bye to my chances of independence in London!

In spite of my * ‘own money,’ ’ I should be so discouraged that I should find myself giving way, inch by inch, to Great-uncle Joseph and to Jim — especially Jim — when he came home and found that I hadn’t been able to “pull off” ’the career which I had proudly mapped out for myself.

I found myself murmuring, almost aloud :

“The rectory — one of themselves — paying guest — delighted to have you — occupation — sewing for a bazaar — waiting for Mr. Right ”

Must I — must I go back to that?

“Oh, won’t you give me a trial?” I almost gasped, as the old gentleman folded up the testimonial and handed it to me again.

I clutched it wildly, as I repeated :

“Couldn’t you give me a trial for a week or so to see how I get on? I promise you that I will not be unbusiness-like. Mrs. Herrick-Henderson once said I was the most reliable pupil in the class. Please give me, at least, a chance ! ’ ’

And I felt as if my heart would stop beating until the old gentleman should take his searching glance off my agitated face and should answer my appeal. ... I felt so desperately sure that it was this or nothing! It was his job — or “Mr. Right.”

Chapter II About Stockings — And A Young Man

I DIDN’T really feel that my heart went on heating normally until after I had left Frith Chambers again, walked along the Embankment, and skipped on to the front seat of the motor- ’bus that was to take me half the Way back to my club.

But then my heart was hammering riotously, hot with anxiety but with delight! For Mr. Allen had at last, though not very enthusiastically, said that he would take me on for a week’s trial at the work, beginning on Monday.

Oh, how I should work, I decided ! How business-like I should be ! How I’d show Mr. Allen that matinees and extra telephone calls and shopping aunts and unpunctuality were things absolutely foreign to my nature. I should make him confess that of all the lady clerks he had 22

'ever had, I was the one with whom he had least fault to find.

I would scarcely even ever talk to the other girls, whoever they might be, I determined !

As a matter of fact, this last would not be very difficult if I were no more popular there than I was the last part of the time among the girls at Mrs. Herrick-Hender son’s.

You see, I put my foot into it badly there, once. Badly. ... I don’t want that ever to happen again.

It was about a little Scots girl nicknamed (of course!) 4 ‘Mac.”

She was the only one in my class who was really so hard-up that she scarcely knew how to pay her fees.

And one Saturday morning I and another girl found her in the dressing-room with her foot up on a chair and a fountain-pen in her hand, inking the heels which showed only too pinkly through the holes in her black Lisle-thread stockings.

When the other girl good-naturedly told her 23

THE WBONG MR. RIGHT that she “ought to be ashamed of herself for not spending an evening darning herself up a couple of pairs of stockings/ ’ she laughed, and explained to us how she did “spend the evening ! ’ ’

Such a terribly depressing little story it was of the married sister with whom she lived being ill, and the five-months old baby who took such ages to “get down,” for of course he was teething; about the washing-up, and her brotherin-law’s dinner.

“So don’t blame me,” she’d said, “if I have never a pair of whole stockings to my name ! ’ ’

She might treat it as a joke, but I thought it was terrible.

No stockings?

Now even in those days, nice stockings were my own pet vanity. I did think they were most frightfully important. Georgie Settle once told me he had fallen in love with me almost entirely because mine were the first silk ’tockies he’d seen worn in that part of the country. I had always had dozens of pairs, of all sorts and all colours.

And here was “Mac,” without an unholey pair to her name ! No time to mend the horrid holey ones she had ! ! Inking her feet ! ! ! Oh, I couldn’t bear it. . . .

I’d just cashed a cheque to pay my Club bill, and what was the use of having an income of my own if it couldn ’t buy me a luxury now and again? Giving presents was one of the nicest luxuries I knew.

No ; that’s not unselfishness, far from it. It’s self-indulgence, really. Some people take their pleasure in one way, some in another. Giving has always been a pure delight to me. Finding out what people will like, and then choosing it carefully and sending it off — oh, there’s no enjoyment like it to people who have the Givepassion!

