There were wheels within wheels at Madame Elena’s establishment.
Romantic friendships for one another amongst Madame Elena’s
“young ladies,” sudden desperate quarrels and equally desperate
reconciliations, all formed part of the fabric of everyday life, and
afforded discussion at the midday dinner in the basement.
The girls, as Miss Graham had said, were all catered for.
“Don’t be afraid to come again,” Mrs. Entwhistle, the housekeeper,
would exclaim jovially from the head of the table, acting, it was
understood, under direct orders from Madame Ribeiro, whom the girls
called Old Madam.
It was well known that Old Madam would not have anyone who might be
working at Elena’s stinted of a good meat meal in the middle of the
day, which she called “an economy in the end.” The number of helpings
was never restricted, and the meat was always followed by a substantial
pudding.
Lydia at first watched with amazement the two accomplished young women
from the millinery, both of them pale London girls, send up their
plates twice or three times, in eager response to Mrs. Entwhistle’s
invitation.
Miss Graham, always at her desk, and the little needlewoman who
attended to alterations, were the only girls on the premises not
selected, partly on account of good looks.
“A pretty saleswoman sets off the goods,” was another of Old Madam’s
reported aphorisms. “Prettiness” was the keynote of the establishment,
and with this end in view, Christian names were always used in business
hours.
Rosie Graham told Lydia that Miss Ryott’s name, Georgina, not
considered an ornamental one by Madame Elena, had been abbreviated
to Gina, as having a pleasant _soupçon_ of Italian romance. Gina, in
fact, rather looked the part. She was a tall girl, of a full figure,
with crape-black hair rolled back from a round, cream-coloured face,
dark-brown eyes and beautiful teeth.
Gina only painted her lips a very little.
Miss Saxon, the other show-room “young lady” on the other hand, who
said that her name was Marguerite, painted her face, as well as her
lips, most artistically. She was flaxen-haired and very slim, with
babyish blue eyes and a tiny mouth. She was always called for by Madame
Elena to show off any _toilette de jeune fille_.
Lydia found it easy to believe that the staff was made up of young
women taken from a class superior to that of the ordinary London
shop-girl. That was Old Madam’s policy.
At intervals, Madame Ribeiro, always unannounced, drove up to the shop
entrance of “Elena’s,” in her little old-fashioned, closed carriage,
and walked slowly through the show-room, up the shallow steps that led
to millinery, and into the small alcove, glass-panelled, where sat
Madame Elena, poring over large tomes, or sometimes inditing scrawled
communications on large, mauve-coloured sheets of notepaper, with
“Elena” carelessly running across the top corner of the page in big
purple lettering.
Old Madam never distinguished Lydia by any special notice on these
occasions. She generally remained with Madame Elena for half an hour or
so, and sometimes the latter would strike her little bronze bell, and
ask, “Marguerite, _chérie_” or “Gina, my child” to bring in afternoon
tea for Madam.
“Anyone would think we were tea-shop girls,” said Miss Ryott pettishly.
The order meant an excursion to the basement, where Mrs. Entwhistle had
to be found, the keys asked for, and bread-and-butter cut very thin and
arranged on a china plate, and two or three sponge biscuits taken out
of a special tin, and the whole arranged on a small green-and-white
tea-service consecrated to Madame Elena’s use. But then Madame Elena
had her tea sent up at a reasonable hour, when the girls had theirs,
and Mrs. Entwhistle prepared it, which she would never do unaided at
any hour earlier than four o’clock. If Old Madam chose to have tea
before half-past three one of the girls must get it ready.
Gina, especially on a hot afternoon in the slack season, very much
preferred the shop.
“Shall I help you, dear?” affectionately inquired Marguerite. “Lydia
could give us a call if anyone came in. Not that anyone will--they are
all in Scotland or at the sea somewhere--lucky things!”
“Thanks, dear--how sweet of you!”
They went away arm-in-arm, leaving Lydia drowsily writing out “Marked
down” tickets, copied from a list of Madame Elena’s making.
“_That_ friendship won’t last,” remarked Miss Graham sapiently, from
her desk.
