Kitabı oku: «Lilian», sayfa 10

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 arrière pensée, 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.