Chapter XXIV: The New King

Samuel Cleever, a tall, thin dyspeptic with a pince-nez and English intonation, was moved from Newark, N.J., to succeed the old man.

His first conference with Georgia was brief. "Good morning, Miss Ah-ah-"

"Connor."

"Quite so. Do you understand the Singer cross-filing reference system?"

"I understand cross-indexing and card-catalogues."

"The Singer system specifically, do you know that?"

"No, sir."

"So I feared."

"But I could learn quickly."

"Quite so. But to be frank," said Mr. Cleever, "I have brought my private secretary with me from Newark." New kings make new courts.

"Yes, sir," said Georgia in a low voice.

"I will assign you to the auditing department for the present."

"Yes, sir."

She felt many eyes upon her and her cheeks were burning as she walked down the long room carrying her business belongings to a narrow flat-top which the young auditor pointed out to her. It was next the inside wall.

The color came to her face in waves as she passed Miss Gerson's desk and she had a furious sensation that her habit of blushing was damnable. Why, she asked herself angrily, couldn't she at least appear calm in unpleasant situations!

Her new work was less interesting, more mechanical. There were rows on rows of figures in it, and much technical accounting jargon. She ceased to throw in overtime to the company, quitting sharply each night on the dot of five thirty. On pay night she found, as she had feared, that her salary had been standardized. She received the regular class A stenographer's $15 instead of the private secretary's $20.

On Tuesday of her second week in the auditing department, Mr. Cleever sent for her. Hoping devoutly that the new secretary had sprained his wrist (Mr. Cleever's secretary was a young man, Mrs. Cleever having been a stenographer herself), Georgia took her notebook.

But Mr. Cleever wanted instead to inform her that the system of bookkeeping whereof she was the apparent beneficiary disaccorded with his notions of system.

Since that remark seemed to leave her in the dark, he tossed across his table to her a report from the auditor's department which showed that in the past seven weeks she had been credited with $140 which had been debited to Mason Stevens, also that Columbus Hospital bills for $129.60 (including extras) had been paid by the company and charged to Stevens, and that a doctor's statement for $300 had been settled by the company and charged to Mr. Silverman's private fund. As to the last item, Mr. Cleever explained he, of course, had nothing to say, but as to the other two, although he had neither the desire nor the right to inquire into her personal affairs or her conduct out of the office, he must henceforth make it an undeviating rule not to permit the use of the company's books to facilitate private financial transactions between employes.

As Mr. Cleever's precise syllables clicked on, she looked from him to the two page report in her hand, and back again to him. Her lips were partly open and she breathed through them.

When he spoke of his desire not to inquire into her conduct out of the office, she thought she distinguished a discreet sneer in his modulated voice.

She knew instantly that it was out of the question for her to remain in the place. The report she held had been typewritten by a woman in her own department. It would spread from her to the other women and then to the men. Her engagement to marry Stevens could never now be announced in explanation. She would be construed as she herself had construed the tall, red-headed girl with the abundant figure.

She felt a flood rush over her face, suffusing it to the roots of her hair. She saw that Cleever saw it, and that he took it for confirmation of his suspicions.

"Mr. Cleever, I assure you I never knew anything of this until this moment."

"Of course, Miss Connor," he responded drily. "Please understand I make no criticism of the method of my predecessor. But in future--"

"It will stop, Mr. Cleever. I wish to hand in my resignation."

"We are sorry to lose you, Miss Connor, but of course if that is your decision--"

"Yes, sir, it is."

He bowed slightly. "Then at the end of the week, Saturday?"

"Yes, sir, Saturday night."

He again bowed slightly to signify that it was understood and that their talk was ended.

She took her lunch hour to write to Mason. She put many sheets in the machine and crumpled them into the waste basket in accomplishing this:

_Dear Mason: I have just learned of your kindness to me at the hospital. Thank you for the thought._

_I find that I owe you $269.60, which I will repay in installments. I enclose $12 for first installment. I regret that I am unable to pay it all at once. I am leaving the office. Please don't write._

_Congratulations on your success._

_Sincerely,
Georgia Connor._

She felt as she dropped the note in the mail chute that Mason was a man to love. Imagine Jim doing her a great service and keeping it quiet. Jim took his affections out in words and physical embrace. Jim--she caught herself up suddenly. This wasn't being resigned, as she had prayed God she might be.

She answered half a dozen want ads before she could get the upset price she had determined on--eighteen dollars. She covenanted for this finally with a frowsy looking, bald little lawyer, in an old-fashioned five-story, pile-foundationed, gray stone building on Clark street, put up soon after the fire. The windows were seldom washed and there were two obsolete rope elevators.

The little lawyer, Mr. Matthews, had a large single room in which he sublet desk-room to a pair of young real-estaters. Georgia didn't like the looks of the place, but inasmuch as Mr. Matthews didn't haggle an instant about her salary, she took it.

She had nothing important to do. Mr. Matthews' mind was fussy and unsystematic. He had little business and set her to copying over his briefs of bygone years. "Codifying," he called it; why she never knew.

She shrewdly suspected she was engaged rather as a "front" to impress clients than to work at her trade.

Whenever a visitor, whether collector or suspender peddler, came to see Mr. Matthews, that attorney bade him sit a few minutes while he finished up a letter that had to catch the Twentieth Century or the five thirty Pennsylvania Limited, as the case might be. Then he would fake a letter and Georgia would help him at the end by inquiring, "Special delivery, I suppose, sir?"

It answered her purpose for the time being, but she hadn't the vaguest intention of staying. She saw there was no future.

Mr. Matthews each morning requested her to oblige the young real-estaters by "helping them out" with their correspondence.

"Helping them out" meant doing it all. Mr. Matthews was brimming with euphemisms. Likewise they, the real estaters, got to asking her to "help out" their friends, which she good-naturedly did--in hours.

Saturday Mr. Matthews didn't turn up, nor yet Monday. Tuesday when Georgia suggested her payment, he said he was expecting a check that afternoon. Thursday, when she insisted on it, he told her to collect half from the real-estaters, since she had been working for them as much as for him.

She couldn't see it that way at all. He had engaged her.

He fell into legal phraseology. "Qui facit per alium," or something of the sort; and she told him nettly she wasn't a fool and that if he didn't pay her immediately she would attach his furniture.

He turned his pockets inside out, showing a ten-dollar bill and eighty-five cents. She took the bill and walked out. But it wasn't much of a triumph. Her wages during her employment by Mr. Matthews had averaged six dollars a week.

She was therefore unable to send Mason another installment; and couldn't help being relieved because, despite her injunction, he had written her.

"_Dear Mrs. Connor: Please do not hurry at all in that matter. Indeed, I would be pleased to consider it an investment bringing in 5%, or if you prefer, 6% a year. If you pay me $16.18 annually (or $4.18 more during the balance of the current year), that would be an advantageous business arrangement for me. I hope you may see your way clear to agreeing to this._

_"With kind regards,_

"_Very truly,
"Mason Stevens._"