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“There’sonly one piece each,” said old Miss Lillicrap, in the sharp, fierce squeak that the other boarders always heard with dismayed resentment, rendered powerless because of her extreme age, and the violet tinge that shadowed her hard old lips.
Miss Lillicrap had been known to have a violent and mysterious “attack” for a less reason than the appropriation of a second piece of seed-cake at tea-time on a Sunday afternoon by someone other than herself.
The boarders assembled in the drawing-room instantly entered into the unanimous league of a silent resolution to ignore Miss Lillicrap’s indelicate insistence on the extremely limited quantity of cake supplied by Miss Nettleship.
“Meal-time again!” sighed little Mrs. Clarence, at the same time edging her chair forward, so as to sit nearest to the small milk-jug and inadequately-filled sugar-basin. “It always seems to be time to eat, somehow.” Her pale, pink-rimmed blue eyes were anxiously scanning the food on the table as she spoke.
“Only one piece each,” snapped Miss Lillicrap again, more loudly than before.
Again they all ignored her.
“Who’s going to do ‘mother,’ and pour out?” asked Mrs. Bulteel with a rather nervous laugh.
Everyone knew that as the principal married woman in the room, she felt herself entitled to the office ofdignity. Almost equally well, everyone knew that it would be disputed.
“I thought Miss Forster did that,” said old Miss Lillicrap.
Had Miss Forster been present she would certainly have supported Mrs. Bulteel.
“Miss Forster is out, Miss Lillicrap,” retorted Mrs. Bulteel, raising her already shrill voice, so as to impress upon Miss Lillicrap that she was old, and must therefore be very deaf as well.
“Oh, all right—all right. Yesterday I was awake nearly all night, the tea was so strong.”
“I’ll give you the first cup,” shrilled Mrs. Bulteel, provided with an excellent excuse for snatching the tea-pot before Mrs. Clarence, who, as a widow, could have no status at all, could put her little be-ringed, claw-like fingers round the handle.
Lydia, who, for reasons connected with her own undoubted popularity at the boarding-house, never took part in the tea-time amenities of the boarders—of which, indeed, she was only witness on occasional Saturday and Sunday afternoons—looked sympathetically at Mr. Bulteel, waiting nervously for the teacups which he habitually handed politely round.
He evidently thought his wife very spirited and clever when she used her shrewish Cockney tongue against the other women.
“Allow me,” said he, taking round the cups of strong, black brew. He threw a resentful glance, as he did so, at the Greek gentleman, who never took his share in dispensing these small courtesies. He only stood, as he usually did, in front of the empty fireplace, his hands in his pockets, and his dark eyes roaming sardonically round the room. He was still spoken ofas “the Greek gentleman,” since no one had mastered his name. Lydia had listened with interest to various conversations about him, but had derived little information from them. It might be entertaining, but it was not particularly illuminating to hear Mrs. Bulteel say to Mrs. Clarence, as Lydia had heard her say a little while ago, in a very penetrating manner:
“That’s not a face I shouldtrust.”
Mrs. Clarence, who never ventured to differ from anybody, and least of all from Mrs. Bulteel, who had a live husband and son to testify to the fact that she had justified her feminine existence, had only replied doubtfully:
“No? Well, perhaps you’re right. What makes you think...?”
“He looks as though he had foreign blood in him.” Mrs. Bulteel adduced the damning grounds for her inference with gloomy prescience, which she appeared to think amply justified by the facts that the Greek spoke English with a slight accent, and had a name that even Miss Nettleship only rendered as Mr. M ... m ... m.
A little while afterwards the unconquerable Mrs. Bulteel had actually asked him outright, “And do tell me,howis your name pronounced?” in a very intelligent way, as though she knew of two or three excellent alternatives.
To which the Greek gentleman had replied, with slightly outspread, olive fingers:
“Just—exactly—as you please.”
“But how doyousay it in your own country?”
“I am not in my own country.”
“I know that. You are a foreigner,” said Mrs.Bulteel, much as she might have said, “You are a cannibal.” “But if youwerein your own country?”
Then had replied the Greek gentleman morosely:
“I should have no need to say it at all. It is too well known.”
And Mrs. Bulteel, seeing herself defeated, could only cry out in a shaking voice the time-honoured indictment of the English middle classes of whatever is slightly less than blatantly obvious:
“Oh! How sarcastic!”
Nothing could be more evident than that the Greek was indifferent to the charge, or, indeed, to any other that might be proffered against him by his fellow-inmates.
That very Sunday morning had been spent by him in reading a French novel in the drawing-room, whilst almost all the other inmates had decorously attended church.
