When Lydia was fifteen, expectant of Honours in her examinations,
highly placed in the school, and with a secret hope that the following
term might see her Head of the School--and that, moreover, at an
unprecedently early age--unexpected disaster overtook her.
The three placid years at Regency Terrace had been so little marked by
any changes that she had forgotten that old sense of the insecurity and
impermanence of life, bred of early days with her mother, and it came
as a shock to her that anything should interfere seriously with her
schemes.
Quite unexpectedly she fell ill.
“I don’t like that cough of yours, Lydia.”
“It’s only a cold, auntie.”
“It doesn’t seem to get any better. Let me see, how long have you had
it now?”
Lydia pretended to think that Aunt Beryl was only talking to herself,
and bent lower over her books. She always worked at her preparation in
the evenings after supper now.
It was damp, chilly weather, and her cough grew worse, although she
stifled it as far as possible, and said nothing about the pains in her
back and sides.
Aunt Beryl brought her a bottle of cough mixture recommended by Mrs.
Jackson, and Lydia put it on the mantlepiece in her bedroom, and
carefully dusted the bottle every day, and sometimes poured away a
little of the contents.
But one morning, one important morning when there was a French lesson
which it was essential that Lydia, with whom French still remained the
weakest of links in an otherwise well-forged chain, should attend, she
found herself quite unable to go downstairs to breakfast.
Her head swam, her eyes and mouth were burning, and her legs
unaccountably trembled beneath her.
“No such thing as _can’t_,” muttered Lydia fiercely, repeating
Grandpapa’s favourite axiom.
The pain in her side had increased without warning, and suddenly gave
her an unendurable stab every time that she tried to move.
“_Oh!_”
Lydia sank back on the bed, and found herself crying hoarsely from pain
and dismay. Surely even Grandpapa would admit the necessity for saying
“can’t” at last.
But Lydia did not see Grandpapa for some time after that morning.
She lay in bed with a fire in the room, sometimes suffering a great
deal of pain, and sometimes in a sort of strange, jumbled dream, when
the pattern of the wall paper turned into mysterious columns of figures
that would never add up, and French Irregular Verbs danced across the
ceiling.
Aunt Beryl nursed her all day and sat up with her at nights very often,
and Dr. Young came to see her every day.
Once he said to her:
“You’re a very good patient. I don’t know what we should have done with
you if you hadn’t been a good, reasonable girl, and done everything you
were told.”
Lydia was pleased.
“Am I very ill?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ve turned the corner nicely now,” said Dr. Young cheerfully.
“But pneumonia’s no joke, and you’ll have to be careful for a long
while yet.”
“Shan’t I be able to go up for the examination?”
“Let me see--that’s about a month off. We shall have to see about that.”
Dr. Young’s daughter was at Miss Glover’s school, too, and he knew all
about the terrible importance of the examination. Nevertheless, he gave
Lydia no permission to resume her studies.
“Don’t worry, dear, there’s plenty of time before you, and now I’ve
got some nice fruit jelly for you,” said Aunt Beryl, and Lydia always
thanked her very gratefully and lay back against the pillow, trying all
the time to recapitulate the French verbs and the list of Exceptions to
Rules that she had been learning when she first fell ill.
Except for anxiety about the examination, convalescence was agreeable.
Uncle George came up to see her one day, and brought her some grapes,
and explained to her why it was that the great pieces of ice in her
glass of barley-water did not cause it to overflow, quite in the old
Mr. Barlow manner, and once Nathalie Palmer came by invitation and had
tea with her upstairs, and told her how sorry all the girls had been
about her illness.
“And you’ll miss the exam,” moaned Nathalie, “and it seems such a
shame. I know you’d have done splendidly.”
“What have you been having in class?” asked Lydia.
“Almost all recapitulation. The only really new thing that we’re doing
is _Henry V._ for literature.”
That evening Lydia made Gertrude, the servant, bring her the volume of
Shakespeare from the drawing-room.
Her brain felt quite clear now, and her eyes no longer hurt her when
she tried to read.
Next day she was allowed to go downstairs for tea.
Aunt Beryl, who looked very tired and sallow, helped her to dress,
and Uncle George came upstairs to fetch her, and they both supported
her very carefully down the stairs and into the drawing-room, where a
fire had been lit, and a special tea laid on a little table beside the
arm-chair.
Grandpapa, with Shamrock prancing unrestainedly at his feet, and the
parrot, brought up from the dining-room, hanging upside down in his
cage on the centre-table, were all waiting to welcome her.
“Very glad to see you down, me dear,” said Grandpapa, shaking hands
with her formally. “A nasty time you’ve had, a very nasty time, I’m
afraid.”
“She’s been such a good girl, Grandpapa,” said Aunt Beryl, raising
her voice as though by a great effort. “Dr. Young says she’s the best
patient he’s ever had.”
“Did you have to swallow a great deal of physic, Lyddie? Ah, a very
disagreeable thing, physic,” said Grandpapa, who was ordered a certain
draught daily, which he was only too apt to pour away into the nearest
receptacle in the face of all Aunt Beryl’s protests.
“Mr. Almond asked after you on Wednesday, Lydia. He has been quite
concerned over your illness,” Uncle George told her.
Lydia sat back in the arm-chair, her long plaits falling over either
shoulder, and could not help feeling that all this attention was rather
agreeable.
Aunt Beryl’s friend, Mrs. Jackson, “stepped in,” to ask how she felt,
and to borrow a paper pattern for a blouse, and said she had also heard
from Dr. Young and other sources what a good patient Lydia had been.
“And so hard on you, poor child, missing your examinations and all.”
“Perhaps Dr. Young will let me go,” said Lydia wistfully: “It’s only
four days, and not till next week.”
Mrs. Jackson shook her head doubtfully.
