Lilian Part 4

His att.i.tude of helplessness touched her. She smiled in her serious manner.

"If you'll leave it to me to see to, Mr. Grig," she said soothingly, and yet a little superiorly, "I'll do the best I can. I'll start it, anyhow. And I'll leave an urgent note for Miss Jackson about it. After all, in two hours they ought to be able to do almost anything, and you know how reliable Miss Jackson is. Miss Grig always relies on her."

She held out her hand for the wretched ma.n.u.script. Mr. Grig yielded it up, pretending unwillingness and uneasiness, but in reality much relieved. A quarter of an hour later he returned to her room in overcoat and hat.

"I think I may as well go home now," said he, yawning enormously. "I'm a bit anxious about my sister. Nothing else likely to come in, is there? You'll be all right, I suppose."

"_Me!_" she exclaimed kindly. "Of _course_, Mr. Grig. I shall be perfectly all right."

She wondered whether he really was anxious about his sister. At any rate, he had not the stamina to sit up through all the night in the office. But she, Lilian, had. She was delighted to be alone again. She finished Lord Mackworth's article, read it and re-read it. Not a mistake. She bound it and st.i.tched it. She entered the item in the night-book. She made out the bill. She typed the address on the envelope. Then, before fastening the envelope, she read through everything again. All these things she did with the greatest deliberation and nicety.

At the end she had ample time to make a start on the other work, but she could not or would not bring herself to the new task. She was content to write a note for Gertie Jackson, s.h.i.+fting all the responsibility on to Gertie. Gertie would have to fly round and make the others fly round. And if the work was late--what then? Lilian did not care. Her conscience seemed to have exhausted itself. She sat in a blissful trance. She recalled with satisfaction that she had said nothing to Felix about Lord Mackworth having called in person. She rose and wandered about the rooms, savouring the silent solitude. The telephone was in the princ.i.p.als' room. How awkward that might have been if Felix had stayed! But he had not stayed.

VI

The Telephone

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo! Who is it?"

"Is that Regent 1067?"

"Yes."

"Is that Lord Mackworth?"

"Speaking. Who is it?"

"Grig's Typewriting Office. I'm so sorry to wake you up, but you asked us to. It's just past six o'clock."

"Thanks very much. Who is it speaking?"

"Grig's Typewriting Office."

"Yes. But _your_ name? Miss--Miss----?"

"Oh! I see. Share. Share. Lilian Share.... Not Spare, S-_h_-a-r-e."

"I've got it. Share. I recognized your voice, Miss Share. Well, it's most extraordinarily good-natured of you. Most. I can't thank you enough. Excuse me asking your name. I only wanted it so that I could thank you personally. Article finished?"

"It's all finished and ready to be delivered. It'll be dropped into your letter-box in about a quarter of an hour from now. You can rely on that."

"Then do you keep messengers hanging about all night for these jobs?"

"I'm going to deliver it myself; then I shall know it is delivered."

"D'you know, I half suspected all along you meant to do that. You oughtn't really to put yourself to so much trouble. I don't know how to thank you. I don't, really!"

"It's no trouble at all. It's on my way home."

"You're just going home, then? You must be very tired."

"Oh, no! I sleep in the daytime."

"Well, I hope you'll have a good _day's_ rest." A laugh.

"And _I_ hope now I've wakened you you won't turn over and go to sleep again." Another laugh, from the same end.

"No fear! I'm up now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm up. Out of bed." A laugh from the Clifford Street end.

"Good-bye, then."

"Good-bye. And thanks again. By the way, you're putting the bill with it?"

"Oh, yes."

"And the carbon?"

"Yes. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Miss Share."

