I
The Return
It was early in July, on one of those long summer evenings of which the
melancholy twilight seems determined never to end, that Lilian, from
Victoria Station, drove up to her late husband's house, now her own.
The events leading to the arrival, and giving it a most poignant
dramatic quality, had one after another as they occurred impressed
everybody concerned as being very strange and sinister; but seen in
perspective they took on a rather ordinary complexion.
At the very moment of leaving the Riviera Lilian had heard that Miss
Grig, on her way to the South to see Felix, had been detained in Paris
by serious ptomaine poisoning due to food eaten at home. Had Miss Grig
been able to get a berth in the through Calais-Mediterranee express, she
might well have died in the train; but she had not been able to get a
berth, and had travelled by a service which necessitated crossing Paris
by taxi. She never did cross Paris. Railway officials carried her to
the Hotel Terminus, and medical aid was obtained just in time. For
several days she was lost, like a mislaid and helpless parcel in the
international post. As soon as she could move again she returned home,
for Felix was by then dead and buried.
Lilian, on her part, did travel towards London by the through
Calais-Mediterranee express, alighting at Calais extremely exhausted
after twenty-eight hours on the railway. A gale was raging in the
Channel. The steamer failed to enter Dover, a colossal harbour
constructed in defiance of common sense for the inconvenience of
seafarers, and put in at Folkestone. This detail changed the course of
Lilian's journey. She was lifted ashore suffering acutely from sickness
and nervous shock caused by the storm. At Dover she would assuredly not
have remained more than a day or two; but Folkestone is a health-resort,
and, installed in a big hotel on the Leas, she was tempted to let week
drift after week in languid and expectant meditation. Felix's solicitor
came down several times from London to see her and take her
instructions. From him she had news of Miss Grig and of the business;
but she neither saw Miss Grig nor heard from her; the silence between
the two mourners was absolute; and Lilian would not be the first to
break it; moreover, there was no official need for letters to pass, each
party being always well informed of the situation through the medium of
the lawyer. At the close of the Riviera season Lilian had a flattering
surprise. Dr. Samson the faithful came to see her in Folkestone. He
was staying at another hotel. He desired nothing, hoped for nothing,
except to exhibit his fidelity. She had in him someone upon whom she
could exercise her instinct to please, and to whom she could talk about
the unique qualities of Felix. But also she had grown capricious and
uncertain in temper. Perceiving at once that her little outbursts
charmed and delighted him, she did not check them, but rather bestowed
them upon him as favours; and the gloomy, fretful, transformed girl in
unbecoming black played with some spirit the role of spoiled virgin from
whom a suppliant adorer anticipates one day complete surrender. It was
touching and at the same time comical.
As spring glowed into summer two factors gradually decided Lilian to
proceed to London. Visitors increased in Folkestone; the Leas were no
longer a desert, and she didn't care to be much remarked. And further,
Dr. Samson advised her to have her child in London, and to settle there
well in advance of the ordeal. He suggested more than one house; but
Lilian would listen to no counsel on this matter. She gave out sharply
that she would have Felix's child in Felix's house, which was her
house--and nowhere else. The ever-silent Miss Grig was still there, but
Lilian had no objection to her staying there. She knew what was due to
her husband's sister. She sent for the solicitor and invited him to
make all the arrangements, and to report when he had done so. In due
course she journeyed to London, deliberately missing train after train
on the day of departure. Dr. Samson accompanied her to the doorstep of
her house and Felix's, he paid the taxi-driver, and then he shook hands
and vanished. She wished to present herself alone, and to this end had
postponed ringing the bell until all that Dr. Samson could do was done.
The facade of the house had been modernized, not untastefully, and was
different from nearly all the other houses in Montpelier Square. The
front door was of a rich, deep blue. The curtains of the windows had
individuality. Lilian looked the facade up and down and from side to
side. She had not even seen the house before; no, nor yet the Square.
