IV
WhenLydia was fifteen, expectant of Honours in her examinations, highly placed in the school, and with a secret hope that the following term might see her Head of the School—and that, moreover, at an unprecedently early age—unexpected disaster overtook her.
The three placid years at Regency Terrace had been so little marked by any changes that she had forgotten that old sense of the insecurity and impermanence of life, bred of early days with her mother, and it came as a shock to her that anything should interfere seriously with her schemes.
Quite unexpectedly she fell ill.
“I don’t like that cough of yours, Lydia.”
“It’s only a cold, auntie.”
“It doesn’t seem to get any better. Let me see, how long have you had it now?”
Lydia pretended to think that Aunt Beryl was only talking to herself, and bent lower over her books. She always worked at her preparation in the evenings after supper now.
It was damp, chilly weather, and her cough grew worse, although she stifled it as far as possible, and said nothing about the pains in her back and sides.
Aunt Beryl brought her a bottle of cough mixture recommended by Mrs. Jackson, and Lydia put it on the mantlepiece in her bedroom, and carefully dusted the bottle every day, and sometimes poured away a little of the contents.
But one morning, one important morning when there was a French lesson which it was essential that Lydia, with whom French still remained the weakest of links in an otherwise well-forged chain, should attend, she found herself quite unable to go downstairs to breakfast.
Her head swam, her eyes and mouth were burning, and her legs unaccountably trembled beneath her.
“No such thing ascan’t,” muttered Lydia fiercely, repeating Grandpapa’s favourite axiom.
The pain in her side had increased without warning, and suddenly gave her an unendurable stab every time that she tried to move.
“Oh!”
Lydia sank back on the bed, and found herself crying hoarsely from pain and dismay. Surely even Grandpapa would admit the necessity for saying “can’t” at last.
But Lydia did not see Grandpapa for some time after that morning.
She lay in bed with a fire in the room, sometimes suffering a great deal of pain, and sometimes in a sort of strange, jumbled dream, when the pattern of the wall paper turned into mysterious columns of figures that would never add up, and French Irregular Verbs danced across the ceiling.
Aunt Beryl nursed her all day and sat up with her at nights very often, and Dr. Young came to see her every day.
Once he said to her:
“You’re a very good patient. I don’t know what we should have done with you if you hadn’t been a good, reasonable girl, and done everything you were told.”
Lydia was pleased.
“Am I very ill?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ve turned the corner nicely now,” said Dr. Young cheerfully. “But pneumonia’s no joke, and you’ll have to be careful for a long while yet.”
“Shan’t I be able to go up for the examination?”
“Let me see—that’s about a month off. We shall have to see about that.”
Dr. Young’s daughter was at Miss Glover’s school, too, and he knew all about the terrible importance of the examination. Nevertheless, he gave Lydia no permission to resume her studies.
“Don’t worry, dear, there’s plenty of time before you, and now I’ve got some nice fruit jelly for you,” said Aunt Beryl, and Lydia always thanked her very gratefully and lay back against the pillow, trying all the time to recapitulate the French verbs and the list of Exceptions to Rules that she had been learning when she first fell ill.
Except for anxiety about the examination, convalescence was agreeable.
Uncle George came up to see her one day, and brought her some grapes, and explained to her why it was that the great pieces of ice in her glass of barley-water did not cause it to overflow, quite in the old Mr. Barlow manner, and once Nathalie Palmer came by invitation and had tea with her upstairs, and told her how sorry all the girls had been about her illness.
“And you’ll miss the exam,” moaned Nathalie, “and it seems such a shame. I know you’d have done splendidly.”
“What have you been having in class?” asked Lydia.
“Almost all recapitulation. The only really new thing that we’re doing isHenry V.for literature.”
That evening Lydia made Gertrude, the servant, bring her the volume of Shakespeare from the drawing-room.
Her brain felt quite clear now, and her eyes no longer hurt her when she tried to read.
Next day she was allowed to go downstairs for tea.
Aunt Beryl, who looked very tired and sallow, helped her to dress, and Uncle George came upstairs to fetch her, and they both supported her very carefully down the stairs and into the drawing-room, where a fire had been lit, and a special tea laid on a little table beside the arm-chair.
Grandpapa, with Shamrock prancing unrestainedly at his feet, and the parrot, brought up from the dining-room, hanging upside down in his cage on the centre-table, were all waiting to welcome her.
“Very glad to see you down, me dear,” said Grandpapa, shaking hands with her formally. “A nasty time you’ve had, a very nasty time, I’m afraid.”