She was right, as usual.
Lydia had not been very long at Elena’s when the Great Quarrel took
place, and assumed an intensity that could only have obtained during
the month of September.
It all reminded Lydia very much of the girls at Miss Glover’s school.
Gina, it was evident enough, had hitherto dominated the little group of
girls, but her temporary infatuation for the society of Miss Marguerite
Saxon had rather diminished her prestige, and Marguerite, moreover,
had made herself popular with the millinery young ladies by talking
agreeably to them at dinner-time, when they sat together at the second
table. Consequently they championed her with vigour.
“It really is too bad, you know, dear. Marguerite is awfully
sensitive--those blondes so often are, much more so than brunettes, I
fancy--and of course she feels it all the more because they used to be
such _friends_. That’s what hurts her so much.”
“Well, Gina is hurt about it, too--and has cause to be, in my opinion,”
inexorably said the girl who did alterations.
The first and second tables were allowed to overlap during the slack
season very often.
“How did it begin?” Lydia asked.
But to this there was no satisfactory reply.
How did the slackening of those romantic bonds first make itself felt?
“Marguerite couldn’t help noticing that Gina’s manner had altered, of
course,” said someone vaguely.
From this painful illumination it appeared as though Miss Saxon and
Miss Ryott had proceeded to revive their drooping interest in one
another by a series of mutual provocations.
“Gina is awfully proud. You couldn’t expect her to take the first step.
I mean, she’s so frightfully proud.”
“You know, I believe Madame Elena knows about it,” said Rosie,
giggling, precluded by Mrs. Entwhistle’s presence from making use of
the auburn-headed principal’s usual _sobriquet_ of “Old Peroxide.”
It was quite true that Madame Elena was inclined to favour Gina. Lydia
had noticed it with resentment.
When Rosie Graham’s shrewdness was justified, as it almost invariably
was, by the event, and Madame Elena showed definite signs of
partisanship in the quarrel, Gina became established as the heroine of
the hour.
One afternoon, just before closing time, she suddenly burst into
tears after a prolonged search for a mislaid pencil--that eternal
preoccupation of the shop-girl’s day.
“Don’t cry,” said Lydia very gently, and feeling very impatient, since
she disliked any display of emotion in other people--unless it was
directly concerned with herself.
“I’ll lend you mine.”
Such a loan was unheard of, for the pencils, suspended by a chain from
each girl’s waist, were in constant use, and the rule obliged each one
to provide her own.
“Oh, I don’t care,” sobbed Gina, recklessly noisy. “Thanks most
awfully, dear. I know it’s sweet of you--but I’m fed up with
everything.”
She sank into a chair, still sobbing hysterically.
“So are we all,” said Miss Saxon low and viciously, looking up from the
drawer before which she was kneeling, carefully swathing some frail
chiffon scarves in tissue-paper. “So are we all, I should imagine,
in this heat and all, but we don’t make a song and dance about it, I
suppose. What _I_ should call absolute carrying on for notice.”
As though to verify the words, Madame Elena’s glass door flew open.
“What’s all this noise?” she asked irately. “If you girls think you’re
here to make a row----”
Her eye fell on Gina, who had the wisdom to make a visible effort to
check her sobs and rise to her feet. Lydia noted, with instinctive
approval, that the face she turned to her principal was paler than
usual, with black marks under either eye.
“I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” she faltered.
“What’s the matter?”
Gina was silent, gulping.
Madame Elena looked sharply round. Her eye fell on Marguerite, still
demurely smoothing out silver paper.
Miss Saxon, less intelligent than Gina, and evidently far less
intuitive than the watching Lydia, made the mistake of allowing a very
small sneer to show itself upon her little roseleaf face.
Lydia saw Madame Elena’s expression alter.
She laid an authoritative hand upon Gina’s shoulder, and gave her a
friendly push.
“Go in there,” she said. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
They vanished into the principal’s own sanctum, Marguerite, apparently
no expert in the interpretation of signs, observing with satisfaction:
“I hope she’ll get properly skinned alive for making a row like that
in business hours. Why, it’s downright unladylike.”
