Invincible Minnie/Book 2/Chapter 11
After this, Miss Eppendorfer was not able to make any further objection to Frankie’s study.
“I may as well tell you now,” said Frankie, “that I shan’t—I couldn’t stay with you after you’re married to that man.”
“But it won’t be for a long time,” Miss Eppendorfer protested.
A very long time indeed! Dimly, in her muddled head, she realised how much she wanted and needed Frankie, even foresaw the day when Mr. Kurt Hassler would go the way of other men to whom she had been so generous, and she would be quite alone. She tried to bribe her not to learn shorthand, she didn’t want her to be able to find another place; she said it would tire her, hurt her eyes, everything she could imagine.
Frances was firm.
“You’re not alone in the evenings now,” she said, “and I’ve got to think of my own future.”
“I’ll always look after you”
“I don’t want to be looked after, thank you. Please don’t be unreasonable!”
Miss Eppendorfer cried a little and consented.
Frances found it a curious experience. She wrote home to Minnie, after the first week:
“I’m a sort of grandmother here in the business school. All the rest are little girls with pigtails and hair ribbons, and little boys in short trousers. You can imagine how I feel, so old and sedate. And even in size! They’re all so stunted. I tower above my tiny desk. I’m taller even than any of the teachers, and quite a different colour, at least five degrees redder.
“I thought I knew something about typing, but I’ve had to start all over again, and learn the ‘touch system.’ And shorthand! Oh, Minnie! I’m so stupid, you can’t think. The others learn like eager little trained animals. They can’t speak decently, or spell, of course, but what does that matter? They can put down on paper what they hear someone say, and copy it off, without the trouble of understanding. I foresee that I shall be here for years while all the little boys and girls pass on and out, and become bank presidents.”
It was quite true that she wasn’t quick at learning her new trade. She was studious by nature, and painstaking, but her hand was not ready. She was more discouraged than she cared to tell.
Life seemed, just then, a rather miserable affair. Her ambition was balked by her slowness in learning, and she began to think that she would never be able to do better than she was doing with Miss Eppendorfer. A filler of odd jobs, employed principally because she was personally agreeable.... And, somehow, Miss Eppendorfer’s talk of love made her lonely and sad. She thought of her twenty-three years, and was terrified by the fear that she would never be loved. She longed so to be loved! What chance, though? She went from Miss Eppendorfer’s flat, which no man entered but “Kurtie,” to the night school, where the oldest male was perhaps nineteen.
A situation ripe for the coming of the hero. As usual he came. Or perhaps, the one who came had to be he....
It was the end of June, and after two months of effort, Frankie still sat among the beginners. She had developed a new trouble. She was able now to scratch desperately while the teacher dictated, almost keeping pace with her, but she could never afterward read what she had written. She was trying in vain to type a letter she had taken down, in which all she could distinguish was “Dear Sir:” and the “14th inst.” when she heard someone sit down in the seat next her, which had till then been vacant. Naturally she glanced up. It was, as she later wrote to Minnie, a “real grown-up human being,” a tall, thin fellow with a haughty, stupid face, a man who couldn’t be under thirty and who was dressed in well-fitting and expensive clothes. She couldn’t help staring at him, all the more because he took no notice of her at all. “He was so out of place there,” she wrote. “He was so well-bred, with the nicest thin brown hands. And, my dear Minnie, he was even stupider than me. Much stupider.”
She watched him a great deal, as he tried to write on his machine. The keyboard was hidden with a tin cover, so that he was obliged to learn the letters by memory; this puzzled and annoyed him, and he frowned severely over his chart.
“I say!” he said, suddenly, to Frances, with a marked English accent, “Isn’t there something wrong about this thing? B ought to come next to A.”
She explained that the keyboard wasn’t arranged alphabetically. He asked why not, and she said she didn’t know.
“Some American idea, I suppose,” he observed, with displeasure, and turned away to resume his struggle.
He was not polite, he was certainly not clever, and, in spite of limpid and innocent grey eyes, not handsome; his nose was too large, his expression too contemptuous. Why then should Frances think him so terribly appealing and attractive? She felt an exaggerated good-will toward him, an ardent wish to help him, even to comfort him. There was no obvious reason for this painful compassion; he was well-dressed, showed not the least trace of poverty, quite the contrary. He looked healthy too, although very thin. And he had very much the air of being satisfied with himself. Ridiculous girl!
He had come to the end of a line and not understanding the bell’s signal, was trying to keep on writing. He saw that something was wrong, and he turned to Frances again. She had been watching him, and was ready to explain at once.
“I’ve never tried one of these infernal things before,” he remarked, quite unnecessarily.
