PART II

I

The Suicide

The next morning Lilian left her lodging at the customary hour of 8.15,

to join one of the hundreds of hastening, struggling, preoccupied

processions of workers that converged upon central London. She had

slept for ten hours without a break on the previous day, risen hungry to

a confused and far too farinaceous tea, done some dressmaking by the

warmth of an oil-stove, and gone to bed again for another enormous

period of heavy slumber. She was well refreshed; her complexion was

restored to its marvellous perfectness; and life seemed simpler, more

promising, and more agreeably exciting than usual.

She had convinced herself that the Irish lord would call at the office

in person to pay his bill; the mysterious and yet thoroughly understood

code that governs certain human relations would forbid him either to

post a cheque or to send his man with the money. Her only fear was that

he might already have called. But even if he had already called, he

would call and call again, on one good pretext or another, until ...

Anyhow they would meet.... And so on, according to the inconsequent

logic of day-dreams in the everlasting night of the Tube.

The dreamer had a seat in the train--one of the advantages of living

near the terminus--but strap-hangers of both sexes swayed in clusters

over her, and along the whole length of the car, and both the platforms

were too densely populated. She could not read; nobody could read. As

the train roared and shook through Down Street station, she jumped up to

fight her way through straphangers towards the platform, in readiness to

descend at Dover Street. On these early trains carrying serious people,

if you sat quiet until the train came to your station you would

assuredly be swept on to the next station. These trains taught you to

meet the future half-way.

As it happened the train stopped about a hundred yards short of Dover

Street, and would not move on. Seconds and minutes passed, and the

stoppage became undeniably a breakdown. The tunnels under the earth

from Dover Street back to Hammersmith were full of stopped trains a few

hundred yards apart, and every train was full of serious people who

positively had to be at a certain place at a certain time. Lilian's

mood changed; the mood of the car changed, and of the train and of all

the trains. No one knew anything; no one could do anything; the trains

were each a prison. The railway company by its officials maintained a

masterly silence as to the origin of the vast inconvenience and

calamity. Rumours were born by spontaneous generation. A man within

Lilian's hearing, hitherto one of God's quite minor achievements, was

suddenly gifted with divination and announced that the electricians at

the power station in Lots Road had gone on strike without notice and

every electric train in London had been paralysed. Half an hour

elapsed. The prisoners, made desperate by the prospect of the fate

which attended them, spoke of revolution and homicide, well aware that

they were just as capable of these things as a flock of sheep. Then, as

inexplicably as it had stopped, the train started.

Two minutes later Lilian, with some scores of other girls, was running

madly through Dover Street in vain pursuit of time lost and vanished.

Not a soul had guessed the cause of the disaster, which, according to

the evening papers, was due to an old, unhappy man who had wandered

unobserved into the tunnel from Dover Street station with the ambition

to discover for himself what the next world was like. This ambition had

been gratified.

As Lilian, in a state of nervous exhaustion, flew on tired wings up the

office stairs she of course had to compose herself into a semblance of

bright, virginal freshness for the day's work, conformably with the

employer's theory that until he reaches the office the employee has done

and suffered nothing whatever. And Miss Grig was crossing the ante-room

at the moment of Lilian's entry.

"You're twenty-five minutes late, Miss Share," said Miss Grig coldly.

She looked very ill.

"So sorry, Miss Grig," Lilian answered with unprotesting humility, and

offered no explanation.

Useless to explain! Useless to assert innocence and victimization!

Excuses founded on the vagaries of trains were unacceptable in that

office, as in thousands of offices. Employers refused to take the least

interest in trains or other means of conveyance. One of the girls in

the room called "the large room" had once told Lilian that, living at

Ilford, she would leave home on foggy mornings at six o'clock in order

to be sure of a prompt arrival in Clifford Street at nine o'clock, thus

allowing three hours for little more than a dozen miles. But only in

the book of doomsday was this detail entered to her credit. Miss Grig,

even if she had heard of it--which she had not--would have dismissed it

as of no importance. Yet Miss Grig was a just woman.

"Come into my room, Miss Share, will you, please?" said Miss Grig.

Lilian, apprehending she knew not what, thought to herself bitterly that

lateness for a delicious shopping appointment or a heavenly appointment

to lunch at the Savoy or to motor up the river--affairs of true

importance--would have been laughed off as negligible, whereas lateness

at this filthy office was equivalent to embezzlement. And she resolved

anew, and with the most terrible determination, to escape at no matter

what risks from the servitude and the famine of sentiment in which she

existed.

II

The Malady

Miss Grig's Christian name was Isabel; it was somehow secret, and never

heard in the office; and Felix, if he ever employed it, could only have

done so in the sacred privacy of the principals' room. Like her

brother, Miss Grig might have been almost any age, but only the malice

of a prisonful of women could have seriously asserted her to be older

than Felix. Although by general consent an authentic virgin, she had not

the air of one. Rather full in figure, she was neither desiccated nor

stiff, and when she moved her soft body took on flowing curves, so that

clever and experienced observers could not resist the inference, almost

certainly wrong, that in the historic past of Isabel lay hidden some

Sabine episode or sublime folly of self-surrender. She had black hair,

streaked with grey, and marvellous troubled, smouldering black eyes that

seemed to yearn and appeal. And yet in an occasional gesture and tone

she would become masculine.

She went wrong in the matter of clothes, aspiring after elegance and

missing it through a fundamental lack of distinction, and also through

inability to concentrate her effects. Her dresses consisted of ten

thousand details held together by no unity of conception. Thin gold

chains wandered, apparently purposeless, over her rich form; they would

disappear like a railway in a cutting and then pop out unexpectedly in

another part of the lush rolling countryside. The contours of her

visible garments gave the impression that the concealed system of

underskirts, cache-corsets, corsets, lingerie, hose and suspenders was

of the most complicated, innumerable and unprecedented variety. And

indeed she was one of those women who, for the performance of the

morning and the evening rites, trebly secure themselves by locks and

bolts and blinds from the slightest chance of a chance of the peril of

the world's gaze.

The purchase of the typewriting business by Felix had changed Miss

Grig's life from top to bottom. It had transformed her from a relic

festering in sloth and frustration into the eager devotee of a sane and

unassailable cult. The business was her perversity, her passion. It

was her mystic husband, fecundating her with vital juices, the spouse to

whom she joyously gave long nights of love. Apart from the business,

and possibly her brother, she had no real thoughts. The concern as it

existed in Lilian's time was her creation. She would sacrifice anything

to it, her own health and life, even the lives and health of tender

girls. Yes, and she would sacrifice her conscience to it. She would

cheat for it. The charges for typewriting were high--for she had

established a tradition of the highest-class work and rates to

match--but this did not prevent her from seizing any excuse to inflate

the bills. The staff said that her malpractices sufficed every year to

pay the rent. And she was never more priestess-like, more lofty and

grandiose, than when falsifying an account.

Lilian found her seated alone in fluent dignity at the great desk.

"Yes, Miss Grig?"

"May I enquire," asked Miss Grig in grave accents not of reproach but of

pain, "why you did not put in an appearance yesterday, Miss Share?"

"Well, madam," Lilian answered with surprise and gentle rebuttal, "I

stayed here all the night before and I was so tired I slept all day. I

didn't wake up until it would have been too late to come."

"But you knew I was unwell, and that I should count on you upper girls

to fill my place. Or you should have known. What if you _were_ tired?

You are young and strong; you could have stood it easily enough, and

there was much work to be done. In a crisis we don't think about being

tired. We just keep on. And even if you did sleep all day, I suppose

it never occurred to you in the evening that someone would be needed to

take charge during last night. The least you could have done would have

been to run up and see how things were. But no! You didn't even do

that! Shall I tell you who did take charge last night? Miss Jackson.

She'd been on duty the whole day yesterday. She stayed all night till

six o'clock. And she was back again at nine o'clock this

morning--twenty-five minutes before you. And when I told her to go back

home, she positively refused. She defied me. That's what I call the

true spirit, my dear Lilian."

Miss Grig ceased; only her lustrous reproachful eyes continued the

harangue. She had shown no anger. She had appealed to Miss Share's

best instincts.

The address "my dear Lilian" caused misgivings in the employee's bosom.

Lilian knew that it was Felix and not Miss Grig who had admitted her to

employment, and that Miss Grig had been somewhat opposed to the

engagement. She also guessed that Miss Grig objected to her good looks,

and was always watchful for an occasion to illustrate her theory that a

girl might be too good-looking. And the tone of the words "my dear

Lilian" had menace in its appealing, sad sweetness. Miss Grig had been

known to deviate without warning into frightful inclemency, and she

always implacably got the last ounce out of her girls.

