"Miss Jackson is waiting to see you"m. Will you see her or shall I ask her to call to-night?"
"Miss Jackson!" Lilian exclaimed, agitated by the swiftness of the sequence of events. "Has she been waiting long?"
"No"m. Only about twenty minutes."
"Why didn"t you tell me before?"
"I thought you ought to have your tea quiet"m."
"How nice of you!" said Lilian, with a weak, acquiescent smile. "But do ask her to come in here now. She won"t mind me being in bed, will she?"
"I should hope not"m," said the parlourmaid, pawing the ground.
Lilian pushed her l.u.s.treless hair out of her eyes. The sun was shining on part of the tumbled bed. Then Gertie Jackson came in. Absolutely unchanged! The same neat, provincial, Islingtonian toilette. The same serious, cheerful, ingenuous gaze. The same unmarred complexion. The same upright pose and throwing back of the shoulders in unconscious rect.i.tude and calm intention to front courageously the difficulties of the day. The same mingling of self-respect and deference. She bent over the bed; Lilian held up her face like a child with mute invitation, and Gertie kissed her. What a fresh, honest, innocent, ignorant kiss on Lilian"s hot, wasted, experienced cheek!
"You poor thing!" Gertrude murmured devotedly.
"I"m seven months gone nearly," Lilian murmured, as if in despair.
"Well, it"ll soon be over, then!" said Gertie buoyantly, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Yes, but shall I ever again be like I was?" Lilian demanded gloomily.
"Of course you will, dear. _And_ prettier. They almost always are, you know. I"ve often noticed it."
"You dear!" cried Lilian, "and do you mean to say you"ve got up earlier and come all the way down from Islington here to see me before going to the office? And me keeping you waiting!"
"Why! But of course I came. I"m responsible to you, now poor Miss Grig"s gone. I told her I would be. And I can"t tell you how glad I shall be if I suit you and you find you can keep me on. It"s such a good situation."
Lilian lifted her face again and kissed her--but not the kiss of grat.i.tude (though there was grat.i.tude in it), the kiss of recompense, of reward. It was Lilian who, in allowing herself to be faithfully served, was conferring the favour. Gertrude was the eternal lieutenant, without ambition, without dreams, asking only to serve with loyalty in security.
In that moment Lilian understood as never before the function of these priceless Gertrudes whose first instinct when they lost one master was to attach themselves to another.
"Look here!" said Lilian. "D"you know what I want? I want you to come and live here till it"s over."
"Of course I will," Gertrude agreed, eagerly ready to abandon her domestic habits and interior for as long as she was required to do so, and to resume them whenever it might suit Lilian"s convenience. And all because Lilian had been beautiful and successful, and would be beautiful and successful once more!
"You must come to-night, will you?" Lilian insisted, transformed in a moment into the spoilt and exacting queen.
Gertrude nodded, brightly beaming.
"I do so want to talk to you," Lilian went on. "I"ve had n.o.body to talk to for--I mean like you. D"you know, Felix would have been alive now if it hadn"t been for me." She burst into tears, and then, recovering, began an interminable detailed recital of events on the Riviera, coupled with a laudation of Felix. She revelled in it, and was shameless, well aware that Gertrude would defend her against herself. The relief which she felt was intense.
At the end of half an hour, when the torrent had slackened, Gertrude said:
"I really think I"d better be going now. What time would you like me to come to-night? I"m quite free because I"m not taking night duty this week. It"s Milly"s week." And as she was leaving she turned back rather nervously to the bed. "D"you mind me suggesting one thing? I wouldn"t have you over-tire yourself; but if you could just show yourself at the office, I feel it would be such a good thing for all of us. The girls would understand then who the new employer is. Some of them are very stupid, you know. If you could just show yourself--a quarter of an hour. It"s for your own sake, dear."
"As I am? I mean--you know----"
"Why not?"
"But would they----"
"Of course not," blandly and firmly decided Gertrude, who had been brought up in Islington, where the enterprise of procreation proceeds on an important scale and in a straightforward spirit. Strange that in Gertrude"s virginal mentality such realism could coexist with such innocent ingenuousness! But it was so.
When Gertrude had left, Lilian opened the parcel. It was from Dr. Samson and contained two books recommended and promised by him about preparing for motherhood, and motherhood, and cognate matters. The mere t.i.tles of the chapters entranced her.
IV
The New Employer
Appreciably less than a year had pa.s.sed since she went down those office stairs, thrust out by the implacable jealousy of Miss Grig, and yet in that short time the stairs had shrunk and become most painfully dingy.
