Lady Honoret’s new discovery had sufficient shrewdness to find
out for herself in a very little while the origin of that lady’s
rapidly-acquired enthusiasm.
Mr. Cassela’s talk of the fifteen-year-old novelist who was to astonish
the reading public that autumn, in the sequel glaringly illuminated the
aspect of her own immediate success with Lady Honoret for Lydia.
It was evidently essential that a counter-discovery should mitigate the
publisher’s complacency, and sustain Lady Honoret’s reputation as a
_connaisseuse_ in the literary world.
Even although the explanation did not flatter Lydia’s vanity, it did
not prevent her from appraising very justly and acutely the full value
to herself of the little Jewess’s patronage. She did not regret,
in spite of Lady Honoret’s lamentations, that she had not taken
the manuscript of her novel to Lexham Gardens that first Saturday
afternoon, since she received an immediate invitation to bring it with
her one afternoon the following week.
“But I only have Saturday afternoons free,” Lydia said serenely. “I
work as accountant in a West End place of business all the week.”
She could not have imagined beforehand that she would ever make such an
announcement during the course of an afternoon call upon Lady Honoret,
but the mention of starving plumbers and Liverpool bar-maids had
convinced her that such candour would prove merely an additional asset
in her favour.
She was not in the least surprised when Lady Honoret said reverently:
“In a shop! Oh, how wonderful! And you find you can write? But I
needn’t ask. It _must_ find exp’ession somehow, mustn’t it--and one
so often has to rise above uncongenial surroundings--unsympathetic
atmosphere.... I myself ... Sir Rupert, you know--cares _nothing_ for
literature, or indeed any of the artistic side of life, and so ... and
so I play B’idge,” said Lady Honoret, her mouth and eyebrows assuming
angles expressive of pathos, and her small hands making a fluttering
gesture of vague resignation, that embraced alike the Bridge table and
the drawing-room crowded with expensive furniture.
It was a little difficult to explain to Miss Forster that Lady Honoret
had actually invited Lydia by herself to lunch on Sunday week, when she
was to bring the typescript of her book; but Lydia did it with all the
tact that she was able to command on their way home.
“I _wish_ you were coming too,” she said, not altogether truthfully.
“I shall feel nervous without you, and of course you know them both so
well.”
“Oh, very well indeed,” said Miss Forster with emphasis. “In fact,
it’s what I may call an intimate friendship--I am in and out almost
as though it were my own home. Sir Rupert--you don’t know him, of
course--and I are tremendous pals--he always says: Now run in and out
quite freely, at any hour.”
As Miss Forster illustrated Sir Rupert’s hospitable dictum with
half-a-dozen hasty little steps, indicative of one running in and
out quite freely, Lydia allowed her to join the omnibus that was to
take them up Cromwell Road, and herself followed sedately, so that
the interior, always favoured by Miss Forster’s large feathered hats,
was filled when she came up, and she was obliged to exchange nods and
waves with Miss Forster from the footboard and go outside, whence the
conversation could naturally not be resumed.
During the week she brought Miss Forster a bunch of violets, and took
pains not to appear as though she were avoiding her.
But when Sunday came, Lydia, decked in the three-cornered velvet hat,
stole discreetly down the stairs and out of the front door at a moment
when she knew that Miss Forster was in her own room.
She had no wish to make a parade of her success, and thereby risk
exciting Miss Forster’s vexation or jealousy. Nothing was more
inconvenient than such an enmity, as Lydia had long ago told herself,
thinking of the “sides” taken at school by Miss Glover’s girls, or the
quarrels between Gina Ryott and Marguerite Saxon at the shop, that had
led to so many minor disputes and discussions.
She carried her novel in a brown-paper parcel.
Lady Honoret had assured Lydia that she would be quite, quite alone,
and although at the moment Lydia had felt slightly disappointed by the
announcement, it now saved her from nervousness.
“Miss Raymond!”
She had never heard her own entry into a room so announced before, and
the novelty of the experience was occupying her mind as she came round
the screen that guarded the drawing-room door.
With a complete shock, she discovered that quite a number of people
were assembled there, dressed in such clothes as she had hitherto only
associated with a few of Madame Elena’s most cherished clients.