“Will you keep some tea for Hector?” suggested Mr. Bulteel, as his wife put down the tea-pot and uncrooked her little finger.
“I have come to an arrangement with the manageress about Hector’s tea,” retorted Mrs. Bulteel, with a magnificence that seemed inadequate to the cup of strong tea, and slices of bread-and-butter on a thick plate now probably waiting on the kitchen range for Hector’s return.
“The poor boy is never much later than half-past five, after all, even on week-days.”
Mrs. Clarence and Miss Lillicrap exchanged a look. Everyone knew that the main interest of the senior members of the Bulteelménagewas to exercise a rigorous censorship over every unaccounted-for moment of their only son’s existence.
It was as a matter of course that everyone present heard the accustomed routine of question and answer gone through by Hector and his parents on the youth’s entrance into the drawing-room.
“Is that you, Hector?” said Mrs. Bulteel mildly, as soon as her son had slouched to a seat, and no further doubt of his identity could possibly prevail.
“Have you asked for your tea?” Mr. Bulteel inquired.
“The girl opened the door to me.”
Few of the boarders possessed latch-keys, and Hector was not one of these.
“That girl!” exclaimed his mother. “Better ring, and I’ll tell her.”
Mrs. Clarence looked rather awed. She would never have dared to ring the drawing-room bell for the parlour-maid.
Lydia herself had come in late for tea, and although Mr. Bulteel had handed her a cup, smiling rather apologetically, there was very little left to eat.
“There’s no more cake—nothing left!” cried old Miss Lillicrap with a sort of vicious triumph, as Lydia gazed at the empty plates on the table.
Lydia shrugged her shoulders, and Mr. Bulteel said nervously and kindly:
“They will bring you some more, no doubt.”
Everybody knew that any such concession to a late arrival was most unlikely, and the effect produced was proportionate when the Greek gentleman, on the arrival of Hector Bulteel’s belated cup and saucer, turned to the maid who had brought them in:
“This young lady will want some tea and bread-and-butter, also.”
Irene looked astounded.
The Greek gentleman fixed upon her the steady, sardonic gaze of his dark eyes.
“If you please,” he said, with the unctuous sibilance that was the only accent marring the perfection of his English speech.
“I’ll see what the manageress says,” gasped Irene, and they heard her clattering down the stairs.
The boarders exchanged glances, of which Lydia was perfectly aware, and which did not altogether displease her. She knew that they were all waiting curiously to see the outcome of Irene’s mission, and the Greek’s reception of its almost certain failure. Miss Nettleship had long ago explained to Lydia that she dared not make any difference in her treatment of the boarders.
“You quite understand how it is, dear, I know. The boarders know very well that your aunt is a friend of mine, and so they’re sort of on the look-out for any favouring. And it wouldn’t do at all, would it, to have any talk made? It would only be disagreeable for both of us—you know how it is, dear.”
Irene reappeared at the door, breathless.
“Miss Nettleship’s very sorry, there’s no more boiling water,” she announced defiantly, and disappeared before the Greek gentleman could do more than look at her, which he did as disagreeably as was possible in the time.
“I am sorry,” he remarked gravely to the object of his benevolence.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lydia, smiling.
“But it’s not right,” cried Mr. Bulteel, as though sheer distress were compelling him to break into the conversation contrary to his will, and certainly contrary to his usual habit.
“It’s notright. One pays for tea, and one ought tohave it. She never deducts a meal like tea from the bill, even if one hasn’t had it.”
His wife tittered shrilly.
“I should think she didn’t! It’s disgraceful the way that woman charges for the food. No one ever has a second helping.”
The room became animated on the instant.
Mr. Bulteel had introduced one of those topics, that, from sheer force of unending discussion in the past, become eagerly acclaimed as suitable for unending discussion in the present.
“Iaskfor a second helping,” said old Miss Lillicrap triumphantly. “Iaskfor it. And I get it, too. I had two helpings of the pudding yesterday, and I sent the girl back for some custard. She brought it to me without any custard the second time, but I sent her back for it. It was the disobliging waitress, too, not Irene, and I could see she didn’t like it. But she had to go back for the custard, and Miss Nettleship gave it to her. She knew it was for me, and she didn’t dare to refuse it.”
No one congratulated Miss Lillicrap on her achievement. She was very unpopular, and it was evident that to most of the boarders the recollection sprang to mind vividly of the methods to which she had recourse for the maintenance of her privileges. Indeed, Miss Nettleship had herself told Lydia of her own defeat at the aged but determined hands of Miss Lillicrap, who had once had five cardiac attacks in succession sooner than pay a disputed item on her weekly bill, emerging from each one in order to say, “It’s extortionate, and you’ll have to take it off. I shan’t pay.”
