CHAPTER XX

JOHN DENE'S PROPOSAL

Marjorie Rogers had entered the outer office at Waterloo Place expecting to find Dorothy. Instead, John Dene sat half-turned in her direction, with one arm over the back of the chair.

"She's gone home," he said, divining the cause of Marjorie's call.

The girl slipped into the room, softly closing the door behind her, and walked a hesitating step or two in John Dene's direction, a picture of shy maidenhood. Marjorie Rogers was an instinctive actress.

"Gone home!" she repeated as a conversational opening. "Is she ill?" She gave him a look from beneath her lashes, a look she had found equally deadly with subs and captains.

John Dene shook his head, but continued to gaze at her.

He was a very difficult man to talk to, Marjorie decided. She had already come to the conclusion that she had been wrong in her suspicion that he made love to Dorothy.

"You don't like us, do you, Mr. Dene?" She made a half-step in his direction, dropping her eyes and drawing in her under lip in a way that had once nearly caused a rear-admiral to strike his colours.

"Like who?" demanded John Dene, wondering why the girl stayed now that he had told her Dorothy had gone home.

"Us girls." Marjorie flashed at him the sub-captain look. "May I sit down?" she asked softly.

"Sure." John Dene was regarding her much as he might a blue zebra that had strayed into his office.

"Thank you, Mr. Dene." Marjorie sat down, crossing her legs in a way that gave him the full benefit of a dainty foot and ankle. She had on her very best silk stockings, silk all the way up, so that there need be no anxiety as to the exact whereabouts of her skirt.

"I have been wondering about Wessie----"

"Wessie, who's she, a cat?"

Marjorie dimpled, then she laughed outright.

"You are funny, Mr. Dene," and again she drew in her lower lip and raked him with her eyes.

"Who's Wessie, anyhow?" he demanded.

"Wessie's Dorothy," she explained. "You see," she went on, "her name's West and----"

"I get you." John Dene continued to regard her with a look that suggested he was still at a loss to account for her presence.

"As I said," she continued, "I've been wondering about Dorothy."

"Wondering what?"

John Dene was certainly a most difficult man to talk to, she decided.

"She's thinner," announced Marjorie after a slight pause.

"Thinner?"

"Yes, not so fat." How absurd he was with his----

"She never was fat." There was decision in John Dene's tone.

"You know, Mr. Dene, you're very difficult for a girl to talk to," said Marjorie.

"I never had time to learn," he said simply.

"I think it's through you, Mr. Dene." She gave him a little fugitive smile she had learned from an American film, and had practised assiduously at home.

"What's through me?" he demanded, hopelessly at sea as to her drift.

"At first I thought you were working her too hard, Mr. Dene, but," she added hastily, as if in anticipation of protest, "but--but----"

"But what?" John Dene rapped out the words with a peremptoriness that startled Marjorie.

"But when you got lost----" She hesitated.

"Got what?"

"I mean when you disappeared," she added hastily, "then I knew."

"Knew what?"

Marjorie no longer had any doubts about John Dene's interest in Dorothy. He had swung round his chair, and was now seated directly facing her.

"You know she worried," continued Marjorie, "and she got pale and----" Again she paused.

John Dene continued to stare in a way that made her frightened to look up, although she watched him furtively through her lowered lashes.

"Is that what you came here to say?" demanded John Dene.

"I--I came to see Dorothy, and now I must run away," she cried, jumping up. "I've got an appointment. Good-bye, Mr. Dene. Thank you for asking me in;" and she held out her hand, which John Dene took as a man takes a circular thrust upon him.

A moment later Marjorie had fluttered out, closing the door behind her.

"Well, that's given him something to think about," she murmured, as she walked down the stairs. "Wessie must have me down to stay with her. He's sure to get a title;" and she made for the Tube, there to join the westward-rolling tide of patient humanity that cheerfully pays for a seat and hangs on a strap.

