VI
Timeslipped by with mysterious rapidity.
Lydia was in the sixth form—she was a prefect—she was Head of the School.
At seventeen she discovered that she had ceased to grow. She had attained to her full height, and after all, it was not the outrageous stature that had been prophesied for her. Only five feet eight inches, and her slimness, and the smallness of her bones, made her look less tall.
Her thick, brown hair was in one plait now, doubled under and tied with a black ribbon, and her skirts reached down to her slender ankles.
Lydia still had doubts as to her own claims to beauty, and envied Nathalie Palmer her bright, Devonshire complexion and blue eyes.
“Should you say I wasat allpretty, Nathalie?”
“Your eyes are lovely.”
“That’s what people always say about plain girls,” said Lydia disgustedly.
“You look sort of foreign, and interesting,” said Nathalie thoughtfully. “The shape of your face is quite different to anyone else’s.”
It did not sound reassuring, and Lydia touched with the tips of her fingers the salient cheek bones that gave an odd hint of Mongolianism to her small olive-hued face.
“Your mouth is pretty, it’s so red,” said Nathalie. “Though I should like it better if your teeth didn’t slope inwards.”
Nathalie adored Lydia, but she was incurably honest.
She went home for good the year before Lydia was to enter upon her last term at Miss Glover’s.
“You’ll come and stay with us next year, won’t you?” entreated Nathalie. “There’s no one but father and me at home, but quite a lot of nice people live near.”
“Of course I’ll come. I’d love to come. I should just have left here,” said Lydia.
She wondered whether Nathalie realized that on leaving school she would be seeking for employment. Most of Miss Glover’s pupils had their homes in the locality, and went as a matter of course “to help father in the shop.” Several found situations as teachers, one had gone to Bristol University to study for a medical degree, and only a minority, like Nathalie herself, looked forward to living at home.
Lydia knew that she meant to write, and she had long ago told Nathalie the secret of her ambitions, but she had said nothing about other work, and the two girls parted without having broached the subject.
“It will be time enough to tell Nathalie when I know what I’m going to do,” reflected Lydia, with characteristic caution.
She was sure that Aunt Beryl expected her to teach. Miss Glover herself had hinted that a post as Junior Mistress might be available in a year’s time to one of Lydia’s abilities. That would mean sleeping at home, having long holidays in the summer, and lesser ones at Christmas and Easter, and a salary as well as her midday dinner at school.
It might also mean a Senior Mistress-ship after a certain number of years, an increase of salary, and thefar-away, ultimate possibility of partnership with the Head. And it would also mean an endless succession of pupils, almost all local, a life spent among femininity until her interests would all centre round numbers of her own sex, and a narrowing of vision such as must be inevitable in a mind exclusively engaged in intercourse with the half-developed faculties of youth.
Lydia wished to leave the little seaside town.
Regency Terrace should be her home; she wanted to come back there for holidays, and to receive the proud welcome that had awaited her after her visit to Wimbledon, when she had passed her examination with first-class honours.
But her secret determination was to find work in London. Only in London, thought Lydia, would her vaunted capabilities be put to the test. Only there could she hope to come into contact with that strata of life, somehow different to the one in which Aunt Beryl, or the Jacksons, or the Senthovens moved, and to which, she felt inwardly certain, she herself would be acclaimed instantly as by right divine. Finally, only in the immensities of London did Lydia think that she would gain the experience necessary for the fulfilment of her desire to write.
Hitherto her keen critical faculty had left her exceedingly dissatisfied with her own literary attempts.
Once at sixteen years old, she had entered a competition started by a girl’s paper for a short story “dealing with animal life.” Lydia had first of all written a long and exciting account of a runaway elephant in the jungle in India, with a little English boy—chota-sahib—on its back.
Aunt Beryl’s praises, which had been enthusiastic, had failed to satisfy her, owing, Lydia supposed, toher own intimate conviction of Aunt Beryl’s lack of discrimination.