When she had said it five times, and showed an iron intention of relapsing into a sixth catalepsy, as a preliminary to saying it again, the manageress had castup her eyes to heaven, and exclaimed that the charge should be remitted.
Thereafter Miss Lillicrap had the upper hand, and knew it, and Miss Nettleship was wont to say pleadingly to her other boarders:
“You know what it is—Miss Lillicrap is old, and then with her heart and all——”
They resented it, but they also were powerless before those tiny, gnarled hands, that little puckered face nodding and shaking under a lace cap, and that cracked, envenomed old voice.
“I wish there was less custard and more pudding, very often,” said Mr. Bulteel, with a sort of gloomy humorousness. “It’s always custard.”
“Made with custard powder at that,” put in his wife.
“Eggs are so expensive,” Mrs. Clarence’s habitual little whine contributed to the quota.
“Not that we don’t pay enough for her to give us real custard made with eggs,” she added hastily, lest it should be thought that she was accustomed to economical shifts.
“Hector,” said his mother sharply, “have you finished your tea?”
The youth looked resentfully at his parents.
“Go and do your exercises then, my boy,” said his father firmly.
“All right, father, all right.”
“Now, go at once, Hector,” said Mrs. Bulteel, as she always said every evening when her son manifested reluctance with regard to the enforced physical drill, judged by his parents necessary to the well-being of their weedy offspring.
“The boy gets hardly any exercise,” his mother discontentedly informed her neighbour, the Greek, whocontented himself with casting a disparaging eye over Hector’s lanky proportions, as though he thought it entirely immaterial whether these were duly developed or not.
“Wonderful thing, those dumb-bell exercises,” remarked Mr. Bulteel, shooting a scraggy wrist out of his coat sleeve, and then withdrawing it again hastily, as an unsuccessful advertisement. “Hurry up, my boy.”
The door opened again before Hector had responded in any way to the bracing exhortations of his progenitors.
“Miss Forster back again?” said the Greek gentleman. “We shall have our game of Bridge before dinner, then.”
“Don’t move, don’t move!” cried Miss Forster, breezily putting out a protesting hand very tightly fastened into a white-kid glove, and thereby obliging Mr. Bulteel to rise reluctantly from his arm-chair.
“Oh, what a shame!”
Miss Forster sank into the vacated seat immediately, with a loud sigh of relief.
“Have you had a pleasant afternoon with your friends?” Mrs. Bulteel inquired. She was always inordinately curious about the social engagements of other people, but Miss Forster’s garrulousness needed no questionings.
“A topping afternoon!” she declared with youthful slanginess. “Never held such cards, either. What do you think of eight hearts to the Ace, King, Queen?”
The Greek gentleman, to whom she appealed, was non-committal.
“It depends who was holding them,” he replied laconically.
“Well, I was, of course. My partner’s deal—he’dgone no trumps; they doubled, and of course I redoubled, and we made the little slam. Jolly, eh? though I prefer something withrathermore play in it, myself.”
“Such as last night,” grimly suggested the Greek, in unkind allusion to an incident that Miss Forster might reasonably be supposed to prefer forgotten.
“Haven’t you forgotten that horrid diamond suit of yours yet?” cried the lady, shaking an admonitory forefinger. “It was certainly a slip, and I can’t think how I came to make it.”
“You took the lead out of your partner’s hand,” piped Mrs. Clarence, with a sudden display of knowledge that caused Miss Forster, the recognized Bridge expert of the house until the Greek gentleman’s recent arrival, to look at her in astonished resentment.
“I’m not a player, I know,” hastily said Mrs. Clarence, perhaps in tardy dread lest she also might be reminded of past fiascos. “Only I always remember that my husband’s golden rule used to be, ‘Third in hand plays his highest, and second in hand plays his lowest.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
Mrs. Clarence’s husband was the only claim to superiority which she could flaunt before the better-dressed, better-housed, better-connected, generally better-off pretensions of Miss Forster and she flaunted him freely.
Perhaps it was on this account that no one paid the slightest attention to themotof the departed card-player.
Mrs. Bulteel picked up theDaily Sketch, and said without animation, as without any shred of meaning: “Fancy the Duke of Connaught going to Canada!” and Mr. Bulteel suddenly exclaimed in shocked tones:
“Hector!You won’t have time to do your exercises before dinner if you don’t go at once.”