Miss Graham, from her desk in the corner, gave her little scoffing
laugh.
“Don’t be a fool, Marguerite. She was playing for that, of course. She
made that noise on purpose so as Perox should hear her, and ask what
was up. Old Perox has been dying to hear what the row’s about between
you two for days, and now Gina can pitch her own yarn. Just like Gina!”
Lydia was astounded, as she often was, at the little Cockney’s
penetration.
“Why are you staring, goggle-eyes?” said Miss Graham, rudely but not
unkindly. “Don’t you think it’s true?”
With Marguerite Saxon’s small, squirrel face turned to catch her
answer, Lydia made a diplomatic evasion.
“Rather an unfair advantage to take, wasn’t it?” she hazarded.
“I’ll tell Gina you think so,” said Rosie, like a shot.
She burst out laughing at the dismay which Lydia, involuntarily, and to
her own vexation, felt that she reflected upon her face.
“You don’t like that, do you?” remarked the terrible Miss Graham.
“You want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds--keep in with
everyone all round, and boss the lot of us. I know your sort. I daresay
you’ll bring it off, too, given you’re here long enough.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Lydia, instinctively adopting the
phraseology of her surroundings.
Rosie gave her little shrug.
“Don’t you worry, I’m only chaffing. _I_ shan’t make mischief. I like
pulling your leg,” explained Miss Graham kindly, “because it’s so dead
easy, that’s all.”
“Don’t mind her, dear,” said Marguerite. “That’s her style, that is. It
doesn’t mean anything. I say, do _hark_ at that girl in there!”
Faint sounds, as of an eloquent outpouring of words mingled with an
occasional sob, came from the partition behind which Gina and the
principal were secluded.
“She’s crying dreadfully,” said Lydia, with a dim idea of diminishing,
by her compassionate tone, the effect of her previous comment upon Miss
Ryott’s methods.
A sardonic glance from Rosie Graham made her uneasily aware that this
manœuvre had been only too transparent.
However, Rosie only remarked scornfully:
“Crying! That’s nothing at the end of a day’s work. Anyone can cry in
the evenings--in fact, it’s easier than not. One’s tired, and it’s
been beastly hot all day, and it’s a relief to sit down and howl. Most
girls do it regularly if they aren’t going out anywhere, and can risk
having a red nose. Wait till you see a girl crying at eight o’clock in
the morning--then it’s time enough to be sorry for her. If she cries
then, it’s because she can’t help it. If she cries at night she’s just
letting herself go.”
“_My_ difficulty is that I never can cry, however much I feel things,”
said Miss Saxon, true to the feminine instinct, so much condemned
by Lydia’s grandfather, of making instant personal application of a
generality.
“I get awfully upset--quite foolishly so, mother always says. ‘You’ll
never go through life, dear,’ she says, ‘if you take every little thing
to heart so much.’ It’s awfully wearing, too--things kind of prey on
me. I just go on turning them over and over in my own mind, you know.
But as for crying--well, it’s just as though I couldn’t. I’d give
anything to, sometimes--you know, I feel it would be such a relief,
like--but I never was one to cry, even as a child.”
Miss Saxon, much interested in her own monologue, appeared as though
she might go on for ever.
Rosie Graham made an expressive grimace at Lydia, and formed with her
lips:
“Good reason why!” at the same time pointing to her own little sallow
face, with a glance at Marguerite’s carefully rose-tinted cheeks.
Lydia smiled discreetly, safely conscious that she had her back turned
to Miss Saxon.
The opportunity for which she had been looking came that evening.
She waited for Gina.
The other girls went down to the dressing-room, pinned on their straw
and flower-wreathed hats, took hasty glances into the tiny mirror
propped up against the window, and rubbed at their shining, heated
faces with leaves of _papier poudre_, torn from little pink or blue
books. Only Marguerite Saxon possessed a small silver elegance, hanging
from a long chain, containing a little puff, with which she dabbed the
tip of her nose delicately.
