Towards Christmas time, as the evenings became shorter and shorter, Mr.
Margoliouth developed great concern at the idea of Lydia’s coming back
from her work alone.
Might he call for her at Madame Elena’s, and escort her home?
Lydia thanked him very much, and said that one of her fellow-workers
generally came most of the way with her. But she was not insensible to
the flattering vista thus opened.
The girls at Elena’s would be, in their own parlance, thrilled if a
foreign and interesting-looking male should make his appearance outside
the little shop and await there the privilege of accompanying Miss
Raymond across the Park.
Gina Ryott boasted a “gentleman friend” who occasionally paid her the
same compliment, and Lydia, as well as Marguerite Saxon, had peeped
through the closed shutters of the shop window more than once, in order
to watch them depart together.
And not only the girls but the community at the boarding-house would be
full of interest and excitement.
Already Lydia knew perfectly well that Miss Forster and Mrs. Bulteel
exchanged significant glances whilst she and the Greek talked to one
another at meals.
In the trivial monotony of the boarding-house existence, she even felt
certain that Mr. Margoliouth and his increasingly-marked attentions to
herself were the chief subjects of discussion.
She began to enjoy her position very much, and no longer held Mr.
Margoliouth at a distance. She was not at all in love with him, but his
attentions were very agreeable and certainly, Lydia told herself, he
had enough discernment to realize that she was not a person with whom
liberties might be taken.
As a fact, his manner towards her was respectful enough except for a
certain tendency towards patting her wrist, or attracting her attention
by a lingering touch upon her arm or her shoulder.
When they went to a theatre or a cinematograph, he always held her
hand, and a curious sense of fair play in return for his hospitality
induced Lydia to allow this, and even feebly to return an occasional
pressure of her fingers, although she derived no slightest satisfaction
from the contact.
The rapid development of her mentality had so far out-distanced other,
more human attributes of youth, that she frequently debated within
herself whether Mr. Margoliouth was ever likely to try and kiss her.
If so, Lydia reflected with cold self-righteousness, she would rebuke
him in such fashion that he would respect and admire her more than
ever. She was full of instinctive horror at the idea of “making herself
cheap,” and it had been inculcated into her both by Aunt Beryl and Aunt
Evelyn that to do so was to invite disaster of some unspecified but
terrible kind.
When her Christmas holiday was approaching--two days and a half which
she was to spend at Regency Terrace--Lydia began to mention the Greek
occasionally in her weekly letter to Aunt Beryl.
She was not averse from some slight exploitation of her first
conquest, and moreover she thought it quite likely that a hint might
reach Aunt Beryl any day through Miss Nettleship, and she wisely
preferred to secure herself against any charge of secretiveness.
At first Aunt Beryl only wrote back, “Glad you enjoyed yourself at the
Polytechnic, dear; mind and not take cold coming out from those hot
places this bitter weather.” Then later: “This Mr. Margoliouth seems
very attractive. Don’t let him break your little heart, dear!!”
The two notes of exclamation denoted Aunt Beryl’s humorous intention,
as Lydia well knew. But one day she wrote more seriously.
“I must say it would be a real pleasure to hear you were properly
engaged, providing it was to some really nice fellow. Don’t be in a
hurry to decide though, dear--you’re very young.”
Lydia herself had hardly contemplated the possibility of an engagement.
But now she began to wonder whether or no any such idea held a place in
Margoliouth’s mind. He had certainly said that he should like to show
her his own country, and told her how much she would enjoy a sea voyage
and how greatly the new experience of travelling would help her to
write.
Meanwhile he continued to take her out two or three times a week, and
to give her expensive boxes of chocolates and occasional books.
The girls at Madame Elena’s became aware of him, and chaffed Lydia
agreeably, and at the boarding-house Miss Forster, always outspoken,
one day asked whether she had ordered her wedding-dress yet.
Lydia did not like Miss Forster’s blatancy, but her old predilection
for finding herself the heroine of her surroundings was stronger than
ever, and it gratified her to know that they were all watching her and
wondering what would happen to her next.
A less agreeable manifestation of interest was, however, in store for
her.
Miss Nettleship sought her out apologetic but conscientious.
“You know how it is, dear, I know--but really I do feel responsible to
your auntie, just a wee bit--and I feel I really must say something.
They’re all talking about it, you know--not saying anything, I don’t
mean of course, but you know--just talking, like.”