Lady Honoret herself looked thoroughly unfamiliar as she came towards
Lydia in a large, flowery picture-hat and fluffy feather boa,
manipulating a long-handled double eye-glass, which she had certainly
not used during Lydia’s former visit. The unfortunate Lydia even
surmised, from a certain vagueness of greeting, that her hostess had
completely forgotten her identity.
“You told me to come--to bring my writing,” she stammered courageously
enough. “I hope it’s the right day.”
“Oh,” said Lady Honoret, on a high, lisping note of pleased surprise,
“it’s my wonderful little seamstress, who writes! Of course! I’m so
glad you’ve come, dear--of course I hadn’t forgotten you.”
Little seamstress who writes!
Was this the description that Lady Honoret had by this time probably
persuaded herself and her friends to be applicable to her “wonderful
new discove’y”?
Lydia tried to make herself think that the term, by Lady Honoret’s
peculiar standard of values, denoted a compliment. Nevertheless, she
was inwardly both angry and mortified.
The long, elaborate luncheon was an ordeal that reminded her of that
puzzling meal taken long ago at the hotel with Nathalie Palmer and her
father. It was almost a relief, even while it humiliated her, that
neither of her neighbours should address more than a few perfunctory
words to her.
For the most part the conversation was general, several people all
talking at once across the table--which Lydia had always been taught
was Bad Manners--and most of the ladies interlarding their discourse
with French words, or even whole sentences in French.
It annoyed Lydia afresh that she could not understand these, but
indeed almost everything they said was to her a veritable jargon of
incomprehensibility. She only gathered that they were all very clever
and artistic, and had read all the books, and seen all the plays, and
heard all the music, in the world, and formed critical and discerning
opinions about everything.
As for Grandpapa’s Golden Rule--always to let the other people talk
about themselves--nothing could be more evident than its total lack of
prevalence in these cultured circles.
“You see, Wagner’s message to _me_ is almost a personal one....”
“I must say, in my own case, the effect that he has on me is....”
“That’s exactly what I felt myself. I must tell you how it strikes
me....”
Whenever any lady with a stronger voice or greater powers of
determination than the others contrived to monopolize the conversation
for a few minutes with personal reminiscences of her own, whatever she
said was quite certain to remind each of her listeners of something
very interesting about herself, about which she immediately began to
tell anyone whom she could compel to keep silent.
The party consisted entirely of women.
Lydia felt thoroughly out of place and wished that she had never come.
Her only consolation was in watching another girl, younger than herself
and even more unfashionably dressed, who sat silent at the other side
of the table, and looked as though she felt strongly inclined to burst
into tears.
Lydia wondered whether this was another “wonderful discovery.”
When lunch was at last over and they had gone into the drawing-room,
which, to Lydia’s horror, they filled with the smoke of their
cigarettes, and two of the most eloquent ladies had snatched up
their gloves and purses and fur wraps, and declared that they must
_fly_ for the Albert Hall, and had accordingly flown, Lydia saw her
unhappy-looking _vis-à-vis_ approached by Lady Honoret.
“It seems a great shame to ask you to sing now, but if you _could_
manage it--I do want some of these friends of mine to hear you....”
“Oh, certainly, Lady Honoret,” said the girl, turning first red and
then white.
It struck Lydia that she was much too frightened to refuse.
“_I_ think it’s a nightingale,” lisped the hostess, turning to her
other guests; and dropping her voice very slightly she added, for the
benefit of those nearest to her:
“Straight, straight from the heart of Stepney. Artifis’al flowers, I
believe.”
“And did you find her, you wonderful thing?” inquired a guest with a
deep, ardent voice.
Lady Honoret nodded her head several times, pursing up her mouth, after
the fashion of a little girl.
Suddenly she struck her ringed hands together in a gesture of dismay.
“Accompaniments! Oh, Tottie, dear, _will_ you?”
“I will,” sacramentally replied “Tottie,” who was tall and
gaunt-looking.
“Then you must all come upstairs. It’s not nearly such a good room for
sound as this is, but my p’ecious, p’ecious Bechstein is there.”
They all flocked out of the room and up to the first floor, where Lydia
was amazed to see an even larger and more elaborately furnished room
than the one downstairs, which she had supposed to be the drawing-room.