Felix! It was all Felix. "Felix" was written right across it. And it
was hers--at any rate, the lease of the house was hers! It belonged to
none but herself. She knew the fact, but could not imaginatively grasp
it, and the effort to grasp it made her feel faint with emotion. She
was frightened, she was proud, she was ashamed, she was defiant, she was
almost sick.
"Why did I insist on coming here like this?" she thought. "No girl was
ever in such a position before!"
The blue door opened, as it were the door of a chamber of unguessed
tortures. A flush spread slowly over Lilian's face.
"Now," she thought, "now I am in the middle of it all, and can't go
back."
A parlourmaid stood in the doorway--tall, stiff, prim, perfect--such a
creature as would have refused to recognize for fellow-creatures the
cook-generals of Putney. Her mature, hard face relaxed into the minimum
of a ceremonial smile.
"Oh, good evening!" said Lilian awkwardly, no better than a typewriting
girl, and stepped into the house.
"Good evening'm," said the parlourmaid, and, as she realized Lilian's
condition the face relented still further and its smile flickered into
genuineness. Though her eyes and mouth showed that she was virtuous to
the verge of insanity, she seemed to be moved, in spite of herself, by
the spectacle of languid and soft and mourning Lilian.
"Miss Grig wished me to say that she is engaged for the moment. She was
expecting you earlier in the day. And shall I show you the principal
bedroom? And if you have any orders.... Yes'm,"--following Lilian's
glance at her trunks piled in the porch--"we've got a young man in as
will see to them."
Lilian sat down on an old carved chair with a wooden seat. How
characteristic and horrid of Miss Grig not to be ready to receive her!
Not that she, Lilian, the mistress of the house, needed a reception from
anyone! Certainly not! This notion braced and fortified her. A young
man did appear fussily from the dark basement staircase, and pulled the
trunks one after another within the house. The front door was then
shut. The hall and upward staircase were already gently lighted for the
evening. Beautiful silk shades over the two lamps! Not a very large
house, nor very luxurious! But the carpets, furniture, and pictures had
for Lilian just the peculiar distinction which she had hoped for. They
recalled the illustrations of interiors in _The Studio_ which used to
come every month to Putney; and they were utterly different from the
Putney furniture. Felix! All Felix! No Miss Grig! Impossible that
there should be a trace of Miss Grig anywhere! This interior had been
Felix's habitation. In a sense it was the history of Felix, his mind,
his taste. She would have to study it, to learn it.
This interior was the first family interior she had seen since Putney.
She was entering it after a period of awful lodging-houses and garish
impersonal hotels. It was touchingly beautiful to her. The baby should
be born in it, should grow up in it, should know it as the home of
memory.... Then it became a vision, a hallucination, and the owning of
it became an illusion. How could she own it? Only yesterday Miss Grig
had thrown her out of Clifford Street with ten days' wages for a weapon
to fight the whole world with. All that had happened since was untrue
and hadn't happened.
"I'll go upstairs," she said coldly to the parlour-maid. She had to be
cold in order to be dignified. Milly Merrislate used to pose like that
sometimes. The resemblance annoyed her, but what could she do in her
weakness against the power of the situation? She did as best she might.
On the first floor the parlourmaid, switching lights off and on, said:
"This is the bathroom and so on."
"Yes. That is Miss Grig's room," in a hushed voice.
Lilian murmured no affirmative at the face of the shut door; her eyes
had a gleam of cruelty, and involuntarily her hands clenched. The house
began to grow enormous, endless.
"This is the principal bedroom." They went into it. Curtains drawn.
Two soft lights. A narrowish bed. The dressing-table naked. A
wonderful easy-chair. Polished surfaces everywhere. Cunning, mild
tints--the whole mysteriously beautiful. Felix! She sank into the
easy-chair, drawing off her black gloves. Another maid and the young
man were bumping the trunks up the stairs.
