Part 21 (1/2)

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 wors.h.i.+pped 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.