“The Town Hall is well warmed, with those pipes and all, but I don’t
know. Perhaps if you could go in a closed cab, well wrapped up.... But
you’ve missed such a lot of study, haven’t you?”
“I know,” said Lydia dejectedly.
They were all very kind to her, and seemed to realize the great
disappointment of failing after all, or even of putting off the
examination for another year, when one would be nearly sixteen, and no
longer the youngest candidate of all.
Mrs. Jackson refused tea, and hurried away with her paper pattern,
Shamrock flying to the head of the stairs after her, and breaking into
a storm of howls, as though in protest at her departure. Aunt Beryl
hastened distressfully after him.
“Hark at that!” said she unnecessarily.
Grandpapa put on his deafest expression.
“This is very trying for you, Lydia,” said Uncle George pointedly. “It
seems to go through and through one’s head.”
Did Grandpapa actually throw a glance of concern at the invalid? She
could hardly believe her eyes, and felt more than ever how pleasant it
was to be the centre of attention.
And then Aunt Beryl came in again, dropped into a chair near the door,
oddly out of breath, and quietly fainted away.
Gertrude had been sent for Dr. Young before they could bring her back
to consciousness again, and when he did arrive, he and Uncle George
almost carried Aunt Beryl up to her room.
“Thoroughly overdone,” said Dr. Young. “Miss Raymond has been so very
unsparing of herself during her niece’s illness--one of those unselfish
people, you know, who never think anything about themselves. I am
ashamed of myself for not seeing how near she was to a break-down.”
Decidedly Aunt Beryl was the heroine of the hour.
Lydia was ashamed of herself for the resentment that this turning of
the tables awoke in her.
She went to her own room, unescorted, when the commotion had subsided,
and her supper was brought up to her by Gertrude nearly an hour late.
“How is Aunt Beryl now?” she asked.
“Gone to sleep, miss. She is wore out, after sitting up at night, and
then the nursing during the day, and seeing to the house and the old
gentleman, all just the same as usual--and no wonder.”
No wonder, indeed! Everyone said the same.
During the two days that Aunt Beryl, by the doctor’s orders, remained
upstairs, the household in Regency Terrace had time to realize what, in
fact, was the case--that never before had Miss Raymond been absent from
her post for more than a few hours at a time.
When Mr. Monteagle Almond came in on Wednesday evening, full of
inquiries and congratulations for Lydia, he was hardly allowed time to
formulate them.
“It’s my poor sister we are anxious about,” said Uncle George, just as
though Lydia had never been ill at all.
“Quite knocked up with nursing,” said Grandpapa, shaking his head.
“I’ve never known Beryl take to her bed before, and we miss her sadly
downstairs.”
Mr. Monteagle Almond was deeply concerned.
“Dear me, dear me. This is very distressing news. I had no idea of
this. Miss Raymond never complains.”
“That’s it,” agreed Uncle George gloomily. “One somehow never thought
of her overdoing it.”
“Unselfish,” said Mr. Almond, adding thoughtfully: “Well, well, well,
selfish people have the best of it in this world, there’s no doubt.”
The little bank clerk was generalizing, according to his fashion, but
Lydia felt angry and uncomfortable, as though the reference might have
application to herself.
Aunt Beryl certainly looked much as usual when she reappeared
downstairs, but it was very evident that two days without her had
thoroughly awakened both Grandpapa and Uncle George to a new sense of
her importance.
“We must try and spare your aunt as much as possible,” Uncle George
said gravely to Lydia. “I’m afraid that we’ve all been allowing her to
do far too much for us.”
Lydia found it curiously disagreeable to see the focus of general
interest thus shifted. Unconsciously, she had occupied the centre place
in the little group in Regency Terrace ever since her arrival there,
as the twelve-year-old orphan, in her pathetic black frock. Without
consciously posing, she had certainly, as the eager student at Miss
Glover’s bringing back prizes and commendations, been the most striking
personality of that small world, and she had known that her elders
discussed her cleverness, her steady industry, even her increasing
prettiness, as topics of paramount interest.
Lydia, in other words, was complacently aware of being the heroine of
that story, which is the aspect worn by life to the imaginative. Now it
appeared that this rôle had been summarily usurped by Aunt Beryl.
Lydia’s sense of drama was far too keen for her to undervalue the
possibilities of the aspect presented by her aunt. It _was_ pathetic
to have toiled, without appreciation, all these years, to have nursed
one’s niece devotedly day and night, and then to faint away helplessly
without a word of complaint. But the more Lydia realized how pathetic
it was, the more annoyed she became.
Her own convalescence was a very rapid one, partly owing to her
determination to get to the Town Hall for the examination. Both
Grandpapa and Uncle George, with the masculine inability to entertain
more than one anxiety at a time, appeared to have forgotten that she
had ever been ill, and Dr. Young himself, when applied to, only said:
“Well, well, if you’ve really set your mind on it--the weather’s nice
and warm. But you must wrap up well and keep out of draughts. We don’t
want a relapse, mind. Miss Raymond can’t do any more nursing, you know.
She ought to be nursed herself.”
Lydia would cheerfully have nursed Aunt Beryl, if only to retain her
own sense of self-importance, but well did she know that her aunt would
give her no such opportunity. Really, unselfish people could be very
trying.
She went to the Town Hall, and was greatly restored by the enthusiastic
greetings of her fellow-candidates.
“Oh, Lydia, how plucky of you to try, after all! Don’t you feel
_fearfully_ behindhand? Fancy, if you do get through! It’ll be even
more splendid than if you hadn’t been ill, and had no disadvantage of
missing such a lot.”
Lydia had a shrewd suspicion that she had not missed nearly so much as
they all thought. Nathalie had said that most of the work done in class
during her absence had been recapitulation, and recapitulation, to
Lydia’s sound memory and habits of accuracy inculcated by Uncle George,
had never been more than a pleasant form of making assurance doubly
sure.