But she had disconcertingly found that it would be utterly impossible to submit the story to Grandpapa’s discerning ear and incisive judgment.
Why?
Lydia, disregarding a certain violent inclination to shelve the whole question, had ruthlessly analyzed her feelings of discomfort at the very idea of hearing Grandpapa’s comments upon her work. There was no doubt of it—Grandpapa would say that Lydia knew nothing about India, or runaway elephants, or chota-sahibs—she had suddenly writhed, remembering the very book of travels in which she first met with that expression—that her story was all written at second or third hand, and was therefore worthless. With a courage that afterwards struck her as surprising, Lydia had envisaged the horrid truth.
She had lacked the heart to destroy the runaway elephant altogether, but had stuffed the manuscript out of sight into the back of her writing-table drawer, and resolutely sat down to consider whether she could not lay claim to any first-hand impressions of animal life.
The result had been a short, humorously written sketch of one of Shamrock’s innumerable escapades.
Lydia had not been awarded the first prize, as she inwardly felt would have been in accordance with the dramatic fitness of things, but she had thoroughly amused Grandpapa by reading the sketch to him aloud, and she had taught herself a valuable lesson.
Experience, she had decided sweepingly, was the only royal road to literature. She would write no more until experience was hers.
Experience, however, to Lydia’s way of thinking,was not to be gained by remaining at Regency Terrace for ever.
When the last of her school days was approaching rapidly, she decided that the time had come to speak.
“Grandpapa, I should like to ask your advice.”
“Light the gas, my dear. Your aunt is very late out this afternoon,” was Grandpapa’s only reply.
When Grandpapa simulated deafness, it always meant that he was displeased.
Lydia obediently struck a match, and the gas, through its crinkly pink globe, threw a sudden spurt of light all over the familiar dining-room.
Grandpapa leant stiffly back in his arm-chair, a tiny, waxen-looking figure, with alert eyes that seemed oddly youthful and mischievous, seen above his knotted hands and shrunken limbs. He could see and hear whatever he pleased, but it was becoming more and more difficult for him to move, although he still staunchly refused to be helped from his chair.
“Lyddie, where’s Shamrock?”
Useless to reply, as was in fact the case, “I don’t know.” The futility of such a reply was bound to call forth one of Grandpapa’s most disconcerting sarcasms.
“I’ll find out, Grandpapa.”
Luck favoured Lydia.
As a rule, one might as well attempt to follow the course of a comet as that of Shamrock’s illicit excursions. But on this occasion Lydia at once found him in the hall, and was so much relieved at the prospect of success with Shamrock’s owner, that she failed to take notice of the stealthy manner of Shamrock’s approach, denoting a distinct consciousness of wrong-doing.
“Good little dog!” said Grandpapa delightedly.“They talk a great deal of nonsense about his sneaking off into the town and stealing from the shops—I don’t believe a word of it! He’s always here whenIwant him.”
At which Shamrock fawned enthusiastically upon his master, and Lydia determined the hour to be a propitious one, and began again:
“Will you give me your advice, Grandpapa?”
“Lyddie, you said that a little while ago,” said Grandpapa severely. “It’s a foolish feminine way of speaking, and I thought you had more sense.”
Lydia looked at her disconcerting grandparent in silence.
She knew herself far better able to steer clear of his many and violent prejudices than was matter-of-fact Uncle George, or unfortunate Aunt Beryl, who often seemed to go out of her way in order to fall foul of them. But this time she was conscious of perplexity.
“I don’t understand, Grandpapa. I reallydowant your advice.”
“Advice is cheap,” said Grandpapa. “A great many people say they want it, especially women. What they really want, Lyddie, is an opportunity for telling someone what they have already decided to do. Then they can say afterwards ‘Oh, but so-and-so and I talked itallover and he advised me to do such-and-such.’ You mark my word, no one ever yet asked advice whose mind wasn’t more or less made up already.”
