MRS. LAWRENCE'S HOSPITALITY
"_An Officer's Widow offers hospitality to students and professional
women. Excellent cuisine; man-servant; moderate terms. Apply: Mrs. L.,
24 Brutton Square, N.W._"
So ran the advertisement which Mrs. Lawrence periodically inserted in one
of the leading London dailies. She was well-pleased with the wording of
it, considering that it combined both veracity and attractiveness--two
things which do not invariably run smoothly in conjunction with each
other.
The opening phrase had reference to the fact that her husband, the
defunct major, had been an army doctor, and the word hospitality
pleasantly suggested the idea of a home from home, whilst the
afterthought conveyed by the moderate terms delicately indicated that the
hospitality was not entirely of a gratuitous nature. The man-servant, on
closer inspection, resolved himself into a French-Swiss waiter, whose
agility and condition were such that he could negotiate the whole ninety
stairs of the house, three at a time, without once pausing for breath
till he reached the top.
Little Miss Bunting, the lady-help, who lived with Mrs. Lawrence on the
understanding that she gave "assistance in light household duties in
return for hospitality," was not quite so nimble as Henri, the waiter,
and often found her heart beating quite uncomfortably fast by the time
she had climbed the ninety stairs to the little cupboard of a room which
Mrs. Lawrence's conception of hospitality allotted for her use. She did
the work of two servants and ate rather less than one, and, seeing that
she received no wages and was incurably conscientious, Mrs. Lawrence
found the arrangement eminently satisfactory. Possibly Miss Bunting
herself regarded the matter with somewhat less enthusiasm, but she was a
plucky little person and made no complaint. As she wrote to her invalid
mother, shortly after taking up her duties at Brutton Square: "After all,
dearest of little mothers, I have a roof over my head and food to eat,
and I'm not costing you anything except a few pounds for my clothes. And
perhaps when I leave here, if Mrs. Lawrence gives me a good reference, I
shall be able to get a situation with a salary attached to it."
So Miss Bunting stuck to her guns and spent her days in supplementing the
deficiencies of careless servants, smoothing the path of the boarders,
and generally enabling Mrs. Lawrence to devote much more time to what she
termed her "social life" than would otherwise have been the case.
The boarders usually numbered anything from twelve to fifteen--all of the
gentler sex--and were composed chiefly of students at one or other of the
London schools of art or music, together with a sprinkling of visiting
teachers of various kinds, and one or two young professional musicians
whose earnings did not yet warrant their launching out into the
independence of flat life. This meant that three times a year, when the
schools closed for their regular vacations, a general exodus took place
from 24 Brutton Square, and Mrs. Lawrence was happily enabled to go away
and visit her friends, leaving the conscientious Miss Bunting to look
after the reduced establishment and cater for the one or two remaining
boarders who were not released by regular holidays. It was an admirable
arrangement, profitable without being too exigeant.
At the end of each vacation Mrs. Lawrence always summoned Miss Bunting to
her presence and ran through the list of boarders for the coming term,
noting their various requirements. She was thus occupied one afternoon
towards the end of April. The spring sunshine poured in through the
windows, lending an added cheerfulness of aspect to the rooms of the tall
London house that made them appear worth quite five shillings a week more
than was actually charged for them, and Mrs. Lawrence smiled, well
satisfied.
She was a handsome woman, still in the early forties, and the word
"stylish" inevitably leaped to one's mind at the sight of her full,
well-corseted figure, fashionable raiment, and carefully coiffured hair.
There was nothing whatever of the boarding-house keeper about her; in
fact, at first sight, she rather gave the impression of a pleasant,
sociable woman who, having a house somewhat larger than she needed for
her own requirements, accepted a few paying guests to keep the rooms
aired.
This was just the impression she wished to convey, and it was usually
some considerable time before her boarders grasped the fact that they
were dealing with, a thoroughly shrewd, calculating business woman, who
was bent on making every penny out of them that she could, compatibly
with running the house on such lines as would ensure its answering to the
advertised description.
"I'm glad it's a sunny day," she remarked to Miss Bunting. "First
impressions are everything, and that pupil of Signor Baroni's, Miss
Quentin, arrives to-day. I hope her rooms are quite ready?"
"Quite, Mrs. Lawrence," replied the lady-help. "I put a few flowers in
the vases just to make it look a little home-like."