For the last two days she had been studying frantically, and had made
Nathalie go through _Henry V._ with her, and mark the passages to be
learnt by heart.
Fortune favoured her in causing the English Literature paper to be set
for the last day of the examination.
When that last day came Lydia felt tolerably certain that she had
thoroughly overtaxed her barely-restored strength, and would shortly
suffer for it with some severity, but her examination-papers had been a
series of inward triumphs.
French had certainly presented its usual stumbling-blocks, but Lydia
reasonably told herself that she would probably have experienced at
least equivalent difficulties, had she attended every class, and where
mechanical rote-learning could avail her, she knew that she was safe.
Moreover, the algebra and arithmetic papers, over which most of the
candidates were groaning, she could view with peculiar complacency.
“How did you get on?” several of the girls asked her eagerly.
“Not _too_ badly, I hope,” said Lydia guardedly.
It would be far more of a triumph, if she did succeed, for her success
to come as a surprise to everyone. They could hardly expect it, after
such an absence from class as hers had been.
Even the governess in charge of the group of girls said to her kindly:
“You mustn’t be disappointed if you don’t get through this time, dear.
Miss Glover knows you’ve worked very well, and that it’s only illness
that’s thrown you back.”
Lydia returned to Regency Terrace thoroughly exhausted.
“I’m sure you’ve done your best, dear, and if it isn’t this time, it’ll
be next,” said Aunt Beryl philosophically. “Now go straight upstairs
and have a good rest.”
Lydia went, and was not at all displeased to find that her head was
throbbing and her face colourless.
The following day the doctor saw her, and shook his head at her.
“Better give her a change of air, Miss Raymond. If you won’t go away
yourself, it will, anyway, set you rather more free not to have Miss
Lydia on your mind.”
Lydia felt that the advice might have been worded in a manner more
flattering to herself, but she was pleased at the idea of a change.
She had not been away since her first arrival as an inmate of
Grandpapa’s household. Aunt Beryl’s theory was that one went away _to_
the sea, not _from_ it. If one happened to live by the sea, there was
no need to go away at all. Only Uncle George, taking his fortnightly
holiday in the summer, departed on a walking or bicycling tour with
some bachelor friend of his own.
“You’ll enjoy staying with your Aunt Evelyn,” said Aunt Beryl. “The
girls must be nearly grown-up now, I declare. How time flies! Beatrice
must be all of eighteen, and Olive sixteen, and I suppose Bob is
somewhere between the two of them. How long is it since you’ve seen
them, Lydia?”
“Not since I was quite little--about ten, I think.”
“It’ll be nice for you to make friends with the girls. I’ve often
wished you had a sister.”
Lydia did not echo the wish when she had seen the Senthoven family
circle.
“There’s no nonsense about _us_,” might have been taken for their
motto, or even their war-cry.
On the evening of Lydia’s arrival she was mysteriously taken possession
of by Olive, her youngest cousin, under pretext of unpacking.
“I say, Lydia.”
“Yes?”
“_Yes?_” mimicked Olive, with a screwed-up mouth and mincing
pronunciation, in derisive mockery of Lydia’s low, clear enunciation,
which was in part natural, and in part learnt from Nathalie Palmer.
“I declare you’re afraid of the sound of your own voice. You ought
to hear _us_! My word! we’ll make you open your eyes--_and_ ears
too--before we’ve done with you. You should just hear the ragging that
goes on whenever Bob’s at home. Look here, this is what I want to know.”
This time Lydia only looked interrogation. She despised Olive too
thoroughly to care whether she laughed at her way of speaking or not,
but she thought that the sooner Olive satisfied her curiosity and went
away the better.
“Do you like _fun_?” said Miss Senthoven, bringing her prominent brown
eyes and head of untidy, flopping hair close to Lydia’s face in her
extreme eagerness for a reply.
Lydia, when she had recovered from her surprise at the form of the
inquiry, assented, since assent was obviously expected of her, but
she had grave doubts as to whether her own definition of “fun” would
coincide with that of the Senthovens.
It did not.
“Fun” was synonymous with noise, and the most brilliant repartee known
to any Senthoven was Bob’s favourite form of squashing such “nonsense”
as a comment on the blueness of the sky: “Well, you didn’t expect to
see it red, did you?”
Bob, a hobble-de-hoy of seventeen, short and thick-set, was his
mother’s idol. But there was “no nonsense” allowed from poor Aunt
Evelyn by her terrible daughters.
“The mater’s so mushy,” they shouted disgustedly, when she made excuse,
on the morning after Lydia’s arrival, for Bob’s very tardy appearance.
Lydia looked round the breakfast-table. She was quite well again now,
and breakfast upstairs would have been unheard of. Beatrice was a still
larger, taller, more athletic, and, if possible, noisier edition of
Olive. She had just left school, and her dark hair, very thick and
heavy, was piled into untidy heaps at the back of her head.
“No nonsense about _my_ hair, I can tell you. Half the time I don’t
even look in the glass to see how I’ve done it,” Beatrice would declare
proudly.
The girls wore flannel shirts, with collars and ties, and short skirts
that invariably contrived to be rather longer at the back than they
were in the front.
They strenuously refused to make any change of toilette in the
evenings, only substituting heelless strapped black shoes for their
large and sturdy boots, over their thick-ribbed stockings.
Those evenings were the noisiest that Lydia had ever known.
Only Uncle Robert, small, and sallow, and spectacled, was silent.
He sat at the foot of the table, said a brief, muttered grace, and
dispensed the soup.
“I say, what tommy-rot it is your not playing hockey, Lyddie. Bee and I
have got a match on to-morrow afternoon.”
