Lydia had to go back to London by an afternoon train on Boxing Day.
Aunt Beryl packed her small hand-bag for her and gave her a large
packet of cake and chocolate for the journey, and said, with all the
increase of affectionate anxiety that she had displayed since learning
of the Margoliouth catastrophe:
“Good-bye, dearie, and bless you. I haven’t packed those new fur
gloves, because I thought you’d want to wear them up. Mind you don’t
get cold, now. It’s been lovely, having you.”
Grandpapa said good-bye to Lydia in his most condescending manner, and
told her that next time she would honour them with a visit a second
chestnut-pudding should certainly be forthcoming.
“For I notice, Lyddie, that a broken heart doesn’t impair the appetite.”
“Good-bye, Grandpapa,” said Lydia austerely. It vexed her that the old
man, with whom she had always had so good an understanding, should
treat her now, as he did everyone else, with mockery.
No doubt he had not forgiven her for going to London.
She was escorted to the station by Uncle George and Shamrock.
“Do you find things pan out all right, as regards the root of all
evil?” Uncle George suddenly made inquiry, after they had whistled and
called for a long time, in a vain endeavour to dissuade Shamrock from
chasing a strange cat.
“Oh!” said Lydia, surprised. “Yes, really I do. Of course I haven’t
saved quite as much as I hoped I should, but now I know my way about
rather better I hope it’ll be easier.”
“Ah, I daresay,” said Uncle George absently.
“I should like to be able to refund you and Aunt Beryl some of all the
money I’ve cost you.”
“Why? What nonsense! Here, Shamrock--come out of that, sir. No, no,
child--don’t feel yourself under any obligation to us. Look here,
Lydia, that infernal dog will make us miss the train--how goes the
enemy?”
“Quarter of an hour more.”
“Then we shall do it easy. Tell me,” said Uncle George, with an
abruptness that argued a strong desire to give a fresh trend to the
conversation, “what do you suppose the road’s up, just here, for--and
on a holiday, too?”
“Repairs, I suppose,” said Lydia easily, well aware that whatever she
supposed Uncle George had every intention of enlightening her still
more completely.
“Road repairs? No, no. Now there’s a hydrant just on the other side of
the street----”
Uncle George talked on in the old Mr. Barlow strain, and Lydia listened
attentively enough to put in a few intelligent questions.
When they reached the station they had lost Shamrock altogether, but
the train was not yet in.
“Not very crowded,” said Uncle George, scanning the platform. “Quite
right not to go by the last train, Lydia.”
He bought her ticket, ignoring the little purse she hastily tendered,
and when he had finally put her into a third-class carriage, well in
the middle of the train because that was the safest place in the event
of an accident, Uncle George leant in through the open window and
pushed a gold piece into his niece’s palm.
“You can settle any little outstanding Sweet William with that, in case
you’ve been buying fal-lals,” he whispered, and drew back hastily just
as the train began to move.
They _were_ kind!
Lydia felt quite ashamed, because she was distinctly conscious of
relief at going back into the broader, bigger life that she felt sure
London held for her.
She had no reluctance even in returning to the shop. The break had not
been long enough to make her appreciate the luxury of idleness, and she
was, besides, genuinely interested in her work and anxious for her own
advancement. She knew that the Principal liked her and approved of her
steady-going enthusiasm, and she was now easily first in popularity
with the other girls. Something of her affair with the Greek had
penetrated to the show-room at Elena’s, and she found herself more or
less exalted into the position of a wronged heroine.
Lydia did not make the mistake of taxing the tentative sympathy offered
her by a recital of her story. She remained subtly aloof, grateful for
the kindness shown her and indefinably plaintive.
The girls discussed her among themselves, and Lydia, not without
satisfaction, knew it.
At the boarding-house she met with a more outspoken championship.
The Bulteels invited her to the theatre one night, “to cheer her
up,” and foolish, little, pink-eyed Mrs. Clarence, on the evening
of Lydia’s return, nearly set the house on fire in an endeavour to
have the little oil-stove in Number Seventeen all ready lit for her
reception.
Miss Nettleship kissed Lydia when she welcomed her back again, and gave
her a copy of _Bibby’s Annual_, saying affectionately: “I thought you’d
like a book better than anything, dear--you quite understand, don’t
you?”
But the most astounding consolation of all was proffered to Lydia by
Miss Forster, a week after her return.
“I’ve been talking about you this afternoon,” she suddenly informed
Lydia in a very arch tone one evening.
