It was not difficult to learn the routine of life at Regency Terrace.
By the end of the autumn Lydia felt as though she had always lived
there.
It was very monotonous.
Breakfast was at eight o’clock, and Lydia found herself expected to
partake of bread-and-milk, to which she was not accustomed, and which
rather annoyed her because she knew they only gave it to her in order
to satisfy Grandpapa’s old-fashioned sense of the appropriate.
Immediately after breakfast she went out, so as to give Aunt Beryl time
to see to the housekeeping before her lessons.
“A good brisk walk up and down the Front,” her aunt said encouragingly.
“There are never many people there early.”
After September, indeed, there were hardly ever any people there at all.
Lydia did not dislike her solitary promenades from one end of the
Esplanade to the other, except on the days when there was an east wind,
when she hated it.
At first she was allowed to take Grandpapa’s dog, Shamrock, with her,
although with many misgivings on the part of Aunt Beryl. Shamrock was
reputedly a Sealyham terrier, and Grandpapa was inordinately attached
to him. He roared with laughter when Uncle George said angrily that
the dog made a fool of him by flattening himself under the front wheel
of the bicycle which daily conveyed Uncle George to his office; and
when Shamrock made all Regency Terrace hideous with howls, on the few
occasions that Uncle George kicked him out of the way, Grandpapa’s
deafness immediately assailed him in its most pronounced form, and he
assured his daughter that he could hear nothing at all, and that it was
all her fancy.
“Good little dog, Shamrock,” said Grandpapa approvingly, when Shamrock
prostrated himself in an attitude of maudlin affection before the old
man’s arm-chair, as he invariably did, to the disgust of the household.
He also showed himself scrupulously obedient to Grandpapa’s lightest
word, although unfortunate Aunt Beryl might still be hoarse from
prolonged cries at the hall-door in a vain endeavour to defend the bare
legs of hapless little passing children, whom Shamrock took a delight
in terrifying, although he never hurt them.
Lydia liked Shamrock because he always pranced along so gaily, and
wagged his tail so effusively, and also because she suspected him of
more than sharing her dislike of the parrot.
But their walks together were not a success. There was only one
crossing, but Shamrock always contrived to negotiate it as badly as
possible under an advancing tram, thus causing the driver to shout
angrily at Lydia. He would simulate sudden, delighted recognitions of
invalid old ladies in bath-chairs, and hurl himself upon them with
extravagant demonstrations, until the bath-chair men, to most of whom
he was only too well known, would seize him by the scruff of the neck
and hurl him away.
Finally, as he never entered the house when Lydia did, but invariably
contrived to give her the slip and extended the excursion by himself,
Aunt Beryl no longer allowed her to take him out. Lydia was sorry,
but she made no lamentations. If one lived with people, it was always
better to conform to their wishes, she had long ago discovered. Her
innate philosophy waxed with the disproportionate rapidity sometimes
seen in children who are dependent on other than their natural
surroundings, for a home.
Crudely put, she conformed to each environment in which she
found herself, but--and in this, Lydia, without knowing it, was
exceptional--she never lost a particle of her own strong individuality.
She merely waited, quite unconsciously, for an opportunity when it
might expediently be set free.
With Aunt Beryl she was a docile, rather silent little girl. Aunt
Beryl gave her lessons every morning from “Little Arthur”, and set
her arithmetic problems of which Lydia knew very well that she did
not herself know the workings, and to which she merely looked up the
answers in a key, and also made her practise scales upon the piano in
the drawing-room.
“It will make your fingers nice and supple, even if one or two of the
keys won’t sound,” said Aunt Beryl. “I’ll write a note to the piano
tuner next week.”
But she never did.
Lydia thought gloomily that she was learning even less now than in the
old days in London, when her mother had, at least, taught her scraps of
French, and given her innumerable books to read. Aunt Beryl declared
that Lydia could go on with French by herself, and a French grammar was
bought.
