"I don't suppose I shall ever marry," she said plaintively. "How can I?" She meant, and without doubt he understood: "How can I possibly meet a man who is worth marrying?" She thought with destructive disdain of every youth who had ever reacted to her charm. The company at the dance she had missed seemed contemptible. They were still dancing. What a collection of tenth-rate fellows!
She became gloomy, pessimistic, as she saw the totality of her existence and its prospects. The home at Putney had been a prison. She had escaped from it, but only to enter another prison. She saw no outlet. She was trapped on every side. She could not break out of the infernal circle of poverty and of the conventions. Not in ten years could she save enough to keep her for a year. She had to watch every penny. If she was mad enough to go to a West End theatre she had to consider the difference between a half-crown and a three-shilling pit. Thousands of men and women negligently fling themselves into expensive taxis, but a rise in bus fares or Tube fares would seriously unbalance Lilian's budget. She passed most of her spare time in using a needle to set off her beauty, but what a farce was the interminable study and labour! She could not possibly aspire to even the best gloves; and as for the best stockings, or the second best!--the price of such a pair came to more than she could earn in a week. It was all absurd, tragic, pitiful. She had common-sense ample enough to see that her beauty was futile, her ambitions baseless, and her prospects nil. If she had been a vicious girl, she might have broken through the dreadful ring into splendours which she glimpsed and needed. But she was not vicious.
"Pooh!" exclaimed Mr. Grig impatiently. "You could marry anybody you liked if you put your mind to it."
And he spoke so scornfully of her lack of faith, so persuasively, so inspiringly, that she had an amazing and beautiful vision of herself worshipped, respected, alluring, seductive, arousing passion, reciprocating passion, kind, benevolent, eternally young, eternally lovely, eternally exercising for the balm and solace of mankind and a man the functions for which she was created and endowed--in a word, fulfilling herself. And for the moment, in the ecstasy of resolution to achieve the impossible, she was superb and magnificent and the finest thing that a man could ever hope to witness.
And she thought desperately:
"I'm twenty-three already. Time is rushing past me. To-morrow I shall be old."
After a silence Mr. Grig said:
"You're very tired. There's no reason why you shouldn't go home to bed."
"Indeed I shan't go home, Mr. Grig," she answered sharply, with grateful, eager devotion. "I shall stay. Supposing some work came in! It's not twelve o'clock yet."
She surprised quite a youthful look on Mr. Grig's face. Nearly thirty years older than herself? Ridiculous! There was nothing at all in a difference of years. Some men were never old. Back in the clerks' room she got out her vanity bag and carefully arranged her face. And as she looked in the glass she thought:
"After to-night I shall never be quite the same girl again.... Did he really call me in to ask me about the work, or did he only do it because he wanted to talk to me?"
IV: The Clubman
Lilian was confused by a momentary magnificent, vague vision of a man framed in the doorway of the small room. The door, drawn backwards from without, hid the vision. Then there was a cough. She realized with alarm that she had been asleep, or at least dozing, over her machine. In the fifth of a second she was wide awake and alert.
"Who's there?" she called, steadying her voice to a matter-of-fact and casual tone.
The door was pushed open, and the man who had been a vision entered.
"I beg your pardon," said he. "I wasn't sure whether it was the proper thing to come in here. I looked into another room, and had a glimpse of a gentleman who seemed to be rather dormant."
"This is the room to come to," said Lilian, with a prim counterfeit of a smile.
"The office is open?"
"Certainly."
As he advanced into the room the man took off the glossy silk hat which he was wearing at the far back of his head. He had an overcoat, but carried it on his left arm. He was tall and broad--something, indeed, in the nature of a giant--with a florid, smooth face; aged perhaps thirty-three. He had a way of pinching his lips together and pressing his lower jaw against his high collar, thus making a false double chin or so; the result was to produce an effect of wise and tolerant good-humour, as of one who knew humanity and who while prepared for surprises was not going to judge us too harshly. He was in full evening-dress, and his clothes were superb. They glistened; they fitted without a crease. The vast curve of the gleaming stiff shirt-front sloped perfect in its contour; the white waistcoat was held round the stupendous form by three topaz buttons; from somewhere beneath the waistcoat a gold chain emerged and vanished somewhere into the hinterland of his person. The stout white kid gloves were thickly ridged on the backs and fitted the broad hands as well as the coat fitted the body--it was inconceivable that they had not been made to measure as everything else must have been made to measure. The man would have been overdressed had he not worn his marvellous and costly garments with absolute naturalness and simplicity.
Lilian thought:
"He must be a man-about-town, a clubman, the genuine article."
She was impressed, secretly flustered, and very anxious to meet him as an equal on his own ground of fine manners. She divined that, having entered the room once and fairly caught her asleep, he had had the good taste to withdraw and cough and make a new entry in order to spare her modesty; and she was softly appreciative, while quite determined to demonstrate by her demeanour that she had not been asleep.
She thought:
"Gertie Jackson wouldn't have known where to look, in my place."
Still, despite her disdain of Gertie Jackson's deportment, she felt herself to be terribly unproficient in the social art.
"Is it anything urgent?" she asked.
"Well, it is a bit urgent."
He had a strong, full, pleasant voice.
"Won't you sit down?"
"Thanks."
He sat down, disposing his hat by the side of her machine, and his overcoat on another chair, and drawing off his gloves.
Lilian waited like a cat to pounce upon the slightest sign of familiarity and kill it; for she had understood that men-about-town regarded girl typists as their quarry and as nothing else. But there was no least lapse from deferential propriety; the clubman might have been in colloquy with his sister's friend--and his sister listening in the next room. He pulled a manuscript from