“I hope you didn’t say anything very bad?”
“Quite the reverse, my dear girl, I can assure you. Haven’t your ears
been burning?”
Both Miss Forster’s hands flew to her rather large ears, hung with
dangling blue drops.
“I was telling Lady Honoret about you, and your writing and all. So
much interested she was, and she suggested that I should take you to
see her in Lexham Gardens one day when they’re back from the country.
They’ve just gone down to their place in Surrey for a week or two, you
know. But you’d like to come and see her in Lexham Gardens one day,
wouldn’t you?”
Miss Forster spoke so triumphantly that the words hardly had the form
of a question at all, but sounded more like a blatantly triumphant
announcement of some glorious certainty. Indeed, the moment was in the
nature of an apotheosis.
To see Miss Forster’s cherished and distinguished friend, Lady Honoret,
whom all the boarders had so frequently heard quoted, and that at her
own invitation, was sufficient to constitute an epoch.
Lydia felt it to be so. Who knew what such an introduction might lead
to?
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I should like to come with you very
much. It’s very kind of Lady Honoret.”
“Oh, she’s such a very kind-hearted creature. And then you know she’s
tremendously interested in anyone who writes--of course, she’s literary
herself, as you know.”
An imaginary pen flew with rapidity across space.
“I told her about your stories--not that you’ve let me see any of them,
naughty girl--and what a plain little thing you are.”
Miss Forster laughed so heartily that no one could possibly remain
in doubt as to her flattering intention in employing an adjective so
obviously unsuited to her newly-adopted protégée.
The first effect of the prospect thus opened to her was to give fresh
impetus to Lydia’s literary activities.
If one were presented to Lady Honoret as a struggling young writer,
it would be necessary to give some proof of one’s gifts. Besides,
Lydia really felt the impulse to write strong within her, and she was
anxious to justify the ambition of which so many people, thanks to
Margoliouth’s indiscretion, now knew.
She began to write a novel.
Her old experience with the Children’s Competition came back to her,
and she had the wit to confine herself to those subjects only of which
she had personal knowledge. After all, it was very easy.
The heroine developed into a slightly idealized Lydia, and the
culminating episode of the very slender little story was her sudden
disillusionment at the hands of a coarsened and exaggerated Margoliouth.
The event was just the one that had really happened, looked at
from another and more tender point of view, and a certain gift for
simplicity of expression, together with a sense of proportion that
saved the tiny tragedy from any quality of absurdity, gave the effect
of a curiously genuine pathos.
Lydia wrote every evening in her room, and found it astonishingly easy.
She was afraid that the book would not be long enough, but did not know
how to estimate its length. There were twenty chapters altogether, but
she thought that they were rather short.
She laid the scene at Wimbledon, certain aspects of which she
remembered perfectly well, and introduced a humorous family that
faintly caricatured the Swaine establishment.
Having no acquaintance with anything masculine that seemed to her a
suitable type for a hero of fiction, Lydia wisely eliminated this _beau
rôle_ from the scene altogether, and the story ended on a piteous
little note of loneliness and bewilderment. She finished it in two
months, re-read it and made hardly any alterations at all, and then
sent the original manuscript to Nathalie Palmer, who owned and used a
typewriter.
“Oh, Lydia!” wrote back Nathalie, just as enthusiastic as though she
and Lydia had only parted the day before, “your story is lovely. I
cried over the end of it--I couldn’t help it. You _are_ clever! Of
course I’ll type it; really, I look upon it as an honour, and I’m
sure any publisher would be only too thankful to have such a book
sent to him. All the people are so real, and you’ve written it all so
beautifully....”
Nathalie’s hyperbole went on for nearly three pages, and Lydia, though
she smiled a little, could not help feeling pleased. If Lady Honoret
was really interested in literary attempts, as Miss Forster had said,
then she should see the typescript, and perhaps be of real assistance
in getting it placed in the hands of a good publisher.
Meanwhile influenza detained Lady Honoret in the country, as Lydia
learnt from the loud lamentations of Miss Forster, and it was nearly
the middle of April before the great occasion actually materialized.
“Lady Honoret has asked me to take you to tea at Lexham Gardens on
Saturday next,” Miss Forster announced. “She quite understands about
Saturday being your only afternoon, and there’s to be no party--perhaps
just a quiet game of Bridge, but she won’t expect you to play.”