The culprit offered no defence. There was no defence. Assuredly she

ought to have run up on the previous evening. Miss Grig had spoken

truth--the notion of running up had simply not occurred to the

preoccupied Lilian. Nevertheless, while saying naught, she kept

thinking resentfully: "Here I worked over twenty hours on end and this

is my reward--a slating! This is my reward--a nice old slating!" With

fallen face and drooping lower lip she moved to leave. She was ready to

cry.

"And there's something else, Miss Share. Now please don't cry. When

Mr. Grig came up the night before last to tell you that I was unwell,

you ought not to have allowed him to stay. You know that he can't stand

night-work. Men are not like us women----"

"But how could I possibly----" Lilian interrupted, quite forgetting the

impulse to cry.

"You should have seen that he left again at once. It would have been

quite easy--especially for a girl like you. The result is that he's

been a wreck ever since. It seems he stayed till four o'clock and

after. I tried my best to stop him from coming at all; but he would

come.... Please, please, think over what I've said. Thank you."

Lilian felt all the soft, cruel, unopposable force of Miss Grig's

individuality. She vaguely and with inimical deference comprehended the

secret of Miss Grig's success in business. Youth and beauty and charm,

qualities so well appreciated by Felix, so rich in promise for Lilian,

were absolutely powerless against the armour of Miss Grig. To Miss Grig

Lilian was no better than a cross-eyed, flat-bosomed spinster of

thirty-nine. Not a bit better! Perhaps worse! Miss Grig actually had

the assurance to preach to Lilian the nauseous and unnatural doctrine

that men are by right entitled to the protection and self-sacrifice of

women.

Moreover, Miss Grig, without knowing it, had convinced Lilian that her

ideas concerning Lord Mackworth were the hallucinations of an

excessively silly and despicable kind of brain. And even if Lord

Mackworth did playfully attempt to continue the divertissement begun in

the romantic night, Miss Grig by the sureness of her perceptions and the

bland pitilessness of her tactics would undoubtedly counter him once and

for all. The two women, so acutely contrasted in age, form and

temperament, had this in common--that they secretly and unwillingly

respected each other. But the younger was at present no match at all

for the elder.

And yet Lilian was not cast down--neither by the realization of her

awful silliness and of her lack of the sense of responsibility, nor by

her powerlessness, nor by the awaking from the dream of Lord Mackworth.

On the contrary, she was quite uplifted and agreeably excited, and her

brain was working on lines of which Miss Grig had absolutely no notion

whatever. Miss Grig, obviously truthful, had said that she had tried to

prevent her brother from coming to the office on the last night but one.

Miss Grig had been ready enough to let Lilian stay till morning without

a word. But Felix had told Lilian that he had come to the office to

warn her at his sister's urgent request. Why had Felix lied?

The answer clearly was that he had had a fancy to chat with Lilian

alone, without Lilian suspecting his fancy. And in fact he had chatted

with Lilian alone, and to some purpose.... The answer was that Felix

was genuinely interested in Lilian. Further, Miss Grig suspected this

interest. If Gertie Jackson had happened to be on duty that evening,

would Miss Grig have opposed her brother's coming? She would not.

Finally, Miss Grig herself had confessed, perhaps unthinkingly, that

Lilian was not without influential attributes. The phrase "especially

for a girl like you" shone in the girl's mind.

She went into the small room, which was at the moment empty. The cover

had not been removed from her own machine, but the other two machines

were open, and Millicent's was ammunitioned with paper. Lilian could

hear Milly, who shared the small room with herself and Gertie Jackson,

dividing work and giving instructions in an important, curt voice to the

mere rabble of girls in the large room. To Lilian's practised sense

there was throughout the office an atmosphere of nervous disturbance and

unease. Mr. Grig being absent, she felt sure that before the end of the

day--probably just about tea-time--the electrical fluid would

concentrate itself in one spot and then explode in a tense, violent,

bitter and yet only murmured scene between two of the girls in the large

room--unless, of course, she herself and Millicent happened to get

across one another.

She took off her things and put them in the clothes cupboard. Gertie's

hat and jacket were absent, which meant that Gertie was already out

somewhere on the firm's business. Millicent's precious boa was present

instead of her thick scarf, which meant that Millicent was to meet at

night the insufferably pert young man from the new branch of Lloyds Bank

in Bond Street. The pert young man would dine Millicent at the Popular

Cafe in Piccadilly, where for as little as five shillings two persons

might have a small table to themselves, the aphrodisiac of music, and

the ingenuous illusion of seeing Life with a capital. Now Lilian never

connected Life with anything less than the Savoy, the Carlton, and the

Ritz. Lilian had been born with a sure instinct in these high matters.

She looked at the contents of the clothes-cupboard and despised them,

furiously--and in particular Millicent's boa; anybody could see what

that was; it would not deceive even a bank clerk. Not that Lilian

possessed any article of attire to surpass the boa in intrinsic worth!

She did not. But she felt no envy in regard to the boa, and indeed never

envied any girl the tenth-rate--no, nor the second-rate! Her desire was

for the best or nothing; she could not compromise. The neighbouring

shop-windows had effectively educated her because she was capable of

self-education. Millicent and Gertie actually preferred the inferior

displays of Oxford Street. She gazed in froward insolence at the

workroom full of stitching girls on the opposite side of the street.

They were toiling as though they had been toiling for hours. Customers

had not yet begun to be shown into the elegant apartment on the floor

below the workrooms. Customers were probably still sipping tea in bed

with a maid to help them, and some of them had certainly never been in a

Tube in their lives. Yet the workgirls, seen broadly across the street,

were on the average younger, prettier, daintier and more graceful than

the customers. Why then...? Etc.

The upper floors of all the surrounding streets were studded with such

nests of heads bent over needles. There were scores and scores of those

crowded rooms, excruciatingly feminine. "Modes et Robes"--a charming

vocation! You were always seeing and touching lovely stuff, laces,

feathers and confections of stuffs. A far more attractive occupation

than typewriting, Lilian thought. Sometimes she had dreamt of a change,

but not seriously. To work on other women's attire, knowing that she

could never rise to it herself, would have broken her heart.

Quickly she turned away from the window, still uplifted--passionately

determined that one day she would enter the most renowned and exclusive

arcana in Hanover Square, and not as an employee either! Then, on that

day, would she please with the virtuosity of a great pianist playing the

piano, then would she exert charm, then would she be angelic and divine;

and when she departed there should be a murmur of conversation. She

smiled her best in anticipation; her fingers ran smoothingly over her

blouse.

Gertie Jackson came in and transformed the rehearsed smile into an

expression of dissatisfaction and hostility far from divine; the fingers

dropped as it were guiltily; and Lilian remembered all her grievances

and her tragedy. Gertie Jackson's bright, pleasant, clear, drawn face

showed some traces of fatigue, but no sign at all of being a martyr to

the industrial system or to the despotism of individual employers. She

was a tall, well-made girl of twenty-eight, and she held herself rather

nicely. She was kindly, cheerful and of an agreeable temper--as placid

as a bowl of milk. She loved her work, regarding it as of real

importance, and she seemed to be entirely without ambition. Apparently

she would be quite happy to go on altruistically typing for ever and

ever, and to be cast into a typist's grave.

Lilian's attitude towards her senior colleague was in various respects

critical. In the first place, the poor thing did not realize that she

was growing old--already approaching the precipice of thirty! In the

second place, though possessed of a good figure and face, she did

nothing with these great gifts. She had no desire to be agreeable; she

was agreeable unconsciously, as a bird sings; there was no merit in it.

She had no coquetry, and not the slightest inclination for _chic_. Her

clothes were "good," and bought in Upper Street, Islington; her

excellent boots gave her away. She was not uninterested in men; but she

did not talk about them, she twittered about them. To Lilian she had

the soul of an infant. And she was too pure, too ingenuous, too kind,

too conscientious; her nature lacked something fundamental, and Lilian

felt but could not describe what it was--save by saying that she had no

kick in either her body or her soul. In the third place, there was that

terrible absence of ambition. Lilian could not understand contentment,

and Gertie's contentment exasperated her. She admitted that Gertie was

faultless, and yet she tremendously despised the paragon, occasionally

going so far as to think of her as a cat.

And now Gertie straightened herself, stuck her chest out bravely,

according to habit, and smiled a most friendly greeting. Behind the

smile lay concealed no resentment against Lilian for having failed to

appear on the previous evening, and no moral superiority as a

first-class devotee of duty. What lay behind it, and not wholly

concealed, was a grave sense of responsibility for the welfare of the

business in circumstances difficult and complex.

"Have you seen Miss Grig?" she asked solemnly.

"Yes," said Lilian, with a touch of careless defiance; she supposed

Gertie to be delicately announcing that Miss G. had been lying in wait

for her, Lilian.

"Doesn't she look simply frightfully ill?"