"Very thoughtful of you, Miss Bunting," Mrs. Lawrence returned
graciously. "Miss Quentin's is rather a special case. To begin with,
she has engaged a private sitting-room, and in addition to that she was
recommended to come here by Signor Baroni himself."
The good word of a teacher of such standing as Baroni was a matter of the
first importance to a lady offering a home from home to musical students,
though possibly had Mrs. Lawrence heard the exact form taken by Baroni's
recommendation she might have felt less elated.
"The Lawrence woman is a bit of a shark, my dear," he had told Diana,
when she had explained that, owing to the retirement from business of her
former landlady, she would be compelled after Easter to seek fresh rooms.
"But she caters specially for musical students, and as she is therefore
obliged to keep the schools pleased, she feeds her boarders, on the
whole, better than do most of her species. And remember, my dear Mees
Quentin, that good food, and plenty of good food, means--voice."
So Diana had nodded and written to Mrs. Lawrence to ask if a bed-room and
sitting-room opening one into the other could be at her disposal,
receiving an affirmative reply.
"Regarding coals, Miss Bunting," proceeded Mrs. Lawrence thoughtfully, "I
told Miss Quentin that the charge would be sixpence per scuttle." (This
was in pre-war times, it must be remembered, and the scuttles were of
painfully meagre proportions.) "It might be as well to put that large
coal-box in her room--you know the one I mean--and make the charge
eightpence."
The box in question was certainly of imposing exterior proportions, but
its tin lining was of a quite different domestic period and made no
pretensions as to fitting. It lay loosely inside its sham mahogany
casing like the shrivelled kernel of a nut in its shell.
"The big coal-scuttle really doesn't hold twopenny-worth more coal than
the others," observed Miss Bunting tentatively.
A dull flush mounted to Mrs. Lawrence's cheek. She liked the prospect of
screwing an extra twopence out of one of her boarders, but she hated
having the fact so clearly pointed out to her. There were times when she
found Miss Bunting's conscientiousness something of a trial.
"It's a much larger box," she protested sharply.
"Yes. I know it is--outside. But the lining only holds two more knobs
than the sixpenny ones."
Mrs. Lawrence frowned.
"Do I understand that you--you actually measured the amount it contains?"
she asked, with bitterness.
"Yes," retorted Miss Bunting valiantly. "And compared it with the
others. It was when you told me to put the eightpenny scuttle in Miss
Jenkins' room. She complained at once."
"Then you exceeded your duties, Miss Bunting. You should have referred
Miss Jenkins to me."
Miss Bunting made no reply. She had acted precisely in the way
suggested, but Miss Jenkins, a young art-student of independent opinions,
had flatly declined to be "referred" to Mrs. Lawrence.
"It's not the least use, Bunty dear," she had said. "I'm not going to
have half an hour's acrimonious conversation with Mrs. Lawrence on the
subject of twopennyworth of coal. At the same time I haven't the
remotest intention of paying twopence extra for those two lumps of excess
luggage, so to speak. So you can just trot that sarcophagus away, like
the darling you are, and bring me back my sixpenny scuttle again."
And little Miss Bunting, in her capacity of buffer state between Mrs.
Lawrence and her boarders, had obeyed and said nothing more about the
matter.
"I have to go out now," continued Mrs. Lawrence, after a pause pregnant
with rebuke. "You will receive Miss Quentin on her arrival and attend to
her comfort. And put the large coal-box in her sitting-room as I
directed," she added firmly.
So it came about that when, half an hour later, a taxi-cab buzzed up to
the door of No. 24, with Diana and a large quantity of luggage on board,
the former found herself met in the hall by a cheerful little person with
pretty brown eyes and a friendly smile to whom she took an instant liking.
Miss Bunting escorted Diana up to her rooms on the second floor, while
Henri brought up the rear, staggering manfully beneath the weight of Miss
Quentin's trunk.
A cheerful fire was blazing in the grate, and that, together with the
daffodils that gleamed from a bowl on the table like a splash of gold,
gave the room a pleasant and welcoming appearance.
"But, surely," said Diana hesitatingly, "you are not Mrs. Lawrence?"
Miss Bunting laughed, outright.
"Oh, dear no," she answered. "Mrs. Lawrence is out, and she asked me to
see that you had everything you wanted. I'm the lady-help, you know."
Diana regarded her commiseratingly. She seemed such a jolly, bright
little thing to be occupying that anomalous position.