I fell to it then. On my way home I turned into my favourite shop and chose a dozen pairs of specially nice stockings, black and grey — for “Mac” wears a grey tweed skirt — and I had them sent off to her address in Shepherd’s Bush, which I had looked up on the college register; and I spent almost the whole Sunday 25 buoyed up by thoughts of her putting on an immaculate pair for Sunday, and of how delighted she would be.

I don’t think I have ever had such a cruel shock as on the Monday morning, when I found that packet of stockings on my desk, and a Mac with a face as white as paper and her lips just a thin line across it, waiting to tell me what she thought of me for having had “the cheek’ ’ to send her parcels of ‘ 4 clothes ’ ’ !

Oh, it was a dreadful little scene. . . . And it was no use trying to explain that I’d never meant to hurt her. . . .

“Did you think I’d no pr-r-r-r-r-ride ? ” asked Mac, “because I’d no pr-r-r-rivate mins?”

I tried to babble something about being sure she would love giving things herself—

“That’s very different!”

“But why?” I asked. “People who give ought to be ready to accept! 1 should! I shouldn’t mind taking the things myself ”

“Probably not!” said the little Scotswoman contemptuously; and then she added what was 26 evidently the bitterest taunt she could think of : “You see, you are from the South !”

It was this that the other girls had got hold of when they sent me to Coventry, and made half-audible remarks before me in the dressing-room about “Miss Rothschild. ’ 9 A horrid time I had!

That should never happen at this new place. I should give up my whole time to establishing myself in the business career which Uncle Joseph said it was such nonsense for me to think of.

As I walked the other stretch of the way home through the park, where the trees were just touched with the first tints of autumn and where wine-coloured dahlias and Japanese anemones still blazed in the borders, I was in racing high spirits about the success I had just had. Really, I felt it was the pleasantest day of my life!

And when I got to the Club, something else pleasant awaited me.

A girl whom I had got to know there, called Mildred Perkins, and who has twice taken me 27 out to tea with her very nice cousins in Kensington, ran up to me, saying she had just been rung up by these same cousins, who wanted to know whether Miss Beaugard would help them by stepping into the breach at a dinner-party they were giving that very night?

“A girl has disappointed them at the eleventh hour, and it would be so sweet of you,” said Mildred Perkins. ‘ ‘ Should you mind very much?”

“I should love it,” I said. “I haven’t been to a dinner-party for a year; I haven ’t worn a proper evening-dress since I came to London. ’ ’ (For I had been going to evening classes half the week, and studying in my bedroom the other half, ever since attending the college.)

The frock I wore was black, as usual, but as I was no longer in mourning, I fastened a big pink velvet rose at my waist, and another at the loop of drapery at my knee. (Yes; it was a ‘ 4 draped ’ ’ year. ) The roses just matched my necklace; poor old Aunt Susan’s pink amethysts.

“Morwenna Beaugard, you look ripping,” 28 pronounced Mildred when she came into my room. “That black against your shoulders is like a fall of soot on a fall of snow, you pretty creature you ! ’ ’

I thought her so wonderful and Spanish ; she wore orange ; and glancing at our reflections together in the glass, I did not think I looked anything, beside her.

“Any man would !” she declared cheerfully. “Or almost any!” (She’d got a young man of her own in California.) “So I do hope the young man who was going to take in the girl who disappointed Cousin Laura will be sensible enough to appreciate his luck, and attractive enough to deserve it ! ”

Looking back at that party of a million years ago ... it was all delightful. Including the young man who took me in instead of that girl who hadn’t been able to come.

I think she missed something! For this Mr. Paul Lancaster who was introduced to me was quite as “attractive” as Mildred could have wished for me.

Perhaps you who read this might not have 29 found him so. Nothing is more extraordinary than the different eyes with which different human beings will look at the same person. To one he may seem a barber’s block; to another he will be all the Romeos, all the Dick Heldars, all the Imlays of Romance. . . .