"She does," admitted Lilian, who in her egotism had quite forgotten her

first impression that morning of Miss G.'s face. "What is it?"

Gertie mentioned the dreadful name of one of those hidden though not

shameful maladies which afflict only women--but the majority of women.

The crude words sounded oddly on Gertie's prim lips. Lilian was duly

impressed; she was as if intimidated. At intervals the rumour of a

victim of that class of diseases runs whisperingly through assemblages

of women, who on the entrance of a male hastily change the subject of

talk and become falsely bright. Yet every male in the circle of

acquaintances will catch the rumour almost instantly, because some wife

runs to inform her husband, and the husband informs all his friends.

"Who told you?" Lilian demanded.

"Oh! I've known about it for a long time," said Gertie without pride.

"I told Milly just now, before I went out. Everybody will know soon."

Lilian felt a pang of jealousy. "It means a terrible operation," Gertie

added.

"But she oughtn't to be here!" Lilian exclaimed.

"No!" Gertie agreed with a surprising sternness that somewhat altered

Lilian's estimate of her. "No! And she isn't _going_ to be here,

either! Not if I know it! I shall see that she gets back home at

lunch-time. She's quarrelled already with Mr. Grig this morning about

her coming up."

"Do you mean at home they quarrelled?"

"Yes. He got so angry that he said if she came he wouldn't. He was

quite right to be angry, of course. But she came all the same."

"Miss G. must have told Gertie all that herself," Lilian reflected.

"She'd never be as confidential with me. She'd never tell me anything!"

And she had a queer feeling of inferiority.

"We must do all we can to help things," said Gertie.

"Of course!" agreed Lilian, suddenly softened, overcome by a rush of

sympathy and a strong impulse to behave nobly, beautifully, forgivingly

towards Miss G.

Nevertheless, though it was Gertie's attitude that had helped to inspire

her, she still rather disdained the virtuous senior. Lilian appreciated

profoundly--perhaps without being able to put her feeling into

words--the heroic madness of Miss G. in defying common sense and her

brother for the sake of the beloved business. But Gertie saw in Miss

G.'s act nothing but a piece of naughty and sick foolishness. To Lilian

Miss G. in her superficial yearning softness became almost a terrible

figure, a figure to be regarded with awe, and to serve as an exemplar.

But in contemplating Miss G. Lilian uneasily realized her own

precariousness. Miss G. was old and plain (save that her eyes had

beauty), and yet was fulfilling her great passion and was imposing

herself on her environment. Miss G. was _doing_. Lilian could only

_be_; she would always remain at the mercy of someone, and the success

which she desired could last probably no longer than her youth and

beauty. The transience of the gifts upon which she must depend

frightened her--but at the same time intensified anew her resolves. She

had not a moment to lose. And Gertie, standing there close to her,

sweet and reliable and good, in the dull cage, amid the daily

circumstances of their common slavery, would have understood nothing of

Lilian's obscure emotion.

III

Shut

The two girls had not settled to work when the door of the small room

was pushed cautiously open and Mr. Grig came in--as it were by stealth.

Milly, prolonging her sweet hour of authority in the large room, had not

yet returned to her mates. By a glance and a gesture Mr. Grig prevented

the girls from any exclamation of surprise. Evidently he was secreting

himself from his sister, and he must have entered the office without a

sound. He looked older, worn, worried, captious--as though he needed

balm and solace and treatment at once firm and infinitely soft. Lilian,

who a few minutes earlier had been recalcitrant to Miss Grig's theory

that women must protect men, now felt a desire to protect Mr. Grig, to

save him exquisitely from anxieties unsuited to his temperament.

He shut the door, and in the intimacy of the room faced the two girls,

one so devoted, the other perhaps equally devoted but whose devotion was

outshone by her brilliant beauty. For him both typists were very young,

but they were both women, familiar beings whom the crisis had

transformed from typists into angels of succour; and he had ceased to be

an employer and become a man who demanded the aid of women and knew how

to rend their hearts.

"Is she in there?" he snapped, with a movement of the head towards the

principals' room.

"Yes," breathed Lilian.

"Yes," said Gertie. "Oh! Mr. Grig, she ought never to have come out in

her state!"

"Well, God damn it, of course she oughtn't!" retorted Mr. Grig. His

language, unprecedented in that room, ought to have shocked the

respectable girls, but did not in the slightest degree. To judge from

their demeanour they might have been living all their lives in an

environment of blasphemous profanity. "Didn't I do everything I could

to keep her at home?"

"Oh! I know you did!" Gertie agreed sympathetically. "She told me."

"I made a hades of a row with her about it in the hope of keeping her in

the house. But it was no use. I swore I wouldn't move until she

returned. But of course I've got to do something. Look here, one of you

must go to her and tell her I'm waiting in a taxi downstairs to take her

home, and that I shall stick in it till she gives way, even if I'm there

all day. That ought to shift her. Tell her I've arranged for the

doctor to be at the house at a quarter to eleven. You'd better go and

do it, Miss Jackson. She's more likely to listen to you."

"Yes, do, Gertie! You go," Lilian seconded the instruction. Then:

"What's the matter, Gertie? What on earth's the matter?"

The paragon had suddenly blanched and she seemed to shiver: first sign

of acute emotion that Lilian had ever observed in the placid creature.

"It's nothing. I'm only---- It's really nothing."

And Gertie, who had not taken off her street-things, rose resolutely

from her chair. She, who a little earlier had seemed quite energetic

and fairly fresh after her night's work, now looked genuinely ill.

"You go along," Mr. Grig urged her, ruthlessly ignoring the symptoms

which had startled Lilian. "And mind how you do it, there's a good

creature. I'll get downstairs first." And he stepped out of the room.

The door opening showed tall, thin Millicent returning to her own work.

Mr. Grig pushed past her on tiptoe. As soon as Gertie had disappeared

on her mission into the principals' room, Lilian told Millicent, not

without an air of superiority, as of an Under-secretary of State to a

common member of Parliament, what was occurring. Millicent, who loved

"incidents," bit her lips in a kind of cruel pleasure. (She had a long,

straight, absolutely regular nose, and was born to accomplish the

domestic infelicity of some male clerk.) She made an excuse to revisit

the large room in order to spread the thrilling news.

Lilian stood just behind the still open door of the small room. A long

time elapsed. Then the door of the principals' room opened, and Lilian,

discreetly peeping, saw the backs of Miss Grig and Gertie Jackson. They

seemed to be supporting each other in their progress towards the outer

door. She wondered what the expressions on their faces might be; she

had no clue to the tenor of the scene which had ended in Gertie's

success, for neither of the pair spoke a word. How had Gertie managed

to beat the old fanatic?

After a little pause she went to the window and opened it and looked out

at the pavement below. The taxi was there. Two foreshortened figures

emerged from the building. Mr. Grig emerged from the taxi. Miss Grig

was induced into the vehicle, and to Lilian's astonishment Gertie

followed her. Mr. Grig entered last. As the taxi swerved away, a

little outcry of voices drew Lilian's attention to the fact that both

windows of the large room were open and full of clusters of heads. The

entire office, thanks to that lath, Millicent, was disorganized. Lilian

whipped in her own head like lightning.

At three o'clock she was summoned to the telephone. Mr. Grig was

speaking from a call-office.

"Miss Jackson's got influenza, the doctor says," he announced grimly.

"So she has to stay here. A nice handful for me. You'd better carry

on. I'll try to come up later. Miss Grig said something about some

accounts--I don't know."

Lilian, quite unable to check a feeling of intense, excited happiness,

replied with soothing, eager sympathy and allegiance, and went with

dignity into the principals' room, now for the moment lawfully at her

mercy. The accounts of the establishment were always done by Miss Grig,

and there was evidence on the desk that she had been obdurately at work

on bills when Gertie Jackson enticed her away. In the evening Lilian,

after a day's urgent toil at her machine, was sitting in Miss Grig's

chair in the principals' room, at grips with the day-book, the

night-book, the ledger and some bill-forms. Although experiencing some

of the sensations of a traveller lost in a forest (of which the trees

were numerals), she was saturated with bliss. She had dismissed the

rest of the staff at the usual hour, firmly refusing to let anybody

remain with her. Almost as a favour Millicent had been permitted to

purchase a night's food for her.

Just as the clock of St. George's struck eight, it occurred to her that

to allow herself to be found by Mr. Grig in the occupation of Miss

Grig's place might amount to a grave failure in tact; and hastily--for

he might arrive at any moment---she removed all the essential

paraphernalia to the small room. She had heard nothing further from Mr.

Grig, who, moreover, had not definitely promised to come, but she was

positive that he would come. However late the hour might be, he would

come. She would hear the outer door open; she would hear his steps; she

would see him; and he would see her, faithfully labouring all alone for

him, and eager to take a whole night-watch for the second time in a

week. For this hour she had made a special toilette, with much

attention to her magnificent hair. She looked spick-and-span and

enchanting.