“Can’t I come and watch you play?”
“I suppose so. _I_ don’t care if you do, I’m sure,” Olive hastily
repudiated the mere suggestion of such a dangerous approach to
“nonsense” as was implied by a possible interest in another’s movements.
“I say, I do believe Bob gets later every blessed day. A nice row
there’d be if _we_ came in late for every meal!”
“Too bally hungry to do that!”
“Your brother doesn’t get much fresh air. You must remember he’s in
an office all day, and has two stuffy train journeys, poor boy,” said
Bob’s mother unwisely.
“_Ow!_ poor ’ickle sing, then--mammy’s own baby-boy!” yelled Beatrice
derisively.
“Mater!” said Olive, “how _can_ you be so sloppy?”
Lydia looked round her, amazed. No one seemed to think, however, that
Beatrice and Olive were behaving otherwise than well and dutifully.
“Beef, Lydia?”
“Yes, please, Uncle Robert.”
Lydia saw Beatrice wink at Olive, and Olive stuff a corner of her
Japanese paper napkin into her mouth, as though to prevent an explosion
of laughter. She only perceived that the jest lay in the manner of her
own reply, when to the same inquiry her cousins successively answered,
very loudly and curtly.
“Ra-_ther_!”
After the beef Aunt Evelyn helped the pudding. There were two dishes in
front of her, one containing the remaining half of the pink mould that
had figured on the dinner-table in the middle of the day, and the other
the cold remnants of the previous night’s tart.
And Lydia, invited to make her choice, replied very clearly and rather
defiantly:
“I should like some tart, if you please, Aunt Evelyn.”
Bob, who had made his entry with the second course, roared with
laughter, and, reaching across his sister Beatrice, banged Lydia
heavily on the back.
“That’s right, Lady Clara Vere de Vere. You stick to it!”
Lydia, who hated being touched, jumped in her place, but she had the
wit to guess that the surest way of making her cousins pursue any
particular course of action would be to show that she disliked it, in
which case they would instantly look upon her as “fair game.” She did
not in the least mind the series of witticisms, lasting the length of
her visit, designed to emphasize what the Senthovens considered the
affectations of her speech.
“Just the weeniest little tiny bit, if you will be so awf’ly kind,
please. Thank you so awf’ly much.”
Thus Beatrice, humorously.
And Bob:
“Well, perhaps--if you were to press me to a jelly----”
Lydia was not in the least amused at these sallies, but she laughed
at them cheerfully enough. She felt immeasurably superior to the
Senthovens, and had every intention of proving that superiority to them
before the end of her stay.
At first blush, this did not appear to be any too easy. There was no
doubt that the Senthovens, the girls especially, were efficient in
their own line of action.
Beatrice was a renowned hockey captain; Olive had silver trophies from
both the Golf Club and the Swimming Club, and both had won Junior
Championships at lawn-tennis.
“Are you a good walker, old girl?” Beatrice one day inquired of Lydia.
This last term of endearment was a sign of the highest goodwill, and if
employed too frequently would almost certainly lead to the accusation
of sloppiness.
“Oh, yes,” said Lydia, thinking of the school crocodile wending its
decorous way the length of the Parade.
“Good. Olive’s an awful rotter at walking. You and I can do some tramps
together. Are you game for a six o’clock start to-morrow morning?”
Lydia laughed, really supposing the suggestion to be humorously
intended.
“What are you cackling about? You’re such an extraordinary kid; you
always seem to laugh with your mouth shut. I suppose they taught you
that at this precious school of yours, where you don’t even play
hockey. Well, what about to-morrow? We can take some sort of fodder
with us, but I’ve got to be back at the Common at ten sharp for a
hockey practice.”
Lydia was obliged to resign her pretensions. She hadn’t understood
quite what Beatrice meant by a “good walker.”
“Anything up to twenty-five miles is my mark,” said Beatrice
complacently.
She and Olive were both good-humouredly contemptuous of Lydia’s
incapabilities, and Bob was even ready to show her how to serve at
tennis, and how to throw a ball straight. Lydia was willing to be
taught, and was sufficiently conscious that her tennis was improving
rapidly, to submit to a good deal of shouting and slangy, good-humoured
abuse.
She did not like it, but was philosophically aware that her stay at
Wimbledon was drawing to a close, and that she would reap the benefit
of improved tennis for ever afterwards.
“I suppose, being a duffer at games, that you’re a regular Smart Aleck
at lessons, aren’t you?” Olive amiably asked her.
An assent would certainly be regarded as “bucking,” but, on the other
hand, Lydia had no mind to let her claims to distinction be passed over.
“I’ve just been in for an examination,” she said boldly. “I might hear
the result any day now.”
“Get on! I thought you’d been ill.”
“I’ve missed half the term at school, but I studied by myself, and I
was up in time to go to the Town Hall for the exam. I had to go to bed
again afterwards, though.”
“Do you suppose you’ve got an earthly?” said Beatrice, in highly
sceptical accents.
“Oh, I don’t know. You see, I was the youngest competitor of all, as it
happened.”
Lydia had been very anxious to introduce this last piece of
information, and it was plain that Beatrice and Olive were not
altogether unimpressed by it.
Aunt Beryl had promised Lydia a telegram as soon as the results of the
examination were put up in the Town Hall, and Lydia had already decided
that in the event of failure, she should say nothing at all to the
Senthovens. They would never remember to ask her about it. But if she
had passed, she told herself grimly, they would have to acknowledge
that they were not the only people who could succeed. Lydia reflected
that she was sick of hearing how Olive had just saved a goal, and
Beatrice had conducted her team to victory in yet another hockey match.
V
The last of Lydia’s Saturday afternoons at Wimbledon, however, was at
length at hand.