This young man was the big, fair, quiet, steady sort; with rather a slab of a face. It looked as if it couldn’t smile — until it did. And then — ah, didn’t it ! It lighted up to show a row of even white teeth, a bright grey twinkle in the eyes, and a deep, deep dimple like a little boy’s in one cheek. It was the kind of smile that makes one wish it wouldn’t be perfectly idiotic to beg, “Oh, do please go on looking like that always ! ’ ’

This Mr. Paul Lancaster certainly did smile at me a good deal during dinner! Several times he seemed frightfully amused at me ; not a bit in a horrid, patronising way, like Great-uncle Joseph, nor in a way that made me want to box his ears, like Georgie Settle, who was the last person who took me in to dinner, at a boring party at that “quiet country rectory,” 30 where — thank goodness, and Mr. Allen, I shall never have to settle down again.

We — that is, Mr. Lancaster and I — talked about everything — tennis, which he plays, and the theatre, and dancing, and dogs, and books — and fancy, he hasn’t ever read any of Miss Austen ! I told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself.

“Ah, but you see, Miss Beaugard, I have some excuse. I haven’t had the time that hangs so heavily on your hands,” he said, looking down at my own hands with that ripping smile. “You see, I’m a hard-working engineer; not a young lady of leisure !”

“Oh, but I’m not a young lady of leisure,” I said proudly.

He laughed, and said, “What then?”

“I am a business-girl,” I announced, very dignifiedly.

He looked at me as if he thought I were making fun of him.

‘ ‘ Indeed ! ” he said, and laughed again. 1 1 And do you really honour some office by turning up 31

THE WRONG MR. RIGHT every morning regularly three-quarters of an hour late?”

“As it happens, I’m a most punctual person,” I told him seriously. “I don’t see why you should imagine I am ever even a minute late. You’re quite as bad as the funny old gentleman I interviewed to-day. He uttered awful warnings about how I mustn’t expect to spend half my time being rung up by my friends on the office telephone, or have my afternoons off: for going to matinees. Even when he engaged me, he didn’t really seem to want to have me there at all.”

“I am not surprised,” said Mr. Paul Lancaster dryly, but with twinkling eyes. 1 1 1 think that if I were head of an office I shouldn’t be too keen on having you working there ! ’ ’

“Why not?” I demanded quite angrily. But I couldn’t get him to say why not, or to do anything but smile, rather exasperatingly.

So I said stiffly, “I think you are rather rude. Also, that you haven’t much eye for character.” And then I turned and spent the rest of dinner 32

— this was at dessert — talking to my other neighbour.

But afterwards, in the drawing-room, Mr. Paul Lancaster came up to the piano, where they had made me sit down and sing them some of the old Somersetshire songs, and he turned over for me, and told me that he rather wondered I didn’t go in for singing instead of office life.

He actually said it would “seem more like me.”

“I don’t think so at all,” I persisted. “I intend to get on very well in office life.”

“Well, I hope you will, Miss Beaugard,” he said, quite nicely and gravely, though the smile which I liked so much didn’t seem very far away. “I hope you will be able to tell me all about it next time we meet. ’ ’

I wondered if there would be a next time. . . .

But I don’t think I bothered very much about whether there would or not.

Most of the next week I gave all my thoughts to the coming “job.”

Chapter III

ON that fateful Monday morning which saw me going to business for the first time in my life I climbed up those wide Georgian stairs, came to the door, and found that the brass plate which I had seen there before had been taken away.

Now, instead of the name “Mr. Allen/ 9 1 saw two names:

Mr. ALLEN.

Mr. PAUL LANCASTER.

Even then I only realised vaguely that I had seen or heard that name somewhere else quite recently. I hadn’t time to “place” it before obeying the “Come in” in answer to my knock. I entered the white-panelled room again, and found myself face to face with — not the white-haired old gentleman who had made all those 34 ridiculously unnecessary stipulations about the telephone and the afternoons oft — but with the tall figure and blonde face of the young engineer with whom I had got on so awfully well at the dinner party last week!