"Will you have everything brought in here'm?"
"Please." She asked that two of the trunks should be pushed under the
bed; they were Felix's. The other maid and the young man departed.
"Will you take anything'm?"
"No, thank you."
The parlourmaid softened again.
"Some tea and some nice bread-and-butter?"
Lilian gave a smile of appreciation, and thought:
"I will make this girl fond of me."
"Up here'm?"
"Yes, please."
She was alone. The room was full of secrets. She opened a wardrobe, and
started back; it held Felix's suits. She gazed at herself in the mirror
of the naked dressing-table; tears were slipping down her wasted white
cheeks. Mechanically she pulled at a drawer. Neckties, scores of them,
neatly arranged. Could one man have possessed so many neckties? She
picked up a necktie at random, striped in violent colours. She did not
know, and could not have known, that the colours were those of a famous
school club. She was entirely ignorant of the immense, the unparalleled
prestige of club colours in the organized life of the ruling classes.
Mechanically again, she put the necktie to her mouth, nibbled at it, bit
it passionately, voluptuously; the feel of the woven stuff thrilled her;
and that club necktie was understood, comprehended, realized, as no club
necktie ever before in all the annals of the sacred public-school
tradition. Lilian sobbed like a child. The parlourmaid entered with
the tea and the nice bread-and-butter, and saw the child munching the
necktie, and was shaken in the steely citadel of her virtue.
"You'll feel better when you've drunk this'm," said the parlourmaid
lumpily, pouring out some tea. "Hadn't you better sit down'm? ... It
won't do for you to tire yourself."
God! The highly-trained girl so far forgot herself as to spill a tear
into the milk-jug!
II
Miss Grig
Lilian, having fulfilled the prophecy of the parlour-maid and felt
better after drinking the tea, had just released her shoulders from her
dust cloak and dropped her forlorn little hat on the carpet, when she
heard a firm, light tap.
"May I come in?"
Miss Grig entered and shut the door carefully.
Lilian tried to get up from the low easy chair.
"Please! Please! Don't move. You must be exhausted."
Miss Grig advanced and shook hands. Lilian raised her eyes and lowered
them. Miss Grig was shockingly, incredibly aged. In eight months she
had become an old woman and a tragic woman. (The lawyer had omitted to
furnish Lilian with this information.) But she was not less plump.
Indeed, owing to the triumph of her instinctive negligence in attire
over an artificial coquetry no longer stimulated by the presence of a
worshipped man, she seemed stouter and looser than ever. She was
dressed for the street.
Lilian, extremely perturbed, looked at the dilapidation and thought: "I
have done this." She also thought: "This is the woman that turned me
out of my situation because she fancied Felix was after me--not me after
Felix. What a cruel shame it was!" And thus, though she felt guilty,
she felt far more resentful than guilty. What annoyed her was that she
felt so young and callow in face of the old woman, and that she was
renewing the humiliating sensations of their previous interview. She
felt like the former typist, and the wedding-ring on her finger had
somehow no force to charm away this feeling so uncomfortable and
illogical. She was not aware that her own appearance, pathetic in its
unshapely mingling of the girl and the matron, was in turn impressively
shocking to Miss Grig.
"I thought I ought just to say good-bye to you before leaving," said
Miss Grig in a calm, polite but quavering voice.
"Are you leaving?" Lilian exclaimed foolishly. "I expected you to----"
"Felix left everything to you----"
"I had nothing at all to do with the will--I----"
"Oh no! I didn't suppose for a moment you had. Felix would never
consult anybody in such matters. I'm not complaining. Felix was quite
right. He made you his wife and he left you everything. It might have
been different if I'd had no money of my own. But, thank God, I'm
independent! And I prefer to have my own home." The tone was
unexceptionable, and yet Miss Grig managed to charge with the most
offensive significance the two phrases: "_He made you his wife_" and
"_Thank God_ I'm independent." It was as if she had said: "He raised
you up from being his kept woman to be his wife--he made you honest--and
he needn't have done!" and, "If I'd been at the mercy of a chit like
you----!"
