“Broken heart? Nonsense. People with broken hearts don’t eat
chestnut-pudding like that,” quoth Grandpapa.
Lydia would have preferred to make her own explanations at Regency
Terrace, but Miss Nettleship had already written a long letter to Aunt
Beryl, as Lydia discovered when she reached home on Christmas Eve.
Aunt Beryl took the affair very seriously, and made Lydia feel slightly
ridiculous.
“Trifling like that with a young girl, and him a married man the whole
of the time!” said Aunt Beryl indignantly.
“It’s all _right_, auntie,” Lydia made rather impatient answer. “I
didn’t take it seriously, you know.”
“How did he know you weren’t going to? Many a girl has had her heart
broken for less.”
It was then that Grandpapa uttered his unkind allusion to Lydia’s
undoubted appreciation of her favourite chestnut-pudding, made in
honour of her arrival by Aunt Beryl herself.
Lydia knew very well that Grandpapa would have been still more
disagreeable if she had pretended a complete loss of appetite, and she
felt rather indignant that this very absence of affectation should thus
come in for criticism.
Although she had only been away four months, the house seemed smaller,
and the conversation of Aunt Beryl and Uncle George more restricted.
She was not disappointed when her aunt told her that their Christmas
dinner was to be eaten at midday, and that there would be guests.
“Who do you think is here, actually staying at the ‘Osborne’?” Miss
Raymond inquired.
Lydia was unable to guess.
“Your Aunt Evelyn, with Olive. They’ve been worried about Olive for
quite a time now--she can’t throw off a cold she caught in the autumn,
and, of course, there _have_ been lungs in the Senthoven family, so
they’re a bit uneasy. Aunt Evelyn brought her down here for a change,
and Bob’s coming down for Christmas Day. They keep him very busy at the
office now. Don’t you ever run across him in town, Lydia?”
“No, never,” said Lydia, with great decision.
She had no wish to meet Bob Senthoven in London, although she was
rather curious to see both her cousins again.
She caught sight of him in church on Christmas morning, where she
decorously sat between Aunt Beryl and Uncle George, in the seats that
had been theirs ever since Lydia could remember.
Bob, who was on the outside, did not look as though he had altered very
much. He was still short and stocky, with hair combed straight back and
plastered close to his head.
Olive, much taller than her brother, was dressed in thick tweed, with
a shirt and tie, and the only concession to her invalidhood that
Lydia could see, was a large and rather mangy-looking yellow fur
incongruously draped across her shoulders.
Mrs. Senthoven’s smaller, slighter figure was completely hidden from
view by her offspring.
As they all met outside the church door, Lydia, in thought, was
instantly carried back to Wimbledon again, and her sixteenth year.
“Hullo, ole gurl!” from Olive.
“Same to you and many of ’em,” briefly from Bob, in reply to
anticipated Christmas greetings.
“We’ll all walk back to the Terrace together, shall we?” suggested Aunt
Beryl, on whose mind Lydia knew that elaborate preparations for dinner
were weighing. “Grandpapa will want to wish you all a Merry Christmas,
I’m sure.”
Aunt Evelyn, not without reason, looked nervous, nor did Grandpapa’s
greeting serve to reassure her.
“Why does little Shamrock bark at you so, my dear?” he inquired of
Olive, with a pointed look at her short skirts. “I’m afraid he doesn’t
like those great boots of yours.”
It was quite evident that Grandpapa’s opinion of the Senthoven family
had undergone no modification.
They sat round the fire lit in the drawing-room in honour of the
occasion, and Aunt Beryl hurried in and out, her face flushed from the
kitchen fire, and hoped that they’d “all brought good appetites.”
“There’s the bell, Lydia! I wonder if you’d go down, dear? I can’t
spare the girl just now, and it’s only Mr. Almond.”
Lydia willingly opened the door to her old friend, and received
his usual, rather precise greeting, together with an old-fashioned
compliment on the roses that London had not succeeded in fading. She
took him up to the drawing-room.
“Greetings of the season, ladies and gentlemen all,” said Mr. Monteagle
Almond, bowing in the doorway.
“Rum old buffer,” said Bob to Lydia, aside.
She smiled rather coldly.
She felt sure that although the Bulteels and Miss Forster--who, after
all, was the friend of Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret--might have accepted
Mr. Almond and his out-of-date gentility, they would never have
approved of Bob and Olive, with their witless, incessant slang.