“I’ll hear you say your verbs,” said Aunt Beryl, harassed, “but I’ve
forgotten my accent long ago.”
As for books, there were none in the Regency Terrace house. When Aunt
Beryl wanted to read, she had recourse to _Weldon’s Fashion Journal_,
or to an occasional _Home Chat_. Grandpapa had the daily paper read to
him, but her aunt once told Lydia that “Grandpapa used to be a great
reader, but he can’t see now without glasses, and he won’t use them. So
he never reads.”
Uncle George, indeed, often brought home a book from the Public
Library in the evenings, but he did not offer to lend them to Lydia,
neither did such titles attract her as “Goodman’s Applied Mechanics,”
or somebody else’s “Theory of Heat, Light, and Sound”. Aunt Beryl,
however, was kind, and when Lydia had once said that she liked reading,
she promised her a story-book for Christmas. It was then October.
Meanwhile she taught her needlework, and Lydia learnt to make her own
blouses, and to knit woollen underwear for a necessitous class vaguely
designated by Aunt Beryl as “the pore”.
Sewing was the only thing that Aunt Beryl taught Lydia in such a way as
to make it interesting. She had no lessons after dinner, which was in
the middle of the day. Sometimes in the afternoon she walked slowly on
the Esplanade with Aunt Beryl beside Grandpapa’s chair, but more often,
as the weather grew colder, she and Aunt Beryl went out alone, and then
they walked briskly into what Aunt Beryl called “the town”. The part
where Regency Terrace stood was the “residential quarter”.
“The town” mainly consisted of King Street and one of those tributary
streets where the shops were. Lydia rather liked the shopping
expeditions with Aunt Beryl, and felt important when the grocer’s boy
or the ironmonger’s young lady took an order, and said, “Yes, Miss
Raymond. Good afternoon, Miss Raymond,” without asking for any address.
Sometimes when Aunt Beryl’s list was a long one, and the darkness of
approaching winter fell early, she took Lydia in to have tea at a small
establishment known to King Street as the “Dorothy Cayfe,” and the
shopping was resumed afterwards, in the cheerful light of the prevalent
gas. This happened seldom, however, as Aunt Beryl liked to be at home,
in order to give Grandpapa his tea--which was not wonderful, since
whenever she failed to do so her parent never omitted to make caustic
allusion to the “long outing that she must have been enjoying in the
good fresh air.”
When Aunt Beryl had duly been present at the rite of tea, however,
it was an understood thing that she went out for a couple of hours
afterwards, and left Lydia to entertain Grandpapa. “I am just going to
step round to the Jacksons, dear, with my work. I’ll be back by six
o’clock or so.” That was really the time that Lydia liked best.
She soon found out that with Grandpapa she might be her own shrewd,
little cynical self. He only required outward decorum and an absence of
any modern slang or noisiness, which accorded well with Lydia’s natural
taste and early training.
She also speedily discovered that Grandpapa thought her clever and
that so long as her opinions and judgments were her own, he was ready
to listen to them with amusement and interest. Any affectation or
insincerity he would pounce upon in a moment. “Don’t humbug,” he
sometimes said sharply. “It’s the worst policy in the world. Humbug
always ends in muddle.”
“Shamrock’s a humbug,” said the old man once, chuckling as he fondled
the little white dog. “He’s a humbug and he’ll come to a bad end. When
I’m dead, they’ll get rid of Shamrock. They think I’m taken in by his
humbug, but I know he’s a bad dog.”
Lydia could not help thinking that “they” had some excuse in supposing
Grandpapa to be blind and deaf to his protégé’s iniquities, but she put
out her hand and patted the dog’s rough head.
“Would you look after Shamrock, Lyddie?”
“Yes, Grandpapa, I am very fond of him.”
“Why?” said Grandpapa sharply.
“Because he amuses me,” answered Lydia truthfully.
