The thing began to assume a dramatic aspect. Graves was a haunted man. He was obliged, or he felt himself obliged, to find a place for Miss Clare in our organization, and the task was a hideous one.
He changed. His brisk self-assurance gave place to a harassed air, and he acquired a new and rather touching way of appealing to the rest of us. In fact, we were all deeply concerned about Miss Clare. We would go joyously to Graves, to tell him we thought something had turned up that would suit her. We always phrased it that way; but it never did suit her.
In the final analysis this was Graves’s fault, because it was he who had made the office so brutally efficient. To be more frank than modest, it was not so much that Miss Clare was very bad as that the rest of us were so good. She failed to come up to our standard. Graves was the Frankenstein who had created this monster, and now he had to suffer for it.
One morning he arrived with a grim and desperate expression.
“An execution?” I asked.
I had become very friendly with Graves during this little complication. He seemed to me less amusing than before, and much more human and engaging.
“Yes,” said he. “She’s got to go. I’ve been thinking it over pretty seriously. I’m afraid I’ve wasted the firm’s time and money in this instance; but you don’t know how hard—”
“Graves,” I said, “you’re inconsistent. You’ll destroy any number of harmless lives, and boast of it, and then you’ll apologize for having been kindly and generous and altogether admirable.”
He turned red.
“Oh, get out!” he said, like a small boy, but the sympathy pleased him. “Well, you see, it’s—well, she tries hard.”