The sight of them saddened her; she wondered how it was that their squalor had not affected her before. She felt acutely sorry for the girl named Lilian Share who in the previous autumn used easily to run up them from bottom to top, urged by the consciousness of being late. Now she had to take the second flight very slowly. The door opened as she reached it, and Gertie Jackson emerged to usher her in. A dozen pairs of ears had been listening for her arrival. The doors of both the large and the small rooms were ajar, and she had glimpses of watching faces as she went with Gertrude into the princ.i.p.al"s room. She was intensely nervous and self-conscious. Gertrude explained that Miss Grig had installed her in the princ.i.p.al"s room months ago, and Lilian said that that was quite right, and Gertrude said that she had hoped Lilian would approve.
Tea was laid on one of the desks, a dainty tea, such a tea as Lilian had never seen in the office, with more pastry than even two girls could eat who had had no lunch and expected no dinner; an extravagant display.
Then a flapper entered with the tea-pot and the hot-water jug, and Lilian smiled at her, and the flapper blushed and smiled and tossed her winged pigtail. The flapper had a shabby air. Lilian could swallow only one cake because Gertrude was sitting where Felix had sat when he first told her what she might do and ought to do with herself.
"I am so glad you"ve come!" said Gertrude, in a sort of rapture.
"Yes," Lilian agreed with dignity. "I was bound to come, of course."
She felt wise and mature and tremendously aware of her responsibilities; and she intended to remain so. n.o.body should be able to say of her that she had lost her head or that she was silly or weak or in any way unequal to her situation. Above all, Miss Grig should be forced to continue to respect her.
"I suppose I"d better just go and see them all now," she suggested, after more tea.
"They"d be delighted if you would," said Gertrude, as if the thing had not already been arranged.
Naturally Lilian honoured the small room first. The three inhabitants of the small room--two of them were unknown to her--sprang up, flattered, ruffled, fl.u.s.tered, excited, at her entrance. There she stood, the marvellous, the semi-legendary Lilian, who had captured the aristocratic master, run off with him to the Continent, married him, buried him, inherited all his possessions, and was soon going to have a baby. Her famous beauty was under eclipse, her famous figure had grown monstrous beyond any possible concealment; but she was still marvellous. She was the most romantic figure that those girls had ever seen; she was all picture-paper serials and cinema films rolled together and come to life and reality. Her prestige was terrific. She felt it and knew it and acted on it. How pathetically common the girls were, how slave-like!
How cheap their frocks! How very small the room (but evidently it had been tidied for her visit)! She recognized one of the old Underwoods by a dent in its frame, and remembered the stain on one of the green lampshades, and the peculiarities of the woodwork of the absurdly small mirror. She was touched; she might have wept a little, but her great pride--in her achievement, in her position, in her condition, even in her tragic sorrow--upheld her safely. Tenderly invited to sit down, she sat down, and she put expert questions, to the wonderment of practising typists, thus proving that she was not proud. And then with gracious adieux she proceeded to the large room where, though her stay was (properly) more brief, she created still more sensation. In the large room she surprised one or two surrept.i.tious exchanges of glance betraying a too critical awareness on the part of some that she had sinned against the code and perhaps only saved herself by the skin of her teeth. These unkind exhibitions did not trouble her in the least.
The demeanour of the more serious and best-paid girls showed absolutely no _arriere pensee_, and better than anybody else they knew what was what in the real world. Gertrude Jackson, the honest soul of purity, already adored her employer.
As these two were returning to the princ.i.p.al"s room the entrance-door opened and Millicent Merrislate burst breathlessly in.
"How splendid!" exclaimed Gertrude.
She had sent a special message to Milly, and Milly for a sight of her new mistress had got up and come to the office two hours earlier than her official time. Lilian was amazed and very pleased. She remembered that she had once spent at any rate one night of toil in perfect friendliness with the queer, flat, cattish Millicent; and now she insisted on Milly helping them to eat cakes in the sacred room. The scene was idyllic. A little later Lilian, having arranged the details of Gertrude"s temporary removal to Montpelier Square, announced that she must go, on account of some important shopping. Gertrude, sternly watchful against undue fatigue for Lilian, raised her eyebrows at the mention of shopping, but Lilian rea.s.sured her. A taxi was fetched by the flapper-of-all-work, and, noticing then for the first time that the road repairs in the neighbourhood were all finished, and every trace of them vanished, Lilian gave the driver an address in Piccadilly. Several girls were watching her departure from the windows; her upward glance caught them in the act, and the heads disappeared sharply within.
"They are all working for _me_!" she thought with complacency, and could scarcely believe the wonderful thing.
V
Layette