"hello, hello! who is it?"
"is that regent 1067?"
"yes."
"is that lord mackworth?"
"speaking. who is it?"
"grig's typewriting office. i'm so sorry to wake you up, but you asked us to. it's just past six o'clock."
"thanks very much. who is it speaking?"
"grig's typewriting office."
"yes. but your name? miss--miss----?"
"oh! i see. share. share. lilian share.... not spare, s-h-a-r-e."
"i've got it. share. i recognized your voice, miss share. well, it's most extraordinarily good-natured of you. most. i can't thank you enough. excuse me asking your name. i only wanted it so that i could thank you personally. article finished?"
"it's all finished and ready to be delivered. it'll be dropped into your letter-box in about a quarter of an hour from now. you can rely on that."
"then do you keep messengers hanging about all night for these jobs?"
"i'm going to deliver it myself; then i shall know it is delivered."
"d'you know, i half suspected all along you meant to do that. you oughtn't really to put yourself to so much trouble. i don't know how to thank you. i don't, really!"
"it's no trouble at all. it's on my way home."
"you're just going home, then? you must be very tired."
"oh, no! i sleep in the daytime."
"well, i hope you'll have a good day's rest." a laugh.
"and i hope now i've wakened you you won't turn over and go to sleep again." another laugh, from the same end.
"no fear! i'm up now."
"i beg your pardon?"
"i'm up. out of bed." a laugh from the clifford street end.
"good-bye, then."
"good-bye. and thanks again. by the way, you're putting the bill with it?"
"oh, yes."
"and the carbon?"
"yes. good-bye."
"good-bye, miss share."
lilian hung up the receiver, smiling. and she continued to smile as she left the room and went to her own room and took her street things out of the cupboard and put them on. nothing could have been more banal, more ordinary, and nothing more exquisite and romantic than the telephone conversation. the secret charm of it was inexplicable to her.... she saw him standing in the blue-and-crimson pyjamas by the bedside, a form distinguished and powerful.... she revelled in his gratitude. how nice of him to ask her name so that he might thank her personally! he did not care to thank a nameless employee. he wanted to thank somebody. and now she was somebody to him.
perhaps she had not been well-advised to give him her christian name. the word, however, had come out of itself. moreover, she liked her christian name, and she liked nice people to know it. she certainly ought not to have said "that" about his not turning over and going to sleep again. no. there was something "common" in it. but he had accepted the freedom in the right spirit, had not taken advantage of it.
she extinguished the gas-stove, restored the stolen typewriter, loosed the catch of the outer door, banged the door after her, and descended, holding the foolscap envelope in her shabbily-gloved hand. the forsaken solitude of the office was behind her.
outside, an icy mist floated over wet pavements in the first dim, sinister unveiling of the london day! lilian wore a thick, broad, woollen scarf which comforted her neck and bosom, and gave to beholders the absurd illusion that she was snugly enveloped; but the assaulting cold took her in the waist, and she shivered. her feet began to feel damp immediately. there was the old watchman peeping out of his sentry-box by his glowing brazier! he recognized her quickly enough, and without a movement of the gnarled face held up her matchbox as a sign of the bond between them. how ridiculous to have classed him with burglars! she threw her head back and gave him a proud, bright and rather condescendingly gracious smile.
along clifford street and all down bond street the heaped dustbins stood on the kerb waiting for the scavengers. in piccadilly several lyons' horse-vans, painted in oxford and cambridge blues, trotted sturdily eastwards; one of them was driven by a woman, wrapped in a great macintosh and perched high aloft with a boy beside her. nothing else moving in the thoroughfare! the ritz hotel, formidable fortress of luxury, stood up arrogant like a florentine palace, hiding all its costly secrets from the scorned mob. no. 6a jermyn street was just round the corner from st. james's street: a narrow seven-storey building of flats, with a front-door as impassive and meaningless as the face of a footman. lilian hesitated a moment and relinquished her packet into the brass-bordered letter-slit. she heard it fall. she turned away with a jerky gesture. she had not walked ten yards when a frightful lassitude and dejection attacked her with the suddenness of cholera. scarcely could she command her limbs to move. the ineffable sadness, hopelessness, wretchedness, vanity of existence washed over her and beat her down. only a very few could be glorious, and she was not and never could be of the few. she was shut out from brightness,--no better than a ragamuffin looking into a candy window.
she descended into the everlasting lamplit night of the tube at dover street, where there was no dawn and no sunset. and all the employees, and all the meek, preoccupied travellers seemed to be her brothers and sisters in martyrdom. her train was nearly empty; but the eastbound trains--train after train--were full of pathetic midgets urgently engaged upon the problem of making both ends meet. after earl's court the train ran up an incline into the whitening day. she got out at the next station, conveniently near to which she lodged.
the house was one of the heavily porched erections of the 'fifties and 'sixties, much fallen in prestige. the dirty kitchenmaid was giving the stone floor of the porch a lick and a promise, so that fortunately the front door stood open. lilian had the tiny mean bedroom on the second floor over the hall; in new york it would have been termed a hall-bedroom. nobody except the gawky, frowsy, stupid, good-natured maid had seen her. she shut her door and locked it. the room was colder even than the street. she looked into the mirror, which was so small that she had had to arrange a descending series of nails for it in order that piece by piece she might inspect the whole of herself. her face was as pale as a corpse. undressing and piling half her wardrobe on to the counterpane she slipped into the narrow bed, ravenous for sleep and oblivion, and drew the clothes right over her head. in an instant she was in a paradise of divine dreams.