The distinction that Miss Nettleship wished to imply between the saying
of anything and mere talking about it, was perfectly clear to the
resentful and embarrassed Lydia.
True to her instincts, however, she showed none of the resentment and
as little as she could of the embarrassment.
“There really isn’t anything for anyone to talk about. Mr. Margoliouth
is very fond of the theatre, he says, and he hasn’t anyone to go with
him. It’s very kind of him to take me, I think.”
“Once here and there,” said Miss Nettleship distractedly, “but really,
dear, it’s getting more than that, and of course it’s a bit conspicuous
because of his never hardly taking any notice of anyone else. At the
Bridge now, when they play in the evenings, he’s downright uncivil to
poor Mrs. Clarence, and I’ve heard him very rude to Miss Forster too,
though of course she’s well able to hold her own. But it makes it all
the more marked, his going on the way he does with you.”
“I can’t help his liking me,” said Lydia meekly, but inwardly rather
gratified at Miss Nettleship’s artless exposition of the distinction
that she enjoyed.
“Now don’t go thinking I’m blaming you for an instant, dear. I know
very well that your auntie’s brought you up to be careful, and,
besides, I can see for myself you’re steady--not one of those girls
I call regular _flirts_. But it’s your being so young, and there’s
something else too.”
Miss Nettleship hesitated, her pleasant, anxious-looking face much
discomposed.
“Really I oughtn’t to say anything about it to you, but you do
understand how it is, dear--I feel the responsibility of having you
here, and your auntie being such a friend of mine and everything, I
feel I can’t let it go on and not say anything.”
“I’ve written to Aunt Beryl all about Mr. Margoliouth, you know,” said
Lydia quickly.
She felt the announcement to be a trump card, and was surprised that
Miss Nettleship’s harassed expression did not relax.
“I was sure you would, dear--it isn’t that. You see the fact is, though
I oughtn’t to mention it but I know you can be trusted never to pass
it on,--the fact is that Mr. Margoliouth, as he calls himself, isn’t
altogether sound, and I don’t know that I shan’t have to ask him to
leave.”
“Why?” cried Lydia, astonished.
But Miss Nettleship had her own methods of imparting information, and
was not to be hustled out of them.
“Of course you know how it is in a place like this--one has to be
very particular, and I’ve always asked for references and everything,
and there’s never been any trouble except just once, right at the
start. That was with foreigners, too, a pair of Germans, and called
themselves brother and sister. However, that’s nothing to do with you,
dear, and I had to send them packing very quickly--in fact, the minute
I had any doubts at all. It’s the ruin of a place like this ever to
let it get a name, as you can imagine, and the fright I got then made
me more particular than ever. This fellow Margoliouth gave me a City
reference, and another a clergyman somewhere up in Yorkshire, and paid
his first week in advance. And since then it’s just been one put off
after another.”
“But how--what do you mean, Miss Nettleship?”
“He’s not paying his way,” said the manageress, fixing her brown eyes
compassionately upon Lydia’s face.
“He asked me to let him have his account monthly, as it was more
convenient, and I gave in, although it’s not my rule, and I wouldn’t
have that old Miss Lillicrap--you know what she is, dear, and how one
can’t go against her--I wouldn’t have her hear about it for the world.
Well, it was seven weeks before he paid me the first month, and I had
to ask him for it again and again. He said there was some difficulty
about getting his money from Greece paid into the Bank here. However,
he paid in the end, but since then it’s been nothing but putting off
and putting off--would I let it stand over for a week because it wasn’t
convenient, and so on and so on. I told him he’d have to get his meals
out if it went on, and then he gave me something on account--but not a
third of what he owes me, dear. I really don’t know what to do about
it. He’s so plausible, I half believe it’s all right when he’s talking
to me, but I can’t afford to go on like this. He’ll have to go if he
hasn’t paid in full at the end of this week. And how I’m to get the
money back if he doesn’t pay up I really don’t know, for a prosecution
would be a fearful business for me, and lose me every boarder in the
place.”
“Oh, it would be dreadful!” cried Lydia, sincerely shocked. “But he
_must_ pay. I thought of him as quite rich.”
“So you might, from the way he goes on. And the bills that are always
coming for him, too!” said Miss Nettleship.
“I can’t help seeing them, you know, when I clear the box in the
mornings. However, he says there’s money coming to him from Greece, and
it’s only got to be put into his Bank over here, and he can promise me
a cheque on Saturday at latest. So I’m not saying any more till then,
but _after_ that my mind’s made up. But you’ll understand, dear, why I
felt I had to speak to you about it first.”