“We might go and have some sort of a rag on the Common to-morrow for
Lydia’s last day. Sunday doesn’t count,” said Beatrice, on Friday
evening after supper.
“Quite a good egg,” agreed Olive. “Bob, are you game?”
Bob assented without enthusiasm. He was stretched at full length on the
sofa, with his arms crossed underneath his head.
Uncle Robert was behind his newspaper as usual, and Aunt Evelyn was
earnestly perusing a ladies’ paper, from which she occasionally
imparted to Lydia--the only person who made any pretence at listening
to her--certain small items of information regarding personalities
equally unknown to both of them.
This was Mrs. Senthoven’s one relaxation, and afforded her an evident
satisfaction.
“Fancy! It says here that, ‘It is rumoured that a certain demoiselle
of no inconsiderable charm, and well known to Society, is shortly to
exchange her rank as peer’s daughter for one even more exalted.’ I
wouldn’t be surprised if that was Lady Rosalind Kelly that was meant.
I suppose she’s going to marry some duke. They say she’s lovely, but I
wouldn’t care to see a son of _mine_ marry her, after all the stories
one’s heard.”
Aunt Evelyn looked fondly at the recumbent Bob.
“I say, we might get the Swaines to come with us to-morrow,” said
Olive, “then we could get up a rag of some sort.”
“I say, old girl, chuck me my pipe. The mater won’t mind.”
“Get it yourself,” retorted Olive, utterly without malice, but in
the accepted Senthoven method of repudiating a request for any small
service.
“Here’s rather a good story about that fellow--you remember, Lydia, we
saw his picture in the Sunday paper--Gerald Fitzgerald, who’s acting in
some play or other. Listen to this!”
Aunt Evelyn read aloud a reputed _mot_ of the famous comedian that did
not err upon the side of originality.
“I wonder if that’s true, now!”
“Bee, chuck me my pipe,” from Bob.
No Senthoven ever listened to any piece of information not directly
bearing upon their own immediate personal interests.
“No fear! What a slacker you are, Bob! Why don’t you get up off that
sofa? Lydia’s shocked at your ways.”
“She’s not!”
“She is!”
Lydia hoped that she showed her sense of superiority by contributing
nothing to the discussion, which continued upon the simple lines of
flat assertion and contradiction until Bob flung a cushion at his
sister’s head.
Beatrice thereupon hurled herself on him with a sort of howl.
“Don’t make so much noise; you’ll disturb father. Bee, you really are
too old to romp so--your hair is nearly coming down.”
It came quite down before Beatrice had finished pommelling her brother,
and Uncle Robert had waked, and said that it was too bad that a man
who’d been working hard all the week couldn’t read the paper in peace
and quiet for five minutes in his own house without being disturbed by
all this horse-play.
Lydia watched her cousins, despised them very thoroughly indeed, and
was more gratified than humiliated when Olive remarked:
“It’s easy to see you’ve never been one of a large family, Lydia. You
don’t seem to understand what rotting means.”
“I wonder you haven’t got used to being chaffed at your school. It must
be a sloppy sort of place.”
“I daresay you’d think so,” said Lydia calmly. “But then, you see, the
girls there go in for work, not play.”
“Oh, they go in for work, not play, do they?” mimicked Olive, but
without much spirit, and as though conscious of her extreme poverty of
repartee.
Lydia noticed, however, that both the Senthoven girls asked her
frequent questions about her school, questions which she answered with
all the assurance that she could muster.
That was something else to be remembered: it was better to assume that
if your standards differ from those of your surroundings, it is by
reason of their superiority.
Lydia lived up to her self-evolved philosophy gallantly, but she was in
a minority, against a large majority that had, moreover, the advantage,
incalculable in the period of adolescence, of a year or two’s seniority.
She did not like the feeling of inferiority, painfully new to her.
At Regency Terrace she was the subject of ill-concealed pride. Even
Grandpapa, although he never praised, found no fault with her manners
and bearing, and had lately admitted--no small compliment--that “Lyddie
could manage Shamrock.”
Uncle George discussed chemistry and botany with her seriously, and
even allowed her opinion to carry weight in certain small questions
of science, and Mr. Monteagle Almond always treated her like a
grown person, and alluded respectfully to the rarity of finding a
mathematical mind in a woman.
As to Aunt Beryl, in spite of the way in which she had lately
usurped Lydia’s recent rôle of invalid and acknowledged centre of
general interest, Lydia knew very well that her own achievements and
capabilities formed the chief theme of Aunt Beryl’s every discourse
with her friends. At school she was not only liked by her companions,
but looked upon as the intellectual pride of the establishment.
No one at Miss Glover’s bothered much about games, and, anyhow, Lydia’s
play at tennis was accounted amongst the best in the school.
It annoyed her to realize, as she most thoroughly did realize, that
judged by the Senthoven standards, that best was very mediocre indeed.
She had never played golf, or hockey, or cricket, and her swimming
consisted of slow and laborious strokes that grew very feeble, and came
at very short intervals if she attempted to exceed a length of fifty
yards.
Lydia’s ambitions would never be athletic ones, and although she
wished to be seen to advantage, she was far too shrewd to attempt
any emulation of Beatrice and Olive and their friends upon their own
ground. She only wished--and it seemed to her a highly reasonable
wish--to show them that, in other and greater issues, she, too, could
count her triumphs.
She waited her opportunity with concealed annoyance at its tardiness in
coming.
The Saturday afternoon picnic, ostensibly arranged in her honour, was
such a form of entertainment as was least calculated to make Lydia
enjoy herself.
It began with a noisy _rendezvous_ between the Senthoven family and a
tribe of male and female Swaines, ranging from all ages between eight
and eighteen years old.
