V
Thelast of Lydia’s Saturday afternoons at Wimbledon, however, was at length at hand.
“We might go and have some sort of a rag on the Common to-morrow for Lydia’s last day. Sunday doesn’t count,” said Beatrice, on Friday evening after supper.
“Quite a good egg,” agreed Olive. “Bob, are you game?”
Bob assented without enthusiasm. He was stretched at full length on the sofa, with his arms crossed underneath his head.
Uncle Robert was behind his newspaper as usual, and Aunt Evelyn was earnestly perusing a ladies’ paper, from which she occasionally imparted to Lydia—the only person who made any pretence at listening to her—certain small items of information regarding personalities equally unknown to both of them.
This was Mrs. Senthoven’s one relaxation, and afforded her an evident satisfaction.
“Fancy! It says here that, ‘It is rumoured that a certain demoiselle of no inconsiderable charm, and well known to Society, is shortly to exchange her rank as peer’s daughter for one even more exalted.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Lady Rosalind Kelly that was meant. I suppose she’s going to marry some duke. They say she’s lovely, but I wouldn’t care to see a son ofminemarry her, after all the stories one’s heard.”
Aunt Evelyn looked fondly at the recumbent Bob.
“I say, we might get the Swaines to come with us to-morrow,” said Olive, “then we could get up a rag of some sort.”
“I say, old girl, chuck me my pipe. The mater won’t mind.”
“Get it yourself,” retorted Olive, utterly without malice, but in the accepted Senthoven method of repudiating a request for any small service.
“Here’s rather a good story about that fellow—you remember, Lydia, we saw his picture in the Sunday paper—Gerald Fitzgerald, who’s acting in some play or other. Listen to this!”
Aunt Evelyn read aloud a reputedmotof the famous comedian that did not err upon the side of originality.
“I wonder if that’s true, now!”
“Bee, chuck me my pipe,” from Bob.
No Senthoven ever listened to any piece of information not directly bearing upon their own immediate personal interests.
“No fear! What a slacker you are, Bob! Why don’t you get up off that sofa? Lydia’s shocked at your ways.”
“She’s not!”
“She is!”
Lydia hoped that she showed her sense of superiority by contributing nothing to the discussion, which continued upon the simple lines of flat assertion and contradiction until Bob flung a cushion at his sister’s head.
Beatrice thereupon hurled herself on him with a sort of howl.
“Don’t make so much noise; you’ll disturb father. Bee, you really are too old to romp so—your hair is nearly coming down.”
It came quite down before Beatrice had finished pommelling her brother, and Uncle Robert had waked, and said that it was too bad that a man who’d been working hard all the week couldn’t read the paper in peace and quiet for five minutes in his own house without being disturbed by all this horse-play.
Lydia watched her cousins, despised them very thoroughly indeed, and was more gratified than humiliated when Olive remarked:
“It’s easy to see you’ve never been one of a large family, Lydia. You don’t seem to understand what rotting means.”
“I wonder you haven’t got used to being chaffed at your school. It must be a sloppy sort of place.”
“I daresay you’d think so,” said Lydia calmly. “But then, you see, the girls there go in for work, not play.”
“Oh, they go in for work, not play, do they?” mimicked Olive, but without much spirit, and as though conscious of her extreme poverty of repartee.
Lydia noticed, however, that both the Senthoven girls asked her frequent questions about her school, questions which she answered with all the assurance that she could muster.
That was something else to be remembered: it was better to assume that if your standards differ from those of your surroundings, it is by reason of their superiority.
Lydia lived up to her self-evolved philosophy gallantly, but she was in a minority, against a large majority that had, moreover, the advantage, incalculable in the period of adolescence, of a year or two’s seniority.
She did not like the feeling of inferiority, painfully new to her.
At Regency Terrace she was the subject of ill-concealedpride. Even Grandpapa, although he never praised, found no fault with her manners and bearing, and had lately admitted—no small compliment—that “Lyddie could manage Shamrock.”
Uncle George discussed chemistry and botany with her seriously, and even allowed her opinion to carry weight in certain small questions of science, and Mr. Monteagle Almond always treated her like a grown person, and alluded respectfully to the rarity of finding a mathematical mind in a woman.
As to Aunt Beryl, in spite of the way in which she had lately usurped Lydia’s recent rôle of invalid and acknowledged centre of general interest, Lydia knew very well that her own achievements and capabilities formed the chief theme of Aunt Beryl’s every discourse with her friends. At school she was not only liked by her companions, but looked upon as the intellectual pride of the establishment.