This was as well, Lydia reflected, not without humour. She had learnt
to play whist under the careful tuition of Uncle George, but the modern
game was quite unknown to her, and she had vague recollections of
having read in some of Aunt Evelyn’s fashion papers terrible warnings
to girls, to the effect that it was possible for guileless beginners to
lose two or three hundred pounds at a single game.
The instinct that always forbade her to acknowledge unnecessarily any
ignorance or inability in herself, however, kept her silent on the
subject of Bridge, and she only smiled intelligently her appreciation
of Lady Honoret’s thoughtfulness.
“Wear your cerise, dear, with that navy blue costume, won’t you?”
counselled Miss Forster solicitously.
The deep-red silk blouse was Lydia’s own favourite, and three days
before she was to go to Lexham Gardens she paid a visit to the
millinery room at Elena’s.
The two pale and exclusive young ladies there were always delighted to
see her.
“I wanted to look at the new models, if you’ll let me,” Lydia confided
to them. “You see I want to make a rather special hat for myself for a
tea-party I’m going to, and I thought I might get some ideas here.”
They were effusively sympathetic.
“Of course, dear--what about this _tricorne_? It’s absolutely new in,
and that Lady St. Ogg who was in this morning--you know, dear, the
Countess--she as nearly as possible bought it for Lady Moira Pring.
They got that flame-coloured toque in the end, but they were awfully
taken with this one--said black velours was always so distinguished.
It’ll be gone to-morrow, I’m certain.”
“It’s lovely,” said Lydia, “and I know it would suit me--I love that
shape.”
“Slip it on, dear,” said the senior assistant. “There’ll be no one in
here just now, and, anyway, we should hear the bell. Ivy here can keep
an eye on the entrance.”
Lydia carefully put on the little black velvet hat--a plain
three-cornered shape, with a tiny edging of gold braid gathered into a
small gold cockade laid against the severe line above the left profile.
“Oh, it’s heavenly!” she breathed, sincerely ecstatic. “But I couldn’t
ever copy anything like that--I should have to get a shape.”
The millinery young ladies exchanged glances.
“Look here, dear, I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it for you. Oh, it’ll
take no time at all--you’ll just want to get the velvet, and the braid,
and some wire. Only don’t you ever let on to a soul--or wear the hat
when old Peroxide is within a hundred miles. It’ll be all right in a
month or two--that shape will be as common as dirt--but she’d spot it
in a second if you came out with it now.”
Lydia, enraptured, felt herself repaid over and over again for the
studied courtesy which she had always been so careful to employ towards
the two millinery girls.
They disclaimed her thanks, and promised that the hat should be
forthcoming on Saturday morning.
“And mark my words, dear--it’ll pay you over and over again, if you’ve
got the cash to get really _good_ velours. You know, the real stuff,
not cheap imitation that spots the first time you put it on.”
Lydia took the advice, and though the materials cost her more money
than she had meant to spend, the hat on Saturday morning was almost
indistinguishable from the model.
Lydia felt that its beauty would obscure the plainness of her dark coat
and skirt and distract attention from her complete absence of jewellery.
Like most girls of the class to which she belonged, Lydia concentrated
rather upon her dress than upon accessories which she regarded as minor
ones. Consequently, although her black stockings were of vegetable
silk, her buckled shoes were down at heel, and showed cracks across
their patent-leather tips, and her dark gloves were very much worn at
the finger ends, and no longer looked clean, although she had only worn
them on Sundays, she experienced a slight feeling of mortification at
the sight of Miss Forster’s very tight white-kid gloves, and elaborate
fur muff and stole; but, after all, the day was much too mild for furs,
and Lydia felt certain that Miss Forster had only put them on because
they were becoming.
Miss Forster looked very sharply indeed at Lydia’s hat, but she said
nothing about it, and somehow this unusual reticence seemed to imply an
almost unwilling amount of astonished admiration.
Lydia felt subtly flattered.
“Now there’s nothing to be nervous of,” Miss Forster said kindly, as
the omnibus jolted them along the Cromwell Road. “Lady H. is every bit
as simple as you or me, and she’s so keen to see you. I told her all
about your writing, and one of her great specialties is to discover new
talent, you know. She’s always on the look-out for it.”
They got out at the corner of Lexham Gardens at last, and Miss Forster
hurried along with short, quick steps.
“Have you ever been in one of these big Kensington houses before?
Lovely, they are, and so roomy. Lady Honoret always says she feels
right _out_ of town here--but Sir Rupert likes it.”