“Ah ha! we all find it amusing to see other people being made fools
of!” was Grandpapa’s charitable sentiment. “Well, you shall have him
one of these days, Lyddie. I hope you’ll have a good home to give him.
What do you mean to do when you’re grown-up?”
“Write books,” said Lydia.
To Aunt Beryl she would have said, “Get married and have two boys and
a little girl, auntie”--but her Aunt Beryl would never have dreamt of
asking her this question.
“Heigh?” said Grandpapa, in a rather astonished voice.
“Write books.”
“A blue stocking never gets a husband,” said Grandpapa sententiously.
Lydia did not know what a blue stocking was, although she deduced that
it was no compliment to be called one, but she was too proud to ask.
“What sort of books do you want to write?”
“Stories,” said Lydia, “and perhaps poetry.”
“Have you ever tried?”
“Yes, Grandpapa.”
“One of these days,” said Grandpapa, with cautious vagueness, “you may
read me one of your stories, and we shall see what we shall see; but
you mustn’t expect to make a living by writing books, Lyddie. That’s a
thing that’s only done by hard work.”
“What sort of hard work?”
“There’s very little hard work that women are fit for. They can go
governessing, or school-teaching, or nurse in hospitals. Your Aunt
Beryl had a fancy that way once, but I told her she’d get as much
nursing as she wanted at home, all in good time, and you see I was
quite right.”
“Did Aunt Evelyn want to do something, too?”
“She wanted to get married, my dear, and so she took the first young
fellow that came after her. Never you do that, Lyddie.”
Lydia raised surprised eyes to the old man’s face.
“Well, well,” said Grandpapa soothingly, “you’ve got twice the brains
of any of them, we know that. You get them from your mother. Not that
brains ever did her any good, poor soul--she was unbalanced, as clever
women generally are.”
“Am I unbalanced, Grandpapa?”
“Now that’s a bad habit,” said Grandpapa, suddenly extending a gnarled
forefinger like a little twisted bit of old ivory, as though about to
lay it on some objectionable insect. “That’s a very bad habit, Lyddie,
me dear. Don’t refer everything back to yourself. It bores people. Do
it in your own mind,” said Grandpapa, chuckling; “no doubt you won’t
be able to help it--but not out loud. When someone tells you that Mrs.
Smith dresses better than she walks, don’t immediately go and say, like
nine women out of every ten, ‘Do I dress better than I walk?’”
Grandpapa assumed a piping falsetto designed to simulate a feminine
voice: “And don’t say, either, ‘Oh, that reminds me of what was said
about _me_ this time nine years ago.’ People don’t want to hear about
you--they want to hear about themselves.”
“Always, Grandpapa?” said Lydia, dismayed.
“Practically always, and when you’ve grasped that, you’ve got the
secret of success. _Always let the other people talk about themselves._”
Lydia’s memory was a retentive one, and to the end of her life, at the
oddest, most unexpected moments, Grandpapa’s aphorism, delivered in the
very tones of his cracked, sardonic old voice, was destined to return
to her, always with increased appreciation of its cynical penetration
into the weakness of human nature:
“_Always let the other people talk about themselves._”
With the advent of Aunt Beryl and the lamp, needless to say, Grandpapa
ceased imparting these educational items to Lydia.
He listened to Aunt Beryl’s account of Mrs. Jackson’s asthma, agreed
that Uncle George was late back from the office, and became deaf and
vacant-eyed when Aunt Beryl reproachfully said that Shamrock had
brought a live crab into the front hall, and upset the girl’s temper.
At seven o’clock, Aunt Beryl and Lydia went away to don evening
blouses, and, in the case of Aunt Beryl, a “dressy” black silk skirt,
and half an hour later they all had supper in the dining-room.
Once a week, Wednesdays, Mr. Monteagle Almond, from the Bank, used to
come in at nine o’clock and play chess with Uncle George. He told Lydia
once that he had never missed a Wednesday evening, except when either
or both were away, during the last fifteen years.