“I’ve been at it for two months,” said Frances, with a sigh, “but I don’t seem to get on. Not like the others.”
He looked at her thoroughly for the first time.
“You’re not like the others,” he said, “that’s probably why.”
And added:
“You look like an English girl.”
That meant that he was pleased, she knew.
“I’m not. I’m American—as far back as the Revolution.”
“What revolution?” he asked.
With the characteristic innocence of her country-people, whose Genesis it is, she was astounded.
“Why, our Revolution! In 1776!” she explained.
He said “Really!” and went on with his writing.
The next night he saluted her with a stiff “Good evening!” directly she entered the room, so formal and frigid that her heart sank. They weren’t friendly, then! But, after half an hour’s desperate effort, he grew bored and discouraged, and once more turned his attention to the pretty girl.
“You’re doing well,” he observed.
Frances gave a sigh and smiled at him.
“I hate it!” she said.
“Rather! But why do you do it?”
“I want to get on—get a better job.”
“What are you doing now?”
He was, she thought, very personal, but he didn’t seem aware of it.
“I’m a secretary, for an authoress.”
That seemed to interest him.
“I’d thought of something of that sort for myself,” he said. “What do they expect of a secretary over here?”
“My position’s rather peculiar,” Frances told him. “I do all sorts of things that aren’t really part of my duties.”
“What, for instance? Can’t you give me some sort of idea?” he persisted, and, half-laughing, she tried to tell him.
“Oh, I go shopping with her,” she said, “and I listen while she reads, and I get up little chafing-dish suppers, and answer the telephone, and check up her bank book, and talk to her publishers, and—oh, well—lots of things like that!”
“I shouldn’t call that a secretary,” said the young man. “At home we’d call you a sort of companion.”
Frances turned red, and began typing again. He was rude, and no mistake about it. Detestable! She worked violently for a time, then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him, pecking away at his typewriter so slowly and stupidly that her heart smote her.
“Good night!” she said cheerfully when the gong sounded, and she went off to the dictation class and he to the beginner’s room, where she could see him through the open door, writing on the arm of his chair, surrounded by eager children.
Frances was a little late the next night, and from her locker in the corridor, she looked anxiously into the classroom for the young Englishman’s nice brown head bent over his machine. But he wasn’t there. She went to her place and began to work half-heartedly, with one eye on the door, watching for him. The clock ticked on and on, half an hour gone, still she couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming. The whole long hour passed, the typing lesson was finished, and he hadn’t come.
Disappointment out of all proportion assailed her. Her heart was like lead, the whole world blank.
“What a fool I am!” she told herself. “Why on earth should I care? I don’t really; it’s only that he’s the only other possible person in the place Why should he come? Of course he’s given up the whole thing in disgust. Of course he’s not coming back, at all. Ever. Of course I shan’t see him again. What difference does it make?”
And yet, in spite of all this excellent common-sense, that feeling of desolation persisted. She hated and loathed the silly school, made up her mind to stop coming. She sat in the shorthand class, scratching down her unintelligible little symbols
Suddenly an awful thought swept over her. It grew rapidly to a conviction. He had certainly stayed away solely because of her, because she had been so preposterously over-friendly that he was disgusted and alarmed. She did wish that she might see him once more, just to tell him that she didn’t like him, not him, personally; simply, like all nice Americans, she had wanted to be kind to a stranger....
She rushed out the minute the class was over. She was very anxious to get home. And there he was, waiting for her, standing under a street lamp where the light streamed on his arrogant face, a slim, foppish figure, with a walking stick. She felt suddenly angry at him; replied with coldness to his greeting.
“It was such a nice evening,” he said, “I couldn’t stand that filthy place.”
It was; sweet, calm, fresh, with a bright little moon overhead.
“I thought perhaps you’d like to walk a bit,” he said, “if you’re not tired.”
She hesitated imperceptibly, then accepted.
“A few blocks,” she said. “I shouldn’t like to be late.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked presently.
Frances said she didn’t, and they began strolling, quite aimlessly, uptown.
“I say!” he exclaimed, “It’s very decent of you to come. You Americans are unconventional, aren’t you?”
“Not all of us,” said Frances drily.
“We’re different. We won’t have anything to do with a stranger till we’ve got his credentials. I dare say we’re over-particular. No English girl I’ve ever met would take up a man this way”
“I’m not in the habit of it,” said Frances. She was affronted and angry. “But I’m not a child. I’m accustomed to—to forming my own judgments. I—as far as I could judge, you were a gentleman. I thought you’d quite understand”
“I do!” he protested, “I do, absolutely. I only wanted to tell you that I like it—all this freedom, you know. An English girl of your class would be so—so much more prudent”
“I’m not imprudent!” cried Frances, passionately.
