Part 6 (1/2)
She had no coquetry, and not the slightest inclination for _chic_. Her clothes were ”good,” and bought in Upper Street, Islington; her excellent boots gave her away. She was not uninterested in men; but she did not talk about them, she twittered about them. To Lilian she had the soul of an infant. And she was too pure, too ingenuous, too kind, too conscientious; her nature lacked something fundamental, and Lilian felt but could not describe what it was--save by saying that she had no kick in either her body or her soul. In the third place, there was that terrible absence of ambition. Lilian could not understand contentment, and Gertie's contentment exasperated her. She admitted that Gertie was faultless, and yet she tremendously despised the paragon, occasionally going so far as to think of her as a cat.
And now Gertie straightened herself, stuck her chest out bravely, according to habit, and smiled a most friendly greeting. Behind the smile lay concealed no resentment against Lilian for having failed to appear on the previous evening, and no moral superiority as a first-cla.s.s devotee of duty. What lay behind it, and not wholly concealed, was a grave sense of responsibility for the welfare of the business in circ.u.mstances difficult and complex.
”Have you seen Miss Grig?” she asked solemnly.
”Yes,” said Lilian, with a touch of careless defiance; she supposed Gertie to be delicately announcing that Miss G. had been lying in wait for her, Lilian.
”Doesn't she look simply frightfully ill?”
”She does,” admitted Lilian, who in her egotism had quite forgotten her first impression that morning of Miss G.'s face. ”What is it?”
Gertie mentioned the dreadful name of one of those hidden though not shameful maladies which afflict only women--but the majority of women.
The crude words sounded oddly on Gertie's prim lips. Lilian was duly impressed; she was as if intimidated. At intervals the rumour of a victim of that cla.s.s of diseases runs whisperingly through a.s.semblages of women, who on the entrance of a male hastily change the subject of talk and become falsely bright. Yet every male in the circle of acquaintances will catch the rumour almost instantly, because some wife runs to inform her husband, and the husband informs all his friends.
”Who told you?” Lilian demanded.
”Oh! I've known about it for a long time,” said Gertie without pride.
”I told Milly just now, before I went out. Everybody will know soon.”
Lilian felt a pang of jealousy. ”It means a terrible operation,” Gertie added.
”But she oughtn't to be here!” Lilian exclaimed.
”No!” Gertie agreed with a surprising sternness that somewhat altered Lilian's estimate of her. ”No! And she isn't _going_ to be here, either! Not if I know it! I shall see that she gets back home at lunch-time. She's quarrelled already with Mr. Grig this morning about her coming up.”
”Do you mean at home they quarrelled?”
”Yes. He got so angry that he said if she came he wouldn't. He was quite right to be angry, of course. But she came all the same.”
”Miss G. must have told Gertie all that herself,” Lilian reflected.
”She'd never be as confidential with me. She'd never tell me anything!”
And she had a queer feeling of inferiority.
”We must do all we can to help things,” said Gertie.
”Of course!” agreed Lilian, suddenly softened, overcome by a rush of sympathy and a strong impulse to behave n.o.bly, beautifully, forgivingly towards Miss G.
Nevertheless, though it was Gertie's att.i.tude that had helped to inspire her, she still rather disdained the virtuous senior. Lilian appreciated profoundly--perhaps without being able to put her feeling into words--the heroic madness of Miss G. in defying common sense and her brother for the sake of the beloved business. But Gertie saw in Miss G.'s act nothing but a piece of naughty and sick foolishness. To Lilian Miss G. in her superficial yearning softness became almost a terrible figure, a figure to be regarded with awe, and to serve as an exemplar.
But in contemplating Miss G. Lilian uneasily realized her own precariousness. Miss G. was old and plain (save that her eyes had beauty), and yet was fulfilling her great pa.s.sion and was imposing herself on her environment. Miss G. was _doing_. Lilian could only _be_; she would always remain at the mercy of someone, and the success which she desired could last probably no longer than her youth and beauty. The transience of the gifts upon which she must depend frightened her--but at the same time intensified anew her resolves. She had not a moment to lose. And Gertie, standing there close to her, sweet and reliable and good, in the dull cage, amid the daily circ.u.mstances of their common slavery, would have understood nothing of Lilian's obscure emotion.
III
Shut
The two girls had not settled to work when the door of the small room was pushed cautiously open and Mr. Grig came in--as it were by stealth.
Milly, prolonging her sweet hour of authority in the large room, had not yet returned to her mates. By a glance and a gesture Mr. Grig prevented the girls from any exclamation of surprise. Evidently he was secreting himself from his sister, and he must have entered the office without a sound. He looked older, worn, worried, captious--as though he needed balm and solace and treatment at once firm and infinitely soft. Lilian, who a few minutes earlier had been recalcitrant to Miss Grig's theory that women must protect men, now felt a desire to protect Mr. Grig, to save him exquisitely from anxieties unsuited to his temperament.