But Lilian, while she fully noticed it, was insensible to the offence.
She was thinking as she sat huddled beneath Miss Grig erect:
"Who won? You didn't. I did. You thought you'd finished me. But you
hadn't."
And added to this was the scarcely conscious exultation of youth and
energy confronting the end of a career. The man for whom they had
fought was dead and long decayed, but they were still fighting. It was
terrible. Lilian's feelings were terrible; she realized that they were
terrible; but they were her feelings. Worse, crueller than all, she
reflected:
"One day you will come and swallow your pride and beg me humbly for a
sight of his child!"
Miss Grig continued with wonderful dignity:
"As I say, I thought it proper to stay till you actually arrived, and
formally hand over. Though really there's nothing to be done. I hope
you'll find everything to your satisfaction. The servants will stay, at
any rate as long as you need them. Of course, I told them beforehand
how things are with you. The household accounts I've given to Mr.
Farjiac to-day" (Mr. Farjiac was the solicitor). "And"--she opened her
Dorothy bag--"here are the keys. Masters--that's the parlourmaid--will
tell you which is which."
Instead of handing the keys to Lilian, she dropped them by the necktie
on the dressing-table, where they made a disturbing noise in collision
with the glass-top--as if they had cracked the glass (but they had not).
"I think that's everything."
"But about the business?" Lilian asked weakly.
"Oh yes, of course, I was forgetting. Mr. Farjiac knows all about it.
I've left Gertie Jackson in charge. She's very capable and devoted.
You needn't go near the place unless you care to. I've told her she
should come and see you to-morrow."
"But are you giving it up entirely?" Lilian, who had heard not a word
from the lawyer as to this abandonment, was ready to cry.
"How can I give up what doesn't belong to me?" asked Miss Grig, with a
revolting sweetness like the taste of horseflesh. "The business is
yours, and it was never mine. I merely managed it."
"Won't you take it?" Lilian burst out, losing self-control in the
reaction of her natural benevolence against the awful bitterness of the
scene. "Take it all for yourself. I would so like you to have it. I
know you love it."
Miss Grig's tone in reply recalled the young widow to the dreadful
proprieties of the interview.
"No, thank you," said she coldly, with the miraculous duplicity of
wounded arrogance, "I'm only too glad to be rid of the responsibility
and the hard work--at my age. I only did it all to please Felix. So
that now he's dead.... By the way, I think I ought to let you know that
my poor brother's grave is sadly neglected. And the headstone has a
terribly foreign look. And it's all sunk in sideways, because you
didn't give the ground time to settle before you had it fixed."
Miss Grig's "By the way" information absolutely effaced the effect on
Lilian of the magnificent lie which preceded it. She was staggered and
she was insulted and outraged. Had Miss Grig dared, without warning
her, to go down to the Riviera and examine Felix's grave?
"You've been there?" she demanded brokenly. Miss Grig nodded.
"I ventured," she said, with haughty deference, "to give orders about
it. I hope you don't disapprove."
"When did you go?"
"Oh! Not long since," said Miss Grig casually, carelessly,
victoriously. "I must leave you now. I think I've had all my own
things removed, and I hope nothing that belongs to you. If there's
anything wrong, or anything I can do, will you write to Mr. Farjiac?"
She smiled gravely, steadily, and shook hands; and carried off her
grief, her frustration, her ever-lasting tragedy, safe and intact and
with pomp away from the poor, pretty little chit whom destiny had chosen
to be the instrument of devastation.
Lilian sat dulled. The keys of the house lay beside the damp and
creased club necktie. She heard a taxi arrive and the door bang and the
taxi depart. A hot, dry, mournful wind of the summer night blew the
curtains with a swish suddenly inwards and made Lilian shiver. Ah!