“Now, then!” said Aunt Beryl, appearing in the doorway divested of
her apron, and with freshly washed hands. “Dinner’s quite ready, if
the company is. George, will you lead the way with Evelyn?--Olive and
Mr. Almond--that’s right--now, Bob, you haven’t forgotten the way to
the dining-room--or, if you have, Lydia will show you--and I’ll give
Grandpapa an arm.”
Aunt Beryl, for once, was excited and loquacious. Giving Grandpapa
an arm, however, was a lengthy process, so that she missed the
appreciative exclamations with which each couple duly honoured the
festive appearance of the dining-room.
“How bright it looks!” cried Aunt Evelyn. “Now, doesn’t it look bright?”
“Most seasonable, I declare,” said Mr. Almond, rubbing his hands
together.
“Oh, golly! crackers!”
“My eye, look at the mistletoe!” said Bob, and nudged Lydia with
his elbow. Lydia immediately affected to ignore the huge bunches of
mistletoe pendant in the window and over the table, and admired instead
the holly decorating each place.
“A very curious old institution, mistletoe,” said Uncle George, and
seemed disappointed that nobody pursued the subject with a request for
further information.
When they were all seated, and Grandpapa had leant heavily upon his
corner of the table, and found a piece of holly beneath his hand, and
vigorously flung it into the enormous fire blazing just behind his
chair, Uncle George said again:
“Probably you all know the old song of the ‘Mistletoe Bough,’ but I
wonder whether anyone can tell me the origin----”
“We’ll come to the songs later on, my boy,” said Grandpapa briskly.
“Get on with the carving. Have you good appetites, young ladies?”
Olive only giggled, but Lydia smiled and nodded, and said, “Yes,
Grandpapa, very good.”
“You needn’t nod your head like a mandarin at me. I can hear what you
say very well,” said Grandpapa, and Lydia became aware that she had
instinctively been pandering to the Senthoven view that Grandpapa was a
very old man indeed, with all the infirmities proper to his age.
The Christmas dinner was very well cooked, and very long and very hot,
and conformed in every way to tradition.
“Don’t forget the seasoning in the turkey, George,” said Aunt Beryl
agitatedly. “There’s plenty more where that comes from. Give Lydia a
little more seasoning--she likes chestnut. Sausage, Evelyn? Sausage,
Mr. Almond? Bob, pass the sauce-boat to your sister, and don’t forget
to help yourself on the way. There’s gravy and vegetables on the side.”
Everyone ate a great deal, and the room grew hotter and hotter, so that
the high colour on Olive Senthoven’s face assumed a glazed aspect, and
the fumes from the enormous dish in front of Uncle George rose visibly
into the air.
Presently Gertrude brought the plum-pudding, blazing in a blue flame,
and with a twig of holly sticking from the top, and much amusement
was occasioned by the discovery that several of the slices contained
a small silver emblem. Mr. Monteagle Almond solemnly disinterred a
thimble, and Bob, with a scarlet face, a wedding-ring.
Under cover of Olive’s screams on the discovery of a three-penny bit on
her own plate, he pushed the ring over to Lydia.
“I shall give it to you,” he muttered gruffly.
After the plum-pudding, they ate mince-pies, and a little spirit was
poured over each and a lighted match applied by Uncle George, Mr.
Almond or Bob, Aunt Beryl and Aunt Evelyn, in accordance with the usage
of their day, each uttering a small scream as the flame shot up. When
the mince-pies were all finished, the dessert dishes were pulled out
from under the piled-up heaps of crackers and holly surmounting them.
The dessert was also traditional--oranges, nuts, apples, raisins,
almonds. Everybody avoided direct mention of these last from a sense of
delicacy, until Mr. Monteagle Almond himself remarked humorously:
“I think I will favour my namesake, if the ladies will pardon an act of
cannibalism.”
Upon which everybody laughed a great deal and jokes were made, and Bob
and Olive began to ask riddles.
In the midst of Bob’s best conundrum, Grandpapa suddenly knocked loudly
upon the table.
“Send round the port, George,” he ordered solemnly. “Round with the sun
... that’s right. The ladies must take a little wine, for the toasts.”
Lydia knew what was coming. She had heard it every year, and the
transition from jovial animal enjoyment to sudden solemnity always gave
her a slight thrill.
Grandpapa raised his glass, and everybody imitated the gesture.
“The Queen! God bless her.”
The sentiment was devoutly echoed round the table.
Then Uncle George said in a very serious way:
“Our absent friends.”