The youth slouched from the room.
“Mr. Hector should hold himself better!” cried Miss Forster, who never hesitated to make a remark on the score of its being a personal one. She flung back her shoulders as she spoke.
“My son is growing very fast,” said Mrs. Bulteel stiffly.
Miss Forster laughed.
“Well, I must go and take off my hat.”
She slightly lifted the brim of her large hat, as though to render her meaning perfectly clear, and left the room.
Mrs. Bulteel’s plain, pinched face was further disfigured by a sneer.
“Poor woman!” she said spitefully. “She really can’t afford to criticize other people. She gets stouter every day, I do believe.”
“Is she really such a very good Bridge-player?” Mrs. Clarence asked, with a sort of restrained eagerness, as though ashamed of hoping—as she quite obviously did—that the answer would be in the negative.
“She plays a fair game—forone of your sex,” said the Greek ungallantly.
It was such small observations as this, which he let fall from time to time, that made Lydia feel almost certain that she disliked him, although at other times she was gratified by his half-covert admiration of her.
Presently the Bulteels went in pursuit of Hector and his dumb-bells; old Miss Lillicrap tottered off to scream shrilly for hot water from the top of the kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Clarence, glancing at Lydia with a friendly little furtive smirk, sidled out of the room toengage upon one of those mysterious futilities that served to bridge the gaps in the one regular occupation of her life: her attendance at meals.
Lydia and the Greek were left alone together in the drawing-room.
“The days are drawing in very fast,” he observed, gazing at the window.
Lydia felt slightly disappointed at the highly impersonal nature of the remark.
“Yes,” she said unenthusiastically.
“Do you find the evenings rather long after you get in from your work? You very seldom join us in the drawing-room, I notice, after dinner.”
“Sometimes I go and sew in Miss Nettleship’s room, and talk to her,” said Lydia.
“Sometimes, no doubt. But are there not evenings when you retire to your own apartment very early?”
Lydia reflected that foreigners no doubt held views unshared by the conventional British mind, as to the propriety of expressing a manifest curiosity in the affairs of other people.
“Sometimes I have writing to do,” she said shyly.
The admission was not altogether unpremeditated. Lydia knew that the Greek was an insatiable reader, mostly of French novels, and it had occurred to her some time since that he might not unpossibly be of use in advising her. Besides, she owned to herself quite frankly, that his interest in her was not likely to be diminished by the discovery of her literary ambitions.
“I came to London partly so as to be able to write,” she told him. “I have wanted to write books ever since I was a child.”
“Ever since you were a child!” he repeated with a hint of friendly derision. “That is indeed a long while.And what form does this writing of yours take? No doubt you write poetry—all about love, and springtime, and death?”
Lydia felt herself colouring with annoyance as she replied with decision:
“Dear me, no. I shouldn’t think of writing poetry nowadays. I know very well that I can’t. But I’ve written one or two short stories, and I should like one day—to write books.”
“Have these stories of yours been published?”
“No, not yet,” said Lydia. “I haven’t tried to publish them. I don’t know if they’re the right length, or where to send them, or anything.”
“Haven’t you ever come across a useful little book called ‘The Artist and Author’s Handbook?’ That would give you all the information you require.”
“Would it? I could try and get it,” said Lydia doubtfully.
She did not want to spend any extra money. There had proved to be so many unforeseen expenses in London.
“I think I have a copy. Allow me to lend it to you,” said the Greek. “It will give you a list of the publishers, and publications, and a great deal of very practical information. You should certainly see it. I will give it to you to-morrow.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“In return,” said the obliging foreigner, with a slight smile, “may I not be allowed to read one of your tales?”
Lydia, the intuitive, had been mentally anticipating the request. She was eager enough for a verdict upon her work, and only pretended a little modest hesitation.
“I am afraid you wouldn’t find them very interesting—but I should like to know if you think there’s any hope for me, Mr. ——”
“My name is Margoliouth,” said he.
No one else had ever been honoured by the information.
Lydia went upstairs, discreetly taking upon herself to break up thetête-à-tête, with increased self-satisfaction.
She was less pleased a few days later when she discovered that everybody in the boarding-house now knew that she wrote stories.
“I’m not a bit surprised,” Miss Forster cried loudly and joyously. “I always felt we had a lot in common. Why, I should write myself if I could only find the time.”
She traced rapid scribbles in the air with her forefinger.
“It must be a great hobby for you,” said pale Mr. Bulteel, looking respectfully at Lydia.
“Perhaps one night you’ll read us one of your stories,” his wife suggested.