“Good night, dear,” she said cordially to Lydia, who responded as
cordially, with her readiest smile. Already she guessed that Miss
Saxon was willing to make a bid for her friendship, in the new-born
apprehension that the tide of partisanship was turning rapidly in
Gina’s favour.
With Gina, the advance was even easier. It was long after closing hours
when she finally emerged from Madame Elena’s room, and then she was
not alone. Madame Elena, in the immense be-plumed hat and long suède
gloves that she always affected, preceded her.
“Lydia! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed sharply.
“I’ve finished those Paris model tickets, Madame Elena,” said Lydia
meekly.
She had printed over two dozen cards whilst she waited, it being one of
the sign manuals of the establishment to display all such tickets in
elaborate fancy letterings.
“You haven’t!”
Madame Elena made one of her rapid, swooping movements, and snatched up
a handful of the cards, miraculously avoiding those on which the ink
was still wet.
“Now I call that charming,” said Madame Elena, with genuine enthusiasm.
“First class. How on earth did you manage to get the letters all
different and so straight! But don’t stay overtime another evening like
that. You may find yourself locked in.”
She nodded and passed out of the side door, demonstratively waiting for
the two girls, in order to lock it behind her.
“I get in here,” she said, pausing where a long row of omnibuses was
drawn up beside the kerb. “Good night, girls.”
“Good night, Madame Elena,” they chorussed politely.
“Which is your way, dear?” inquired Gina, who called everyone “dear”
without discrimination.
“Right across the Park. I generally walk,” said Lydia.
“Rotten to be so far off. _I_ live miles out, too, right the way to
Mornington Crescent. I’ll walk with you, if you like. The air’ll do my
head good, and I may as well get in at Oxford Circus as anywhere else.”
“Have you a headache?” said Lydia sympathetically.
“I should think I have! Why, I’ve been howling, on and off, since five
o’clock. I daresay you think I’m a fool,” said Gina dolorously.
“No, of course I don’t. I’m so sorry for you.”
“Thanks, dear. I don’t generally say much about things when I feel
them,” said Miss Ryott pensively, “but I don’t mind talking to you,
between ourselves, like. Now, Rosie Graham--she’s the sarcastic
sort--or tries to be. I could never let myself go in front of that
girl----”
Gina paused, expressively enough, in lieu of seeking in the barren
fields of the shop-girl’s range of imagery.
“I know what you mean,” said Lydia. She had long ago found out the
incalculable value of this sympathetic, and entirely non-committal,
form of words.
“You may have noticed that I haven’t been exactly what you might call a
Sunny Jim lately,” said Miss Ryott.
She looked sidelong at Lydia, who turned a deeply interested gaze upon
her, but said nothing at all. The echo of Grandpapa’s wisdom came back
to her, as it so often did: “Always let the other people talk about
themselves.” And once more it was justified.
Whilst her companion talked, Lydia congratulated herself upon the
success of her manœuvre in waiting for Gina, and at the same time
impressing upon Madame Elena, ever alert for signs of enthusiasm in the
staff, her eager devotion to her work. There was not another employee
in the shop who would voluntarily have remained on after hours,
apparently from utter absorption in the task on hand.
Lydia marvelled, with perfectly genuine wonder, that none of them
should have the wit to see how enormously worth while it was to
sacrifice an hour or two of leisure once in a way for the sake of the
immense effect that such a display produced upon the authorities.
She never made the mistake of attempting to deceive herself as to her
own motives, and was consequently able to estimate to the full the
results at which she had consciously aimed.
“You’re a perfect dear to have listened to me,” said Gina warmly when
they parted. “I’m sure I’ve been the most frightful bore, really.”
Lydia assured her that this had not been the case, and was able to do
so with the more earnestness that she was inwardly full of exhilaration
at the growing conviction that her personality was once more giving her
prominence amongst her surroundings.
The next day Marguerite Saxon twice emphatically called her “my
dear”--a mark of potential friendship as distinguished from the
professional and abstracted “dear,” that invariably punctuated the
day’s intercourse.