"Oh, are you? Then it was you"--with a sudden, inspiration--"who put
these lovely daffodils here, wasn't it? . . . Thank you so much for
thinking of it--it was kind of you." And she held out her hand with the
frank charm of manner which invariably turned Diana's acquaintances into
friends inside ten minutes.
Little Miss Bunting flushed delightedly, and from that moment onward
became one of the new boarder's most devoted adherents.
"You'd like some tea, I expect," she said presently. "Will you have it
up here--or in the dining-room with the other boarders in half an hour's
time?"
"Oh, up here, please. I can't possibly wait half an hour."
"I ought to tell you," Miss Bunting continued, dimpling a little, "that
it will be sixpence extra if you have it up here. '_All meals served in
rooms, sixpence extra_,'" she read out, pointing to the printed list of
rules and regulations hanging prominently above the chimney-piece.
Diana regarded it with amusement.
"They ought to be written on tablets of stone like the Ten Commandments,"
she commented frivolously. "It rather reminds me of being at school
again. I've never lived in a boarding-house before, you know; I had
rooms in the house of an old servant of ours. Well, here
goes!"--twisting the framed set of rules round with its face to the wall.
"Now, if I break the laws of the Medes and Persians I can't be blamed,
because I haven't read them."
Miss Bunting privately thought that the new boarder, recommended by so
great a personage as Signor Baroni, stood an excellent chance of being
allowed a generous latitude as regards conforming to the rules at No.
24--provided she paid her bills promptly and without too careful a
scrutiny of the "extras." Bunty, indeed, retained few illusions
concerning her employer, and perhaps this was just as well--for the fewer
the illusions by which you're handicapped, the fewer your disappointments
before the journey's end.
"You haven't told me your name," said Diana, when the lady-help
reappeared with a small tea-tray in her hand.
"Bunting," came the smiling reply. "But most of the boarders call me
Bunty."
"I shall, too, may I?--And oh, why haven't you brought two cups? I
wanted you to have tea with me--if you've time, that is?"
"If I had brought a second cup, '_Tea, for two_' would have been charged
to your account," observed Miss Bunting.
"What?" Diana's eyes grew round with astonishment. "With the same sized
teapot?"
The other nodded humorously.
"Well, Mrs. Lawrence's logic is beyond me," pursued Diana.
"However, we'll obviate the difficulty. I'll have tea out of my
tooth-glass"--glancing towards the washstand in the adjoining room where
that article, inverted, capped the water-bottle--"and you, being the
honoured guest, shall luxuriate in the cup."
Bunty modestly protested, but Diana had her own way in the matter, and
when finally the little lady-help went downstairs to pour out tea in the
dining-room for the rest of the boarders, it was with that pleasantly
warm glow about the region of the heart which the experience of an
unexpected kindness is prone to produce.
Meanwhile Diana busied herself unpacking her clothes and putting them
away in the rather limited cupboard accommodation provided, and in fixing
up a few pictures, recklessly hammering the requisite nails into the
walls in happy disregard of Rule III of the printed list, which
emphatically stated that: "_No nails must be driven into the walls
without permission_."
By the time she had completed these operations a dressing-bell sounded,
and quickly exchanging her travelling costume for a filmy little dinner
dress of some soft, shimmering material, she sallied downstairs in search
of the dining-room.
Mrs. Lawrence met her on the threshold, warmly welcoming, and conducting
her to her allotted place at the lower end of a long table, around which
were seated--as it appeared to Diana in that first dizzy moment of
arrival--dozens of young women varying from twenty to thirty years of
age. In reality there were but a baker's dozen of them, and they all
painstakingly abstained from glancing in her direction lest they might be
thought guilty of rudely staring at a newcomer.
Diana's _vis-à-vis_ at table was the redoubtable Miss Jenkins of coal-box
fame, and her neighbours on either hand two students of one of the
musical colleges. Next to Miss Jenkins, Diana observed a vacant place;
presumably its owner was dining out. She also noticed that she alone
among the boarders had attempted to make any kind of evening toilet. The
others had "changed" from their workaday clothes, it is true, but a light
silk blouse, worn with a darker skirt, appeared to be generally regarded
as a sufficient recognition of the occasion.