No one at Miss Glover’s bothered much about games, and, anyhow, Lydia’s play at tennis was accounted amongst the best in the school.
It annoyed her to realize, as she most thoroughly did realize, that judged by the Senthoven standards, that best was very mediocre indeed.
She had never played golf, or hockey, or cricket, and her swimming consisted of slow and laborious strokes that grew very feeble, and came at very short intervals if she attempted to exceed a length of fifty yards.
Lydia’s ambitions would never be athletic ones, and although she wished to be seen to advantage, she was far too shrewd to attempt any emulation of Beatrice and Olive and their friends upon their own ground. She only wished—and it seemed to her a highly reasonablewish—to show them that, in other and greater issues, she, too, could count her triumphs.
She waited her opportunity with concealed annoyance at its tardiness in coming.
The Saturday afternoon picnic, ostensibly arranged in her honour, was such a form of entertainment as was least calculated to make Lydia enjoy herself.
It began with a noisyrendezvousbetween the Senthoven family and a tribe of male and female Swaines, ranging from all ages between eight and eighteen years old.
Most of the Swaines bestrode bicycles, upon which they balanced themselves whilst almost stationary with astonishing skill, and presently, amid many screams, a female Swaine took Olive and a picnic basket on the step of her machine, and departed with them in the direction of the Common. Bob and three junior Swaine brethren, also on bicycles, laid arms across one another’s shoulders, and thus, taking up the whole width of the road, boldly invaded the tram lines, and Beatrice, with her contemporary Swaine and Lydia, started out on foot at a swinging pace.
“Give meekker,” said Beatrice contemptuously. “There’s no ekker in biking that I can see.”
Exercise, Lydia grimly reflected, they were certainly having in abundance. She and Beatrice held either handle of the large picnic hamper containing the Senthovens’ contribution to the entertainment, and as it swung and rattled between them, Lydia made increased efforts to accommodate her steps to Beatrice’s unfaltering stride.
“I s’pose,” presently remarked Beatrice, with that aggressive accent that to a Senthoven merely represented the absence of affectation, “you’ll be sayingpresently that we’ve walked you off your legs. I never knew such a kid! Here, slack off a bit, Dot—she can’t keep up.”
“I can,” said Lydia.
She had no breath left with which to make a long speech.
Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
“Come on then.”
It was a scarlet-faced Lydia, with labouring chest, that eventually dropped on to the selected spot of Wimbledon Common, but she at least had the satisfaction of hearing her own name given in reply to Bob’s derisive inquiry as to which of them had set the pace.
Yet another proof of the profound wisdom of Grandpapa who had said, “There’s no such thing ascan’t.”
Grandpapa’s theory, however, was less well exemplified in the impromptu cricket match that presently sprang up, in the sort of inevitable way in which a game that comprised the use of muscles and a ball invariably did spring up whenever the Senthovens were gathered together.
“I don’t play cricket,” Lydia haughtily observed to the least muscular-looking of the Swaine girls.
“Why not?” said her contemporary, looking very much astonished.
There was nothing for it but to put into words the humiliating admission:
“I don’t know how to.”
“How funny! But we’ll soon teach you.”
Lydia resigned herself, and since she was no more deficient in physical courage than is any other imaginative egotist, who sets the importance of cutting afigure far above any incidental bodily risk that may be incurred in cutting in, she successfully avoided at least the appearance of running away from the ball.
The game, of course, was what was known to the Senthovens as “a rag” only, since with deficient numbers and a lack of implements, nothing so serious as a match could be contemplated. Consequently, Lydia presently found herself with Bob’s cricket bat tightly grasped in her unaccustomed hands.
She was not altogether displeased. It was only Olive who was bowling, and hitting the ball did not seem so very difficult. She might possibly distinguish herself even amongst these Philistines.
Lydia, in fact, was not above coveting the admiration of those whom she admittedly despised.
“Chuck you an easy one to start with,” shouted Olive, good-naturedly.
Lydia jerked up the bat, but heard no reassuring contact with the slow moving ball.
“Don’t spoon it up like that! You’d have been caught out for a dead cert if you had hit it!”
A second attempt was made.
“Youarea duffer! Show her how to hold the bat, someone.”
Lydia’s third effort mysteriously succeeded in knocking down the improvised stumps behind her, whilst the ball, still unhit, was neatly caught by a nine-year-old Swaine child.
“Oh, I say, this is awfully slow!” remonstrated Bob.
“She’s out now, anyway.”
“Give her another chance,” said Olive, “let her finish the over, anyway. There’s no scoring, what’s it matter?”