“She’s been such a good girl, Grandpapa,” said Aunt Beryl, raising her voice as though by a great effort. “Dr. Young says she’s the best patient he’s ever had.”
“Did you have to swallow a great deal of physic, Lyddie? Ah, a very disagreeable thing, physic,” said Grandpapa, who was ordered a certain draught daily, which he was only too apt to pour away into the nearest receptacle in the face of all Aunt Beryl’s protests.
“Mr. Almond asked after you on Wednesday, Lydia. He has been quite concerned over your illness,” Uncle George told her.
Lydia sat back in the arm-chair, her long plaits fallingover either shoulder, and could not help feeling that all this attention was rather agreeable.
Aunt Beryl’s friend, Mrs. Jackson, “stepped in,” to ask how she felt, and to borrow a paper pattern for a blouse, and said she had also heard from Dr. Young and other sources what a good patient Lydia had been.
“And so hard on you, poor child, missing your examinations and all.”
“Perhaps Dr. Young will let me go,” said Lydia wistfully: “It’s only four days, and not till next week.”
Mrs. Jackson shook her head doubtfully.
“The Town Hall is well warmed, with those pipes and all, but I don’t know. Perhaps if you could go in a closed cab, well wrapped up.... But you’ve missed such a lot of study, haven’t you?”
“I know,” said Lydia dejectedly.
They were all very kind to her, and seemed to realize the great disappointment of failing after all, or even of putting off the examination for another year, when one would be nearly sixteen, and no longer the youngest candidate of all.
Mrs. Jackson refused tea, and hurried away with her paper pattern, Shamrock flying to the head of the stairs after her, and breaking into a storm of howls, as though in protest at her departure. Aunt Beryl hastened distressfully after him.
“Hark at that!” said she unnecessarily.
Grandpapa put on his deafest expression.
“This is very trying for you, Lydia,” said Uncle George pointedly. “It seems to go through and through one’s head.”
Did Grandpapa actually throw a glance of concern at the invalid? She could hardly believe her eyes, andfelt more than ever how pleasant it was to be the centre of attention.
And then Aunt Beryl came in again, dropped into a chair near the door, oddly out of breath, and quietly fainted away.
Gertrude had been sent for Dr. Young before they could bring her back to consciousness again, and when he did arrive, he and Uncle George almost carried Aunt Beryl up to her room.
“Thoroughly overdone,” said Dr. Young. “Miss Raymond has been so very unsparing of herself during her niece’s illness—one of those unselfish people, you know, who never think anything about themselves. I am ashamed of myself for not seeing how near she was to a break-down.”
Decidedly Aunt Beryl was the heroine of the hour.
Lydia was ashamed of herself for the resentment that this turning of the tables awoke in her.
She went to her own room, unescorted, when the commotion had subsided, and her supper was brought up to her by Gertrude nearly an hour late.
“How is Aunt Beryl now?” she asked.
“Gone to sleep, miss. She is wore out, after sitting up at night, and then the nursing during the day, and seeing to the house and the old gentleman, all just the same as usual—and no wonder.”
No wonder, indeed! Everyone said the same.
During the two days that Aunt Beryl, by the doctor’s orders, remained upstairs, the household in Regency Terrace had time to realize what, in fact, was the case—that never before had Miss Raymond been absent from her post for more than a few hours at a time.
When Mr. Monteagle Almond came in on Wednesdayevening, full of inquiries and congratulations for Lydia, he was hardly allowed time to formulate them.
“It’s my poor sister we are anxious about,” said Uncle George, just as though Lydia had never been ill at all.
“Quite knocked up with nursing,” said Grandpapa, shaking his head. “I’ve never known Beryl take to her bed before, and we miss her sadly downstairs.”
Mr. Monteagle Almond was deeply concerned.
“Dear me, dear me. This is very distressing news. I had no idea of this. Miss Raymond never complains.”
“That’s it,” agreed Uncle George gloomily. “One somehow never thought of her overdoing it.”
“Unselfish,” said Mr. Almond, adding thoughtfully: “Well, well, well, selfish people have the best of it in this world, there’s no doubt.”
The little bank clerk was generalizing, according to his fashion, but Lydia felt angry and uncomfortable, as though the reference might have application to herself.
Aunt Beryl certainly looked much as usual when she reappeared downstairs, but it was very evident that two days without her had thoroughly awakened both Grandpapa and Uncle George to a new sense of her importance.