For nearly an hour John Dene sat at his table as Marjorie had left him, twirling in his mouth a half-smoked cigar that had not been alight since the early morning. His face was expressionless, but in his eyes there was a strange new light.

The next morning when Dorothy arrived at the office, she found Sir Bridgman North with John Dene, who was angry.

"Just because somebody's lost a spanner, or a screw-driver, they're raising Cain about it. Look at all these," and he waved a bunch of papers in front of Sir Bridgman.

"It's a way they have in the Navy. We never lose sight of anything."

"Except the main issue, winning the war," snapped John Dene.

"Oh, we'll get on with that when we've found the spanner," laughed Sir Bridgman good humouredly.

"I don't want to be worried about a ten cent spanner, and have a couple of letters a day about it," grumbled John Dene, "and I won't have it."

"What I used to do," said Sir Bridgman, "was just to tell them that everything possible should be done. Then they feel happier and don't worry so much. Why I once lost a 12-inch gun, and they were quite nice about it when I told them that somebody must have put it aside for safety, and that it had probably got mislaid in consequence. I never found that gun. You see, Dene," he added a moment later, "we indent everything--except an admiral, and it doesn't matter much if he gets lost."

John Dene grumbled something in his throat. He was still smarting under the demands from the Stores Department to produce forthwith the missing article.

"Now I must be off," said Sir Bridgman, and with a nod to John Dene and a smile to Dorothy he departed.

All the morning John Dene was restless. He seemed unable to concentrate upon anything. Several times he span round in his revolving chair with a "Say, Miss West;" but as soon as Dorothy raised her eyes from her work, he seemed to lose the thread of his ideas and, with a mumbled incoherence, turned to the mechanical sorting of the papers before him.

Dorothy was puzzled to account for his strangeness of manner, and after a time determined that he must be ill.

Presently he jumped up and began restlessly pacing the room. Three times he paused beside Dorothy as she was engaged in checking inventories. Immediately she looked up, he pivoted round on his heel and restarted the pacing, twirling between his lips the cigar that had gone out an hour before.

On the fourth occasion that he stood looking down at her, Dorothy turned.

"If you do that, I shall scream," she cried.

He stepped back a pace, obviously disconcerted by her threat.

"Do what?" he enquired.

"Why, prance up and down like that, and then come and stand over me. It--it makes me nervous," she added lamely, as she returned to her work.

"Sorry," said John Dene, as he threw himself once more into his chair.

Suddenly with an air of decision, Dorothy put down her pencil and turning, faced him.

"Aren't you well, Mr. Dene?" she inquired.

"Well," he repeated with some asperity. "Of course I'm well."

"Oh!" she said, disconcerted by his manner. Then for a moment there was silence.

"Why shouldn't I be well?" he demanded uncompromisingly.

"No reason at all," said Dorothy indifferently, "only----" She paused.

"Only what?" he enquired sharply.

"Only," she continued calmly, "you seem a little--a little--may I say jumpy?" She looked up at him with a smile.

Without replying he sprang from his chair, and once more started pacing the room with short, nervous strides, his head thrust forward, his left hand in his jacket pocket, his right hanging loosely at his side.

"That's it!" he exclaimed at last.

Dorothy continued to regard him in wonder. Something of vital importance must have happened, she decided, to produce this effect on a man of John Dene's character.

"It's--it's not the _Destroyer_" she cried breathlessly at last. "Nothing has happened?"

John Dene shook his head vigorously, and continued his "prancing."

"Then what----" began Dorothy.

"Listen," he said. "I've never had any use for women," he began, then stopped suddenly and stood looking straight at her.

Dorothy groaned inwardly, convinced that she was about to be dismissed. In a flash there surged through her mind all that this would mean. She might be taken on again by the Admiralty; but at less than half her present salary. It was really rather bad luck, she told herself, when the extra money meant so much to her, and she really had tried to be worth it.

"You see, I don't understand them."

The remark broke in upon her thoughts as something almost silly in its irrelevancy. Again she looked up at him as he stood before her rather as if expecting rebuke. Again he span round and continued his pacing of the room.