Diana's near neighbours were at first somewhat tongue-tied with a nervous
stiffness common to the Britisher, but they thawed a little as the meal
progressed, and when the musical students, Miss Jones and Miss Allen, had
elicited that she was actually a pupil of the great Baroni, envy and a
certain awed admiration combined to unseal the fountains of their speech.
Just as the fish was being removed, the door opened to admit a tall, thin
woman, wearing outdoor costume, who passed quickly down the room and took
the vacant place at the table, murmuring a curt apology to Mrs. Lawrence
on her way. To Diana's astonishment she recognised in the newcomer Olga
Lermontof, Baroni's accompanist.
"Miss Lermontof!" she exclaimed. "I had no idea that you lived here."
Miss Lermontof nodded a brief greeting.
"How d'you do? Yes, I've lived here for some time. But I didn't know
that you were coming. I thought you had rooms somewhere?"
"So I had. But I was obliged to give them up, and Signor Baroni
suggested this instead."
"Hope you'll like it," returned Miss Lermontof shortly. "At any rate, it
has the advantage of being only quarter of an hour's walk from
Grellingham Place. I've just come from there." And with that she
relapsed into silence.
Although Olga Lermontof had frequently accompanied Diana during her
lessons with Baroni, the acquaintance between the two had made but small
progress. There had been but little opportunity for conversation on
those occasions, and Diana, instinctively resenting the accompanist's
cool and rather off-hand manner, had never sought to become better
acquainted with her. It was generally supposed that she was a Russian,
and she was undoubtedly a highly gifted musician, but there was something
oddly disagreeable and repellent about her personality. Whenever Diana
had thought about her at all, she had mentally likened her to Ishmael,
whose hand was against every man and every man's hand against his. And
now she found herself involved with this strange woman in the rather
close intimacy of daily life consequent upon becoming fellow-boarders in
the same house.
Seen amidst so many strange faces, the familiarity of Olga Lermontof's
clever but rather forbidding visage bred a certain new sense of
comradeship, and Diana made several tentative efforts to draw her into
conversation. The results were meagre, however, the Russian confining
herself to monosyllabic answers until some one--one of the musical
students--chanced to mention that she had recently been to the Premier
Theatre to see Adrienne de Gervais in a new play, "The Grey Gown," which
had just been produced there.
It was then that Miss Lermontof apparently awoke to the fact that the
English language contains further possibilities than a bare "yes" or "no."
"I consider Adrienne de Gervais a most overrated actress," she remarked
succinctly.
A chorus of disagreement greeted this announcement.
"Why, only think how quickly she's got on," argued Miss Jones. "No one
three years ago--and to-day Max Errington writes all his plays round her."
"Precisely. And it's easy enough to 'create a part' successfully if that
part has been previously written specially to suit you," retorted Miss
Lermontof unmoved.
The discussion of Adrienne de Gervais' merits, or demerits, threatened to
develop into a violent disagreement, and Diana was struck by a certain
personal acrimony that seemed to flavour Miss Lermontof's criticism of
the popular actress. Finally, with the idea of averting a quarrel
between the disputants, she mentioned that the actress, accompanied by
her chaperon, had been staying in the neighbourhood of her own home.
"Mr. Errington was with them also," she added.
"He usually is," commented Miss Lermontof disagreeably.
"He's a remarkably fine pianist," said Diana. "Do you know him
personally at all?"
"I've met him," replied Olga. Her green eyes narrowed suddenly, and she
regarded Diana with a rather curious expression on her face.
"Is he a professional pianist?" pursued Diana. She was conscious of an
intense curiosity concerning Errington, quite apart from the personal
episodes which had linked them together. The man of mystery invariably
exerts a peculiar fascination over the feminine mind. Hence the
unmerited popularity not infrequently enjoyed by the dark, saturnine,
brooding individual whose conversation savours of the tensely
monosyllabic.
Olga Lermontof paused a moment before replying to Diana's query. The she
said briefly:--
"No. He's a dramatist. I shouldn't allow myself to become too
interested in him if I were you."
She smiled a trifle grimly at Diana's sudden flush, and her manner
indicated that, as far as she was concerned, the subject was closed.
Diana felt an inward conviction that Miss Lermontof knew much more
concerning Max Errington than she chose to admit, and when she fell
asleep that night it was to dream that she and Errington were trying to
find each other through the gloom of a thick fog, whilst all the time the
dark-browed, sinister face of Olga Lermontof kept appearing and
disappearing between them, smiling tauntingly at their efforts.