“We must try and spare your aunt as much as possible,” Uncle George said gravely to Lydia. “I’m afraid that we’ve all been allowing her to do far too much for us.”
Lydia found it curiously disagreeable to see the focus of general interest thus shifted. Unconsciously, she had occupied the centre place in the little group in Regency Terrace ever since her arrival there, as thetwelve-year-old orphan, in her pathetic black frock. Without consciously posing, she had certainly, as the eager student at Miss Glover’s bringing back prizes and commendations, been the most striking personality of that small world, and she had known that her elders discussed her cleverness, her steady industry, even her increasing prettiness, as topics of paramount interest.
Lydia, in other words, was complacently aware of being the heroine of that story, which is the aspect worn by life to the imaginative. Now it appeared that this rôle had been summarily usurped by Aunt Beryl.
Lydia’s sense of drama was far too keen for her to undervalue the possibilities of the aspect presented by her aunt. Itwaspathetic to have toiled, without appreciation, all these years, to have nursed one’s niece devotedly day and night, and then to faint away helplessly without a word of complaint. But the more Lydia realized how pathetic it was, the more annoyed she became.
Her own convalescence was a very rapid one, partly owing to her determination to get to the Town Hall for the examination. Both Grandpapa and Uncle George, with the masculine inability to entertain more than one anxiety at a time, appeared to have forgotten that she had ever been ill, and Dr. Young himself, when applied to, only said:
“Well, well, if you’ve really set your mind on it—the weather’s nice and warm. But you must wrap up well and keep out of draughts. We don’t want a relapse, mind. Miss Raymond can’t do any more nursing, you know. She ought to be nursed herself.”
Lydia would cheerfully have nursed Aunt Beryl, if only to retain her own sense of self-importance, but well did she know that her aunt would give her nosuch opportunity. Really, unselfish people could be very trying.
She went to the Town Hall, and was greatly restored by the enthusiastic greetings of her fellow-candidates.
“Oh, Lydia, how plucky of you to try, after all! Don’t you feelfearfullybehindhand? Fancy, if you do get through! It’ll be even more splendid than if you hadn’t been ill, and had no disadvantage of missing such a lot.”
Lydia had a shrewd suspicion that she had not missed nearly so much as they all thought. Nathalie had said that most of the work done in class during her absence had been recapitulation, and recapitulation, to Lydia’s sound memory and habits of accuracy inculcated by Uncle George, had never been more than a pleasant form of making assurance doubly sure.
For the last two days she had been studying frantically, and had made Nathalie go throughHenry V.with her, and mark the passages to be learnt by heart.
Fortune favoured her in causing the English Literature paper to be set for the last day of the examination.
When that last day came Lydia felt tolerably certain that she had thoroughly overtaxed her barely-restored strength, and would shortly suffer for it with some severity, but her examination-papers had been a series of inward triumphs.
French had certainly presented its usual stumbling-blocks, but Lydia reasonably told herself that she would probably have experienced at least equivalent difficulties, had she attended every class, and where mechanical rote-learning could avail her, she knew that she was safe. Moreover, the algebra and arithmetic papers, over which most of the candidates were groaning, she could view with peculiar complacency.
“How did you get on?” several of the girls asked her eagerly.
“Nottoobadly, I hope,” said Lydia guardedly.
It would be far more of a triumph, if she did succeed, for her success to come as a surprise to everyone. They could hardly expect it, after such an absence from class as hers had been.
Even the governess in charge of the group of girls said to her kindly:
“You mustn’t be disappointed if you don’t get through this time, dear. Miss Glover knows you’ve worked very well, and that it’s only illness that’s thrown you back.”
Lydia returned to Regency Terrace thoroughly exhausted.
“I’m sure you’ve done your best, dear, and if it isn’t this time, it’ll be next,” said Aunt Beryl philosophically. “Now go straight upstairs and have a good rest.”
Lydia went, and was not at all displeased to find that her head was throbbing and her face colourless.
The following day the doctor saw her, and shook his head at her.
“Better give her a change of air, Miss Raymond. If you won’t go away yourself, it will, anyway, set you rather more free not to have Miss Lydia on your mind.”
Lydia felt that the advice might have been worded in a manner more flattering to herself, but she was pleased at the idea of a change.
She had not been away since her first arrival as an inmate of Grandpapa’s household. Aunt Beryl’s theory was that one went awaytothe sea, notfromit. If one happened to live by the sea, there was no need to go away at all. Only Uncle George, taking hisfortnightly holiday in the summer, departed on a walking or bicycling tour with some bachelor friend of his own.