Lydia felt that she understood only too well, and she went to business
next morning in so thoughtful a mood that Rosie Graham, whose
observation nothing escaped, made sharp inquiry of her as they snatched
a ten minutes’ tea-interval in the afternoon: “What’s up that you’re
going about with a face as long as a fiddle?”
In the midst of her perfectly real preoccupation, it was not in Lydia
to fail to perceive her opportunity for at last arousing a tardy
interest in Miss Graham.
“I’m worried,” she said frankly.
“Worry won’t mend matters,” quoted Rosie tritely, but Lydia reaped
the advantage of her invariable abstention from the airing of daily
minor grievances such as the other girls brought to their work, in the
instant acceptance of her statement shown by the astute little Cockney.
“Come round to my place for a yarn this evening,” she suggested. “My
pal’s out and I can find some food, I daresay, though it won’t be seven
courses and a powdered footman behind the chair, like that place of
yours.”
Lydia accepted, and felt flattered. No one else had ever been asked to
Rosie’s place.
They took a Sloane Street omnibus at six o’clock, and got out at Sloane
Square, where Lydia made use of a public telephone to inform Miss
Nettleship that she would not be in to supper, and then Rosie led her
through a very large square, a mews, and into a little street called
Walton Street. They crossed it, and entered Ovington Street.
“Number ninety-one A,” said Miss Graham, producing a latch-key.
She took Lydia to the top of the house, and Lydia was astounded at the
lightness and airiness of the fair-sized room, with a much smaller one
opening out of it, evidently in use as a dressing-room.
“Not so dusty, is it?” Rosie said complacently. “This sofa turns into
a bed, and there’s another proper bed in the other room. The whole
thing--unfurnished--costs us twenty-two and six a week, and includes
everything except the use of the gas. There’s a penny-in-the-slot
machine for that. We do most of our cooking on the gas-ring, but the
landlady’s very decent about sometimes letting us use the kitchen fire.”
She gave Lydia a supper of sausage-rolls, bread-and-butter, cocoa and
a variety of sweet cakes and biscuits, and all the time talked more
agreeably and less caustically than Lydia had ever heard her talk
before.
When the little meal was over and the table pushed out of the way,
Rosie made Lydia draw her chair close to the tiny oil-stove.
“There’s a gas-fire,” she said frankly, “but we don’t use it unless
the weather’s simply perishing. It’s rather an expensive luxury. Sure
you’re all right like that?”
“Yes, thank you. What a lot of heat this thing gives out!”
“Doesn’t it? Well, now,” said Miss Graham abruptly, “spit it out.
What’s all the trouble? Is it anything to do with that foreign freak
who stands about waiting for you outside Elena’s of an evening
sometimes?”
Lydia was too well inured to the shop-girl vocabulary to resent this
description of her admirer.
She decided that she would allow herself the luxury of contravening
Grandpapa’s rule, and for once talk about herself, justified in doing
so by her conviction that it was the only short cut to the rousing in
Miss Rosie Graham of that interest which Lydia still desired the more
keenly from the very ease with which she could command it in others.
She told her story, but omitted all mention of Miss Nettleship’s
confidences.
“My aunt, who brought me up, knows a little about it--I wrote and told
her he was taking me out sometimes--and she said in a letter I had from
her the other day that it would be so nice if I got engaged. Somehow,
you know, I hadn’t really thought of that before. But I’ve been rather
worried since, wondering whether perhaps he means to ask me. If so, I
suppose I oughtn’t to let him go about with me quite so much unless I
make up my mind to say ‘yes.’”
Lydia was aware that she had stated her problem one-sidedly, for her
real preoccupation was whether or no Margoliouth was going to pay her
the compliment of a proposal. But the temptation to represent herself
as merely undecided if she should become engaged to him or not, was
irresistible.
She thought that Rosie looked at her rather curiously as she finished
speaking.
“Of course, if you’re always about with him and let him give you
presents and all the rest of it, the poor Johnnie’s bound to think you
mean business,” she said slowly. “But you’d better be careful, kid. Are
you so sure that he wants to marry you?”
Lydia felt herself colouring hotly, sufficiently understanding the
older girl’s implication to resent it.
“I should think Mr. Margoliouth is too much of a man of the world not
to see for himself the sort of girl _I_ am,” she said haughtily.