“And I don’t suppose,” solemnly said Mr. Almond, “I shall miss one for
the next fifteen--not if we’re both spared.”
He was a dried-up-looking little man, with a thin beard and a nearly
bald head, and both Uncle George and Aunt Beryl chaffed him facetiously
from time to time on the subject of getting married, but Mr. Monteagle
Almond never retaliated by turning the tables on them, as Lydia
privately considered that he might well have done.
On the evenings when Mr. Almond was not present, Aunt Beryl very often
took off her shoes and rested her feet, which were always causing her
pain, against the rung of a chair. Sometimes, when Gertrude had cleared
away, she hung over the dining-room table, spread with paper patterns
and rolls of material, and after hovering undecidedly for a long while,
would suddenly pounce on her largest pair of scissors and begin to
slash away with every appearance of recklessness. But the recklessness
was always justified when the dress or the blouse was finished. She was
never too much absorbed to remember Lydia’s bedtime, however, and at
nine o’clock every night Lydia was expected to rouse Grandpapa from the
light slumber into which he would never admit that he had fallen, Uncle
George from the newspaper or “Applied Mechanics,” and shake hands with
them gravely as she said good night.
Only the game of chess might not be interrupted.
Aunt Beryl always came up to say good night to Lydia in her nice little
room at the top of the house.
“Sure you’re quite warm enough, dear?”
“Yes, quite, thank you, auntie.”
“There’s another blanket whenever you want one. You’ve only to say.
Have you said your prayers?”
“Yes.”
“And brushed your teeth?”
“Yes, auntie.”
“Good night, dearie. Sleep well.”
Aunt Beryl tucked her up and kissed her, and sometimes she said: “Sleep
on your back and tuck in the clothes, and then the fleas won’t bite
your toes.”
Then she went downstairs again, and Lydia never heard her and Uncle
George going up to bed, for Grandpapa always refused to stir before
twelve o’clock, and sometimes later, and it was necessary that both of
them should wait so as to keep him company and eventually take him up
to his room. The only variety in the week was Sunday, and even Sundays
had their own routine. A later breakfast and a morning in church were
succeeded by a heavy midday meal and a somnolent afternoon for Aunt
Beryl and Grandpapa. Uncle George very often took Lydia for a long
walk, in the course of which he became more than ever like Mr. Barlow,
and would suddenly, while crossing the railway bridge, propound such
inquiries as:
“Now, what do you suppose is meant by the word _Tare_, on the left-hand
bottom corner of those trucks?”
Lydia very seldom knew the answer to these conundrums, but whether she
did or no, she was sufficiently aware that no scientific precision of
reply on her part would have given her uncle half the satisfaction that
it did to enlighten her ignorance. Accordingly, she generally said
demurely:
“I’ve often wondered, Uncle George. I should like to know what it
means.”
She always listened to Uncle George’s accurate and painstaking
explanations and tried to remember them. Suspecting extraordinary
deficiencies in Aunt Beryl’s system of education, she was genuinely
desirous of supplementing them whenever she could.
Her ambitions to acquire learning, accomplishments, and the achievement
of extreme personal beauty, all of which seemed to her to be equally
far from realization, were Lydia’s only troubles at Regency Terrace.
On the former questions she had determined to approach either her
uncle or her grandfather after Christmas. Not before, Lydia shrewly
decided, or they would say that she was in too great a hurry, that she
had not yet had a fair trial of the system of regular lessons at home.
In foresight and appraisement of valuation where the touchstone of
what she considered to be her own best interest was concerned, Lydia’s
judgment and calm, unchildlike tenacity of purpose might have been
envied by a financier. But to the question of her own appearance, she
brought all the ridiculous finality, childish vanity and exaggeration,
of twelve-year-old femininity. She spent a long time in front of her
small looking-glass, almost every day, staring at her little pointed
face, seeking desperately for traces of beauty in her olive skin and
straight brows and wishing that her eyes were blue, or brown, or
even grey--anything except a dark, variable sort of hazel. The only
satisfaction she got was from the contemplation of her hair, which
was long and dark and very thick. Aunt Beryl made her wear it in
two plaits, during the day-time, but Lydia did not dislike this; as
the plaits undone and carefully brushed out in the evenings, gave a
momentary wave to the perfectly straight mass.
