"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 compa.s.sion, 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 princ.i.p.als 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt. He would see to it himself, and wanted no a.s.sistance, indeed objected to a.s.sistance 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 role of dismissing applicants as fast as they came.