To take the bull by the horns was always the best way of dealing with Grandpapa.
Lydia said resolutely:
“Well, I haven’t yet made up my mind, Grandpapa, that’s why I want to talk to you.”
“So that I can advise you to do whatever you want to do?” satirically demanded Grandpapa. “Well, my dear, you know me well enough to know that I shan’t dothat. Talk away.”
Thus encouraged, Lydia began.
“I am seventeen, Grandpapa.”
She pretended not to hear Grandpapa’s cheerful ejaculation, “Only seventeen, my dear? Quite a young child, then.”
“I shall be eighteen by the time I leave school next month, and there’ll be my future to think about. I know Miss Glover means to give me a chance of a Junior Mistress-ship, or I suppose I could get a post as governess, as Aunt Beryl is always suggesting. It would be a pity to waste all my education at dressmaking, or anything like that, though I suppose Icouldtake up something of the sort. Only really I feel as though I’d rather use my head than my hands. Of course, I like anything to do with figures, and Mr. Almond seemed to think that I shouldn’t have any difficulty in getting into the Bank here.”
She paused.
“Well,” said Grandpapa, “you’ve told me all the things youdon’tmean to do. Now tell me what you’ve really decided.”
Lydia, although rather angry, could not help laughing outright, and immediately felt that her laughter had done herself and her cause more good than any amount of eloquence. Eloquence indeed was invariably wasted upon Grandpapa, who preferred any good speaking that might take place to be done by himself.
“Now, child, have done with this nonsense and speak out. What is it you want?”
Lydia drew a long breath.
“To go and work in London.”
There was a long pause, and then Grandpapa said in rather a flat voice:
“So that’s it, is it? Well, well, well—who’d have thought it?”
“Grandpapa! you didn’t think I should stay herealways?” protested Lydia. “How am I ever to get any experience, in one place all the time, never seeing any new people?”
“‘Never’ is a long day,” quoth Grandpapa.
“But I shall have to begin soon if I’m to work at all. You and Aunt Beryl have always said that I must do something when I leave school.”
“And supposing I said now that things have looked up a little, and you could live at home and help your aunt a bit, and take little Shamrock out of a morning. Eh, Lyddie, what then?”
Lydia was silent, but she did not attempt to conceal that her face fell at the suggestion.
“Well, well, well,” said Grandpapa again, “so it’s to be London!”
“Then you’ll let me go,” Lydia exclaimed, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice.
Grandpapa uttered one of his most disagreeable, croaking laughs.
“Don’t talk like a little fool, my dear! You know very well that if you want to go, you’ll go. How can I prevent it? I am only an old man.”
Lydia was disconcerted. Grandpapa never spoke of himself as old, and the hint of pathos in the admission, unintentional though she supposed it to be, seemed to her out of place in the present juncture.
She grew more annoyed as the evening wore on, for Grandpapa was really very tiresome.
“A useless old man, that’s what I am,” he soliloquized, taking care, however, to make himself perfectly audible.
“What is the matter, Grandpapa?” said the much surprised Aunt Beryl.
Everyone knew how angry Grandpapa would have been had he suspected anyone else of looking upon him as a useless old man.
“Anno Domini,” sighed Grandpapa melodramatically, “Anno Domini! No one left but little Shamrock to keep the old man company.”
“Grandpapa!” cried Aunt Beryl indignantly, “I’m sure if you had to depend on the dog for company, youmightcomplain. But you know very well that isn’t the case. Why, here’s George only too ready to have a game of Halma, if you want to. Or Lydia could read out to you for a bit.”
“Lyddie’s off to London, my dear,” sighed Grandpapa in martyred accents, for all the world, thought Lydia indignantly, as though she meant to start off by the next train.
“What?”
But Grandpapa, having dropped his bomb amongst them, not unwisely elected to leave it there without waiting to see its effect.
“I shall go up to bed now, my boy. Will you give me an arm?”