Lydia was inclined to agree with Sir Rupert.
The flight of stone steps in front of the house led up to a door that
was painted a bright, glaring blue; there was a brass knocker shaped
like a lion’s head, and yellow flowers blazed from the window boxes on
the first and second floors.
A manservant opened the door, and they were ushered into the
drawing-room, which was on the left of the entrance-hall.
“Miss Forster!”
She had only given her own name, rather to Lydia’s vexation.
The hostess, who rustled forward in an elaborate tea-gown, upset
Lydia’s preconceived ideas of the literary Lady Honoret altogether.
She was small and slight, with a fuzz of curly dark hair arranged in
a heavy fringe on her forehead; her nose was wide and _retroussé_,
and her small white teeth rather prominent. Her neck was slung with a
pearl necklace, and with various chains from which dangled two or three
lockets and charms, and she wore a number of glittering rings on her
small, gesticulating white hands.
When she greeted Miss Forster, Lydia was rather surprised that they did
not kiss one another, but only shook hands.
“And is this the little writer?” Lady Honoret exclaimed, in a high
voice that held some indefinable suggestion of a lisp. “I’m so ve’y
glad to see you, and we must have a long, long talk about your work.
Perhaps I can be of use to you--I write myself.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” said Lydia boldly.
Lady Honoret smiled and nodded, as though taking it for granted that
of course everyone knew she wrote, and introduced to Lydia an elderly
gentleman in a grey frock-coat, with whom Miss Forster had already
vigorously shaken hands.
Lydia observed that he withdrew his fingers from that hearty clasp
with an expression that almost amounted to a wince, and that he only
acknowledged her own presence by a bow so deep that it revealed the
baldness on the top of his dark head. She inclined to think, however,
that he was only middle-aged, in spite of the baldness, and of a
certain width of outline at the waist of his beautiful coat.
“Mr. Cassela.”
“You must be careful what you say to Mr. Cassela,” Lady Honoret said,
laughing.
“Dear lady!” Mr. Cassela protested in a voice quite as high as, and a
good deal more affected than, that of his hostess.
“Miss Raymond writes. I’m not sure that you’re not the first publisher
to have the honour of her acquaintance. Ah, tea! and I behold toast!
Don’t you _adore_ buttered toast?”
“I adore it indeed,” said the publisher gravely; “but nothing--nothing,
to my mind, can equal the love of my childhood--the wonderful Sally
Lunn. Ah, dear lady, you are too young to look back with that passion
of voluptuous regret that one bestows upon the vanished gastronomic
delights of infancy! I have the most rapturous recollections of a Sally
Lunn making its periodic appearance upon the nursery tea-table of my
youth--and yet I fear--I terribly fear--that a Sally Lunn to-day would
leave me cold--quite cold.”
“May you never meet one,” breathed Lady Honoret. “It might be too,
too sad and disillusioning. You must live on the beautiful memory of
the past. I once had a passion for green bull’s-eyes. I remember it
perfectly.”
“But surely--surely,” said the publisher anxiously, “that can
still live--crystallized and matured, as it were, into the most
transcendental expression of which the bull’s-eye is capable--_crème de
menthe_.”
He raised his white, rather puffy hands as he spoke, in a gesture of
almost sacramental solemnity.
“I adore _crème de menthe_, for its lovely, lovely eme’ald colour,”
said Lady Honoret. “Green is a sacred colour--and quite my favourite in
the world.”
“The sacred colour of vernal youth,” replied the publisher. “Now a
deep rich purple is to _me_ the sacred colour--that purple that holds
all passion in the heart of it. The child, of course”--he suddenly
waved a hand at Lydia--“the palest blush rose--or even pure white? Yes,
I think it can still claim white--the white of a white violet, _bien
entendu_--not the heavy, sensual white of the magnolia.”
“And you?”
He abruptly turned to Miss Forster.
“My colour? Oh, blue--blue--blue. Certainly, blue.”
It was as though, by her breezy repetitions, Miss Forster strove to
disguise her lack of the picturesque hyperbole of which the other two
were making use in their strange conversation.
Lydia listened to them with complete bewilderment, and a gradual,
invading sensation of contempt. Talk like this was _silly_, and they
seemed to be as much in earnest as though the fate of an empire were
being discussed.