What would she not have given for an endless, tearful, sobbing talk with
the only other creature on earth who had worshipped Felix? How she would
have confessed, abased herself, accused herself, excused herself,
abandoned herself, uncovered her inmost soul, at the signal of one soft
word from Isabel Grig! Hellish pride! Hellish implacable rancour!
Glutton of misery! The woman had not even offered a syllable of
goodwill for the welfare of the coming baby! Nevertheless, Lilian's
heart was breaking for Isabel Grig. Who could blame Isabel? Or who
Lilian? The situation inevitably arising from their characters and from
the character of the dead man had overpowered both of them. Lilian
thought of the neglected grave, and of the courtesan's prayer, "Eternal
peace! No emotions! Stretched straight out. Quiet for ever and ever!
Eternal peace!" In the indulgence of grief and depression she wanted to
keep that thought. But she could not. She was too young and too strong,
and the edges of the dangerous future were iridescent.
III
The Lieutenant
Lilian slept heavily and without moving, and when the parlourmaid
aroused her with more tea at nine o'clock according to order, she drank
half the first cup before the process of waking was complete. Her mind
had been running jerkily:
"So she actually went all that way to see his grave. And I haven't seen
the stone myself. Of course Felix wrote to her when he was getting
better, and told her he was going to marry me. That's how she must have
first known I was out there with him. He wrote on purpose to tell her.
And she went all that way to see my darling's grave, and never said a
word to me! It's her feeling for Felix makes her so cruel, poor thing!
Oh! But she's so hard, _hard_! Well, I could never be hard like
that--I don't care what happened. And it won't make her any happier."
The parlourmaid returned with a parcel.
"Oh yes, I know what that is," said Lilian. "Just cut the string and put
it down here, will you?"
"Miss Jackson is waiting to see you'm. Will you see her or shall I ask
her to call to-night?"
"Miss Jackson!" Lilian exclaimed, agitated by the swiftness of the
sequence of events. "Has she been waiting long?"
"No'm. Only about twenty minutes."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I thought you ought to have your tea quiet'm."
"How nice of you!" said Lilian, with a weak, acquiescent smile. "But do
ask her to come in here now. She won't mind me being in bed, will she?"
"I should hope not'm," said the parlourmaid, pawing the ground.
Lilian pushed her lustreless hair out of her eyes. The sun was shining
on part of the tumbled bed. Then Gertie Jackson came in. Absolutely
unchanged! The same neat, provincial, Islingtonian toilette. The same
serious, cheerful, ingenuous gaze. The same unmarred complexion. The
same upright pose and throwing back of the shoulders in unconscious
rectitude and calm intention to front courageously the difficulties of
the day. The same mingling of self-respect and deference. She bent
over the bed; Lilian held up her face like a child with mute invitation,
and Gertie kissed her. What a fresh, honest, innocent, ignorant kiss on
Lilian's hot, wasted, experienced cheek!
"You poor thing!" Gertrude murmured devotedly.
"I'm seven months gone nearly," Lilian murmured, as if in despair.
"Well, it'll soon be over, then!" said Gertie buoyantly, in a
matter-of-fact tone.
"Yes, but shall I ever again be like I was?" Lilian demanded gloomily.
"Of course you will, dear. _And_ prettier. They almost always are, you
know. I've often noticed it."
"You dear!" cried Lilian, "and do you mean to say you've got up earlier
and come all the way down from Islington here to see me before going to
the office? And me keeping you waiting!"
"Why! But of course I came. I'm responsible to you, now poor Miss
Grig's gone. I told her I would be. And I can't tell you how glad I
shall be if I suit you and you find you can keep me on. It's such a
good situation."
Lilian lifted her face again and kissed her--but not the kiss of
gratitude (though there was gratitude in it), the kiss of recompense, of
reward. It was Lilian who, in allowing herself to be faithfully served,
was conferring the favour. Gertrude was the eternal lieutenant, without
ambition, without dreams, asking only to serve with loyalty in security.