“Two more balls, then.”
But there was only one more ball. Lydia, desperately determined to succeed once at least, exerted her whole strength miraculously, hit the ball fair and square, and knew a momentary triumph as it flew off the bat.
There was an ear-piercing shriek from Olive, and Lydia, terrified, saw her fling up both hands to her face and stagger round and round where she stood.
“Oh, I say, are you hurt, ole gurl?” came in anxious, if rather obvious, inquiry from the surrounding field.
“Got her bang on the jaw!”
“What awful rot, poor wretch.”
They crowded round Olive, who was choking and gulping, her mouth streaming with blood, but undauntedly gasping:
“It’s all right, don’t fuss, I tell you, Bee, it’s all right. I’ll be all right in a sec. I never dreamt she was going to hit out like that. I ought to have caught it.”
“Comes of having a mouth like a pound of liver splits,” said Bob, quite unconsciously making use of the strain of facetious personal incivility always used by him to any intimate, and all the while solicitously patting his sister on the back.
“Oh,Olive, I’m so sorry,” said Lydia, far more acutely aware than anyone else was likely to be of the inadequacy of the time-worn formula.
“Don’t be an ass,” returned Olive crisply. “Lend me a nose wipe if you want to do something useful. Mine’s soaked.”
Such of the assembly as were possessed of pocket-handkerchiefs willingly sacrificed them, although the number contributed proved utterly inadequate to theamount of blood lost by Olive, still determinedly making light of her injuries.
“Let’s have a look and see if your teeth are all out, old gurl,” urged Beatrice.
“I lost two last summer,” the eldest Swaine remarked casually, “and Dot had one knocked out at hockey.”
“The front one feels a bit loose,” said Olive thoughtfully, and thrust a finger and thumb into a rapidly swelling mouth.
“Better not push it about,” someone suggested; “why not sit down and have tea now?”
“You don’t want to go home, do you, Ol?” Lydia heard Beatrice ask her sister aside.
“Good Lord, no. Don’t let’s have anyfuss.”
Olive could certainly not be accused of making the most of her distressing circumstances.
She gave Lydia a tremendous bang on the back, and said:
“Cheer up, old stupid! You jolly well don’t pretend you can’t hit out when you want to another time, that’s all!”
After that she took her place amongst the others, and contrived to eat a great deal of bread-and-butter and several of the softer variety of cakes, in spite of the evident possibilities of a swelled and discoloured upper lip and badly bruised jaw.
“Old Olive has plenty of pluck—I will say that for her,” Bob remarked to Lydia, who agreed with the more fervour that she was conscious of a quite involuntary sort of jealousy of Olive. It must be so much pleasanter to be the injured than the injurer, and to know that everyone was, at least inwardly, approving one’s courage and powers of endurance.
When the picnic was over, Olive had quite a largeescort to accompany her home, all relating in loud and cheerful voices the various disabilities and disfigurements that had sooner or later overtaken them in the pursuit of athletic enjoyment.
“It’s part of the fun,” declared Olive herself. “I only hope the mater won’t turn green at the sight of me. She’s a bit squeamish sometimes.”
“Hold your hand in front of your mouth.”
“Keep your back to the light all you can.”
But it became evident that none of these precautions would avail when Mrs. Senthoven was seen leaning over the gate, gazing down the road.
She waved a yellow envelope at them.
“Tellywag!” exclaimed Beatrice. “What on earth can it be?”
Telegrams were so rare in the Wimbledon establishment as to be looked upon with alarm.
She and Olive both began to run.
“It’s addressed to you, Lydia,” screamed Beatrice. “Come and open it. Come on, you people.”
The last exhortation was in encouragement to the members of the Swaine family, delicately hanging back. At Beatrice’s semaphore-like gesticulations of invitation, they all followed Lydia’s rush forward, and as she opened her telegram she heard their loud babble uprise.
“Not so bad as it looks, is it, Ol?”
“She got a swipe on the jaw, and took it like a brick, too!”
“Oh, my dear girl!” from Aunt Evelyn. “Let me look this minute——”
“Don’t fuss, mater. It’s all right, really.”
They were all pressing round the reluctant Olive.
Lydia looked up.
“No bad news, I hope, dear,” said Aunt Evelyn, as was her invariable custom whenever present at the opening of a telegram.
“It’s from Aunt Beryl about my examination,” said Lydia very clearly.
She was so much excited that her tense, distinct utterance produced a sudden silence, and they all looked at her.
