The return to London seemed like a return to another life.
Even the weather changed suddenly.
No more waking to the sound of the hens clucking below the open window,
to the sight of nodding ivy-leaves, and to the cheerful anticipation of
such novelties as a school entertainment in the village, or an all-day
cricket match, with luncheon provided for both teams at Quintmere, as
well as the usual Saturday afternoon tea at the pavilion.
Fogs began very early, and seemed to pervade the boarding-house,
together with the perpetual smell of cabbages cooking in the
basement. Omnibuses lurched and rumbled through the wet streets, and
the “Elephant and Castle,” that took Lydia daily to the corner of
Lexham Gardens, seemed always full of shiny mackintoshes and dripping
umbrellas.
There was a change in the atmosphere of the household there that Lydia
could not altogether define.
For one thing, Sir Rupert’s taciturnity seemed to have given place
to a spasmodic, unpleasant sort of garrulity, when he would ask his
secretary abrupt and apparently disconnected questions, that certainly
did not concern her work for him.
“You been in here all day, Miss Raymond?”
“Yes. It was too wet to take my little walk after lunch, I thought.”
“Do they bring your lunch properly in here?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“You didn’t go to the dining-room to-day, then?”
“No, Sir Rupert.”
A pause, while Sir Rupert gave his habitual, choked-sounding snort, as
though in a useless attempt to modify the ugly nasal intonation with
which he always spoke.
“I suppose her Ladyship wasn’t in for lunch, was she?”
He always spoke of his wife as “her Ladyship,” and Lydia inwardly
resented it.
“I don’t know.”
“She doesn’t tell you her plans, eh?”
“I haven’t seen Lady Honoret for the last day or two.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have. She’s more often out than in, by all
accounts,” said Sir Rupert, with a disagreeable, meaningless laugh.
Another day, when he asked Lydia the same question, she was able to
reply that Lady Honoret had invited her to luncheon in the dining-room.
“There were some people here, weren’t there?”
“Only one or two. There was an old lady whose name I didn’t hear, and
Mrs. Cohen and Mr. Cassela.”
“H’m. And I suppose they stayed on all the afternoon?”
“I don’t know,” said Lydia. “I came back here at half-past two.”
Sir Rupert gave her a very sharp look, almost as though he were
wondering whether or not she was speaking the truth, and Lydia felt
vexed and uncomfortable, unable to imagine any reason for these
interrogations.
Still more disconcerting did she find it when Sir Rupert took to
making sudden appearances in the course of the day, always at hours
when he had hitherto been in the City.
“Is her Ladyship in?”
“I don’t know, Sir Rupert.”
“Just ring the bell, will you?”
And Sir Rupert would sharply question the footman:
“What time did her Ladyship go out?”
“I couldn’t say, Sir Rupert. I’ll inquire, Sir Rupert.”
The footman was always obliged to disappear, in order to collect the
information that her Ladyship had gone off in a hansom-cab at half-past
two o’clock.
“Didn’t she order the carriage?”
“I believe not, Sir Rupert.”
“Why not? What do I keep a couple of fine horses for, eating their
heads off, and fellows in livery and all? Anything wrong with the
horses, eh?”
“Not as I’m aware of, Sir Rupert.”
“Send her Ladyship’s maid to me. No--don’t--that’ll do. You can go.”
“Very good, Sir Rupert.”
Then the little Jewish financier turned to Lydia, pretending to be
absorbed at her writing-table in the corner.
“Why don’t her Ladyship use the carriage, instead of a low, dirty cab?”
“I don’t know at all. Perhaps Lady Honoret went out in a hurry.”
Sir Rupert snorted again.
Perhaps, after all, old Mr. Palmer’s warnings had not been without
reason. Lydia began to feel that she did not much like the atmosphere
of the Lexham Gardens house nowadays.