This was indeed a delightful surprise — to think that I should actually be coming to business every day, and meeting somebody with whom I should not have to be on dry-as-dust, formal, business terms, but on quite jolly social ones!

I gave a little gasp of amazement, and I felt myself turning quite pink, which was rather silly, and I wished I hadn’t; but you can’t help it if you have a very fair skin, and, besides, I was fearfully taken by surprise. Nobody could have helped being.

He was surprised, too, for I heard him say u Hallo!” in such a boyish voice as he jumped up and took the hand which I held out to him.

“I never thought you were here!” I said gaily. “ Isn’t it extraordinary, after the other night? Fancy! I shall be one of your clerks!

Are you going to be the head of affairs, instead of Mr. Allen? That will be jolly!”

But, before I got to the end of this sentence, I saw the most curious and unexpected change come over the face of the young man to whom I was speaking.

That nice smile faded quite away from out of his eyes and round his mouth. The little boy’s dimple disappeared. His face was once more a slab, and milch older looking. And his voice ! Oh! how “ grown up” and distant it had suddenly become as he said to me, ‘ ‘ No; I am seconding Mr. Allen. He has a great deal of the research part of the work to do at this moment : in consequence I am taking over this side of it.” Then, quite brusquely, “I will take you into the clerks ’ room where you have to work. 9 9

Through yet another door I heard the sound of a clear, girlish voice singing, in imitation of a Cockney music-hall serio, the words :

4 ‘Don’t send my boy to prison!

It’s the first crime he has done!”

and then all in one breath :

“Very well,” said the magistrate, “I’ll forgive him!

This ditty stopped abruptly as Mr. Lancaster opened the door and we went in.

The room was very much like his own office, but a little larger. There were three tables, with a girl at each. A tall, fair girl, a short, dark one, with mischievous eyes and a turnedup nose, who had, I guessed, been singing, and an older one with a sweet, rather sad face, and a good many grey threads in her hair.

“Miss Rickards,’ ’ said Mr. Lancaster, to the one with the grey hair, “this is the new clerk, who has been sent on from the City.”

“The new clerk!” As if he scarcely knew my name! As if he’d never seen me before! As if he hadn’t been quite, quite different and jolly, only a few evenings ago !

Oh, how changeable and unreliable men are ! It made me quite furious. That is, it might have made me furious. Only there’s no reason why I should mind, even if Mr. Paul Lancaster does choose to be one sort of person on Satur- 37 day night and quite another on Monday morning.

Then, apparently losing sight of my very existence, he disappeared back into his own room.

The little dark-eyed clerk was the one who spoke to me first.

‘ ‘ What a comfort to see a fresh face!” she began pleasantly. “We have got so sick of one another, seeing one another every day and all day from ten till five in this place. It is really quite as bad as being on a sea voyage with only three people on board. You cannot think how our features have begun to rankle in each other’s minds. I do my best to keep the other girls alive, but it is a deadening life, indexing — positively deadening! And you look 4 so young to die,’ as it says in the melodrama. What is your name?”

I told them.

“Beaugard! I’m glad it isn’t Robinson!” said the fair-haired girl unexpectedly.

And when I asked her why, she replied :

“ Because then, don’t you see, you would have spoiled our only joke calling ourselves ‘the 38 three RV — Miss Rickards, Miss Royds, and myself. Rodney, my name is. I hope you ’ll like being here with us.”

I felt, then, that I should.

Already I’d taken a fancy to the place — the rooms with their view over wharves, barges, and tall chimneys beyond the Thames — already I liked these people . . . except Mr. Lancaster.

He, the Chief, didn’t give anybody there a chance to like or dislike him. While in those rooms, Miss Royds declared, he never says a word except on business.

The business, by the way, was a long and exhaustive Report, drawn up by Mr. Allen on the various mines that had been inspected by him and Mr. Lancaster. It was to come out in the form of an Encyclopaedia on Mining Engineering, of which the indexing and the proof-reading and even some of the arrangement was to be done by our four selves.