Most of the Swaines bestrode bicycles, upon which they balanced
themselves whilst almost stationary with astonishing skill, and
presently, amid many screams, a female Swaine took Olive and a picnic
basket on the step of her machine, and departed with them in the
direction of the Common. Bob and three junior Swaine brethren, also on
bicycles, laid arms across one another’s shoulders, and thus, taking
up the whole width of the road, boldly invaded the tram-lines, and
Beatrice, with her contemporary Swaine and Lydia, started out on foot
at a swinging pace.
“Give me _ekker_,” said Beatrice contemptuously. “There’s no ekker in
biking that I can see.”
Exercise, Lydia grimly reflected, they were certainly having in
abundance. She and Beatrice held either handle of the large picnic
hamper containing the Senthovens’ contribution to the entertainment,
and as it swung and rattled between them, Lydia made increased efforts
to accommodate her steps to Beatrice’s unfaltering stride.
“I s’pose,” presently remarked Beatrice, with that aggressive accent
that to a Senthoven merely represented the absence of affectation,
“you’ll be saying presently that we’ve walked you off your legs. I
never knew such a kid! Here, slack off a bit, Dot--she can’t keep up.”
“I can,” said Lydia.
She had no breath left with which to make a long speech.
Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
“Come on then.”
It was a scarlet-faced Lydia, with labouring chest, that eventually
dropped on to the selected spot of Wimbledon Common, but she at least
had the satisfaction of hearing her own name given in reply to Bob’s
derisive inquiry as to which of them had set the pace.
Yet another proof of the profound wisdom of Grandpapa who had said,
“There’s no such thing as _can’t_.”
Grandpapa’s theory, however, was less well exemplified in the impromptu
cricket match that presently sprang up, in the sort of inevitable way
in which a game that comprised the use of muscles and a ball invariably
did spring up whenever the Senthovens were gathered together.
“I don’t play cricket,” Lydia haughtily observed to the least
muscular-looking of the Swaine girls.
“Why not?” said her contemporary, looking very much astonished.
There was nothing for it but to put into words the humiliating
admission:
“I don’t know how to.”
“How funny! But we’ll soon teach you.”
Lydia resigned herself, and since she was no more deficient in physical
courage than is any other imaginative egotist, who sets the importance
of cutting a figure far above any incidental bodily risk that may
be incurred in cutting it, she successfully avoided at least the
appearance of running away from the ball.
The game, of course, was what was known to the Senthovens as “a rag”
only, since with deficient numbers and a lack of implements, nothing
so serious as a match could be contemplated. Consequently, Lydia
presently found herself with Bob’s cricket bat tightly grasped in her
unaccustomed hands.
She was not altogether displeased. It was only Olive who was bowling,
and hitting the ball did not seem so very difficult. She might possibly
distinguish herself even amongst these Philistines.
Lydia, in fact, was not above coveting the admiration of those whom she
admittedly despised.
“Chuck you an easy one to start with,” shouted Olive, good-naturedly.
Lydia jerked up the bat, but heard no reassuring contact with the slow
moving ball.
“Don’t spoon it up like that! You’d have been caught out for a dead
cert if you had hit it!”
A second attempt was made.
“You _are_ a duffer! Show her how to hold the bat, someone.”
Lydia’s third effort mysteriously succeeded in knocking down the
improvised stumps behind her, whilst the ball, still unhit, was neatly
caught by a nine-year-old Swaine child.
“Oh, I say, this is awfully slow!” remonstrated Bob.
“She’s out now, anyway.”
“Give her another chance,” said Olive, “let her finish the over,
anyway. There’s no scoring, what’s it matter?”
“Two more balls, then.”
But there was only one more ball. Lydia, desperately determined to
succeed once at least, exerted her whole strength miraculously, hit the
ball fair and square, and knew a momentary triumph as it flew off the
bat.
There was an ear-piercing shriek from Olive, and Lydia, terrified, saw
her fling up both hands to her face and stagger round and round where
she stood.
“Oh, I say, are you hurt, ole gurl?” came in anxious, if rather
obvious, inquiry from the surrounding field.
“Got her bang on the jaw!”
“What awful rot, poor wretch.”
They crowded round Olive, who was choking and gulping, her mouth
streaming with blood, but undauntedly gasping:
“It’s all right, don’t fuss, I tell you, Bee, it’s all right. I’ll be
all right in a sec. I never dreamt she was going to hit out like that.
I ought to have caught it.”
“Comes of having a mouth like a pound of liver splits,” said Bob, quite
unconsciously making use of the strain of facetious personal incivility
always used by him to any intimate, and all the while solicitously
patting his sister on the back.
“Oh, _Olive_, I’m so sorry,” said Lydia, far more acutely aware than
anyone else was likely to be of the inadequacy of the time-worn formula.
“Don’t be an ass,” returned Olive crisply. “Lend me a nose wipe if you
want to do something useful. Mine’s soaked.”
Such of the assembly as were possessed of pocket-handkerchiefs
willingly sacrificed them, although the number contributed proved
utterly inadequate to the amount of blood lost by Olive, still
determinedly making light of her injuries.
“Let’s have a look and see if your teeth are all out, old gurl,” urged
Beatrice.
“I lost two last summer,” the eldest Swaine remarked casually, “and Dot
had one knocked out at hockey.”
“The front one feels a bit loose,” said Olive thoughtfully, and thrust
a finger and thumb into a rapidly swelling mouth.
“Better not push it about,” someone suggested; “why not sit down and
have tea now?”
“You don’t want to go home, do you, Ol?” Lydia heard Beatrice ask her
sister aside.
“Good Lord, no. Don’t let’s have any _fuss_.”
Olive could certainly not be accused of making the most of her
distressing circumstances.
She gave Lydia a tremendous bang on the back, and said:
“Cheer up, old stupid! You jolly well don’t pretend you can’t hit out
when you want to another time, that’s all!”