Nor was she mistaken. Hardly had she arranged matters in her own room

when the outer door did open, and she did hear his steps. The divine

moment had arrived. He appeared in the doorway of the room. Rather to

her regret he was not in evening dress. (But how could he be?) Still,

he had a marvellous charm and his expression was less worried. He was

almost too good to be true. She greeted him with a smile that combined

sorrow and sympathy and welcome, fidelity and womanly comprehension, the

expert assistant and the beautiful young Eve. She was so discomposed by

the happiness of realization that at first she scarcely knew what either

of them was saying, and then she seemed to come to herself and she

caught Mr. Grig's voice clearly in the middle of a sentence:'

"... with a temperature of 104. The doctor said it would be madness to

send her to Islington. This sort of influenza takes you like this, it

appears. I shall have it myself next.... What are you supposed to be

doing? Bills, eh?"

He looked hard at her, and her eyes dropped before his experienced

masculine gaze. She liked him to be wrinkled and grey, to be thirty

years older than herself, to be perhaps even depraved. She liked to

contrast her innocent freshness with his worn maturity. She liked it

that he had not shown the slightest appreciation of her loyalty. He

spoke only vaguely of Miss Grig's condition; it was not a topic meet for

discussion between them, and with a few murmured monosyllables she let

it drop.

"I do hope you aren't thinking of staying, Mr. Grig," she said next. "I

shall be perfectly all right by myself, and the bills will occupy me

till something comes in."

"I'm not going to stay. Neither are you," replied Mr. Grig curtly.

"We'll shut the place up."

Her face fell.

"But----"

"We'll shut up for to-night."

"But we're supposed to be always open! Supposing some work does come in!

It always does----"

"No doubt. But we're going to shut up the place--at once." There was

fatigue in his voice.

Tears came into Lilian's eyes. She had expected him, in answer to her

appeal to him to depart, to insist on staying with her. She had been

waiting for heaven to unfold. And now he had decided to break the

sacred tradition and close the office. She could not master her tears.

"Don't worry," he said in tones suddenly charged with tenderness and

sympathetic understanding. "It can't be helped. I know just how you

feel, and don't you imagine I don't. You've been splendid. But I had

to promise Isabel I'd shut the office to-night. She's in a very bad

state, and I did it to soothe her. You know she hates me to be here at

nights--thinks I'm not strong enough for it."

"That's not her reason to-night," said Lilian to herself. "I know her

reason to-night well enough!"

But she gave Mr. Grig a look grateful for his exquisite compassion,

which had raised him in her sight to primacy among men.

Obediently she let herself be dismissed first, leaving him behind, but

in the street she looked up at her window. The words "Open day and

night" on the blind were no longer silhouetted against a light within.

The tradition was broken. On the way to the Dover Street Tube she did

not once glance behind her to see if he was following.

IV

The Vizier

Late in the afternoon of the following day Mr. Grig put his head inside

the small room.

"Just come here, Miss Share," he began, and then, seeing that Millicent

was not at her desk, he appeared to decide that he might as well speak

with Lilian where she was.

He had been away from the office most of the day, and even during his

presences had seemingly taken no part in its conduct. Much work had

been received, some of it urgent, and Lilian, typing at her best speed,

had the air of stopping with reluctance to listen to whatever the

useless and wandering man might have to say. He merely said:

"We shall close to-night, like last night."

"Oh, but, Mr. Grig," Lilian protested--and there was no sign of a tear

this time--"we can't possibly keep on closing. We had one complaint

this morning about being closed last night. I didn't tell you because I

didn't want to worry you."

"Now listen to me," Mr. Grig protested in his turn, petulantly.

"Nothing worries me more than the idea that people are keeping things

from me in order that I shan't be worried. My sister was always doing

that; she was incurable, but I'm not going to have it from anyone else.

If you hide things, why are you silly enough to let out afterwards that

you were hiding them and why you were hiding them? That's what I can't

understand."

"Sorry, Mr. Grig," Lilian apologized briefly and with sham humility,

humouring the male in such a manner that he must know he was being

humoured.

His petulancy charmed her. It gave him youth, and gave her age and

wisdom. He had good excuse for it--Miss Grig had been moved into a

nursing home preparatory to an operation, and Gertie was stated to be

very ill in his house--and she enjoyed excusing him. It was implicit in

every tone of his voice that they were now definitely not on terms of

employer and employee.

"That's all right! That's all right!" he said, mollified by her

discreet smile. "But close at six. I'm off."

"I really don't think we ought to close," she insisted, with firmness in

her voice followed by persuasion in her features, and she brushed back

her hair with a gesture of girlishness that could not be ineffective.

He hesitated, frowning. She went on: "If it gets about that we're

closing night after night, we're bound to lose a lot of customers. I

can perfectly well stay here."

"Yes! And be no use at all to-morrow!"

"I should be here to-morrow just the same. If other girls can do it,

why can't I?" (A touch of harshness in the question.) "Oh, Milly!" she

exclaimed, neglecting to call Milly Miss Merrislate, according to the

custom by which in talking to the principals everybody referred to

everybody else as "Miss." "Oh, Milly!"--Millicent appeared behind Mr.

Grig at the door and he nervously made way for her--"here's Mr. Grig

wants to close again to-night! I'm sure we really oughtn't to. I've

told Mr. Grig I'll stay--and be here to-morrow too. Don't you agree we

mustn't close?"

Millicent was flattered by the frank appeal as an equal from one whom

she was already with annoyance beginning to regard as a superior. From

timidity in Mr. Grig's presence she looked down her too straight nose,

but she nodded affirmatively her narrow head, and as soon as she had

recovered from the disturbing novelty of deliberately opposing the

policy of an employer she said to Lilian:

"I'll stay with you if you like. There's plenty to do, goodness knows!"

"You are a dear!" Lilian exclaimed, just as if they had been alone

together in the room.

"Oh, well, have it as you like!" Mr. Grig rasped, and left, defeated.

"Is he vexed?" Milly demanded after he had gone.

"Of course not! He's very pleased, really. But he has to save his

face."

Milly gave Lilian a scarcely conscious glance of admiration, as a woman

better versed than herself in the mysteries of men, and also as a woman

of unsuspected courage. And she behaved like an angel through the whole

industrious night--so much so that Lilian was nearly ready to admit to

an uncharitable premature misjudgment of the girl.

"And now what are you going to do about keeping open?" inquired Mr.

Grig, with bland, grim triumph the next afternoon to the exhausted

Lilian and the exhausted Millicent. "I thought I'd let you have your

own way last night. But you can't see any further than your noses,

either of you. You're both dead."

"I can easily stay up another night," said Lilian desperately, but

Millicent said nothing.

"No doubt!" Mr. Grig sneered. "You look as if you could! And supposing

you do, what about to-morrow night? The whole office is upset, and, of

course, people must go and choose just this time to choke us with work!"

"Well, anyhow, we can't close," Lilian stoutly insisted.

"No!" Mr. Grig unexpectedly agreed. "Miss Merrislate, you know most

about the large room. You'd better pick two of 'em out of there, and

tell 'em they must stay and do the best they can by themselves. But

that won't carry us through. _I_ certainly shan't sit up, and I won't

have you two sitting up every second night in turn. There's only one

thing to do. I must engage two new typists at once--that's clear. We

may as well face the situation. Where do we get 'em from?"

But neither Lilian nor Milly knew just how Miss Grig was in the habit of

finding recruits to the staff. Each of them had been taken on through

private connexions. Gertie Jackson would probably have known how to

proceed, but Gertie was down with influenza.

"I'll tell you what I shall do," said Mr. Grig at last. "I'll get an

advertisement into to-morrow's _Daily Chronicle_. That ought to do the

trick. This affair's got to be handled quickly. When the applicants

come you'd better deal with 'em, Miss Share--in my room. I shan't be

here to-morrow."

He spoke scornfully, and would not listen to offers of help in the

matter of the advertisement. He would see to it himself, and wanted no

assistance, indeed objected to assistance as being merely troublesome.

The next day was the day of Miss Grig's operation, and the apprehension

of it maddened this affectionate and cantankerous brother. Millicent

left the small room to bestow upon two chosen members of the rabble in

the large room the inexpressible glory of missing a night's sleep.