“Blue is _so_ mystical,” Lady Honoret observed. “I’m told that I’m a
mystic. And yet it’s a ve’y, ve’y ext’aordinary thing, I never wear
blue. It seems to me so cold. I shrink from it, in some ext’aordinary
way. It devitalizes me. I suppose I have a dual personality.”
“Never, never tamper with vitality,” begged Mr. Cassela. “Vitality is
my religion--my only creed.”
He turned towards Lydia.
“You, who are young and wonderful,” he said matter-of-factly, “I do
pray and trust that you are an ardent disciple of vitality? It is what
we need so terribly just now.”
Never before had Lydia conceived of a conversation wherein
personalities of the kind just addressed to her should be admitted.
But these people were not mad, although Aunt Beryl would undoubtedly
have thought them so, and even although Miss Forster wore an air of
being brightly determined not to think them so.
They were, on the contrary, people who counted for something in a world
that was totally unknown to Lydia, and towards which she aspired.
Miss Forster was gazing at her rather anxiously, as though doubtful
whether she would be able to answer Mr. Cassela suitably, and a sudden
impish inspiration seized upon Lydia.
“I _adore_ vitality,” she said, as nearly as possible in Lady Honoret’s
own manner.
She was astonished at herself when she had said it, but Mr. Cassela
appeared merely to be deeply gratified.
“Then I have indeed found another kindred spirit, dear lady!” said he.
And he added calmly to Lady Honoret: “Is this your discovery? But how
young! how exquisitely, adorably young!”
Lydia could hardly believe that he was referring to her, and was
relieved when her hostess, for once disregarding the element of
personality in the conversation, answered in a vague manner:
“Discoveries are so wonderful, aren’t they? You know it was I who
_really_ discovered that marvellous, marvellous c’eature, the plumber
who published a book of verses last year--the author of the ‘Lyrics
addressed to the Inanimate’?”
“Ah, yes, yes! I congratulate you indeed. But let me tell you a secret,
dear lady. I have a discovery of my own--a novel that will appear this
autumn--a colossal production! And by whom do you think?”
Lydia thought that Lady Honoret looked annoyed, but she nevertheless
gazed inquiringly at Mr. Cassela.
“By a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl!” he hissed.
There was a death-like silence.
Lydia wanted to laugh, partly from the sheer sense of anti-climax, and
partly from nervousness.
“The vitality, the grip, the passion, that child has put into her work!
It’s incredible--it defies description. Wait--wait and see the storm
that book will raise. I’m going to advertise it everywhere--_with_ the
girl’s portrait. A wild-looking creature, with an underhung jaw and
sunken eyes--there’s Red Indian blood in her. And I found her behind a
bar in Liverpool--in _Liverpool_!”
His voice rose with horror.
“The author of ‘Lyrics to the Inanimate’ was starving when I met him,”
returned Lady Honoret sombrely--“starving in a London gutter.”
“Quite romantic,” Miss Forster suddenly and loudly declared, as though
she felt that she had been left out of the conversation long enough.
Lydia heard the interruption with a shock at its inappositeness, so
thoroughly had she already assimilated the atmosphere of her new
surroundings. She felt positively relieved when the door opened at the
same moment, and other visitors were announced.
This time Lydia was not made known to any of them, and she watched
with curiosity Lady Honoret dropping the intensity of her manner and
resuming the light, tinkling cordiality with which she herself had been
greeted.
Miss Forster also appeared to be relieved, and began to talk eagerly
about such topics as a sale taking place at one of the big shops in
Kensington High Street, and the prospect of warm weather at last.
Lydia finished the cold dregs of tea in her cup--which her hostess had
not offered to replenish--and reflected that any of Aunt Beryl’s or
Aunt Evelyn’s friends would have considered it very poor hospitality to
allow a guest to remain sitting so long before an empty plate. She had
not summoned enough courage to help herself from the nearest dish of
thin bread-and-butter before there was a general movement, and she saw
that a card-table had been prepared.
The two ladies whom Lydia did not know were already arranging
themselves above the little baize-covered tables, their jewelled
fingers and hooked noses hovering over the packs of cards.
“Miss Forster--Mr. Cassela? _Do_ smoke--there are ciga’ettes on the
table....”
“But aren’t you playing, dear Lady Honoret?” Miss Forster said
solicitously, at the same time fingering her silver-net purse eagerly.
“Not this time,” said the hostess, and laid her hand with an engaging
smile on Lydia’s arm. “I’m going to have a lovely, heart-to-heart talk
with my new discove’y.”