A heavy blue drapery worked in gold and scarlet with scaly dragons was
reverently taken from the top of a grand piano and put on the back of a
sofa, where several ladies stood transfixed with admiration in front of
it, and “Tottie” took off all her rings and bracelet and a watch, and
sat down upon the music-stool and got up again and altered its height,
and struck three chords upon the piano, and then demanded of the pallid
and bewildered-looking songstress:
“Where is your music?”
“I haven’t got any music.”
“But what about the accompaniment?”
“I always sing without anything at all,” said the girl, whiter than
ever.
“Without a piano?”
“Oh, yes,” said the inhabitant of Stepney.
“Tottie” once more rose from the piano-stool, and resumed possession of
her jewellery.
“Then we must all come downstairs,” said Lady Honoret cheerfully. “It’s
_so_ much better for sound downstairs.”
Lydia was astonished that nobody seemed to be angry with the poor,
foolish girl who had given them all this trouble for nothing, but they
all trooped downstairs again, talking as complacently as ever.
When at last they were all seated and silent, the girl, standing at
the end of the room with her arms hanging straight down against her
sides, began to sing in a high, clear voice a song which Lydia had
never heard before and which seemed to her to have no tune whatever.
She very soon stopped listening to it.
Instead, she began to think of the singer’s evident terror of her
surroundings and lack of presence of mind.
Why had she been foolish enough to let them all come up to the room
where the piano was, just now, when she must have known all the time
that no piano would be necessary? Lydia supposed that it was from sheer
fright.
And the girl had sat with a scared, white face all through lunch, and
had hardly answered the very few words occasionally addressed to her.
Lydia did not feel much pity for her fellow-victim. She was merely
engaged in criticizing her very evident short-comings, and in firmly
resolving to avoid them herself.
When the girl had ceased to sing, she caught up her jacket with a
nervous movement and declared that she must go, without waiting for any
words of thanks or praise for her song. She almost scuttled out of the
room, making a sort of agitated bow from the doorway that comprised
everyone in the room.
What a fool, thought Lydia impatiently.
The sight gave her a sudden, new self-confidence. After all, learning
through the mistakes of other people was an easy form of education.
When Lady Honoret came and sat down beside her, Lydia looked up with a
new self-possession.
“One can’t, can’t talk in a c’owd,” said the hostess plaintively, “but
you must come some day when I’m quite alone. _Have_ you brought your
work?”
For an instant Lydia hesitated, giving the word its feminine connection
with a needle and thimble, but she rightly concluded that Lady Honoret
was referring to the typescript hidden in brown paper.
Lydia had been endeavouring to conceal the parcel all through the
afternoon, not having had sufficient presence of mind to leave it with
her umbrella in the hall. It was therefore with positive relief that
she handed it to Lady Honoret.
“Oh, don’t look at it now!”
But her hostess was recklessly tearing at the good brown paper--“what
waste of a wrapping for some future parcel” involuntarily murmured the
spirit of Uncle George within Lydia--and in another moment she had
pulled out Nathalie’s neat typescript.
“I think I’ll go now,” said Lydia. For the first time she felt a
certain sympathy for the girl with the voice, who had rushed away after
her song was over.
She stood up nervously. The eyes of Lady Honoret were glued on the
pages which she was rapidly fluttering and turning, and she did not get
up, although she pressed two of Lydia’s fingers with an absent sort of
gesture.
“Come again--ve’y, ve’y soon, dear child. We must talk about this,” she
murmured.
Lydia released her hand and looked round the room. The remaining
visitors were engaged in conversation, or in scanning the pictures and
miniatures on the walls.
Lydia, very upright and with her head held high, turned round and
walked out of the room. Her umbrella was miraculously put into her hand
by the manservant in the hall; the door was opened and shut again
behind her, and she stood on the pavement of Lexham Gardens and drew a
deep breath.
“My goodness gracious!” said Lydia to herself, in the tense,
straightforward phraseology of Regency Terrace. “My goodness gracious!
What a house, and what manners they all had!”
This was the only unvarnished expression of her opinion that Lydia
permitted herself.
She gave Miss Forster a careful and rather manufactured account of the
luncheon-party; she mentioned to the other girls at Elena’s that she
had been introduced recently to a Lady Honoret who had twice invited
her to her own house, and she wrote and told Aunt Beryl that Miss
Forster’s friend, Lady Honoret, had been very kind to her, and was
going to read something she had written and tell her if anything could
be done with it. Lady Honoret wrote herself, and was the friend of
publishers.