On the following morning, when Lilian, refreshed, arrived zealously at

the office half an hour earlier than usual, she found three aspirants

waiting to apply for the vacant posts. The advertisement had been drawn

up and printed; the newspaper had been distributed and read, and the

applicants, pitifully eager, had already begun to arrive from the ends

of London. Sitting in Miss Grig's chair, Lilian nervously interviewed

and examined them. One of the three gave her age as thirty-nine, and

produced yellowed testimonials. By ten o'clock twenty-three suitors had

come, and Lilian, frightened by her responsibilities, had impulsively

engaged a couple, who took off hats and jackets and began to work at

once. She had asked Millicent to approve of the final choice, but

Millicent, intensely jealous and no longer comparable to even the lowest

rank of angel, curtly declined.

"You're in charge," Millicent said acidly. "Don't you try to push it on

to me, Miss Lilian Share."

Aspirants continued to arrive. Lilian had the clever idea of sticking a

notice on the outer door: "All situations filled. No typists required."

But aspirants continued to enter, and all of them averred positively

that they had not seen the notice on the door. Lilian told a junior to

paste four sheets of typing paper together, and she inscribed the notice

on the big sheet in enormous characters. But aspirants continued to

enter, and all of them averred positively that they had not seen the

notice on the door. It was dreadful, it was appalling, because Lilian

was saying to herself: "I may be like them one day." Millicent, on the

other hand, disdained the entire procession, and seized the agreeable

role of dismissing applicants as fast as they came.

In the evening Mr. Grig appeared. The operation had been a success.

Gertie Jackson was, if anything, a little worse; but the doctor

anticipated an improvement. Mr. Grig showed not the least interest in

his business. Lilian took the night duty alone.

Thenceforward the office settled gradually into its new grooves, and,

though there was much less efficiency than under Miss Grig, there was

little friction. Everybody except Millicent regarded Lilian as the grand

vizier, and Millicent's demeanour towards Lilian was by turns

fantastically polite and fantastically indifferent.

A fortnight passed. The two patients were going on well, and it was

stated that there was a possibility of them being sent together to

Felixstowe for convalescence. Mr. Grig's attendance grew more regular,

but he did little except keep the books and make out the bills; in which

matter he displayed a facility that amazed Lilian, who really was not a

bit arithmetical.

One day, entering the large room after hours, Lilian saw Millicent

typing on a machine not her own. As she passed she read the words: "My

darling Gertie. I simply can't tell you how glad I was to get your

lovely letter." And it flashed across her that Millicent would relate

all the office doings to Gertie, who would relate them to Miss Grig.

She had a spasm of fear, divining that Millicent would misrepresent her.

In what phrases had Millicent told that Lilian had sat in Miss Grig's

chair and interviewed applicants for situations! Was it not strange

that Gertie had not written to her, Lilian, nor she even thought of

writing to Gertie? Too late now for her to write to Gertie! A few days

later Mr. Grig said to Lilian in the small room:'

"You're very crowded here, aren't you?"

The two new-comers had been put into the small room, being of a superior

sort and not fitted to join the rabble.

"Oh, no!" said Lilian. "We're quite comfortable, thank you."

"You don't seem to be very comfortable. It occurs to me it would be

better in every way if you brought your machine into my room."

An impulse, and an error of judgment, on Felix's part! But he was

always capricious.

"I should prefer to stay where I am," Lilian answered, not smiling.

What a letter Millicent would have written in order to describe Lilian's

promotion to the principals' room!

Often, having made a mistake, Felix would persist in it from obstinacy.

"Oh! As you like!" he muttered huffily, instead of recognizing by his

tone that Lilian was right. But the next moment he repeated, very

softly and kindly: "As you like! It's for you to decide." He had not

once shown the least appreciation of, or gratitude for, Lilian's zeal.

On the contrary, he had been in the main querulous and censorious. But

she did not mind. She was richly rewarded by a single benevolent

inflection of that stirring voice. She seemed to have forgotten that

she was born for pleasure, luxury, empire. Work fully satisfied her,

but it was work for him. The mere suggestion that she should sit in his

room filled her with deep joy.

V

The Martyr

Miss Grig came back to the office on a Thursday, and somewhat

mysteriously. Millicent, no doubt from information received through

Gertie Jackson, had been hinting for several days that the return would

not be long delayed; but Mr. Grig had said not one word about the matter

until the Wednesday evening, when he told Lilian, with apparent

casualness, as she was leaving for the night, that his sister might be

expected the next morning. As for Miss Jackson, she would resume her

duties only on the Monday, having family affairs to transact at

Islington. Miss Jackson, it seemed, had developed into the trusted

companion and intimate--almost ally, if the term were not

presumptuous--of the soul and dynamo of the business. Miss Grig and she

had suffered together, they had solaced and strengthened each other; and

Gertie, for all her natural humility, was henceforth to play in the

office a role superior to that of a senior employee. She had already

been endowed with special privileges, and among these was the privilege

of putting the interests of Islington before the interests of Clifford

Street.

The advent of Miss Grig, of course, considerably agitated the office and

in particular the small room, two of whose occupants had never seen the

principal of whose capacity for sustained effort they had heard such

wonderful and frightening tales.

At nine-thirty that Thursday morning it was reported in both rooms that

Miss Grig had re-entered her fortress. Nobody had seen her, but ears

had heard her, and, moreover, it was mystically known by certain signs,

as, for example, the reversal of a doormat which had been out of

position for a week, that a higher presence was immanent in the place

and that the presence could be none other than Miss Grig. Everybody

became an exemplar of assiduity, amiability, and entire

conscientiousness. Everybody prepared a smile; and there was a

universal wish for the day to be over.

Shortly after ten o'clock Miss Grig visited the small room, shook hands

with Lilian and Millicent, and permitted the two new typists to be

presented to her. Millicent spoke first and was so effusive in the

expression of the delight induced in her by the spectacle of Miss Grig

and of her sympathy for the past and hope for the future of Miss Grig's

health, that Lilian, who nevertheless did her best to be winning, could

not possibly compete with her. Miss Grig had a purified and chastened

air, as of one detached by suffering from the grossness and folly of the

world, and existing henceforth in the world solely from a cold,

passionate sense of duty. Her hair was greyer, her mild equable voice

more soft, and her burning eyes had a brighter and more unearthly

lustre. She said that she was perfectly restored, let fall that Mr.

Grig had gone away at her request for a short, much-needed holiday, and

then passed smoothly on to the large room.

After a while a little flapper of a beginner came to tell Millicent that

Miss Grig wanted her. Millicent, who had had charge of the petty cash

during the interregnum, was absent for forty minutes. When she

returned, flushed but smiling, to her expectant colleagues, she informed

Lilian that Miss Grig desired to see her at twelve o'clock.

"I notice there's an account here under the name of Lord Mackworth,"

Miss Grig began, having allowed Lilian to stand for a few seconds before

looking up from the ledger and other books in which she was apparently

absorbed. She spoke with the utmost gentleness, and fixed her

oppressive deep eyes on Lilian's.

"Yes, Miss Grig?"

"It hasn't been paid."

"Oh!" Lilian against an intense volition began to blush.

"Didn't you know?"

"I didn't," said Lilian.

"But you've been having something to do with the books during my

absence."

"I did a little at first," Lilian admitted. "Then Mr. Grig saw to

them."

"Miss Merrislate tells me that you had quite a lot to do with them, and

I see your handwriting in a number of places here."

"I've had nothing to do with them for about three weeks--I should think

at least three weeks, and--and of course I expected the bill would be

paid by this time."

"But you never asked?"

"No. It never occurred to me."

This statement was inaccurate. Lilian had often wondered whether Lord

Mackworth had paid his bill, but, from some obscurely caused

self-consciousness, she had not dared to make any inquiry. She felt

herself to be somehow "mixed up" with Lord Mackworth, and had absurdly

feared that if she mentioned the name there might appear on the face or

in the voice of the detestable Milly some sinister innuendo.

"Miss Merrislate tells me that she didn't trouble about the account as

she supposed it was your affair."

"My affair!" exclaimed Lilian impulsively. "It's no more my affair than

anybody else's." She surmised in the situation some ingenious

malevolence of the flat-breasted mischief-maker.

"But you did the work?"

"Yes. It came in while I was on duty that night, and I did it at once.

There was no one else to do it."

"Who brought it in?"

"Lord Mackworth."

"Did you know him?"

"Certainly not. I didn't know him from Adam."

"Never mind Adam, Miss Share," observed Miss Grig genially. "Has Lord

Mackworth been in since?"

"If he has I've not seen him," Lilian answered defiantly.

Miss Grig's geniality exasperated her because it did not deceive her.

"I'm only asking for information," Miss Grig said with a placatory

smile. "I see the copies were delivered at six-thirty in the morning.

Who delivered the job?"

"I did."

"Where?"

"At his address. I dropped it into the letter-box on my way home after

my night's work. I stayed here because somebody had to stay, and I did

the best I could."

"I'm quite sure of that," Miss Grig agreed. "And, of course, you've been

paid for all overtime--and there's been quite a good deal. We all do

the best we can. At least, I hope so.... And you've never seen Lord

Mackworth since?"