After that she took her place amongst the others, and contrived to eat
a great deal of bread-and-butter and several of the softer variety
of cakes, in spite of the evident possibilities of a swelled and
discoloured upper lip and badly bruised jaw.
“Old Olive has plenty of pluck--I will say that for her,” Bob remarked
to Lydia, who agreed with the more fervour that she was conscious of
a quite involuntary sort of jealousy of Olive. It must be so much
pleasanter to be the injured than the injurer, and to know that
everyone was, at least inwardly, approving one’s courage and powers of
endurance.
When the picnic was over, Olive had quite a large escort to accompany
her home, all relating in loud and cheerful voices the various
disabilities and disfigurements that had sooner or later overtaken them
in the pursuit of athletic enjoyment.
“It’s part of the fun,” declared Olive herself. “I only hope the mater
won’t turn green at the sight of me. She’s a bit squeamish sometimes.”
“Hold your hand in front of your mouth.”
“Keep your back to the light all you can.”
But it became evident that none of these precautions would avail when
Mrs. Senthoven was seen leaning over the gate, gazing down the road.
She waved a yellow envelope at them.
“Tellywag!” exclaimed Beatrice. “What on earth can it be?”
Telegrams were so rare in the Wimbledon establishment as to be looked
upon with alarm.
She and Olive both began to run.
“It’s addressed to you, Lydia,” screamed Beatrice. “Come and open it.
Come on, you people.”
The last exhortation was in encouragement to the members of the
Swaine family, delicately hanging back. At Beatrice’s semaphore-like
gesticulations of invitation, they all followed Lydia’s rush forward,
and as she opened her telegram she heard their loud babble uprise.
“Not so bad as it looks, is it, Ol?”
“She got a swipe on the jaw, and took it like a brick, too!”
“Oh, my dear girl!” from Aunt Evelyn. “Let me look this minute----”
“Don’t fuss, mater. It’s all right, really.”
They were all pressing round the reluctant Olive.
Lydia looked up.
“No bad news, I hope, dear,” said Aunt Evelyn, as was her invariable
custom whenever present at the opening of a telegram.
“It’s from Aunt Beryl about my examination,” said Lydia very clearly.
She was so much excited that her tense, distinct utterance produced a
sudden silence, and they all looked at her.
“_Passed your examination first-class honours_,” read Lydia out loud.
“I _say_!”
“And you’d been ill the whole time, hadn’t you? My golly!”
“Why, we thought you hadn’t a chance!”
“Weren’t you the youngest one there, or some rot of that kind?”
“First-class honours! That’s as high as you can go, isn’t it?”
They were all lavish of exclamations and hearty slangy congratulations.
Olive herself, and everybody else, had forgotten all about Olive’s
injury, and Lydia was the centre of attention.
“I say, let’s have a celebration!” shouted Bob. “Come in after supper
and have a cocoa-rag.”
The invitation was accepted with loud enthusiasm.
“You can have the dining-room, dears,” said Aunt Evelyn, “only not too
much noise, because of father. I’ll explain it to him, and get him to
sit in the drawing-room.”
Uncle Robert never took part in any festivity of his family’s. It was
supposed that he needed peace and solitude after his day’s work, and in
summer he pottered about the little green-house, and at other times of
the year dozed behind the newspaper, unmolested. Nevertheless, Uncle
Robert, to Lydia’s astonishment and gratification, actually came out of
his taciturnity that evening at supper-time in order to pay tribute to
her achievement.
“Fancy the pater waking up like that!” ejaculated Bob afterwards. “More
than he’s ever done for any of us.”
“A fat lot of exams. we’ve ever passed!” said Beatrice scornfully.
It was true that no Senthoven had ever attained to any such
distinction, and Lydia realized with the more surprise that for this
very reason they regarded her success as something nearly approaching
to the miraculous.
Almost against her own will, she was struck with Olive’s unfeigned
relief at having the general attention distracted from herself and her
accident, and focussed instead upon her cousin’s triumph.
Lydia half admired and half despised Olive, and most wholly and
thoroughly enjoyed the novel sensation of being for once of high
account in the eyes of the Wimbledon household.
Certainly towards the end of the exceedingly rowdy “celebration,”
the cause of it was rather lost sight of in the fumes of unlimited
cocoa, the shrieking giggles of the younger Swaine children, and the
uproarious mirth of their seniors, the whole-hearted amusement, that
almost seemed as though it would never be stayed, at so exquisitely
humorous an accident as the collapse of Bob’s chair beneath him.
Nevertheless, the celebration was all in Lydia’s honour, and her health
was drunk in very hot, very thick cocoa, with a great deal of coarse
brown sediment at the bottom of each cup, afterwards scraped up into a
spoon, and forcibly administered to the youngest child present, who had
rashly declared a liking for “grounds.”
Lydia, highly excited, for once made as much noise as anybody, and
began to feel that she should be quite sorry to say good-bye to them
all on Monday.
But she was much too clear-sighted in the analysis of her own
situations to delude herself into supposing that a prolongation of her
stay at Wimbledon would result in anything but failure.
One could not pass an examination with brilliancy every day, and once
the first sensation over--which it speedily would be--the old routine
of walks and hockey and “ragging” would go on as before, and Lydia
could no longer hope for anything but, at best, a negative obscurity.
Far better to leave them before any of their gratifying enthusiasm had
had time to die down.
She could tell, by the very nature of their farewells, the immense
difference that now obtained in their estimation of her importance.
“You must go on as well as you’ve begun, Lydia. It’s a great thing for
a girl to be clever,” said Aunt Evelyn rather wistfully. “I suppose
you’ll want to take up teaching, later on?”
“Perhaps. I’m not quite sure yet.”
Lydia had long ago given up talking about her childish ambition to
write books, although it was stronger than ever within her.
