Lilian Part 21

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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d_ 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 gla.s.s-top--as if they had cracked the gla.s.s (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! h.e.l.lish pride! h.e.l.lish 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?"