“But it’s quite early. Don’t you feel well, Grandpapa? And what’s all this about Lydia going away?”
Aunt Beryl received no answer.
Lydia was too much vexed and too much embarrassed to make any attempt at stating her case, and Grandpapa had begun the tense process of hoisting himself out of his arm-chair. When he was on his feetat last, he allowed Uncle George to come and assist him out of the room and up the stairs.
“Good night all,” said Grandpapa in a sorrowful, impersonal sort of way, as he hobbled out of the room on his son’s arm. “I am getting to be an old fellow now—I can’t afford to keep late hours. Bed and gruel, that’s all that’s left for the old man.”
Aunt Beryl looked at Lydia with dismay.
“What’s all this about? Grandpapa hasn’t been like this since he was so vexed that time when Uncle George took Shamrock out and lost him, and he was away three days before a policeman brought him back. I remember Grandpapa going on in just the same way then, talking about being an old man and nobody caring for him. Such nonsense!”
Lydia had seldom heard so much indignation expressed by her quiet aunt, and for a moment she hoped that attention might be diverted from her own share in the disturbance of Grandpapa’s serenity.
But an early recollection of the unfortunate effects upon Aunt Beryl of her withheld confidence, five years previously, came to her mind. Lydia considered the position quietly for a few moments, and then decided upon her line of attack.
“I know you’ll understand much better than Grandpapa did, and help me with him,” she began.
Not for nothing had the child Lydia learnt the necessity for diplomacy in dealing with those arbitrary controllers of Destiny called grown-up people.
Aunt Beryl seemed a good deal startled, and perhaps rather disappointed, which Lydia indulgently told herself was natural enough, but the subtle appeal to range herself with her niece against Grandpapa’s overdone pretensions was not without its effect.
And Lydia found an unexpected ally in Uncle George, when her scheme had presently reached the stage of family discussion.
“You ought to get a good post enough,” he said judicially, “but you mustn’t expect to keep yourself all at once unless you ‘live in’ somewhere!”
“If she goes to London at all,” Aunt Beryl said firmly, “she must go to Maria Nettleship.”
Of course. Maria Nettleship, theamie d’enfanceof Aunt Beryl’s younger days, who still punctually exchanged letters with her, and was successfully managing a boarding-house in Bloomsbury.
“I should be happier about her with Maria Nettleship than if she was just ‘living in’ with goodness knows whom to keep her company. And it’snicer, too, for a young girl like Lydia—you know what I mean,” said Aunt Beryl mysteriously.
“But a boarding-house is expensive. I never thought of anything like that, auntie. Why, I should cost you more than I would if I lived at home, a great deal,” said Lydia, aghast.
“Oh, I could easily make an arrangement with Maria Nettleship. And you want the chance, Lydia, my dear. I’m sure I don’t blame you. It’s not a good thing to stay in one place all one’s life long, I suppose.” Aunt Beryl gave a sigh. “It would be just an experiment for a little while, and I’m sure the expense isn’t to be thought of when we know you would be paying it all back in a year or two.”
“If it’s simply a question of the ready,” said Uncle George solemnly, “I can lay my hand on something at the minute. A bachelor has few expenses, and except for the little I make over to the house, I can put by a tidy little bit every year. I should look upon it asquite a profitable investment, Lydia, I assure you, to provide the needful on this occasion.”
“Oh, Uncle George—thank you very much. But haven’t I any money at all of my own without having to take yours?” cried Lydia, distressed.
Uncle George shook his head.
“Your poor mother was very unwise in the management of her affairs—very unwise indeed. There’s a matter of twenty or twenty-five pounds coming to you every year, Lydia, and that’s about all.”
“Did that pay for my being sent to school?”
“There was a little money of your father’s, that he left to me,” said Aunt Beryl hastily. “I was always his favourite sister, whatever Evelyn may say, and it seemed only natural that his child should have the benefit of it, I’m sure. Now leave that, my dear, and tell me what sort of work you think of looking out for in town.”