In that moment Lilian understood as never before the function of these
priceless Gertrudes whose first instinct when they lost one master was
to attach themselves to another.
"Look here!" said Lilian. "D'you know what I want? I want you to come
and live here till it's over."
"Of course I will," Gertrude agreed, eagerly ready to abandon her
domestic habits and interior for as long as she was required to do so,
and to resume them whenever it might suit Lilian's convenience. And all
because Lilian had been beautiful and successful, and would be beautiful
and successful once more!
"You must come to-night, will you?" Lilian insisted, transformed in a
moment into the spoilt and exacting queen.
Gertrude nodded, brightly beaming.
"I do so want to talk to you," Lilian went on. "I've had nobody to talk
to for--I mean like you. D'you know, Felix would have been alive now if
it hadn't been for me." She burst into tears, and then, recovering,
began an interminable detailed recital of events on the Riviera, coupled
with a laudation of Felix. She revelled in it, and was shameless, well
aware that Gertrude would defend her against herself. The relief which
she felt was intense.
At the end of half an hour, when the torrent had slackened, Gertrude
said:
"I really think I'd better be going now. What time would you like me to
come to-night? I'm quite free because I'm not taking night duty this
week. It's Milly's week." And as she was leaving she turned back
rather nervously to the bed. "D'you mind me suggesting one thing? I
wouldn't have you over-tire yourself; but if you could just show
yourself at the office, I feel it would be such a good thing for all of
us. The girls would understand then who the new employer is. Some of
them are very stupid, you know. If you could just show yourself--a
quarter of an hour. It's for your own sake, dear."
"As I am? I mean--you know----"
"Why not?"
"But would they----"
"Of course not," blandly and firmly decided Gertrude, who had been
brought up in Islington, where the enterprise of procreation proceeds on
an important scale and in a straightforward spirit. Strange that in
Gertrude's virginal mentality such realism could coexist with such
innocent ingenuousness! But it was so.
When Gertrude had left, Lilian opened the parcel. It was from Dr. Samson
and contained two books recommended and promised by him about preparing
for motherhood, and motherhood, and cognate matters. The mere titles of
the chapters entranced her.
IV
The New Employer
Appreciably less than a year had passed since she went down those office
stairs, thrust out by the implacable jealousy of Miss Grig, and yet in
that short time the stairs had shrunk and become most painfully dingy.
The sight of them saddened her; she wondered how it was that their
squalor had not affected her before. She felt acutely sorry for the
girl named Lilian Share who in the previous autumn used easily to run up
them from bottom to top, urged by the consciousness of being late. Now
she had to take the second flight very slowly. The door opened as she
reached it, and Gertie Jackson emerged to usher her in. A dozen pairs
of ears had been listening for her arrival. The doors of both the large
and the small rooms were ajar, and she had glimpses of watching faces as
she went with Gertrude into the principal's room. She was intensely
nervous and self-conscious. Gertrude explained that Miss Grig had
installed her in the principal's room months ago, and Lilian said that
that was quite right, and Gertrude said that she had hoped Lilian would
approve.
Tea was laid on one of the desks, a dainty tea, such a tea as Lilian had
never seen in the office, with more pastry than even two girls could eat
who had had no lunch and expected no dinner; an extravagant display.
Then a flapper entered with the tea-pot and the hot-water jug, and
Lilian smiled at her, and the flapper blushed and smiled and tossed her
winged pigtail. The flapper had a shabby air. Lilian could swallow only
one cake because Gertrude was sitting where Felix had sat when he first
told her what she might do and ought to do with herself.
"I am so glad you've come!" said Gertrude, in a sort of rapture.
"Yes," Lilian agreed with dignity. "I was bound to come, of course."