“He can see for himself that you’re only a silly kid, if that’s what
you mean,” retorted the outspoken Rosie Graham. “Tell me, where does
this Margoliouth, or whatever he calls himself, come from? He’s as
black as my hat, anyway.”
Lydia began to wish that she had never embarked upon the path of
confidences at all.
“He is Greek,” she said very stiffly.
“That might mean anything,” retorted Miss Graham sweepingly. “I tell
you frankly that’s what I don’t like about the business--his being such
a rum colour. I don’t trust black fellows.”
“You talk as though he were a nigger!” said Lydia, furious.
“I know what I’m talking about. I knew a girl once who took up with a
fellow like that. He wasn’t a bit darker than your Margoliouth, and he
talked awfully good English, and she got herself engaged to him. He
said he was a prince, and frightfully rich, and he gave her all sorts
of presents, and when he had to go back to his own country he sent
her the money for her passage so she could come out next year and get
married to him. Well, she got everything ready--heaps of clothes and
things--and was always talking of how she was going to be a princess,
and he’d promised to meet her at a place called Port Said with his own
carriage and horses and all the rest of it. Some of us thought she was
taking a bit of a risk, but she didn’t care a scrap, and was just wild
to get out there. Well, off she went--and we didn’t hear anything more
about her, or get any of the letters and photographs and things she’d
promised to send. And then three months later, I met her in the City,
where I was matching silks for old Peroxide, and she’d sneaked back to
her old firm and got them to take her back as typist again.”
“But what had happened?”
“She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask her. But she told another girl,
and I heard about it afterwards. She’d gone off on the ship all right,
with all her fine new luggage and the rest of it, and she’d told all
the people on board who she was going out to marry, and most of them
said what a fool she was, and it would be an awful life for an English
girl, and she’d never be allowed to come home again. But there was
one man on board--a parson--who simply wouldn’t let her alone about
it, and said she didn’t know what she was doing, and at last he got
her to promise that she wouldn’t actually marry this chap until he’d
made inquiries about him. And he did the minute they arrived--although
the fellow was there just as he’d said, with a great carriage and two
horses, to take her away. I don’t exactly know what happened, but this
clergyman fellow went straight off to some British Consul or someone,
and they found out all about the man straight away. He _was_ a sort of
prince all right, and quite as rich as he’d said--though he didn’t live
in a palace, but some place right away from everywhere--but he wasn’t a
Christian--and _he’d got two native wives already_.”
“Oh!” Lydia gasped involuntarily at the climax of the narrative, which
came upon her inexperience as a complete shock.
“So that was the end of _that_, as you can imagine,” said Miss Graham.
“The clergyman was awfully good to her, and paid her passage home again
out of his own pocket, because she hadn’t got a sixpence. Poor kid, she
was fearfully cut up, though as a matter of fact she ought to have been
off her head with thankfulness that she got stopped in time. I don’t
suppose she’d ever have got away again, once he’d taken her off in his
carriage and pair.”
“It must have been awful for her, going back to her old job, after
leaving it to get married like that,” said Lydia. She thought with
horror of the humiliation that it would mean for the victim to return,
in such circumstances, to those who had doubtless heard her triumphant
boasts of emancipation on leaving.
“D’you think that would be the worst of it?” queried Miss Graham
sharply.
Lydia, failing to see the drift of the question, answered
unhesitatingly:
“Yes, I think it would. It’s the part _I_ should have minded most.”
A guilty remembrance flashed across her mind of yet another axiom of
Grandpapa’s--“Don’t refer everything back to yourself.”
She wished that she had remembered it earlier, when Rosie looked at her
strangely, and then said:
“I believe you _would_ mind that most--what other people would say and
think about you, I mean. What an inhuman kid you are!”
Lydia felt almost more bewildered than offended.
“Isn’t there anybody you care for beside yourself?” said Rosie Graham
slowly. “I’ve been watching you ever since you came to us. Of course
you’re very clever, and a cut above the rest of us--I know all
that--and you’re awfully sweet and nice to everybody, and never say
cattish things about anyone--but what’s it all _for_? You don’t care
a damn for anybody that I can see. And then you talk about this chap
who’s going with you--this Margoliouth--and whether he wants you to be
engaged or not. And I don’t believe you’ve once thought whether you
could care for him, or he for you. Why, this girl I was telling you
about was crazy about her fellow. _That_ was what broke her up--not the
having made a fool of herself, and wondering if the others at her old
shop weren’t laughing at her. But that’s simply beyond you, isn’t it? I
don’t believe you know what caring for anybody means.”
