Lilian. Arnold Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ she snatched at a sheet of paper and began to insert it in the machine before her, as though about to start some copying.

      "Miss Grig is rather unwell," said Felix Grig. "She insisted that I should come up, and so I came." With that he tactfully left the room, obeying the wise rule of conduct under which a man conquers a woman's weeping by running away from it.

      Lilian's face was red; it went still redder. She was tremendously ashamed of being caught blubbering, and by Mr. Grig! It would not have mattered if one of the girls had surprised her, or even Miss Grig. But Mr. Grig! Nor would it have mattered so much if circumstances had made possible any pretence, however absurd and false, that she was not in fact crying. But she had been trapped beyond any chance of a face-saving lie. She felt as though she had committed a sexual impropriety and could never look Mr. Grig in the eyes again. At the same time she was profoundly relieved that somebody belonging to the office, and especially a man, had arrived to break her awful solitude…

      So Mr. Grig knew that she had a dance that night! There was something piquant and discomposing in that. Gertie Jackson must have chattered to Miss Grig-they were as thick as thieves, those two, or, at any rate, the good-natured Gertie flattered herself that they were-and Miss Grig must have told Felix. (Very discreetly the girls would refer among themselves to Mr. Grig as "Felix.") Brother and sister must have been talking about her and her miserable little dance. Still, a dance was a dance, and the mere word had a glorious sound. Nobody except herself knew that her dance was in a basement… So he had not come to the office to relieve and reassure her in her unforeseen night-watch, but merely to placate his sister! And how casually, lightly, almost quizzically, he had spoken! She was naught to him-a girl typist, one among a floating population of girl typists.

      Miss Grig had no distinction-her ankles proved that-but Felix was distinguished, in manner, in voice, in everything he did. Felix was a swell, like the easy flâneurs in Bond Street that she saw when she happened to go out of the office during work-hours. It was said that he had been married and that his wife had divorced him. Lilian surmised that if the truth were known the wife more than Felix had been to blame.

      All these thoughts were mere foam on the great, darkly heaving thought that Felix had horribly misjudged her. Not his fault, of course; but he had misjudged her. Crying for a lost dance, indeed! She terribly wanted him to be made aware that she was only crying because she had experienced an ordeal to which she ought not to have been exposed and to which no girl ought to have been exposed. Miss Grig again! It was Miss Grig, not Felix, who had sneered at hold-ups. There had been no hold-up, but there might have been a hold-up, and, in any case, she had passed through the worst sensations of a hold-up. Scandalous!

      Anxious to be effective, she took up the typing of a novel which had been sent in by one of their principal customers, a literary agency, and tried to tap as prosaically as if the hour were 11.30 A.M. instead of 11.30 P.M. Bravado! She knew that she would have to do the faulty sheet again; but she must impress Felix. Then she heard Felix calling from the principals' room:

      "Miss Share. Miss Share!" A little impatient as usual.

      "Yes, Mr. Grig." She rushed to the mirror and patted herself with the tiny sponge that under Miss Grig's orders was supposed to be employed for wetting postage stamps-but never was so employed save in Miss Grig's presence.

      "I shall tell him why I was crying," she said to herself as she crossed the ante-room. "And I shall tell him straight."

      He was seated on the corner of the table in the principals' room, and rolling a cigarette. He had lighted the gas-stove. A very slim man of medium height and of no age, he might have been thirty-five with prematurely grizzled hair, or fifty with hair younger than the wrinkles round his grey eyes! Miss Grig had said or implied that she was younger than her brother, but the girls did not accept without reserve all that Miss Grig might say or imply. He had taken off his overcoat and now displayed a dinner-jacket and an adorably soft shirt. Lilian had never before seen him in evening-dress, for he did not come to the office at night, and nobody expected him to come to the office at night. He was wonderfully attractive in evening-dress, which he carried with the nonchalance of regular custom. So different from her father, who put on ceremonial attire about three times a year, and wore it with deplorable self-consciousness, as though it were a suit of armour! Mr. Grig was indeed a queer person to run a typewriting office. Lilian was aware that he had been to Winchester and Cambridge, and done all manner of unusual things before he lit on typewriting.

      "Any work come in to-night, Miss Share?" he demanded in the bland, kindly, careless, official tone which he always employed to the girls-a tone rendering the slightest familiarity impossible. "Anybody called?"

      Lilian knew that he was merely affecting an interest in the business, acting the rôle of managing proprietor. He had tired of the business long ago, and graciously left all the real power to his sister, who had no mind above typewriting.

      "Someone did come in just before you, Mr. Grig," Lilian replied, seizing her chance, and in a half-challenging tone she related the adventure with the night-watchman. "It was that that upset me, Mr. Grig. It might have been a burglar-I made sure it was. And me all alone-"

      "Quite! Quite!" he stopped her. "I can perfectly imagine how you must have felt. You haven't got over it yet, even. Sit down. Sit down." He said no word of apology for his misjudgment of her, but his tone apologized.

      "Oh! I'm perfectly all right now, thank you."

      "Please!" He slipped off the table and pulled round Miss Grig's chair for her.

      She obediently sat down, liking to be agreeable to him. He unlocked his own cupboard and brought out a decanter and a liqueur glass. "Drink this."

      "Please, what is it?"

      "Brandy. Poison." He smiled.

      She smiled, sipped, and coughed as the spirit burned her throat.

      "I can't drink any more," she appealed.

      "That's all right. That's all right."

      It was his humorous use of the word "poison" that touched her. This sole word changed their relations. Hitherto they had never for a moment been other than employer and employed. Now they were something else. She was deeply flattered, assuaged, and also excited. Brought up to scorn employment, the hardest task for her in her situation in the Grig office had been to admit by her deportment that there was a bar of class between her employer and herself. The other girls addressed Mr. Grig as "Sir"; but she-never! She always called him "Mr. Grig," and nothing could have induced her to say "Sir." Now, he was protecting her; he had become the attendant male; his protection enveloped her like a soft swansdown quilt, exquisite, delicious. And it was night. The night created romance. Romance suddenly filled the room like a magic vapour, transforming him, herself, and the commonest objects of the room into something ideal.

      "Several times I've wanted to speak to you about a certain matter," said Mr. Grig quietly; and paused, gazing at the smoke from his cigarette.

      "Oh, yes?" Lilian murmured nervously, and strove to accomplish the demeanour of a young woman of the world. (She much regretted that she had her wristlets on.) As he was not looking at her she could look at his face. And she looked at it as though she had never seen it before, or with fresh-perceiving eyes. A very clever, rather tired face; superior, even haughty, self-sure; fastidious, dissatisfied, the face of one accustomed to choose sardonically between two evils; impatient, bitter; humorous, with hints of benevolence. She thought: "Of course he's never spoken to me because of his sister. Even he has to mind his p's and q's with her. And he's one that hates a fuss. Now she isn't here-"

      She could not conceive what might be the "certain matter." She thrilled to learn it; but he would not be hurried. СКАЧАТЬ