“Certainly,” said Uncle George, “that must be all cut and dried before you think of starting off.”
Lydia felt almost bewildered by the rapidity with which things appeared to be settling themselves. A boarding-house in London, independent work, and leisure and opportunity for the writing that was to bring her fame and money! She remembered once more, and this time with triumph, Grandpapa’s old assertion: “There’s no such thing ascan’t.”
Lydia’s determination to succeed, product partly of an ambitious and resolute character, and partly of sheer ignorance as to the difficulties that might lie in wait for her, was enhanced by an ardent desire to justify the astonishingly practical belief in her that Aunt Beryl and Uncle George were displaying.
Uncle George, who was not at all in the habit of paying compliments, even said to her:
“I must say, it isn’t every girl who would have the courage to start life as you’re proposing to do, Lydia, and you deserve every success, I’m sure.”
After this, it was a disagreeable shock to find that another, and entirely opposite, point of view could be taken of her venture.
One Wednesday evening, to Lydia’s infinite surprise, silent, dried-up little Mr. Monteagle Almond suddenly broached the subject. He chose his opportunity with evident care. Grandpapa, who still elected to maintain his pose of rapidly-approaching dissolution, had waited until the first game of chess was in full swing, and then demanded plaintively if his son was too busy amusing himself to give the poor old man an arm upstairs.
“Excuse me one moment, Monty.”
Uncle George had departed dutifully.
Almost at the same moment the maid Gertrude had put her head round the door, the rest of her remaining outside the room, after the fashion most deplored by Miss Raymond, and given breathless utterance:
“Oh, miss! Could you come out a minute, please? Shamrock’s got his head squeezed in between the railings at the back, and I can’t get him out, and he’s howling something awful!”
“That dog!”
Permitting herself only this forbearing exclamation, Aunt Beryl also had hastened away.
Mr. Monteagle Almond remained seated before the chess-table, sedulously tracing a little imaginary pattern on the board with one long yellow forefinger.
Lydia was seated under the gas, which she hadturned up as high as it would go, absorbed in finishing a Sunday blouse for herself.
“I am sorry to hear of your projected departure, Miss Lydia,” suddenly said Mr. Monteagle Almond. “Quite a break-up of the home circle.”
“Oh, no!” protested Lydia, who would have been more deeply concerned at this fashion of viewing her going if she had not been accustomed to Mr. Almond’s sententious phraseology on every occasion. “Besides, I’m not going yet. It’s only a plan for next winter perhaps. I shan’t leave school until the end of this term.”
Mr. Almond shook his head.
“A great wrench for old Mr. Raymond no doubt, and he seems to me to be breaking up. To-night, for instance, he was quite tremulous. I was sorry to see that.”
“So was I,” muttered Lydia rather viciously. It was really too bad of Grandpapa to put on those airs that would take in anyone who did not know all of which he was capable.
“The old are perhaps less apt at concealing their feelings than we younger folk,” pursued Mr. Almond. “Now, I’m sure my good friends, your aunt and uncle, have not allowed you to see how deeply your decision will affect them.”
“They’ve been very kind,” said Lydia with emphasis. She was anxious that no one should think her ungrateful.
“I have no doubt of it at all—none whatever. A most kind-hearted fellow is George—most kind-hearted. And as for Miss Raymond—well, I need not tell you what she is. I am sure that you remember her devoted nursing of you—for which she afterwards suffered soseverely—on the occasion of some childish ailment of yours a couple of years ago.”
Mr. Almond fixed an eye of melancholy severity upon Lydia, looking as though he were much less sure than he alleged himself to be of her remembering the occasion in question, and was consequently determined to recall it to her memory.
Lydia was speechless with indignation.
Pneumonia a childish ailment!
One of the chief crises of her youth to be recalled merely as the setting for the jewel of Aunt Beryl’s self-devotion!