She was not usually gracious to the other women in the house, but Lydia had always listened sympathetically to her account of the agony that she suffered from her teeth, now undergoing extensive structural alterations.
Only little Mrs. Clarence gazed at Lydia with a thoroughly uneasy eye.
“I must say,” she said with a note of aggression in her habitual whine, “I do hope you won’t putmeinto one of your books, Miss Raymond.”
Lydia enjoyed the attention that was bestowed uponher, even while she critically told herself that it lacked discernment.
She did not read her stories out loud to the assembled boarders, as Mrs. Bulteel had suggested, but she submitted several of them to the inspection of Margoliouth.
“They have merit, and originality,” he told her. “But your English is not good.”
Lydia held out her hand for the manuscripts without replying.
“Aha, you think that a foreigner cannot criticize English,” he said acutely, and interpreting her secret thought with perfect correctness. “But I assure you that I am right. Look! you put ‘alright’ for ‘all right’ and ‘She was very interested’ instead of ‘she was very much interested.’ And again, you have ‘under the circumstances’ for ‘in the circumstances.’ All these are common errors. Tell me, what authors do you read?”
Lydia was vague. Like the majority of readers, she chose books almost at random, because the title allured her, or because someone had said that the story was exciting.
The Greek shrugged his shoulders.
“The ideas are there,” he said, “but you must learn to express them better.”
Lydia felt so much mortified that she could hardly speak. She, the Head of the School at Miss Glover’s, the owner of the “mathematical mind” so rarely found in one of her own sex, the responsible and trusted accountant at Elena’s, to be told that she could not write English!
At that moment she disliked Margoliouth with all the cordial dislike accorded to a really candid critic.
Yet it was characteristic of Lydia that, even in themidst of her vexation, she realized that to display it would be to destroy much of the Greek’s flattering opinion of her superior intelligence. She drew a long breath, and gazed at him frankly and steadily.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I must try and study the really good writers, and—and I’ll remember what you say, and try and write better English. I’m sure you’re right.”
It was a little set speech, uttered regardless of the indignation still burning within her, and it did not fail of its effect.
“Well done!” cried the Greek softly. “Well done, Miss Raymond! It is very rare to find so much frankness and determination in a lady, if I may say so—I am the more sure that you will eventually succeed.”
Lydia thanked him and took away her manuscripts.
She was inwardly just as angry at his criticism as she had been on first hearing it, and just as certain that a foreigner could know nothing about the correctness or otherwise of her English. But she congratulated herself on the presence of mind and strength of will which had enabled her to make so good a show of open-minded generosity. Quite evidently Margoliouth thought the better of her for it, and Lydia would not for the world have forfeited his admiration.
It gave her greatprestigein the eyes of the other boarders.
Lydia knew that they most of them liked her, Mr. Bulteel because she was young and pretty, his wife, and whining little Mrs. Clarence, because she always listened to them sympathetically, all the while inwardly mindful of Grandpapa’s rule—“Always let the other people talk about themselves.”
Miss Forster liked her too.
Lydia did not exactly flatter Miss Forster, but she had a tactful way of introducing the topic of Miss Forster’s great friends, Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, and was always ready to hear about the Bridge parties that Miss Forster frequented at their house in Lexham Gardens.
Hector Bulteel, the pallid youth whose days were passed in Gower Street, had at first been too shy even to speak to Lydia, but one day she asked for his advice on a point of accountancy, and thereafter they occasionally discussed the higher mathematics or the distinctions between organic and inorganic chemistry.
Lydia did not really think very highly of Hector’s capabilities, but criticized him as shrewdly as she did everyone else with whom she came into contact.
She was always careful, however, to keep her rather caustic judgments to herself, and she knew that both at Madame Elena’s and at the boarding-house the reputation that had been hers at school still prevailed: Lydia Raymond never said an unkind thing about anyone.
Even old Miss Lillicrap, who seldom uttered a word that was not either spiteful or complaining, looked at Lydia in a comparatively friendly silence on the evening that the Greek gentleman first took her to the Polytechnic.
Lydia wore a new, pale-pink blouse, and her best dark-brown cloth coat and skirt.
For the first time, she decided that she reallywaspretty.
The conviction lent exhilaration to the evening’s entertainment, which on the whole she found rather dull. She was not very much amused by the cinematographfilms displayed, and when, towards the end of the evening, Mr. Margoliouth fumbled for her hand in the darkness and held it, Lydia was principally conscious that hers was still sticky from the chocolates that he had given her, and failed to derive any thrill from the experience.