As he walked he threw staccatoed remarks from him rather than directed them at Dorothy.

"There's nothing wrong with the _Destroyer_. When you're after one thing you don't seem to notice all the other things buzzing around. One day you wake up to find out that you've been missing things. I've been telling myself all the time that some things didn't matter, but they do."

He paused in front of Dorothy, expressing the last three words with almost savage emphasis.

"There's never been anybody except Jim--and the boys," he added, "until your mother was----" He stopped dead, then a moment later continued: "I'd like her to know." To Dorothy his voice seemed a little husky. "May be it'ud please her to think that she had--you see I'm telling you the whole shooting-match," he blurted out as he resumed his restless pacing up and down.

"But that's just what you're not doing," said Dorothy. "I don't in the least understand what you mean, and---- Oh, I wish you could stand still, if only for a minute."

Instantly John Dene stopped in his walk, and stood in the middle of the room looking over Dorothy's head.

"I'm trying to ask you to marry me, only I haven't got the sand to do it," he blurted out almost angrily.

"Oh!" Dorothy's hands slipped into her lap, her eyes widened and her lips parted, as she looked up at him utterly dumbfounded.

"There, I knew what it would mean," he said, as he continued his pacing. "What have I got to offer? Look at me. I'm not good-looking. My clothes are not right. I don't wear them properly. I can't say pretty things. The best I can do is to buy flowers and chocolates and express them. I daren't even hand them to you. Oh, I've thought it all over. What use am I to a woman?" Then as an after-thought he added, "to a girl?" He turned and paced away from Dorothy without looking at her.

"Oh, shucks!"

John Dene swung round on his heel as if he had been struck. His jaw dropped, his cigar fell from his mouth, and he looked at her as if she had said the most surprising thing he had ever heard.

"I said 'shucks'" she repeated. Her eyelids flickered a little and she was unusually pale.

"You mean----" His voice was far from steady.

"I mean," said Dorothy quietly, "that a man who could invent the _Destroyer_ ought to be able to learn how to talk to--to--be nice to a girl." The last five words came tumbling over each other, as if she had found great difficulty in uttering them, and then had thrown them all out at one time.

"Say," he began, hope shining from his eyes. Then he stopped abruptly and walked over to his chair, throwing himself into it with a sigh. "You mean."

"Perhaps," said Dorothy, dropping her eyes and playing about with a fastening on her blouse, "I might be able to help you." Then after a pause she added, "You know you got me a rise."

And then John Dene smiled. "Say, this is great," he cried. "I--I----" Then suddenly he jumped up, dashed for his hat and made for the door. As he opened it he threw over his shoulder:

"We'll start right in to-morrow. I'm through with work for to-day. I'll be over to-night."

Then suddenly Dorothy laughed. "Was ever maid so wooed?" she murmured. "But----" and she left it at that.

As she thrust the pins into her hat, she decided that John Dene had been right. It would have been awkward to--to--well, to do anything but go home.

Just as she was about to lock the outer door of the office, she had an inspiration. Returning to her table she removed her gloves and, after a few minutes' thought and reference to the London Directory, she sat down to her typewriter and for a few minutes her fingers moved busily over the keys.

With a determined air she pulled the sheet from the clips and read:--

"JOHN DENE OF TORONTO. Lesson 1.

Tailors . . . Pond and Co., 130 Sackville Street. Hosiers . . . Tye Brothers, 320 Jermyn Street. Bootmakers . Ease & Treadwell, 630 Bond Street. Hatters . . . Messrs. Bincoln and Lennet, Piccadilly.

When a man knows his job, let him do it and don't butt in."

With a determined little nod of approval, she folded the sheet of paper, inserted it in an envelope, which she addressed to "John Dene, Esq., The Ritzton Hotel, S.W. Immediate," and left the office.

"I wonder what you would think of that, mother mine," she murmured as she left the hotel, after having given strict injunctions that the note be handed to John Dene immediately he returned.