Kitabı oku: «Lilian», sayfa 4

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 rôle 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.