“Passed your examination first-class honours,” read Lydia out loud.
“Isay!”
“And you’d been ill the whole time, hadn’t you? My golly!”
“Why, we thought you hadn’t a chance!”
“Weren’t you the youngest one there, or some rot of that kind?”
“First-class honours! That’s as high as you can go, isn’t it?”
They were all lavish of exclamations and hearty slangy congratulations.
Olive herself, and everybody else, had forgotten all about Olive’s injury, and Lydia was the centre of attention.
“I say, let’s have a celebration!” shouted Bob. “Come in after supper and have a cocoa-rag.”
The invitation was accepted with loud enthusiasm.
“You can have the dining-room, dears,” said Aunt Evelyn, “only not too much noise, because of father. I’ll explain it to him, and get him to sit in the drawing-room.”
Uncle Robert never took part in any festivity of his family’s. It was supposed that he needed peace and solitude after his day’s work, and in summer he pottered about the little green-house, and at othertimes of the year dozed behind the newspaper, unmolested. Nevertheless, Uncle Robert, to Lydia’s astonishment and gratification, actually came out of his taciturnity that evening at supper-time in order to pay tribute to her achievement.
“Fancy the pater waking up like that!” ejaculated Bob afterwards. “More than he’s ever done for any of us.”
“A fat lot of exams. we’ve ever passed!” said Beatrice scornfully.
It was true that no Senthoven had ever attained to any such distinction, and Lydia realized with the more surprise that for this very reason they regarded her success as something nearly approaching to the miraculous.
Almost against her own will, she was struck with Olive’s unfeigned relief at having the general attention distracted from herself and her accident, and focussed instead upon her cousin’s triumph.
Lydia half admired and half despised Olive, and most wholly and thoroughly enjoyed the novel sensation of being for once of high account in the eyes of the Wimbledon household.
Certainly towards the end of the exceedingly rowdy “celebration,” the cause of it was rather lost sight of in the fumes of unlimited cocoa, the shrieking giggles of the younger Swaine children, and the uproarious mirth of their seniors, the whole-hearted amusement, that almost seemed as though it would never be stayed, at so exquisitely humorous an accident as the collapse of Bob’s chair beneath him.
Nevertheless, the celebration was all in Lydia’s honour, and her health was drunk in very hot, very thick cocoa, with a great deal of coarse brown sedimentat the bottom of each cup, afterwards scraped up into a spoon, and forcibly administered to the youngest child present, who had rashly declared a liking for “grounds.”
Lydia, highly excited, for once made as much noise as anybody, and began to feel that she should be quite sorry to say good-bye to them all on Monday.
But she was much too clear-sighted in the analysis of her own situations to delude herself into supposing that a prolongation of her stay at Wimbledon would result in anything but failure.
One could not pass an examination with brilliancy every day, and once the first sensation over—which it speedily would be—the old routine of walks and hockey and “ragging” would go on as before, and Lydia could no longer hope for anything but, at best, a negative obscurity. Far better to leave them before any of their gratifying enthusiasm had had time to die down.
She could tell, by the very nature of their farewells, the immense difference that now obtained in their estimation of her importance.
“You must go on as well as you’ve begun, Lydia. It’s a great thing for a girl to be clever,” said Aunt Evelyn rather wistfully. “I suppose you’ll want to take up teaching, later on?”
“Perhaps. I’m not quite sure yet.”
Lydia had long ago given up talking about her childish ambition to write books, although it was stronger than ever within her.
“Well, there’s time to settle yet. You’re not sixteen, and there’s no hurry. I’m sure Grandpapa and Aunt Beryl would miss you dreadfully if you thought ofgoing away anywhere. It would be best if you could get something to do down there, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, Aunt Evelyn,” said Lydia amiably. She always listened to older people politely and agreed with what they said, but their advice had no disturbing effect upon her, because it never seriously occurred to her that anyone could be a better judge of her own interests than she was herself.
Even Uncle Robert, hastily saying good-bye before starting for the office, found time to say to her:
“Well, good-bye, child. Don’t overwork yourself with all this examination stuff. You can come down here if you want a change any time. Settle it with your aunt.”
“Better come down for the Christmas hols. We can show you some tobogganing then, most likely. I got some whopping great bruises on my legs last year,” was the inducement held out by Olive. “I must be off to that beastly old holiday task now, I suppose. I always put it off to the last minute. Wish I was a stew-pot like you.”
Beatrice and Bob escorted Lydia to the station.