She felt wise and mature and tremendously aware of her responsibilities;
and she intended to remain so. Nobody should be able to say of her that
she had lost her head or that she was silly or weak or in any way
unequal to her situation. Above all, Miss Grig should be forced to
continue to respect her.
"I suppose I'd better just go and see them all now," she suggested,
after more tea.
"They'd be delighted if you would," said Gertrude, as if the thing had
not already been arranged.
Naturally Lilian honoured the small room first. The three inhabitants of
the small room--two of them were unknown to her--sprang up, flattered,
ruffled, flustered, excited, at her entrance. There she stood, the
marvellous, the semi-legendary Lilian, who had captured the aristocratic
master, run off with him to the Continent, married him, buried him,
inherited all his possessions, and was soon going to have a baby. Her
famous beauty was under eclipse, her famous figure had grown monstrous
beyond any possible concealment; but she was still marvellous. She was
the most romantic figure that those girls had ever seen; she was all
picture-paper serials and cinema films rolled together and come to life
and reality. Her prestige was terrific. She felt it and knew it and
acted on it. How pathetically common the girls were, how slave-like!
How cheap their frocks! How very small the room (but evidently it had
been tidied for her visit)! She recognized one of the old Underwoods by
a dent in its frame, and remembered the stain on one of the green
lampshades, and the peculiarities of the woodwork of the absurdly small
mirror. She was touched; she might have wept a little, but her great
pride--in her achievement, in her position, in her condition, even in
her tragic sorrow--upheld her safely. Tenderly invited to sit down, she
sat down, and she put expert questions, to the wonderment of practising
typists, thus proving that she was not proud. And then with gracious
adieux she proceeded to the large room where, though her stay was
(properly) more brief, she created still more sensation. In the large
room she surprised one or two surreptitious exchanges of glance
betraying a too critical awareness on the part of some that she had
sinned against the code and perhaps only saved herself by the skin of
her teeth. These unkind exhibitions did not trouble her in the least.
The demeanour of the more serious and best-paid girls showed absolutely
no _arriere pensee_, and better than anybody else they knew what was
what in the real world. Gertrude Jackson, the honest soul of purity,
already adored her employer.
As these two were returning to the principal's room the entrance-door
opened and Millicent Merrislate burst breathlessly in.
"How splendid!" exclaimed Gertrude.
She had sent a special message to Milly, and Milly for a sight of her
new mistress had got up and come to the office two hours earlier than
her official time. Lilian was amazed and very pleased. She remembered
that she had once spent at any rate one night of toil in perfect
friendliness with the queer, flat, cattish Millicent; and now she
insisted on Milly helping them to eat cakes in the sacred room. The
scene was idyllic. A little later Lilian, having arranged the details
of Gertrude's temporary removal to Montpelier Square, announced that she
must go, on account of some important shopping. Gertrude, sternly
watchful against undue fatigue for Lilian, raised her eyebrows at the
mention of shopping, but Lilian reassured her. A taxi was fetched by
the flapper-of-all-work, and, noticing then for the first time that the
road repairs in the neighbourhood were all finished, and every trace of
them vanished, Lilian gave the driver an address in Piccadilly. Several
girls were watching her departure from the windows; her upward glance
caught them in the act, and the heads disappeared sharply within.
"They are all working for _me_!" she thought with complacency, and could
scarcely believe the wonderful thing.
V
Layette
The pride of her reception in Clifford Street wafted her easily up the
somewhat austere stairs of the first floor establishment in Piccadilly.
She had long been familiar with the face of the commissionaire, and the
brass signs, of this mysterious shop, but never till the leading word
attracted her eyes as she was driving from Montpelier Square to Clifford
Street had it occurred to her what the word signified. The deceiving
staircase led to splendid rooms, indicating that the renown of the
establishment could not be spurious. A bright and rosy young woman came
smilingly forward and gave Lilian a chair. One other customer, a stout
lady with her back to the world, was being served in a distant corner.