Inwardly, Lydia was not without fears that her volatile patroness might
forget all about her, and nothing more ever be heard of the novel and
its possibilities, but in less than a week she received a summons to
Lexham Gardens.
This time she said nothing at all to Miss Forster, but took the
Cromwell Road omnibus, when her work was over for the day.
She regretted very much that she was not wearing the three-cornered
hat, but only her every-day straw.
Lady Honoret, however, greeted her with outstretched hands and an
enthusiasm that quite overlooked any such minor considerations. To her
real astonishment, Lydia learnt that her novel was a tiny, tiny gem, a
wonderful discove’y, and the truest and purest return to the heart of
Nature that Lady Honoret had read for years and years and years.
“Oh, the little _b’oken_ heart!” breathed Lady Honoret piously, as she
hung over the final pages of the typescript.
Of course, it was to go to a publisher--it would make a boom at
once--it was so utterly new and young.
“But not Cassela,” said Lady Honoret thoughtfully. “I think _not_
Cassela. He goes in so tremendously for _strong_ things, and your
idyll is such a wee, wee tender little sto’y. Besides, he’s got his
discove’y--this Red Indian girl, or whatever she calls herself. This is
to be all mine!”
Lady Honoret laughed in a gleeful, childish sort of way, and Lydia
reflected coldly and ungratefully that a desire to outdo Mr. Cassela in
the field of discoveries was probably at the bottom of her hostess’s
extreme enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, she felt very much excited, and she thanked Lady Honoret
warmly and eagerly before she went away.
Was her book really so very good, she wondered? She felt a suspicion
that work produced so very easily was unlikely to have any great
intrinsic merit.
With considerable self-control, she said nothing whatever to anyone
of the hopes that she now entertained, and which occasionally rose to
immense and unreasonable heights, of an immediate accession to fame and
fortune.
Every day she looked eagerly and nervously for further news from Lexham
Gardens.
When it came at last she was astounded.
Her book was accepted--it was to be published as soon as possible--the
publisher thought well of it--she was to receive a draft agreement for
her immediate consideration....
This time Lydia cast discretion to the winds. She was wildly excited,
and she told everybody that she had written a novel, and that it was
going to be published at once.
“Do you mean printed, dear?” said Miss Nettleship, in an awed manner.
“Well, I never! The boarders _will_ be anxious to read it--they’ll all
think to see themselves.”
This was no less than the truth.
Mrs. Clarence showed the extreme of apprehension, lest she should
discover herself in the central figure of Lydia’s novel, and seemed to
credit the authoress with a supernatural power of insight enabling her
to visualize her victim’s past, present, and future alike.
“You writing people are so penetrating,” she said anxiously to Lydia,
“and there are certain passages in my life--oh, years before I ever
came here--when I never thought I should live in a residential hotel,
in fact, but had my own house and servants--but there have been
incidents which I’ve always thought exactly like a novel. Only I
couldn’t bear to see my own character dissected in cold print.”
Even Mrs. Bulteel, laughing rather nervously, said that she supposed
writers were always on the look-out for copy, and they would all be
afraid to open their lips in front of Miss Raymond now.
Mr. Bulteel congratulated her solemnly.
“I am afraid that I very seldom read novels myself, but we shall make a
point of obtaining your book from the library. I have often been urged
to write myself--some of my experiences in foreign countries would
certainly make interesting reading--but, I’ve always said, a writer
has to have imagination. Don’t you find that imagination is absolutely
necessary to you?”
Lydia admitted that this was so.
“I believe,” Mr. Bulteel pursued his reflective way, “I believe that
I could express myself in sufficiently correct English. But I lack
imagination. I am a practical man, I fear.”
His fear, Lydia could not help noticing, was tinged with something that
much resembled complacency.
“Perhaps, one day,” said good Mr. Bulteel, smiling, “one day, you and I
might collaborate over a book.”
After that the book that Lydia and Mr. Bulteel were to write
in collaboration became one of the mild, standard jokes of the
boarding-house.
The congratulations which pleased Lydia least were those which she
received from Miss Forster, who seemed inclined to look upon herself as
the presiding genius of the situation.