“Well, ta-ta, and be a good girl,” said Bob patronizingly, tilting his hat rather far back on his head and smoking a cigarette that aggressively protruded from the extreme corner of his mouth, “when’s the old man going to have the decency to remember my existence? You’ve cut us all out with him with your blooming book-work. He goes in for being a bit of a brainy old bird himself, doesn’t he?”
Inured though she might be to the Senthoven vocabulary, Lydia nearly shuddered visibly at the thought of Grandpapa, had he heard his descendant’s description of him.
“Shut up, you ass,” said Beatrice, in an automatic sort of way. “Well, bye-bye, ole gurl. You’ve fixed it up with the mater about popping down again some time, I s’pose. Just come and take us as you find us, as the saying goes. Here’s your train.”
Lydia, leaning from the window of the third-class railway carriage, wondered whether to shake hands with Beatrice or not. The law of “No nonsense aboutus” would certainly preclude kissing, even had she felt the slightest desire to embrace her rough-haired, freckle-faced cousin, shifting from one leg to the other, her red hands thrust into the pockets of her woollen coat, and her tam o’ shanter pulled well down over one eye.
Bob was already casting glances in the direction of the refreshment room.
“Good-bye,” said Lydia, definitely deciding against putting out her hand. “And thanks so much.”
“Good heavens! Don’t start speechifying, whatever you do,” cried the Senthovens in protesting horror, both at the same moment, and as nearly as possible in the same words.
So Lydia was obliged to have recourse to that most uncomfortable form of ejaculatory conversation that appears to be incumbent upon all those who are unfortunate enough to be accompanied by their friends to the railway station.
“Nearly off now, I think.”
“Oh, yes, there’s the whistle.”
“Well, I suppose Aunt Beryl will expect us to send our love, or some rot of that kind.”
“All right. I think we reallyarestarting this time.”
We were not, however, and Lydia looked dumbly ather waiting cousins and wondered why, since they had nothing more to say, and were obviously quite as ill at ease as she was herself, they did not go.
“I wish you wouldn’t wait. We shall be off in a minute now.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
Beatrice shifted her weight on to the other leg, and Bob pulled out a packet of Woodbine cigarettes and lit one of them.
“I hope Grandpapa will be in good form,” said Bob desperately.
“I’ll tell him you asked.”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“He knows there isn’t any nonsense aboutus,” said Beatrice.
To this last familiar refrain, the train actually began to move out of the station at last. Lydia waved her hand once or twice, received curt nods in reply, and sank back with a feeling of relief on to her seat.
The end of the Senthovens.
She could not help feeling glad that her visit was over.
The familiar quiet of Regency Terrace awaited her now. Aunt Beryl, as her letters had assured Lydia, once more returned to the unobtrusive rôle out of which her illness had momentarily forced her into unsuitable lime-light. Uncle George, certain to be full of quiet pride in the result of the examination, even Mr. Monteagle Almond, next Wednesday, probably framing elaborate little congratulatory sentences.
Lydia looked forward intensely to it all.
She wondered how Grandpapa would receive her, and mentally conned over the amusing descriptions that she would give him in private of the Senthovenménage, treading upon his well-known prejudice against that slang in the use of which it was so proficient.
She did not expect to be met at the station, but sent her luggage by the omnibus, and herself walked to Regency Terrace by the short cut, remembering as she did so her arrival, more than three years ago, under the care of both aunts, and full of uncertainty as to her own eventual destination.
Security, reflected Lydia maturely, was the most important thing of all. One was secure where one was appreciated, and held to be of importance.
She remembered that it was upon her own representations that Grandpapa had consented—going against his own prejudice to do so—to her being sent to school. It had been a great success, as even Grandpapa must have long ago acknowledged to himself.
Perhaps one day he might even acknowledge it to her.
Lydia smiled to herself over the improbability of the suggestion.
Then she turned the corner into Regency Terrace and saw the familiar house on the opposite side of the road.
As she caught sight of it, the hall-door opened, and Aunt Beryl, in her well-known blue foulard dress with white spots, that she generally only wore on Sundays, looked out. At the same instant Lydia saw Grandpapa peering from the dining-room window, which was already open, and raising his stick a few inches in the air to shake it in welcome.
All in honour of the great examination victory!
Lydia waved her hand excitedly, and at the same moment, with ear-piercing barks, Shamrock shot outfrom behind Aunt Beryl, trailing a significant length of broken chain behind him, and raced madly down the road towards her.
Lydia, breaking into quick, irrepressible laughter, dashed across the road and up the steps, in sudden, acute happiness at so vivid a realization of her dreams of home-coming.