The two girls looked at one another in silence.
Rosie’s accusation not only came as a shock to Lydia, but it carried
with it an inward conviction that was disconcerting in the extreme.
Lydia, no coward, faced the unpalatable truth, and instinctively and
instantly accepted it as such.
She wondered, with the curious analytical detachment characteristic of
the self-centred, that she had never seen it for herself. It vexed her
that it should have been left to little Rosie Graham’s penetration to
enlighten her.
She rallied her forces. Rosie should at least see in her the saving
grace of a courageous candour.
“Perhaps that’s true,” she said slowly. “I’ve been first with one
set of people, and then with another, since I was a small child, and
perhaps I’ve got into a calculating way of just trying to please
them, so that they should be nice to me. I don’t know that I’m really
particularly fond of any of them....”
She passed in mental review as she spoke those with whom her short life
had been most nearly connected.
Her parents.
She could hardly remember her father, and she had certainly never loved
her mother, weak where Lydia, at twelve years old, was already hard,
irrationally impulsive where Lydia was calculating, sentimental where
Lydia was contemptuous. Looking back, she realized that her mother had
done her best to make Lydia as feebly emotional as she was herself, and
that Lydia’s own clear-sightedness had not only saved her, but had also
forced upon her a very thorough reaction.
Grandpapa--Aunt Beryl--Uncle George--she thought of them all. Certainly
she was fond of them in a way, and Grandpapa she most sincerely admired
and respected, more than anyone she knew.
She was grateful to Aunt Beryl and Uncle George, and anxious to do them
credit, but her interest in their welfare was not excessive. If she
heard of their deaths that evening, Lydia knew very well that her chief
pang would be remorse for a complete absence of acute sorrow.
There was Nathalie Palmer.
At school, Nathalie had adored her. She still wrote her long, intimate
letters full of personal details which Lydia could not help thinking
rather trivial and unnecessary.
But because one criticized, that did not preclude a certain degree of
affection. Lydia was certainly fond of Nathalie.
She did not for an instant, however, pretend either to herself or to
Rosie Graham, that the latter’s words were unjustified by fact.
“I’m certainly not at all in love with Mr. Margoliouth now,” she said,
“but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be later on, I suppose. And
because it’s more or less true that I’ve never cared a very great deal
for anybody so far, it doesn’t follow that I never shall. I’m not
twenty yet.”
“I suppose there’s hope for you,” said Rosie Graham grudgingly. “But
I’m very sorry for you when you once _do_ begin to care for somebody--I
don’t mind who it may be.”
Lydia was conscious of feeling rather flattered by the interpretation
she put upon the words.
“I suppose that all one’s eggs in one basket is always a risk,” she
said, not without complacency.
Rosie gave a short, staccato laugh, and again shot one of her
disconcerting glances at her visitor.
“What _I_ mean is that you’ll do it so jolly badly. You’ve never cared
for anybody but yourself, and you won’t even know how to begin.”
“Then you had better be sorry for the person I care for,” said Lydia
drily.
She was in reality very angry, and she rose to go for fear of betraying
it.
“I daresay it’s rather beastly of me to have said that, when I’ve asked
you here to spend the evening,” said Rosie with a certain compunction
in her voice.
“I’m very glad you said what you thought,” Lydia returned calmly. “Good
night, and thanks for having me.”
“Good night. And I say--_don’t_ do anything in a hurry about that
coloured friend of yours.”
Lydia walked downstairs and out of the front door without deigning any
reply to this last, urgent piece of advice.
As she sat in the jolting, nearly empty omnibus that was to take her
as far as Southampton Row, she reviewed Rosie Graham’s speeches of the
evening.
It was quite true, Lydia supposed, that she did not really care
for anybody but herself. She was too clear-sighted to pretend that
this distressed her. On the contrary, she realized the immense
simplification of a life into which no seriously conflicting claims
could enter.
After all it had taken the almost uncanny acumen of a Rosie Graham to
discover the fundamental egotism that underlay all Lydia’s careful
courtesy and studied kindness of word and deed.
She was annoyed that Rosie should have so poor an opinion of her, but
Rosie was only one person; and though in Lydia’s present surroundings
she held rank of high importance, the importance was merely relative.
The day would come when Rosie Graham, and what Rosie Graham thought,
whether true or otherwise, would matter not at all to Lydia Raymond.