"No."

"And you simply dropped the envelope into the letter-box?"

"Yes."

"Didn't see Lord Mackworth that morning?"

"Certainly not."

By this time Lilian was convinced that Miss Grig's intention was to

provoke her to open resentment. She guessed also that Milly must have

deliberately kept silence to her, Lilian, about the Mackworth account in

the hope of trouble on Miss Grig's return, and that Milly had done

everything she could that morning to ensure trouble. The pot had been

simmering in secret for weeks; now it was boiling over. She felt

helpless and furious.

"You know," Miss Grig proceeded, "there's a rule in this office that

night-work must only be delivered by hand by the day-staff the next day.

If it's wanted urgently before the day-staff arrives the customer must

fetch it."

"Excuse me, Miss Grig, I never heard of that rule."

Miss Grig smiled again: "Well, at any rate, it was your business to have

heard of it, my dear. Everybody else knows about it."

"I told Mr. Grig I was going to deliver it myself, and he didn't say

anything."

"Please don't attempt to lay the blame on my brother. He is far too

good-natured." Miss Grig's gaze burned into Lilian's face as, with an

enigmatic intonation, she uttered these words. "You did wrong. And I

suppose you've never heard either of the rule that new customers must

always pay on or before delivery?"

"Yes, I have. But I couldn't ask for the money at half-past six in the

morning, could I? And I couldn't tell him how much it would be before

I'd typed it."

"Yes, you could, my dear, and you ought to have done. You could have

estimated it and left a margin for errors. That was the proper course.

And if you know anything about Lord Mackworth you must know that his

debts are notorious. I believe he's one of the fastest young men about

town, and it's more than possible that that account's a bad debt."

"But can't we send in the account again?" Lilian weakly suggested; she

was overthrown by the charge of fast-living against Lord Mackworth, yet

she had always in her heart assumed that he was a fast liver.

"I've just telephoned to 6a St. James's Street, and I needn't say that

Lord Mackworth is no longer there, and they don't know where he is. You

see what comes of disobeying rules."

Lilian lifted her head: "Well, Miss Grig, the bill isn't so very big,

and if you'll please deduct it from my wages on Saturday I hope that

will be the end of that."

It was plain that the bewildered creature had but an excessively

imperfect notion of how to be an employee. She had taken to the

vocation too late in life.

Miss Grig put her hand to the support of her forehead, and paused.

"I can tolerate many things," said she, with great benignity, "but not

insolence."

"I didn't mean to be insolent."

"You did. And I think you had better accept a week's notice from

Saturday. No. On second thoughts, I'll pay your wages up to Saturday

week now and you can go at once." She smiled kindly. "That will give

you time to turn round."

"Oh! Very well, if it's like that!"

Miss Grig unlocked a drawer; and while she was counting the money Lilian

thought despairingly that if Mr. Grig, or even if the nice Gertie, had

been in the office, the disaster could not have occurred.

Miss Grig shook hands with her and wished her well.

"Where are you going to? It's not one o'clock yet," asked Millicent in

the small room as Lilian silently unhooked her hat and jacket from the

clothes-cupboard.

"Out."

"What for?"

"For Miss G., if you want to know."

And she left. Except her clothes, not a thing in the office belonged to

her. She had no lien, no attachment. The departure was as simple and

complete as leaving a Tube train. No word! No good-bye! Merely a

disappearance.

VI

The Invitation

She walked a mile eastwards along Oxford Street before entering a

teashop, in order to avoid meeting any of the girls, all of whom, except

the very youngest and the very stingiest, distributed themselves among

the neighbouring establishments for the absurdly insufficient snack

called lunch. Every place was full just after one o'clock, and crammed

at one-fifteen. She asked for a whole meat pie instead of a half, for

she felt quite unusually hungry. A plot! That was what it was! A plot

against her, matured by Miss G. in a few minutes out of Milly's

innuendoes written to Gertie and spoken to Miss G. herself. And the

reason of the plot was Miss G.'s spinsterish, passionate fear of a

friendship between Felix Grig and Lilian! Lilian was ready to believe

that Miss G. had engineered the absence of both her brother and Gertie

so as to be free to work her will without the possibility of

complications. If Miss G. hated her, she hated Miss G. with at least an

equal fierceness--the fierceness of an unarmed victim. The injustice of

the world staggered her. She thought that something ought to be done

about it. Even Lord Mackworth was gravely to blame, for not having paid

his bill. Still, that detail had not much importance, because Miss G.,

deprived of one pretext, would soon have found another. After all that

she, Lilian, had done for the office, to be turned off at a moment's

notice, and without a character--for Miss G. would never give a

reference, and Lilian would never ask for a reference! Never! Nor

would she nor could she approach Felix Grig; nor Gertie either. Perhaps

Felix Grig might communicate with her. He certainly ought to do so.

But then, he was very casual, forgetful and unconsciously cruel.

All the men and girls in the packed tea-shop had work behind them and

work in front of them. They knew where they were; they had a function

on the earth. She, Lilian, had nothing, save a couple of weeks' wages

and perhaps a hundred pounds in the Post Office Savings Bank.

Resentment against her father flickered up anew from its ashes in her

heart.

How could she occupy herself after lunch? Unthinkable for her to go to

her lodging until the customary hour, unless she could pretend to be

ill; and if she feigned illness the well-disposed slavey would be after

her and would see through the trick at once, and it would be all over

the house that something had happened to Miss Share. The afternoon was

an enormous trackless expanse which had to be somehow traversed by a

weary and terribly discouraged wayfarer. Her father had been in the

habit of conducting his family on ceremonial visits to the public art

galleries. She went to the Wallace Collection, and saw how millionaires

lived in the 'seventies, and how the unchaste and lovely ladies were

dressed for whom entire populations were sacrificed in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries. Thence to a cinema near the Marble Arch, and

saw how virtue infallibly wins after all.

When, after travelling countless leagues of time and ennui, she reached

home she received a note from Mr. Pladda inviting her to the Hammersmith

Palais de Danse for the following night. Mr. Pladda was the star lodger

in the house--a man of forty-five, legally separated from his wife but

of impeccable respectability and decorum. His illusion was that he

could dance rather well. Mr. Pladda was evidently coming on.

The next morning, which was very fine, Lilian spent in Hyde Park,

marshalling her resources. Beyond her trifling capital she had none.

Especially she had no real friends. She had unwisely cut loose from her

parents' acquaintances, and she could not run after them now that she

was in misfortune. Her former colleagues? Out of the question! Gertie

might prove a friend, but Gertie must begin; Lilian could not begin.

Lord Mackworth? Silly idea! She still thought of Lord Mackworth

romantically. He was an unattainable hero at about the same level as

before in her mind, for while his debts had lowered him his advertised

dissoluteness had mysteriously raised him. (Yet in these hours and days

Mr. Pladda himself was not more absolutely respectable and decorous, in

mind and demeanour, than Lilian.) She went to two cinemas in the

afternoon, and, safe in the darkness of the second one, cried silently.

But with Mr. Pladda at the Palais de Danse she was admirably cheerful,

and Mr. Pladda was exceedingly proud of his companion, who added refined

manners to startling beauty. She delicately praised his dancing,

whereupon he ordered lemon squashes and tomato sandwiches. At the

little table she told him calmly that she was leaving her present

situation and taking another.

Back in her room she laughed with horrid derision. And as soon as she

was in bed the clockwork mice started to run round and round in her

head. A plot! A plot! What a burning shame! What a burning shame! ...

A few weeks earlier she had actually been bestowing situations on

pitiful applicants. Now she herself had no situation and no prospect of

any. She had never had to apply for a situation. She had not been

educated to applying for situations. She could not imagine herself ever

applying for a situation. She had not the least idea how to begin to

try to get a situation. She passed the greater part of Sunday in bed,

and in the evening went to church and felt serious and good.

On Monday morning she visited the Post Office and filled up a withdrawal

form for forty pounds. She had had a notion of becoming a companion to a

rich lady, or private secretary to a member of Parliament. She would

advertise. Good clothes, worn as she could wear them, would help her.

(She could not face another situation in an office. No, she couldn't.)

The notion of a simpleton, of course! But she was still a simpleton.

The notion, however, was in reality only a pretext for obtaining some

good clothes. All her life she had desired more than anything a smart

dress. There was never a moment in her life when she was less entitled

to indulge herself; but she felt desperate. She was taking to clothes

as some take to brandy. On the Wednesday she received the money: a

colossal, a marvellous sum. She ran off with it and nervously entered a

big shop in Wigmore Street; the shop was a wise choice on her part, for

it combined smartness with a discreet and characteristic Englishness.