“You’ll enjoy staying with your Aunt Evelyn,” said Aunt Beryl. “The girls must be nearly grown up now, I declare. How time flies! Beatrice must be all of eighteen, and Olive sixteen, and I suppose Bob is somewhere between the two of them. How long is it since you’ve seen them, Lydia?”
“Not since I was quite little—about ten, I think.”
“It’ll be nice for you to make friends with the girls. I’ve often wished you had a sister.”
Lydia did not echo the wish when she had seen the Senthoven family circle.
“There’s no nonsense aboutus,” might have been taken for their motto, or even their war-cry.
On the evening of Lydia’s arrival she was mysteriously taken possession of by Olive, her youngest cousin, under pretext of unpacking.
“I say, Lydia.”
“Yes?”
“Yes?” mimicked Olive, with a screwed-up mouth and mincing pronunciation, in derisive mockery of Lydia’s low, clear enunciation, which was in part natural, and in part learnt from Nathalie Palmer.
“I declare you’re afraid of the sound of your own voice. You ought to hearus! My word! we’ll make you open your eyes—andears too—before we’ve done with you. You should just hear the ragging that goes on whenever Bob’s at home. Look here, this is what I want to know.”
This time Lydia only looked interrogation. She despised Olive too thoroughly to care whether she laughed at her way of speaking or not, but she thoughtthat the sooner Olive satisfied her curiosity and went away the better.
“Do you likefun?” said Miss Senthoven, bringing her prominent brown eyes and head of untidy, flopping hair close to Lydia’s face in her extreme eagerness for a reply.
Lydia, when she had recovered from her surprise at the form of the inquiry, assented, since assent was obviously expected of her, but she had grave doubts as to whether her own definition of “fun” would coincide with that of the Senthovens.
It did not.
“Fun” was synonymous with noise, and the most brilliant repartee known to any Senthoven was Bob’s favourite form of squashing such “nonsense” as a comment on the blueness of the sky: “Well, you didn’t expect to see it red, did you?”
Bob, a hobble-de-hoy of seventeen, short and thick-set, was his mother’s idol. But there was “no nonsense” allowed from poor Aunt Evelyn by her terrible daughters.
“The mater’s so mushy,” they shouted disgustedly, when she made excuse, on the morning after Lydia’s arrival, for Bob’s very tardy appearance.
Lydia looked round the breakfast-table. She was quite well again now, and breakfast upstairs would have been unheard of. Beatrice was a still larger, taller, more athletic, and, if possible, noisier edition of Olive. She had just left school, and her dark hair, very thick and heavy, was piled into untidy heaps at the back of her head.
“No nonsense aboutmyhair, I can tell you. Half the time I don’t even look in the glass to see how I’ve done it,” Beatrice would declare proudly.
The girls wore flannel shirts, with collars and ties, and short skirts that invariably contrived to be rather longer at the back than they were in the front.
They strenuously refused to make any change of toilette in the evenings, only substituting heelless strapped black shoes for their large and sturdy boots, over their thick-ribbed stockings.
Those evenings were the noisiest that Lydia had ever known.
Only Uncle Robert, small, and sallow, and spectacled, was silent.
He sat at the foot of the table, said a brief, muttered grace, and dispensed the soup.
“I say, what tommy-rot it is your not playing hockey, Lydie. Bee and I have got a match on to-morrow afternoon.”
“Can’t I come and watch you play?”
“I suppose so.Idon’t care if you do, I’m sure,” Olive hastily repudiated the mere suggestion of such a dangerous approach to “nonsense” as was implied by a possible interest in another’s movements.
“I say, I do believe Bob gets later every blessed day. A nice row there’d be ifwecame in late for every meal!”
“Too bally hungry to do that!”
“Your brother doesn’t get much fresh air. You must remember he’s in an office all day, and has two stuffy train journeys, poor boy,” said Bob’s mother unwisely.
“Ow!poor ’ickle sing, then—mammy’s own baby-boy!” yelled Beatrice derisively.
“Mater!” said Olive, “howcanyou be so sloppy?”
Lydia looked round her, amazed. No one seemed tothink, however, that Beatrice and Olive were behaving otherwise than well and dutiful.
“Beef, Lydia?”
“Yes, please, Uncle Robert.”