Lilian hung up the receiver, smiling. And she continued to smile as she left the room and went to her own room and took her street things out of the cupboard and put them on. Nothing could have been more ba.n.a.l, more ordinary, and nothing more exquisite and romantic than the telephone conversation. The secret charm of it was inexplicable to her.... She saw him standing in the blue-and-crimson pyjamas by the bedside, a form distinguished and powerful.... She revelled in his grat.i.tude. How nice of him to ask her name so that he might thank her personally! He did not care to thank a nameless employee. He wanted to thank _somebody_.

And now she was somebody to him.

Perhaps she had not been well-advised to give him her Christian name.

The word, however, had come out of itself. Moreover, she liked her Christian name, and she liked nice people to know it. She certainly ought not to have said "that" about his not turning over and going to sleep again. No. There was something "common" in it. But he had accepted the freedom in the right spirit, had not taken advantage of it.

She extinguished the gas-stove, restored the stolen typewriter, loosed the catch of the outer door, banged the door after her, and descended, holding the foolscap envelope in her shabbily-gloved hand. The forsaken solitude of the office was behind her.

Outside, an icy mist floated over wet pavements in the first dim, sinister unveiling of the London day! Lilian wore a thick, broad, woollen scarf which comforted her neck and bosom, and gave to beholders the absurd illusion that she was snugly enveloped; but the a.s.saulting cold took her in the waist, and she s.h.i.+vered. Her feet began to feel damp immediately. There was the old watchman peeping out of his sentry-box by his glowing brazier! He recognized her quickly enough, and without a movement of the gnarled face held up her matchbox as a sign of the bond between them. How ridiculous to have cla.s.sed him with burglars! She threw her head back and gave him a proud, bright and rather condescendingly gracious smile.

Along Clifford Street and all down Bond Street the heaped dustbins stood on the kerb waiting for the scavengers. In Piccadilly several Lyons'

horse-vans, painted in Oxford and Cambridge blues, trotted st.u.r.dily eastwards; one of them was driven by a woman, wrapped in a great macintosh and perched high aloft with a boy beside her. Nothing else moving in the thoroughfare! The Ritz Hotel, formidable fortress of luxury, stood up arrogant like a Florentine palace, hiding all its costly secrets from the scorned mob. No. 6a Jermyn Street was just round the corner from St. James's Street: a narrow seven-storey building of flats, with a front-door as impa.s.sive and meaningless as the face of a footman. Lilian hesitated a moment and relinquished her packet into the bra.s.s-bordered letter-slit. She heard it fall. She turned away with a jerky gesture. She had not walked ten yards when a frightful la.s.situde and dejection attacked her with the suddenness of cholera.

Scarcely could she command her limbs to move. The ineffable sadness, hopelessness, wretchedness, vanity of existence washed over her and beat her down. Only a very few could be glorious, and she was not and never could be of the few. She was shut out from brightness,--no better than a ragam.u.f.fin looking into a candy window.

She descended into the everlasting lamplit night of the Tube at Dover Street, where there was no dawn and no sunset. And all the employees, and all the meek, preoccupied travellers seemed to be her brothers and sisters in martyrdom. Her train was nearly empty; but the eastbound trains--train after train--were full of pathetic midgets urgently engaged upon the problem of making both ends meet. After Earl's Court the train ran up an incline into the whitening day. She got out at the next station, conveniently near to which she lodged.

The house was one of the heavily porched erections of the 'fifties and 'sixties, much fallen in prestige. The dirty kitchenmaid was giving the stone floor of the porch a lick and a promise, so that fortunately the front door stood open. Lilian had the tiny mean bedroom on the second floor over the hall; in New York it would have been termed a hall-bedroom. n.o.body except the gawky, frowsy, stupid, good-natured maid had seen her. She shut her door and locked it. The room was colder even than the street. She looked into the mirror, which was so small that she had had to arrange a descending series of nails for it in order that piece by piece she might inspect the whole of herself. Her face was as pale as a corpse. Undressing and piling half her wardrobe on to the counterpane she slipped into the narrow bed, ravenous for sleep and oblivion, and drew the clothes right over her head. In an instant she was in a paradise of divine dreams.