Lilian Part 9

"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 a.s.sumed 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day. No. On second thoughts, I'll pay your wages up to Sat.u.r.day 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, pa.s.sionate fear of a friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 ent.i.tled 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!