And the toast was drunk silently, Aunt Beryl raising her handkerchief
to her eyes for a moment as she did every year, in whose honour nobody
knew.
After that healths were proposed and honoured indiscriminately. Mr.
Monteagle Almond ceremoniously toasted Aunt Beryl, and Bob, looking
very sentimental, insisted upon knocking the rim of his glass several
times against the rim of Lydia’s. Uncle George, noncommittally
confining himself to generalities, proposed “The Fair Sex,” and
Grandpapa effectually prevented anyone from rising to reply by
sarcastically inquiring which of the ladies present would act as
representative for them all.
The room grew steadily hotter.
Lydia had enjoyed the resumption of old festive custom and also the
additional importance conferred upon herself as a two days’ visitor
from London, but she found herself viewing the familiar Christmas
rituals from a new and more critical angle.
She was inclined to wonder how they would strike the aristocratic
boarding-house in Bloomsbury, or even the fashionable “young ladies” at
Madame Elena’s.
Surely it was an out-of-date custom to join hot hand to hot hand all
round the table, and sing, “Auld Lang Syne” in voices made rather
hoarse and throaty from food, and silently to pull each a cracker
with either neighbour, hands crossed, and Uncle George saying,
“One--two--three--all together, now--_Go!_”
Lydia felt mildly superior.
They adorned themselves with paper caps and crowns, Bob sheepishly
self-conscious, Lydia critically so, and all the others merely
serious. When no one could eat or drink anything more, Aunt Beryl said
reluctantly:
“Well, then--shall we adjourn this meeting?” and they rose from the
disordered table, now strewn with scraps of coloured paper from the
crackers, dismembered twigs of holly, and innumerable crumbs.
“You gentlemen will be going for a walk, I suppose?” Aunt Evelyn
suggested, as everyone hung about the hall indeterminately.
“That’s right,” said Grandpapa. “Get up an appetite for tea. And you’ll
take little Shamrock with you.”
Little Shamrock, having been given no opportunity for over-eating
himself, after the fashion of his betters, was careering round Uncle
George’s boots with a liveliness that boded ill for his docility during
the expedition.
“We’ll smoke a cigarette first, at all events,” said Uncle George
gloomily, and he and Mr. Almond and Bob went back into the dining-room
again.
“You don’t want to go for a walk, dear, do you?” said Aunt Beryl, and
sighed with evident relief when Mrs. Senthoven shook her head in reply.
“Grandpapa?”
“The drawing-room is good enough for me,” said Grandpapa, and Uncle
George had to be called out of the dining-room again to help him up
the stairs and instal him in his arm-chair by the window.
“I say, aren’t you girls coming with us?” demanded Bob rather
disconsolately, leaning against the open door of the dining-room with a
half-smoked cigar in his mouth.
“You’ll go too far for us,” said Lydia primly.
“Let you and me go off somewhere on our own,” struck in Olive. “I’m
game for a toddle, if you are, but we don’t want the men, do we?”
“You want to talk secrets--_I_ know you,” jeered Bob.
Lydia lifted her chin fastidiously and turned away.
Her cousins had not improved, she thought, and she was very angry when
her dignified gesture inadvertently placed her beneath a beautiful
bunch of mistletoe, hung in the hall by Aunt Beryl.
“Fair cop!” yelled Bob, and put his arm round her waist and gave her a
sounding kiss.
She would not struggle, but she could not force herself to laugh, and
she ran upstairs with a blazing face.
It was not that Lydia had any objection to being kissed, but that the
publicity, and the scuffling, and the accompanying laughter offended
her taste.
She felt almost as though she could have burst into angry tears.
“Are you two girls really going out?” Aunt Beryl inquired. “If so, I’ll
give you the key, Lydia. I’m letting the girl go home for the rest of
the day, as soon as she’s cleared up. The char’s coming in to give her
a hand with the washing-up.”
“That’s a _good_ girl you’ve got hold of,” Aunt Evelyn said
emphatically. “She’s been with you quite a time now, hasn’t she?”
Aunt Beryl and Aunt Evelyn went upstairs, talking busily about the
difficulty of training a servant really well, and then inducing her to
remain with one. Presently, Lydia knew, they would go into Aunt Beryl’s
room, under pretext of looking at a paper pattern, or a new blouse
bought at a clearance sale, and they would lie down on Aunt Beryl’s
bed, with eiderdowns and a couple of cloaks to keep them warm, and doze
until tea-time.