A marvellous calm reigned, and the noise of Piccadilly seemed to beat
vainly against the high, curtained windows.
"Layettes?" Lilian began questioningly, with a strange exultation. The
aspect of the interior had revived her taste for luxury while giving it
a new direction.
"Yes, madam."
The esoteric conversation was engaged. Lilian sat entranced by the
fineness and the diminutiveness and the disconcerting elegance of the
display ranged abroad for her on the glass counter. She was glad that
through culpable sloth she had done absolutely nothing as yet with her
own needle. It was the books from Dr. Samson that had aroused her to
the need for action of some sort, for she had had no wise woman to
murmur in her eager ear the traditions and the Spanish etiquette of
centuries of civilized maternity.
"I shall bring Gertie to see these to-morrow," she thought. "It will
please her frightfully to come, and she'll stop me from being too
extravagant. Only I must arrange it so that her work won't be
interfered with. Perhaps at lunch time. Never do to upset discipline
right at the start!"
And she asked to see still more stock. The articles stimulated her
memory and her imagination into a kind of tranquil and yet rapturous
contemplation of the events, voluptuous, tender and tragic, which had
set her where she was. The thrill of conception, the long patience of
gestation, the coming terror of labour mingled all together in her now
mystical mind. Her destiny had been changed, or at least it was gravely
diverted. Instead of glittering in public as the lovely darling and
blossom of luxurious civilization, and in private rendering a man to the
highest possible degree happy--instead of this she was secretly and
obscurely building a monument, in her body and also in her heart, to
Felix--Felix whom already she had raised to be the perfect man, Felix
who might have been alive then if she had not one evening behaved like a
child, or if his sense of his duty towards her had not been so
imperious. (Her commonsense had at last cured her of regarding herself
as his murderess.) Whether she had loved him to the height of which she
was capable of passionate love was doubtful. But she had profoundly
admired him; she had been passionately grateful to him for his love of
her; and, come what might when her beauty was restored to its empire, no
other man could ever stand to her in the relation in which Felix had
stood. He had set his imprint upon her and created her a woman. And so
she was creating him a god.
All these movements of her brooding mind originated from the spectacle
of the articles on the counter. They did not prevent her from discussing
layettes with the bright, rosy, shop-girl. That innocent, charming and
unimaginative young creature fingered the treasures with the casualness
of use. For her layettes were layettes, existing of and for themselves;
they connoted nothing.
PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.4.
----
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
NOVELS
A Man from the North
Helen With the High Hand
Anna of the Five Towns
The Card
Leonora
The Regent
A Great Man
The Lion's Share
Sacred and Profane Love
Clayhanger
Whom God Hath Joined
Hilda Lessways
Buried Alive
These Twain
The Old Wives' Tale
The Roll Call
The Glimpse
The Pretty Lady
The Price of Love
Mr. Prohack
FANTASIAS
The Ghost
Teresa of Watling Street
The Grand Babylon Hotel
The Loot of Cities
The Gates of Wrath
Hugo
The City of Pleasure
SHORT STORIES
Tales of the Five Towns
The Grim Smile of the Five Towns
The Matador of the Five Towns
BELLES-LETTRES
Journalism for Women
Liberty
Fame and Fiction
Over There: War Scenes
How to Become an Author
Books and Persons
The Truth About an Author
Married Life
Mental Efficiency
The Author's Craft
How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day
Self and Self-Management
The Human Machine
From the Log of the "Velsa"
Literary Taste
Our Women
Friendship and Happiness
Things That Have Interested Me
Those United States
Paris Nights
DRAMA
Polite Farces
The Great Adventure
Cupid and Commonsense
Judith
What the Public Wants
Sacred and Profane Love
The Honeymoon
The Love Match
The Title
Body and Soul
Milestones (in collaboration with Edward Knoblock)
(In collaboration with Eden Phillpotts)
The Sinews of War: A Romance
The Statue: A Romance