Impossible to have the dangerous air of an adventuress in a frock bought

at that shop!

The next few days were spent in exactly fitting and adapting the

purchases to her body. She had expended the forty pounds and drawn out

eight more. Through the medium of the slavey she borrowed a mirror, and

fixed it at an angle with her own so that she could see her back. She

was so interested and absorbed that she now and then neglected to feel

unhappy and persecuted. She neglected also to draw up an advertisement,

postponing that difficult matter until the clothes should be finished.

But the house gathered that Miss Share had got her new situation. One

afternoon, early, returning home after a search for white elastic in

Hammersmith, she saw Mr. Grig coming away from the house. She stood

still, transfixed; she flushed hotly, and descried a beneficent and just

God reigning in heaven. She knew she was saved; and the revulsion in

her was nearly overwhelming. A miracle! And yet--not a miracle at all;

for Mr. Grig was bound by every consideration of honour and decency to

get into communication with her sooner or later. Her doubts of his

integrity had been inexcusable.

"I've just left a note for you," he said, affecting carelessness. "I

brought it down myself because I couldn't remember whether your number

was 56 or 65, and I had to inquire. Moreover, it's urgent. I want to

talk to you. Will you dine with me to-night at the Devonshire

Restaurant, Jermyn Street? Eight o'clock. I shan't be able to dress,

so you could wear a hat. Yes or no?..." He was gone again in a moment.

Lilian literally ran upstairs to her room in order to be alone with her

ecstatic happiness. She hugged it, kissed it, smothered it; then read

the wonderful note three times, and reviewed all her new clothes.

VII

The Avowal

As Lilian armed herself for the field she discovered that, after all her

care, she had omitted to provide several small details, the absence of

each of which seemed for a few moments in turn to be a disaster. But on

the whole she was well satisfied with the total effectiveness. The

slattern, who had been furtively summoned, and who was made to wash her

hands before touching a hook-and-eye, expressed, in whispers, an

admiring amazement which enheartened Lilian in spite of its uninformed

quality. The girl, as if bewitched, followed the vision down to the

front door.

"If it rains you're ruined, miss," said the girl anxiously, glancing up

into the heavy darkness where not a star was to be seen. "You ought for

to have an umbrella."

Lilian shook her head.

"It won't rain," she answered cheerfully.

But as soon as she was fairly away from the house she felt, or thought

she felt, a drop of rain, and, seeing a taxi, she impulsively hailed it,

wishing to heaven the next instant that she had not been so audacious.

For although twice with her father and mother she had ridden in taxis on

very great occasions, she had never in her life actually taken one by

herself. Her voice failed and broke as she said to the driver:

"Devonshire Restaurant, Jermyn Street"; but the driver was proficient in

comprehension, and the Devonshire Restaurant in Jermyn Street seemed to

be as familiar to him as Charing Cross Station.

In the taxi she collected herself. She thought she was all right except

for her lips. She knew that her lips ought to have been slightly

coloured, but she thought she also knew what was the best lip-stick and

she had not been able to get it in Hammersmith. As for her nails, she

was glad that it had been impossible for her to tint them. She must

remember that she was a typist, and though typists, and even discharged

typists, generally help their lips to be crimson on state-nights, they

do not usually tint their nails--unless they have abandoned discretion.

Lilian was glad when justifying rain began to fall. While she paid the

driver at her destination, a commissionaire held a vast umbrella over

her fragile splendour.

Her legs literally shook as she entered the restaurant, exactly as once

they had shaken in an air-raid. Within was a rich, tiny little

waiting-room with a view of the dining-room beyond. She hesitated

awkwardly, for owing to the taxi she was nearly a quarter of an hour too

early. A respectful attendant said:

"Are you expecting anyone, madam?"

"Yes."

"What name, madam?"

"Mr. Grig."

"Oh yes, madam. His table is booked."

She had sat down. She could now inspect herself in half a dozen large

mirrors, and she almost ceased to fear for her appearance. It was her

deportment and demeanour that now troubled her. In this matter she was

disturbingly aware that she had both to unlearn and to learn. She

looked through the glass partition into the restaurant. It was small

but sumptuous; and empty of diners save for a couple of women who were

smoking and eating simultaneously. People, chiefly in couples, kept

arriving and passing through the antechamber. She picked up a copy of

_What's On_, pretending to study it but studying the arrivals. Then she

felt a man come in and glimpsed the attendant pointing to herself. Mr.

Grig could not entirely conceal his astonishment at the smartness of her

appearance. He had in fact not immediately recognized her. His

surprised pleasure and appreciation gave her both pleasure and

confidence.

"I'm not late," he said, resuming rapidly his rather quizzical

matter-of-factness.

"No. I was too early."

The attendant took Mr. Grig's overcoat like a sacred treasure; he was

shown to be in a dark blue suit; and they passed to the restaurant.

Lilian thought:

"Anyway, he can't think I've bought these clothes specially for this

affair, because he only asked me this afternoon."

The table reserved was in a corner. Lilian had a full view of the whole

restaurant, while Mr. Grig had a full view of nothing but Lilian. For a

girl in Lilian's situation he was an ideal host, for the reason that he

talked just as naturally--and in particular curtly--as if they had been

at the office together. When a waiter shackled in silver approached with

the wine list, he asked:

"What wine do you prefer?"

"Whatever you prefer," she replied, with a prompt and delicious smile.

"Oh, no!" he protested. "That won't do at all. If a woman's given the

choice she ought to choose. She must submit ideas, at any rate.

Otherwise we shall go wandering all through the wine list and finally

settle on something neither of us wants."

Lilian had learnt a little about wines (she had sipped often from the

paternal glass), and also about good plain cooking.

"Burgundy," she said.

Without another word Mr. Grig turned to the Burgundy page, and while he

was selecting Lilian took off her gloves and gazed timidly around. It

was the silver table-lamps, each glowing under a canopy of orange, that

impressed her more than anything else. She saw shoulders, bosoms,

pearls, white shirt-fronts, black backs--the room was still filling--all

repeated in gilt mirrors. The manner of the numerous waiters

corresponded to her notion of court chamberlains. This was the first

high-class restaurant she had ever seen, and despite her nervousness she

felt more at home in it, more exultingly happy in it, than anywhere

before in all her existence. She passionately loved it, and her beauty

seemed to increase in radiance. She liked to think that it was

extremely costly. Compare it to the Palais de Danse, Mr. Pladda, and

the tomato sandwiches! Ah! It was the genuine article at last! She

took surreptitious glances also at Mr. Grig's bent face; and the face

was so strange to her, though just the same as of old, that she might

have been seeing it for the first time. The greatness, the enormity of

the occasion, frightened her. What were they doing there together? And

what in the future would they do together? Was he really and seriously

attracted by her? Was she in love with him? Or was it all a curious

and dangerous deception? She had always understood that when one was in

love one knew definitely that one was in love. Whereas she was sure of

nothing whatever. Nevertheless she was uplifted into a beatific,

irrational and reckless joy. Never had she felt as she felt while Mr.

Grig was selecting the Burgundy.

"Now we'd better be getting to business," said he, when the hors

_d'oeuvre_ had been removed and the soup served. "I had a letter from

my sister this morning. She wrote--wait a minute!" He pulled a letter

from his pocket and read out: "'I'm sorry to say I've been compelled to

get rid of poor Lilian Share. She's a nice enough girl in her way, but

when you're not here I'm in charge of this office, and as she couldn't

treat me with the respect due to me, I had to decide at once what to do,

and I did decide. I treated her generously, and I hope she'll soon get

another place. She will, of course, because she can be so very

attractive _when she likes_'--underlined--'but I fear she isn't likely

to keep it unless she changes her style of behaviour.'" He smacked the

letter together and returned it to his pocket. "There, you see! I'm

being remarkably frank with you. I came up from Brighton on purpose to

tell you, and I'm going, back by the last train to-night. My sister is

quite unaware of this escapade. In fact, at the moment I'm leading a

double life. Now! I've given you one version of this mighty incident.

Give me your version."

Lilian, troubled, looked at her mother's engagement ring on her

finger--the sole jewel she carried--and smiled with acute restraint at

her plate.

"_Have_ you got another situation? I suppose not," Mr. Grig went on.

"No--not yet."

"Have you tried for one?"

"No."

"Then what are you about?"

"Oh! My father left me a little money--very little, but I'm not

starving."

"So I should judge.... Well, tell me all about it."

"I didn't mean to be rude to her--really I didn't. It was about a small

bill of Lord Mackworth's."

She related the episode in detail, repeating the conversation with

marvellous exactitude, but with too many "she saids, she saids" and "I

saids, I saids." Mr. Grig laughed when she came to the offer to pay the

bill herself, and after a moment she gave a slight responsive smile.