“Well, there’s time to settle yet. You’re not sixteen, and there’s no
hurry. I’m sure Grandpapa and Aunt Beryl would miss you dreadfully if
you thought of going away anywhere. It would be best if you could get
something to do down there, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, Aunt Evelyn,” said Lydia amiably. She always listened to older
people politely and agreed with what they said, but their advice had no
disturbing effect upon her, because it never seriously occurred to her
that anyone could be a better judge of her own interests than she was
herself.
Even Uncle Robert, hastily saying good-bye before starting for the
office, found time to say to her:
“Well, good-bye, child. Don’t overwork yourself with all this
examination stuff. You can come down here if you want a change any
time. Settle it with your aunt.”
“Better come down for the Christmas hols. We can show you some
tobogganing then, most likely. I got some whopping great bruises on my
legs last year,” was the inducement held out by Olive. “I must be off
to that beastly old holiday task now, I suppose. I always put it off to
the last minute. Wish I was a stew-pot like you.”
Beatrice and Bob escorted Lydia to the station.
“Well, ta-ta, and be a good girl,” said Bob patronizingly, tilting
his hat rather far back on his head and smoking a cigarette that
aggressively protruded from the extreme corner of his mouth, “when’s
the old man going to have the decency to remember my existence? You’ve
cut us all out with him with your blooming book-work. He goes in for
being a bit of a brainy old bird himself, doesn’t he?”
Inured though she might be to the Senthoven vocabulary, Lydia nearly
shuddered visibly at the thought of Grandpapa, had he heard his
descendant’s description of him.
“Shut up, you ass,” said Beatrice, in an automatic sort of way. “Well,
bye-bye, ole gurl. You’ve fixed it up with the mater about popping down
again some time, I s’pose. Just come and take us as you find us, as the
saying goes. Here’s your train.”
Lydia, leaning from the window of the third-class railway carriage,
wondered whether to shake hands with Beatrice or not. The law of “No
nonsense about _us_” would certainly preclude kissing, even had she
felt the slightest desire to embrace her rough-haired, freckle-faced
cousin, shifting from one leg to the other, her red hands thrust into
the pockets of her woollen coat, and her tam o’ shanter pulled well
down over one eye.
Bob was already casting glances in the direction of the refreshment
room.
“Good-bye,” said Lydia, definitely deciding against putting out her
hand. “And thanks so much.”
“Good heavens! Don’t start speechifying, whatever you do,” cried the
Senthovens in protesting horror, both at the same moment, and as nearly
as possible in the same words.
So Lydia was obliged to have recourse to that most uncomfortable form
of ejaculatory conversation that appears to be incumbent upon all those
who are unfortunate enough to be accompanied by their friends to the
railway station.
“Nearly off now, I think.”
“Oh, yes, there’s the whistle.”
“Well, I suppose Aunt Beryl will expect us to send our love, or some
rot of that kind.”
“All right. I think we really _are_ starting this time.”
We were not, however, and Lydia looked dumbly at her waiting cousins
and wondered why, since they had nothing more to say, and were
obviously quite as ill at ease as she was herself, they did not go.
“I wish you wouldn’t wait. We shall be off in a minute now.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
Beatrice shifted her weight on to the other leg, and Bob pulled out a
packet of Woodbine cigarettes and lit one of them.
“I hope Grandpapa will be in good form,” said Bob desperately.
“I’ll tell him you asked.”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“He knows there isn’t any nonsense about _us_,” said Beatrice.
To this last familiar refrain, the train actually began to move out of
the station at last. Lydia waved her hand once or twice, received curt
nods in reply, and sank back with a feeling of relief on to her seat.
The end of the Senthovens.
She could not help feeling glad that her visit was over.
The familiar quiet of Regency Terrace awaited her now. Aunt Beryl, as
her letters had assured Lydia, once more returned to the unobtrusive
rôle out of which her illness had momentarily forced her into
unsuitable lime-light. Uncle George, certain to be full of quiet pride
in the result of the examination, even Mr. Monteagle Almond, next
Wednesday, probably framing elaborate little congratulatory sentences.
Lydia looked forward intensely to it all.
She wondered how Grandpapa would receive her, and mentally conned over
the amusing descriptions that she would give him in private of the
Senthoven _ménage_, treading upon his well-known prejudice against
that slang in the use of which it was so proficient.
She did not expect to be met at the station, but sent her luggage by
the omnibus, and herself walked to Regency Terrace by the short cut,
remembering as she did so her arrival, more than three years ago, under
the care of both aunts, and full of uncertainty as to her own eventual
destination.
Security, reflected Lydia maturely, was the most important thing of
all. One was secure where one was appreciated, and held to be of
importance.
She remembered that it was upon her own representations that Grandpapa
had consented--going against his own prejudice to do so--to her being
sent to school. It had been a great success, as even Grandpapa must
have long ago acknowledged to himself.
Perhaps one day he might even acknowledge it to her.
Lydia smiled to herself over the improbability of the suggestion.
Then she turned the corner into Regency Terrace and saw the familiar
house on the opposite side of the road.
As she caught sight of it, the hall-door opened, and Aunt Beryl, in her
well-known blue foulard dress with white spots, that she generally only
wore on Sundays, looked out. At the same instant Lydia saw Grandpapa
peering from the dining-room window, which was already open, and
raising his stick a few inches in the air to shake it in welcome.
All in honour of the great examination victory!
Lydia waved her hand excitedly, and at the same moment, with
ear-piercing barks, Shamrock shot out from behind Aunt Beryl, trailing
a significant length of broken chain behind him, and raced madly down
the road towards her.
Lydia, breaking into quick, irrepressible laughter, dashed across
the road and up the steps, in sudden, acute happiness at so vivid a
realization of her dreams of home-coming.