“And to think it’s all come from my having told my friend Lady Honoret
all about you, that time when you were so down in the mouth last
Christmas!” she cried exultantly. “Why, it was her taking you up that
did the whole thing, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’m delighted to have been
able to do something really helpful like that for you, my dear!”
Lydia thanked Miss Forster, but without any great display of exuberance.
She did not expect any compliments from old Miss Lillicrap, nor did she
receive any, but the girls at Madame Elena’s were more enthusiastic.
“I hope it ends sadly,” said Marguerite Saxon, hanging her head on
one side. “I often like to weep a little weep over a story with a sad
ending. I know it’s foolish to take a tale so much to heart, but I’m
made that way. I get awfully absorbed in what I read. You know, when
I put the book down it’s as though I’d said good-bye to real friends.
That’s the way I feel, very often, about the people in the tales I
read.”
Gina Ryott’s congratulations began better, but they, also, tailed
off into personal reminiscences of her own. Lydia noticed it with
impatience, but without any surprise.
“I can’t imagine how you afford the time to write, I must say. I’ve
always thought you must be clever, Lydia. You know, the way one can
tell sometimes, without any rhyme or reason--oh, so-and-so seems to be
_clever_. That’s what I’ve often thought about you. A gentleman friend
of mine always says I’m a judge of character, and somehow I think I
must be. It’s just a sort of knack, somehow. One sort of sizes people
up right, the minute one sets eyes on them. I always know in a second
what I think of anybody.”
Lydia, after these two, heard with something like relief the practical
comments of Miss Rosie Graham.
“Good for you! I hope they’re going to pay you.”
“I’m getting a royalty,” Lydia explained. “That means so much on each
copy sold. I daresay it won’t be very much, especially as they say it’s
a very short book, and is only going to cost three-and-six instead of
six shillings. But my friend, who arranged it all for me, says it’s a
very good agreement indeed for a first book.”
“My-friend-who-arranged-it-all” was Lady Honoret. Thus did Lydia now
freely describe that patroness of struggling art. Nor did she do so
unjustified by Lady Honoret’s further advances. Miss Forster might be
invited to Bridge parties during the week, but it was Lydia who was
urged to come eve’y, eve’y Sunday and spend the afternoon, and meet
all the dear people who had heard about her, and would be _longing_ to
read her book. It was Lydia who was introduced to all and sundry of the
frequenters of the Lexham Gardens house as the very latest and youngest
novelist, and after a little while she altogether ceased to resent the
label of “actually serves in a shop, my dear!” which alternated with
“little seamstress, in quite a tiny way,” that formed the aside to the
introductions.
It all seemed to add to her prestige with these extraordinary people.
She assimilated the new atmosphere with astonishing ease, and, being
unhampered by shyness, soon acquired absolute ease in her surroundings.
Insensibly she became less interested in her work at Madame Elena’s,
and although the habit of concentration still prevailed, she was
conscious of relief now, when each working day came to an end.
She ceased to cultivate the little cashier, Rosie Graham, since her
advances never led to any permanent success, and, moreover, she could
not altogether forget Rosie’s strictures on the evening they had had
supper together. Madame Elena went to Paris without leaving Lydia in
charge, as she had half said she would do, and on her return seemed
inclined to fall back into the old way of favouring Gina Ryott.
Early in the summer Marguerite Saxon’s roseleaf face developed a series
of spots that rapidly became sores, and Madame Elena remarked them, in
spite of layers of thick white powder, and told Marguerite that she
need not return until they were cured.
The wretched model sobbed and cried, asserting that she had used bottle
upon bottle of “stuff,” some of which _must_ soon take effect, but as
the sore places spread daily, and two clients asked what was the matter
with that girl’s face, she received her dismissal, and the show-room at
Elena’s knew her no more.
“She was bound to end by ruining her skin with all that paint and
stuff,” said the other girls.
Lydia was not greatly interested. She examined her own clear olive
complexion in the glass, and decided that the very moderate use of a
small powder puff was not likely to have results that would bring upon
her the disastrous fate of Marguerite Saxon, and thereupon dismissed
the whole incident from her thoughts.
Full of tremulous excitement, she corrected the proofs of her novel,
and waited for its appearance.