She was very careful not to make or even to imply the least charge

against Miss Grig, and she accomplished the duplicity with much skill.

"I can promise you one thing," said Mr. Grig. "The moment I get back

I'll see that Milly is sacked. I cannot stick that bag of bones."

"_Please_ don't!"

"You don't want me to?"

Lilian shook her head slowly.

"All right, then. I won't. Now I'll tell you the whole business in a

nutshell. My sister's a great woman. She's perfectly mad, but she's a

great woman. Only where I'm concerned she's always most monstrously

unscrupulous. I'm her religion--always was, but more than ever since I

bought that amusing business. She was dying of boredom. It saved her.

When I got myself divorced she was absolutely delighted. She had me to

herself again. Her jealousy where I'm concerned is ferocious. She can't

help it, but it's ferocious. Tigresses aren't in it with her. She was

jealous of you, and she'd determined to clear you out. I've perceived

that for a long time."

"But why should she be jealous of me? I'm sure I've never----"

"Well, she's damned clever, Isabel is, and she's seen that I'm in love

with you. Gone--far gone!"

He spoke with strange detachment, as of another person.

The thud-thud of Lilian's heart appalled her. She blushed down to her

neck. Her hand shook. The restaurant and all its inhabitants vanished

in a cloud and then slowly reappeared. Her confusion of mind was

terrible. She was shocked, outraged, by the negligently brutal candour

of the avowal; and at the same time she was thinking: "I'd no idea that

any man was as marvellous as this man is, and I don't think there can

possibly be another man quite as marvellous anywhere. And his being in

love with me is the most ravishing, lovely, tender--tender--tender thing

that ever happened to any girl. And, of course, he is in love with me.

He's not pretending. _He_ would never pretend...."

She wanted to be unconscious for a little while. She did not know it,

but her beautiful face was transfigured by the interplay of shyness,

modesty, soft resentment, gratitude, ecstasy and determination. Her head

was bowed and she could not raise it. Neither could she utter a single

word. She looked divine, and thought she looked either silly or sulky.

Mr. Grig glanced aside. A glimpse of paradise had dazzled the eternal

youth in him. The waiter bore away the soup-plates.

"Perhaps that's enough about business for the present," said Mr. Grig at

length. "Let's talk about something else. But before we start I must

just tell you you're the most stylish creature in this restaurant. I was

staggered when I came in and saw you. Staggered!"

She did raise her head.

"Why?" she asked with exquisite gentleness.

Mr. Grig, overwhelmed, offered no response.

As for her determination, it amounted to this: "I will be as marvellous

as he is. I will be more marvellous. I will be queen, slave,

everything. He doesn't guess what is in store for him." She did not

think about the difference in their ages, nor about marriage; nor did

she even consider whether or not she was in love with him. Chiefly, she

was grateful. And what she saw in front of her was a sublime vocation.

Her mood was ever so faintly tinged with regret because they were not

both in evening dress.

VIII

Philosophy of the Grey-haired

The evening and all Lilian's emotions seemed to start afresh. The look

of the restaurant was changed. The tables had been cleared of the

grosser apparatus of eating, and showed white cloths with only white

plates, fruit, small glasses, small cups, ash-trays. Most of the waiters

had vanished; the remainder stood aside, moveless, inobtrusive,

watchful. The diners had abandoned themselves to intimacy or the sweet

coma of digestion. Some talked rather loudly, others in a murmur.

Women leaned back, or put their elbows on the table, letting cigarette

smoke float upwards across their eyes. A few tables were already

deserted, and the purity of their emptiness seemed bafflingly to

demonstrate that events may happen and leave behind absolutely no trace.

Without consulting Lilian Mr. Grig gave an order and two small glasses

were slowly filled to the brim with a green liquid. Lilian recognized

it for the very symbol of delicate licence. She was afraid to sip, lest

she might be disillusioned concerning it, and also lest the drinking of

it might malignly hasten the moment of departure of the last train for

Brighton.

Mr. Grig was of those who murmured. His wrists lay one over the other

on the table and his face was over the table; and it seemed strange, so

low and even was his speech, that Lilian could catch every word, as she

did. The people at the next table could have heard nothing. All the

animation and variety were in his features, none in his tone. He had

been telling her about Brighton. He saw the town of Brighton as a

living, developing whole, discussing it as a single organism, showing

how its evolution was still in active process, and making the small

group of men who were exploiting it and directing it appear like

creative giants and the mass of inhabitants like midgets utterly

unconscious of their own manipulation. And in his account of the vast

affair there was no right and no wrong; there were merely the dark aims

and the resolution of the giants determined to wax in power and to

imprint themselves on the municipality. Lilian had never heard such

revealing talk; she could not follow all of it, but she was fascinated,

wonderstruck; profoundly impressed by the quality of the brain opposite

to her and the contemptibleness of her own ignorance of life; amazed and

enraptured that this brain could be interested in herself. Mr. Grig

related the story of the middle-aged proprietor of one of the chief

hotels who had married a young wife.

"He had broken up his family, and the family is the real unit of

society--and there was no need for it! No need at all! But then, you

see, he'd never had time in his existence to understand that a

middle-aged man who has already had experience of marriage and marries a

girl young enough to be his daughter is either a coward or a fool or

without taste. He would only do it because he's mad for her, and that's

the very reason for not doing it. When romance comes in that way it

wants the sauce of secrecy and plotting--the double life, and so on.

The feeling of naughtiness--naughtiness is simply a marvellous feeling;

you must sometimes have guessed that, haven't you?--perversity, doing

society in the eye. It's a continual excitement. Of course, it needs

cleverness on both sides. You haven't got to be clumsy over it. The

woman runs risks, but nothing to the risks she'd run in marriage. And

if the thing dies out in her, and they haven't been clumsy, she's free

as air to start again. She's got her experience gratis, and there's a

mysterious flavour about her that's nearly the most enticing flavour on

earth. Naturally people will talk. Let 'em. No harm in rumour. In

fact, the more rumour the better." He went on with no pause. "You've

not looked at me for about five hours. Look at me now and tell me

you're disgusted. Tell me you're frightened."

She lifted her eyes and gazed at him for a few seconds, not smiling.

Her skin tingled and crept. Then she sipped the creme de menthe and at

first it tasted just like water.

"A woman wants making. Only a man can make a woman. She has to be

formed. She can't do it herself. A young man may be able to do it, but

he's like a teacher who swots up the night before what he has to teach

the next day. And he's a fearful bungler, besides being

cruel--unconsciously. Whereas an older man, a much older man--he knows!

It's a unique chance for both of them. She has so much to give, and she

has so much to learn. It's a fair bargain. Perhaps the woman has a

little the best of it. Because after all she loses nothing that it

isn't her business to lose--and the man may--well, he may kill himself.

And the chance for a clever girl to be 'made' without any clumsiness!

What a chance! ... Well, I won't say _which_ of 'em has the best of

it.... I'm speaking impartially. If you live to be as old as Ninon de

l'Enclos you'll never meet a more honest man than I am."

Lilian felt intoxicated, but not with the Burgundy nor with the creme de

menthe. Rather with sudden fresh air. She thought: "Be careful! Be

careful! You aren't yourself. Something queer's come over you." She

was not happy. She was alarmed. Once before she had been alarmed by

herself, but this time she was really alarmed. She was glad that she

had always despised boys of her own age. What did Mr. Grig mean by

saying that a man might kill himself? She didn't know.... Yes, she

knew.... She saw clearly that a woman must be formed by a man, and that

until she was formed she would not be worthy of herself. She longed

ardently to be formed. As she stood she was futile. She could exercise

no initiative, make use of no opportunities; and her best wisdom was to

remain negative--in order to avoid mistakes. Something that looked like

a woman but wasn't one. She had the intelligence to realize how insipid

she was. Ambition surged through her anew and with fresh power.

Mr. Grig drove her home, and the taxi was a little dark vibrating room

in which they were alone together, and safe from all scrutiny. She was

painfully constrained.

"Yes," said Mr. Grig, after an interminable silence. "My sister was

quite right."

"What about?" Lilian asked in a child's voice.

"I'm in love. What are you going to do about it?" He turned his head

impulsively towards her, gazed at her in the dim twilight of the taxi,

and then kissed her. In spite of herself she yearned to give, and the

yearning thrilled her.

"Please! Please!" she murmured in modest, gentle, passive protest.

Another pause.

"I shall write to you to-morrow," he said. "In the meantime, believe

me, you're entirely marvellous." He was looking straight in front of

him at the driver's shaggy shoulders. That was all that occurred,

except the handshake.

When she let herself into the house the servant was just going upstairs

to bed, after her usual sixteen-hour day.

"So you're back, miss."

"No!" thought Lilian. "It's somebody else that's come back. The girl

you mean will never come back."