Mr. Almond was worse than Grandpapa even.
It was clear to her that here was a point of view which required readjustment.
“I shall be very, very sorry to leave home,” she said earnestly. “But indeed I do think it’s the best thing I can do. If I get a good post in London, it will lead to much more than my just going on at Miss Glover’s, teaching, for ever. And it seems a shame not to make the very most of the education I’ve had.”
“Very true. But I’m afraid you’ll be sadly missed. One had hoped, if I may say so without offence, to see you taking your aunt’s place in time. She has been very much tied now for a number of years.”
“Idohope to help Aunt Beryl. But it would be a disappointment to her and to Uncle George if I didn’t do something with the education they’ve given me. In some ways,” said Lydia, “the thought of going to London by myself frightens me—but honestly, Mr. Almond, I believe if I once take the plunge, it’ll turn out to be the best and most profitable for us all in the long run.”
She saw by his face, with decided relief, that the little man was becoming mollified.
“I’m glad you look at it in that light. You’ll excuse me speaking like this, I hope, but I’ll admit to you, Miss Lydia, that at first I was inclined to think you might be going into this without much thought for anyone but yourself. What you’ve just said shows me that I may have misjudged you.”
“Indeed,” Lydia said deferentially, “I know it’s only from friendship that you’re saying it at all. But I hope you’ll believe that I really am not ungrateful to them all—and I do want to make them proud of me. I hope I shall, too, if I have my chance.”
The middle-aged bank clerk looked at her with a gaze that seemed half admiring and half envious.
“Well,” he said slowly, “they’re giving you your chance all right, Miss Lydia. And I hope, if I may say so, that you’ll make the most of it, both for your own sake and for theirs.”
And Lydia, whilst agreeing with him in all sincerity, felt with an odd sense of triumph that she had reinstated herself in the good opinion of the loyal friend of the family.
This opinion received a startling confirmation the next time that she saw him.
“Have you decided upon the exact nature of your employment in London?” he inquired of her, with an air of caution.
“Oh, no. I don’t very much care for the idea of teaching, and I should have to learn shorthand and typewriting before I could get secretarial work. What I should really like would be something to do with figures—accountancy perhaps.”
“Ah! I thought so. The mathematical mind! Avery rare thing in your sex,” said Mr. Monteagle Almond, as he had frequently said before. “But subject to the approval of your good aunt, I have here something that may interest you, I think.”
Aunt Beryl and Lydia gazed eagerly at the paper he held out to them, covered with telegraphic notes written in Mr. Almond’s neat little clerkly hand.
“New venture.Robes et Modes.Started last year. Establishment owned by Lady Proprietress, personally known to informant. Prem. in West End already acquired and cap. assured.”“Opening for educ. young lady; a/cs and help in sales-room when required.”“Live out; midday meal in. Special feature made of employees’ welfare.”“Personal interview previous to engagt. Probably Sept. Salary to begin—no premium.”“Only superior young ladies considered.”
“New venture.Robes et Modes.Started last year. Establishment owned by Lady Proprietress, personally known to informant. Prem. in West End already acquired and cap. assured.”
“Opening for educ. young lady; a/cs and help in sales-room when required.”
“Live out; midday meal in. Special feature made of employees’ welfare.”
“Personal interview previous to engagt. Probably Sept. Salary to begin—no premium.”
“Only superior young ladies considered.”
“The last item,” said Mr. Almond solemnly, “was much dwelt upon by my informant—Griswell, of the N. S. Bank. He could give me very few details, but seeing that I was interested, he immediately offered to communicate with the lady concerned, a personal friend of his. He merely mentioned her name to me by chance, and was quite surprised at my taking him up, like.”
“It was very kind of you to pass it on, I’m sure,” said Aunt Beryl excitedly. “What do you say about it, Lydia?”
“I should like, if Mr. Almond will be so very kind, to hear all about it,” said Lydia, her eyes shining and her heart full of excitement.