Lydia herself felt heavy and drowsy, but nothing would have induced her
to lie down upon her bed with Olive beside her. Instead, she put on her
best hat and jacket, and a pair of high-heeled, patent-leather walking
shoes, and took her cousin out into the mild damp of the December
afternoon.
“What I call a muggy day,” said Olive.
“Shall we go along the Front?” Lydia inquired.
“It’s all those shoes of yours are good for, I should think,” retorted
Olive candidly. “Still the same old juggins about your clothes, I see?”
The Front--a strip of esplanade with the shingle and the grey sea on
one side, beneath a low stone wall, and the green of the Public Gardens
on the other--was almost deserted.
One or two young men in bowler hats and smoking Woodbine cigarettes
hung round the empty band-stand, and an occasional invalid was pushed
or pulled along in a bath-chair. Here and there a pair of sweethearts
sat together in one of the small green shelters--the girl leaning
against the man, and both of them motionless and speechless.
The sight of one such couple apparently gave Olive a desired opening.
“I say, what’s all this about you falling in love with some chappie in
London?” she demanded abruptly.
“I haven’t fallen in love with anybody, that I know of,” said Lydia
coolly.
“But there was someone going after you, now, wasn’t there?” urged Olive.
Lydia reflected.
“Who told you anything about it?” she demanded at last.
“Aunt Beryl told the mater.”
Lydia perceived to her surprise that Olive did not, as she would
have expected her to do, despise her cousin for “sloppiness.” On the
contrary, she appeared to be really impressed, and anxious to hear
details from the heroine of the affair. Lydia did not resist the
temptation.
She gave Olive a brief and poignant version of the tragedy.
There _had_ been a man--a fellow-boarder at the great boarding-house
in Bloomsbury that was always full of people, men and women alike. He
was a foreigner--a distinguished sort of man--who had certainly paid
Lydia a great deal of attention. Everyone had noticed it. Theatres,
hansom-cabs, chocolates--he had appeared to think nothing too good for
her. Certain of these attentions Lydia had accepted.
“Well, whyever not!” ejaculated Olive.
She worked hard all the week, and it was pleasant to have a little
relaxation, and, besides, the Greek gentleman was most cultivated and
clever--one had really interesting conversations with him about books.
But----
Lydia paused impressively, really uncertain of what she was about
to say. She was very seldom anything but truthful, and could not
remember ever having told a direct lie since she was a little girl.
Nevertheless, she did not want Olive to suppose her a mere dupe, the
more especially as she felt perfectly certain that whatever she told
Olive would be repeated to Olive’s family, as nearly as possible word
for word.
Lydia, therefore, said nothing untrue, but she rather subtly contrived
to convey a desirable impression that, without any direct statements,
should yet penetrate to Olive’s consciousness. There had certainly
been a mystery about the Greek. He was very uncommunicative about
himself--even to Lydia herself. Then one day, after he had taken her
out and been more attentive than ever, they had come in to find a
foreign woman there who called herself his wife.
“Why, it’s like a novel!” gasped Olive. “There’s a plot exactly like
that in a story called ‘Neither Wife nor Maid.’ Only the fellow turns
out to be all right in the end, and the girl marries him.”
“I should never have married Mr. Margoliouth,” said Lydia haughtily.
“But of course he’d no right to carry on like that if he was married
all the time,” said Olive. “Men are rotters!”
Lydia gazed at her cousin thoughtfully.
“That woman _said_ she was his wife,” she remarked quietly.
“I say! d’you think it was all my eye and Betty Martin?”
“I don’t know. But it was an awkward sort of position for him.”
“Lord, yes!” said Olive more emphatically than ever, and Lydia felt
that any humiliation attaching to the _débâcle_ had been effectually
transferred, so far as Olive’s interpretation of it was concerned,
from herself to the Greek deceiver.
“Of course, it doesn’t matter to you, Lyd--a good-looking gurl like
you,” said Olive simply.
Lydia felt that after this she could well afford to change the
conversation.
She made inquiries about Beatrice.
“Oh, just rotting about,” said Olive discontentedly. “I wish she and
I could do something for ourselves, the way you do, but the old birds
wouldn’t hear of it. Besides, I don’t know what we could do, either of
us. Bee plays hockey whenever she gets the chance, of course, and goes
to all the hops. She’s taken up dancing like anything.”
“And haven’t you?”