Lydia brushed it off her forehead and fastened it back with a round
comb, and thought that she looked rather like the pictures of “Alice
Through the Looking-Glass.”
She was tall for her age, which was another source of satisfaction,
but the length of her slim hands and feet were a terrible portent
of inordinate future growth, and Aunt Beryl, with a foresight
unappreciated by her niece, insisted upon a precautionary and unsightly
tuck in all Lydia’s garments.
But in spite of the tucks, and the frequent east wind, and Aunt Beryl’s
lessons, and the complete absence of any society of her own age, Lydia
liked Regency Terrace very much.
She had an odd appreciation for the security implied by the very
monotony of each day as it slipped by. With her mother there had been
no security at all. They had come from China when Lydia was five,
and she could only just remember a little about the voyage, and the
terrible parting from her Amah. After that, they had been in London,
sometimes at a boarding-house, sometimes in rooms, once in a big hotel
where Lydia had had her first alarming, unforgettable experience of
going up and downstairs in a lift. When Lydia was six, and her father
had gone back to China, she and her mother had stayed first with one
relation and then with another, and none of the visits had been very
comfortable nor successful. Lydia’s mother had cried and said that no
one understood the sort of thing she was used to in Hong Kong, and what
a dreadful change it was for her to be without a man to look after her.
Lydia, a detached and solemn little girl, had retained from those early
years a dislike of scenes and tears, and self-pitying rhapsodies, that
was to remain with her for the rest of her life.
They were in London when Lydia’s mother became a widow and the next
three years had been worse than ever.
Lydia was sent to stay with Aunt Evelyn, and then, just as she was
beginning to feel rather more at home with her noisy, teasing cousins,
her mother fetched her away again and they went to rooms in Hampstead.
But the landlady there objected to the number of times that Lydia’s
mother asked her friends, although only one at a time, to come and have
supper and spend the evening. The two ladies would sit up very late,
while Lydia’s mother talked of all that made her unhappy, and generally
cried a great deal, and very often, even after the visitor had gone,
would come and wake Lydia up by kneeling at her bedside and sobbing
there.
From Hampstead, her mother went as paying guest to a family in West
Kensington and Lydia was sent to a boarding-school. She never forgot
the mortification of her mother’s sudden descent upon her, when she had
been there nearly a whole term, to say that she had come to take her
away.
“But she’s getting on so well!” the head mistress, whom Lydia liked,
had protested. “You’re very happy with us, aren’t you, dear?”
“Yes,” Lydia had muttered miserably, and with only too much truth.
She had been happier than ever before, and had made friends with other
little girls, and enjoyed the games they played, and the interesting
lessons. And she had felt almost sure of getting a prize at the end of
the year. But she knew with a dreadful certainty that if she showed
her great reluctance to leaving school, and her disappointment and
humiliation at being taken away without rhyme or reason, her mother
would have a fit of the tempestuous crying that Lydia so dreaded, and
would say how heartless it was of her little girl not to want to come
home, “now that they only had each other.” So she swallowed very hard,
and looked down on the floor, clenching her hands, and made hardly any
protest at all. Her only comfort was that her mother’s impetuosity,
which could never wait, insisted upon her immediate departure. And
Lydia was glad to avoid any farewells, with the astonished questions
and comments that must have accompanied them.
She felt that she could never bear to see the nice Kensington school
again.
After that she had lessons or holidays as seemed good to her mother,
and very seldom spent a consecutive three months in the same place. No
wonder that Regency Terrace, unaltered in half a century, seemed a very
haven of refuge to Mrs. Raymond’s child.