“Ah, but you are, though. My dear young lady, you don’t even know my name.”
“Well, what is it, then?” she asked, half-laughing, half-furious. “You’d better tell me, if that will make this shocking walk more ‘prudent.’”
“Lionel Naylor,” he said.
“Haven’t you any letters, any papers, to identify yourself? How can I tell if that’s really your name?”
He replied with perfect seriousness:
“I’ve one or two things—a letter”
“Oh, nonsense! Couldn’t you see that I was joking? Why on earth should I care who you are? I’m old enough and sufficiently intelligent to find out very soon what you are. I’m not afraid of strange men. I can take care of myself.”
“It does no harm for a girl to be careful,” he answered, stubbornly.
And that was, apparently, his final word. They went on in silence. Frances counted fifteen blocks without a word. At the first crossing he had rather ceremoniously taken her arm, and he didn’t release it. He seemed quite contented to go on forever in this way. But it provoked Frances beyond measure. She longed to say to him:
“Why did you ask me to take a walk, if you didn’t want to speak to me?”
She made up her mind that she wouldn’t speak first, no matter how long it was. She had to, though. She looked at her watch.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to turn back now,” she said. “It’s time I was home.”
“I say!” he cried. “That’s too bad! I wanted to have a talk with you.”
“Why didn’t you talk then?” she asked, sharply, and he answered with equal irritability:
“My dear young lady, I can’t plunge into things the way you people do. I have to collect my thoughts a bit”
“Strange as it may seem to you,” said Frances, “all the people in this country are not exactly alike.”
It began to dawn upon him that she was really annoyed, that these people were possibly as sensitive to offence as himself. Instantly he was very sorry.
“I dare say I’m not very tactful,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be offensive, though, I assure you. I admire you people very much.”
“All of us?”
He laughed.
“There are some, of course.... My sister-in-law—She!...”
“She’s an American?”
“Yes. My brother lives over here, you know. Been here some time. We thought he was a confirmed bachelor. Practically certain not to marry. Then, the very day after I got here, he did it. And such a girl! Of course it made trouble at once.”
Frances was interested, and moreover, she could see that he wanted to talk about it.
“How?” she asked.
“Set my brother against me. Put all sorts of beastly—Am—beastly ideas into his head. She has no use for a man unless he’s eternally stewing over a row of figures, grubbing after money. So now he’s got this idiotic idea of my learning this typing and shorthand rot. And why? So I can get a job in his office. I never heard such silly rot. What earthly use is that stuff going to be? I shan’t be one of his clerks. It’s her idea. She wants to humiliate me.”
Frances murmured something sympathetic.
“What business were you in before?” she asked.
“Not in any business,” he replied, surprised. “Didn’t you understand? I suppose, according to your ideas, I’m no good. I’ve never done anything much. Just stopped at home while my mother was alive.... Until two years ago ... when she died. She—liked to have me at home. We got on together very well.”
He was rather pathetically anxious to be friendly and communicative now, to show her that he wasn’t aloof and condescending. He tried to tell her about himself, indirectly to present his credentials. And did so, far more fully than he imagined. With every word, spoken and unspoken, she was more certain that she had not been mistaken—that he was “nice,” that he was to be trusted, that he was mysteriously likable.
“We travelled, and so on,” he continued. “She liked that.... Do you know, when I look at this girl Horace has married, I’m glad—really glad, the poor old mater—isn’t here.”
Then, unfortunately, he got started on a very favourite topic; he told her what he had endured from “that girl”; how she sneered at him, persecuted him, was continually poisoning his brother’s mind against him. Frances listened with a heavy heart. She couldn’t approve of this! It wasn’t manly; it wasn’t fine. She pitied him, yearned over him, and at the same time felt a passionate Defoe desire to lecture him, to tell him he was wrong, didn’t see things in a proper light. She wanted to tell him what to do and offer to help him to do it.
Conversation about his sister-in-law lasted until they had reached Frankie’s door. Then he was once more surprised and regretful that he hadn’t made better use of his time. He took Frankie’s proffered hand warmly.
“You see,” he said, “I didn’t ask your name. It wasn’t necessary.”
“Do you know it?” she asked, a little puzzled.
“No, not that. Simply, I don’t need any credentials to know that you’re—absolutely—all right. Absolutely.”
She smiled at him maternally. She liked that clumsy compliment; she liked his naïveness, his simplicity, even his rudeness. She saw him no longer as a young man, but as a boy, who had been badly trained, a rather spoilt boy. She felt very peaceful, very kindly, toward him and toward everyone else. She had never known life to be so satisfying as it was that evening, for no reason at all.