III
I saw Miss Clare going into Graves’s office, and I felt sorry for him. I shouldn’t have enjoyed pointing out her faults to her. She was very young and quite without affectation, but she had a natural and altogether charming dignity about her. You couldn’t think of her as an office worker; you were obliged to remember all the time that she was a woman.
She came out after half an hour, looking downcast and grave. She smiled at me, as she passed, with the air of a lady who never neglects her social obligations, but I fancied her lips quivered a trifle.
“Poor girl!” I thought. “She’s out of place here. She hasn’t the stuff in her for a competitive worker. She’ll never get on!”
I was so sympathetic to Graves that he told me the story of the interview.
“The poor girl’s worried sick,” he said. “It seems she’s trying to support her mother, and she’s so desperately afraid she won’t make good that she can’t do her[Pg 84] work. She does try, you know, and she’s fairly accurate, but she’s slow, and she knows it. She said she’d never tried to hurry before, and when she does, she gets nervous.” He paused, and frowned a little. “Well,” he said, “it’s irregular, but I think it’ll work. I’m going to let her come half an hour earlier than the other girls and stay an hour later, so that she can finish her share of the work.”
“That’s hard on her, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Not so hard as getting fired,” he answered. “She’s got a queer point of view about that. She says that if she were discharged, she’d be so discouraged that she’d—I think she said she’d go to pieces.”
“Lacks stamina,” I observed.
“Well,” said Graves, “there’s more than one sort of stamina. It takes some grit for a girl brought up as she’s been to tackle the job of supporting herself and her mother, I can tell you!”
I agreed with him, and said so, and he was delighted; but he paid heavily for his kind-heartedness. Miss Kelly let the thing go on for one week. Then, on Saturday morning, she appeared before him.
“Mr. Graves,” she said, “after due consideration, I have decided that the only course for me is to leave this office. I shall remain, of course, until you have filled my position to your satisfaction.”
She knew perfectly well how invaluable, how irreplaceable she was.
“Now, see here, Miss Kelly,” said Graves, as man to man. “This wants talking about. Sit down and let’s discuss it frankly.”
She did sit down, and I thought she looked alarmingly frank.
“Certainly, Mr. Graves,” she said very pleasantly.
“Now, then, what’s the trouble? Not enough salary?”
“My salary is quite as much as the overhead permits,” said she. “In proportion to the calculated profits, it is perfectly fair and adequate. No, Mr. Graves—it’s a question of prestige and morale.”
Graves looked serious.
“My girls are constantly coming to me now with requests to be allowed to finish their work at irregular and unauthorized hours, instead of keeping up to the standard output required by my department. They assert that a girl in Mr. Allen’s department was allowed to do this, and they had never understood that employment in his department carried any special privileges. I went to Mr. Allen about this. I pointed out to him that it affected the morale of my girls to see one of his people favored, but he told me he could do nothing. He said it was not his idea, and—”
“All right!” said Graves, suddenly getting up, with a flushed face and a constrained smile. “I—very likely you’re right, Miss Kelly. I’ll—I’ll make some adjustment that’ll suit you.”
“Please don’t consider suiting me,” said Miss Kelly. “It’s the morale of the office, Mr. Graves.”
And she went away like Pallas Athene from a battleground.
I honestly pitied Graves, he was so wretched.
“Well, you know,” he said, “she’s right. It does upset the routine, and so on; but, hang it all, that girl simply couldn’t stand being discharged! She has pluck enough, and all that, but she’s sensitive. She’s too darned sensitive entirely. I wish to Heaven she’d picked out some other office to start in! She’s got some fool idea in her head that it’s the first job that makes or breaks you. It’s no use pointing out her faults to her; she knows ’em. She’s trying to overcome them; but she’s just naturally slow.”
He tried her at filing. Not for long, though; the tumult was too great. He tried her at bookkeeping; but she herself admitted that figures were not her forte.
“There must be something that girl can do, or can be taught to do!” he cried in despair. “Everybody has some aptitude, and she’s not stupid. She can talk well about books and so on.”
“Do you talk to her, Graves?” I asked. “Much?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered innocently. “I talk to her a lot. I try to find out what she’s adapted for; but I can’t, for the life of me. And yet I can’t fire her. I simply can’t do it. She says no one else would give her the same chance I do; and that’s no lie. She wouldn’t last a week in any other office!”
“Unless—” said I, and hesitated.
“Unless what?” asked Graves.
“Unless there were another personnel manager as—as conscientious as you.”
“Well,” said Graves, “it’s this way—there’s a big responsibility attached to my job. I shouldn’t like to think I’d destroyed the self-confidence of a girl like Miss Clare.[Pg 85]”
“Anything would be better than that,” I said.
Graves looked at me with dawning suspicion.
“Well, you’re all wrong,” he said severely, “if you think there’s any—any personal element in this. It’s simply that I’ve got a heavy responsibility—”
“You bet you have!” said I, and left him with that.