Lydia saw Beatrice wink at Olive, and Olive stuff a corner of her Japanese paper napkin into her mouth, as though to prevent an explosion of laughter. She only perceived that the jest lay in the manner of her own reply, when to the same inquiry her cousins successively answered, very loudly and curtly.
“Ra-ther!”
After the beef Aunt Evelyn helped the pudding. There were two dishes in front of her, one containing the remaining half of the pink mould that had figured on the dinner-table in the middle of the day, and the other the cold remnants of the previous night’s tart.
And Lydia, invited to make her choice, replied very clearly and rather defiantly:
“I should like some tart, if you please, Aunt Evelyn.”
Bob, who had made his entry with the second course, roared with laughter, and, reaching across his sister Beatrice, banged Lydia heavily on the back.
“That’s right, Lady Clara Vere de Vere. You stick to it!”
Lydia, who hated being touched, jumped in her place, but she had the wit to guess that the surest way of making her cousins pursue any particular course of action would be to show that she disliked it, in which case they would instantly look upon her as “fair game.” She did not in the least mind the series of witticisms, lasting the length of her visit, designed to emphasize what the Senthovens considered the affectations of her speech.
“Just the weeniest little tiny bit, if you will be so awf’ly kind, please. Thank you so awf’ly much.”
Thus Beatrice, humorously.
And Bob:
“Well, perhaps—if you were to press me to a jelly——”
Lydia was not in the least amused at these sallies, but she laughed at them cheerfully enough. She felt immeasurably superior to the Senthovens, and had every intention of proving that superiority to them before the end of her stay.
At first blush, this did not appear to be any too easy. There was no doubt that the Senthovens, the girls especially, were efficient in their own line of action.
Beatrice was a renowned hockey captain; Olive had silver trophies from both the Golf Club and the Swimming Club, and both had won Junior Championships at lawn-tennis.
“Are you a good walker, old girl?” Beatrice one day inquired of Lydia.
This last term of endearment was a sign of the highest goodwill, and if employed too frequently would almost certainly lead to the accusation of sloppiness.
“Oh, yes,” said Lydia, thinking of the school crocodile wending its decorous way the length of the Parade.
“Good. Olive’s an awful rotter at walking. You and I can do some tramps together. Are you game for a six o’clock start to-morrow morning?”
Lydia laughed, really supposing the suggestion to be humorously intended.
“What are you cackling about? You’re such an extraordinary kid; you always seem to laugh with your mouth shut. I suppose they taught you that at this precious school of yours, where you don’t even playhockey. Well, what about to-morrow? We can take some sort of fodder with us, but I’ve got to be back at the Common at ten sharp for a hockey practice.”
Lydia was obliged to resign her pretensions. She hadn’t understood quite what Beatrice meant by a “good walker.”
“Anything up to twenty-five miles is my mark,” said Beatrice complacently.
She and Olive were both good-humouredly contemptuous of Lydia’s incapabilities, and Bob was even ready to show her how to serve at tennis, and how to throw a ball straight. Lydia was willing to be taught, and was sufficiently conscious that her tennis was improving rapidly, to submit to a good deal of shouting and slangy, good-humoured abuse.
She did not like it, but was philosophically aware that her stay at Wimbledon was drawing to a close, and that she would reap the benefit of improved tennis for ever afterwards.
“I suppose, being a duffer at games, that you’re a regular Smart Aleck at lessons, aren’t you?” Olive amiably asked her.
An assent would certainly be regarded as “bucking,” but, on the other hand, Lydia had no mind to let her claims to distinction be passed over.
“I’ve just been in for an examination,” she said boldly. “I might hear the result any day now.”
“Get on! I thought you’d been ill.”
“I’ve missed half the term at school, but I studied by myself, and I was up in time to go to the Town Hall for the exam. I had to go to bed again afterwards, though.”
“Do you suppose you’ve got an earthly?” said Beatrice, in highly sceptical accents.
“Oh, I don’t know. You see, I was the youngest competitor of all, as it happened.”
Lydia had been very anxious to introduce this last piece of information, and it was plain that Beatrice and Olive were not altogether unimpressed by it.
Aunt Beryl had promised Lydia a telegram as soon as the results of the examination were put up in the Town Hall, and Lydia had already decided that in the event of failure, she should say nothing at all to the Senthovens. They would never remember to ask her about it. But if she had passed, she told herself grimly, they would have to acknowledge that they were not the only people who could succeed. Lydia reflected that she was sick of hearing how Olive had just saved a goal, and Beatrice had conducted her team to victory in yet another hockey match.