She was also required to listen, during the tea-interval, to Miss
Saxon’s version of the recent disturbance.
It need scarcely be said that Lydia’s perfectly non-committal sympathy
was extended as freely to Marguerite as it had been to Gina, with the
result that each declared a warm liking for her, and she speedily
became the central figure in their little world.
Madame Elena was not prone to personal enthusiasms, and the signs that
she gave of having distinguished Lydia from among her compeers, were
all but imperceptible. Only Lydia’s ruthless clear-sightedness where
her own interests were concerned enabled her to discern them.
She soon found that the two young ladies in the millinery were rather
looked down upon by the show-room young ladies, who had, indeed, little
opportunity for intercourse with them. Nevertheless, Lydia smiled
sedulously at them when she said, “Good morning,” and never pretended
deafness when one or the other of them asked her to “pass along the
bread, please,” at dinner.
Consequently they were overheard to say to one another that Miss
Raymond was the only lady in the place, so far as manners went.
Mrs. Entwhistle was somewhat of the same opinion, since Lydia was the
only girl who never grumbled at helping her when Old Madam’s unexpected
calls led to a sudden demand for afternoon tea.
There remained Miss Rosie Graham.
Lydia was perhaps more nearly afraid of her than she had ever been of
any member of her own sex.
To a Cockney sharpness of tongue, Rosie added an almost uncanny power
of insight into the minds of her neighbours, and it was commonly
asserted amongst the girls that she could “thought-read.”
The “thought-reading,” Lydia decided, was a trick, based upon natural
shrewdness and an almost infallible instinct for the detection of small
affectations and insincerities, but it may reasonably be supposed that
it added no sense of security to the circles of which Miss Graham was a
member.
Lydia knew that Rosie was not, and never would be, popular, but she
uneasily surmised in her a strength of character that might equal, if
it did not surpass, her own. And the idea was disturbing to Lydia’s
conception of her own allotted rôle in life, well to the forefront of
the stage.
She was always charming to Miss Graham, in accordance with her
invariable rule, but after three months at Madame Elena’s she was
still vexedly aware that the medium by which the charm could be made
efficacious had yet to be discovered.
It was obviously waste of time to say to Rosie, as she might have said
to Marguerite Saxon, for instance:
“You do look tired to-day. I’m sure you’re not a bit strong.”
For, whereas Miss Saxon would have denied the charge, simpering with
gratification the while, and at an early opportunity have returned
the kindness by some such compliment as, “What a sweet figure that
costume gives you, dear. I’m sure you wear lovely corsets,” it might
safely be assumed that Rosie would shrug her shoulders, and retort
matter-of-factly that her pallor was due to indigestion. She frankly
disliked personalities, although she was willing enough to give her
opinion, uncivilly and often unkindly, although never maliciously, in
regard to other people.
Lydia sometimes thought that the only avenue of approach lay in the
sense of humour that they shared, and which was deficient in the other
members of the small group. And it always gave her an odd sense of
reassurance when, in the course of the day, some trivial incident, or
chance word, would cause her eyes and those of Rosie Graham to meet,
involuntarily and quite instinctively, in a silent laugh.
X
“There’s only 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 of dignity. 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 teapot 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 of as “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 should _trust_.”
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, _how_ is 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 do _you_ say 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 you _were_ in 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 teapot 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 Bulteel _ménage_ was 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 not _right_. One pays for tea, and one ought to have 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.
“I _ask_ for a second helping,” said old Miss Lillicrap triumphantly.
“I _ask_ for 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 cast up 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, who contented 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’d gone no trumps; they
doubled, and of course I redoubled, and we made the little slam. Jolly,
eh? though I prefer something with _rather_ more 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 the _mot_ of the departed card-player.
Mrs. Bulteel picked up the _Daily 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--_for_ one 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 to engage
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 the
_tête-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 put _me_ into one of your books, Miss Raymond.”
Lydia enjoyed the attention that was bestowed upon her, 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 the midst 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 great _prestige_ in 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 really _was_ pretty.
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 cinematograph films 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.