Free The Lady of Situations by Louis Auchincloss Page B

morning chapel and to remain there until lunchtime. In the afternoons she could work at home if she preferred, typing dictated letters and reports, and on weekends she was subject to call at the headmaster's study in his residence whenever he needed her. Having typed since her fourteenth year and having taken courses in shorthand during her Barnard summer, she expected to be adequately equipped for the job, and she could only hope that her new boss would be less exacting with women than he was reputed to be with men. It was encouraging that rumor had him trembling, like the first duke of Marlborough, before a wife who could be something of a shrew.
    On her first morning he greeted her as perfunctorily as if she had been working for him a year, and launched immediately into the dictation of three letters to parents. He spoke slowly, with perfect articulation and without a single change or interjection, as if he had been reciting a prepared piece. But she knew he was testing her.
    When she came back with the letters typed he read all three carefully before saying a word.
    "I think we shall get on together, Mrs. Barnes."
    His use of the formal address signified the change in her status.
    "I hope so, sir."
    "Have you been a secretary before?"
    "I've had some experience," she fibbed.
    "In my letter to Mrs. Kingsford about her son, Jimmy, it occurs to me that I may have been too harsh. I suppose an adoring mother might object to the application of the term egotist' to her son."
    "Would 'individualist' be better?"
    "But that might be construed as a compliment!"
    "How about saying he has an individuality too pronounced for his years?"
    "Excellent! Write the letter over that way."
    It was not more than a week before she was allowed herself to compose the routine correspondence: the letters of congratulation and condolence to the more distantly connected, the answers to simple inquiries, the replies to graduates who wrote giving news of their careers. And more and more now when he was dictating, he would pause to ask her to suggest an alternate word or phrase. But she was careful never to volunteer one.
    "You have a sense of style," he told her after she had worked for him a month. "Have you done any writing yourself?"
    "Oh, I've scribbled a bit. Nothing too serious."
    "I suppose every woman believes she has a novel in her."
    She hesitated. Was this the moment for a bolder note? Was he challenging her? "Maybe that's the only way we women have to live."
    "You mean if one lives, one doesn't have to write?" Those small red eyes seemed to bore into her. "What does Tommy think of your writing?"
    "I doubt he even knows about it. There isn't, you see, anything much to know."
    He grunted. "You're smarter than Tommy."
    "I trust, sir, that doesn't mean you think little of my poor husband's intellect."
    "No, it doesn't mean that at all. He had the sense to marry you, didn't he?"
    She had no desire to write fiction at this point; she would be too busy gathering material out of which it might be made. For what was she but a spy in the holy of holies of a male society? Wasn't it on the playing fields of Averhill that the battles of Wall Street were won? And then, too, she highly enjoyed her new position. She was somebody, even if a small somebody, on the campus now. When she saw other faculty wives wending their dreary way to and from chapel, or to and from the dining hall, she felt in contrast as if she were on a bobbing horse on a merry-go-round. It was all she could do to keep from waving gaily at them and crying out what a good time she was having. The headmaster being everything at Averhill, even his secretary was envied, as the valet who emptied the chamber pot of Louis XIV was envied by the greatest peers of France.
    Lockwood sometimes sent her as his messenger to faculty members with instructions about a change in schedule or the need of filling in for a sick or absent master. She was always careful never to allow the smallest note of