“Can’t,” said Olive briefly. “They’re scared of me going off like the
pater’s sister. Chest, you know. But Beatrice is as strong as a horse.
You know she’s sort of engaged?”
“Who to?”
“The eldest Swaine boy--you remember Stanley Swaine? Nobody’s a bit
pleased about it, because they can’t ever get married, possibly.”
“No money?”
“Not a penny, and he’s a perfect fool, except at games. He got the sack
from the Bank, and now he hasn’t any job at all. Bob says he drinks,
but I daresay that’s a lie.”
“And does Beatrice like him?” said Lydia, rather astonished.
“Perfectly dotty about him. He’s always hanging round--_I_ think the
pater ought to forbid him the house. But instead of that he comes in
after supper of an evening, and he and Bee sit in the dining-room in
the dark, and she comes up after he’s cleared off with her face like
fire and her hair half down her back. Absolutely disgusting, I call it.”
Lydia was very much inclined inwardly to endorse this trenchant
criticism.
She had never been so much aware of her own fastidiousness as she was
now, on her return from the new surroundings which seemed to her so
infinitely superior to the old. Really, it was terrible to think of how
clever, fashionably-dressed Miss Forster, or haughty and disagreeable
Miss Lillicrap, would have looked upon Olive Senthoven and her slangy,
vulgar confidences.
As for the young ladies at Elena’s, they would probably have refused to
believe that anything so unrefined could be related to Lydia Raymond at
all.
Nevertheless, Lydia Raymond expressed interest and even sympathy in
all that Olive told her, and was conscious of feeling both pleased and
flattered when, as they entered Regency Terrace again, Olive remarked
with what, by the Senthoven standards, perilously approached to
sentiment:
“I must say, ole gurl, I never thought you’d turn out such a decent
sort.”
They found Aunt Beryl, whose nap must after all have been a very short
one, preparing a magnificent muffin-and-crumpet tea in the kitchen.
“Auntie! let me help you,” Lydia cried.
“No, no. You go and take off your things.”
Lydia pulled off her hat and jacket and laid them on the kitchen
dresser.
“Are we using the blue tea-service to-day?” she asked calmly.
“But you’re on a holiday, dearie! Don’t you worry about the tea--I’ll
manage it. It’s only to get the table laid in the drawing-room.”
Lydia, however, carried her point. It would have made her feel
thoroughly uncomfortable to see Aunt Beryl toiling upstairs with the
heavy trays, and it would have looked, besides, as though she, Lydia,
had grown to think herself too “fine” for household work.
So she carried the best blue china upstairs and set it out on the
embroidered tea-cloth, and Aunt Evelyn, who was sitting with Grandpapa,
looked at her approvingly and called her a good girl.
After tea she received other compliments.
They asked about her work in London, and Lydia told them about the
great ledgers, and the bills and the invoices, and of how Madame Elena
had practically said that she should leave Lydia in charge of the other
girls, when she went to Paris to buy new models for Easter.
She also told them about the other young ladies, of Gina Ryott’s good
looks, and the cleverness and independence of little Rosie Graham, who
lived in such nice rooms with a girl friend.
“And do they make you comfortable at the boarding-house?” Aunt Evelyn
asked solicitously.
“Yes, very comfortable--and there were such nice superior people
there. There was a Miss Forster, who played Bridge splendidly, and was
great friends with a Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, who lived in Lexham
Gardens.”
“Fancy!” Aunt Evelyn ejaculated. “I’ve seen Lady Honoret’s name in
print, too, I’m almost certain.”
And the Bulteels were a nice family, Lydia said, with a clever son who
went to Gower Street University.
“A great many clever folk in the world,” said Mr. Monteagle Almond
sententiously. “And no doubt you’ll meet many of them in London. But
I think, if you’ll excuse personalities, that you’ll find it’s as I
say--the true mathematical mind is a very rare thing in one of your
sex.”
Lydia’s relations looked at her admiringly.
Only Grandpapa, with a detached expression, occupied himself in making
a great fuss about Shamrock.
That night, when Lydia said good night to him, the old man fixed his
eyes upon her with his most impish-looking twinkle.
“Why didn’t you tell them about your romance, eh, Lyddie? The broken
heart, and all the rest of it. You could have made a very pretty story
out of it, I’m sure. You only told one-half of the tale when you were
entertaining us all so grandly this evening. Always remember, me dear,
whether you’re listening to a tale or telling one: Every penny piece
that’s struck has two sides to it.”