Her relations with Lady Honoret were changed, too. The excitement that
the publication of her book had momentarily caused in these literary
circles was now apparently forgotten, and although Lydia resolutely
told herself that she had expected nothing less, she could not help
noticing that instead of being introduced to visitors as the new
discove’y, she was now either left unpresented, or referred to as “my
husband’s secreta’y, who does sums so ve’y, ve’y marvellously. Poor
little _me_ can never add two and two together, you know....”
Sometimes Lady Honoret brought a request to Lydia that she would
juggle various items of expenditure on dress or jewellery into an
appearance of charitable generosity, but this she only did in her
own drawing-room. She never, so far as Lydia was aware, entered Sir
Rupert’s study, whether he were there or not.
Clement Damerel did not come to Lexham Gardens for some time
after Lydia’s return there, and when at last he did so, it was by
appointment, and Sir Rupert was waiting for him. Lydia was not at all
sure what the etiquette of her position demanded, but Mr. Damerel
appeared to have no such doubts.
He shook hands with her, although flushing a little, and told Sir
Rupert that Miss Raymond had spent her holiday with his next-door
neighbours in Devonshire.
Sir Rupert expressed no interest in the coincidence, and the two men
began at once to discuss business.
Sir Rupert, however, did not seem quite so much interested in East End
crèches and orphan asylums as he had been in the summer.
Very often the instructions that he gave Lydia were self-contradictory,
as though he hardly knew altogether what he was saying.
It came as a relief to Lydia when one day he told her that an old
friend of his was coming to stay.
“A man I knew abroad,” said Sir Rupert gruffly. “Quite a rough diamond,
you understand, and I don’t want him to bother her Ladyship. He’ll make
this room his headquarters.”
“I’m afraid I may be in his way?” ventured Lydia.
“No. He’s got plenty of writing to do. Over here on business.”
Lydia pictured a Colonial, but Sir Rupert’s friend proved to be a very
quiet, unmistakably English, middle-aged man, who talked a good deal
about big-game shooting in Africa, and was more prolix of reminiscences
than was his host.
Sir Rupert, indeed, rather shocked Lydia by his absence of cordiality
towards his old friend. He did not interrupt his daily excursions
to the City on Mr. Codd’s account, and, in fact, appeared rather to
discontinue his recently acquired habit of making unexpectedly early
returns.
Mr. Codd was left to entertain himself all the morning, which he very
often did by reading the newspapers in the study, or making entries in
a black memorandum book that he kept in his pocket.
“As an old traveller, I may be writing my reminiscences one of these
days,” he jokingly observed to Lydia. “I’ve always kept up the habit
of noting my impressions as I go along. You’ll find that a very useful
thing to do, Miss Raymond, as you write yourself.”
Lydia felt gratified.
“How do you know that I write?” she asked rather shyly.
“I’ve not yet had the pleasure of reading your novel, but Lady Honoret
has told me all about it, and the success it enjoys.”
So Lady Honoret, at least, did take a little trouble to entertain the
neglected guest!
Lydia felt quite relieved. Mr. Codd was very nice, and had quite good
manners, but she had somehow imagined that he did not see very much of
his hostess.
Certainly he must lunch in her company, but Lydia had a vague idea that
he generally went out by himself in the afternoons. And she was obliged
to admit, with a certain inward appreciation for her own discernment,
that Mr. Codd, evidently a practical, matter-of-fact man, whose chief
idea was sport, and whose life had been passed largely in the wilds,
could hardly have very much in common with cultivated, expensive little
Lady Honoret and her artistic circle of friends.
From these considerations it was easy to pass to a friendly feeling,
almost amounting to a sense of responsibility, for Mr. Codd’s
unoccupied morning hours.
Lydia was not very busy, and Mr. Codd was always ready to talk. For
all his quietness of manner, he was a gregarious soul. Lydia had
once entered the study, after a protracted absence, and found him in
friendly intercourse with William, the footman.
Quite evidently, Mr. Codd was lonely.
Lydia asked him one or two questions about his travels and he gave her
some very interesting information, in a manner that somehow reminded
her a little of Uncle George, and then, in return as it were for her
interest in his concerns, Mr. Codd asked Lydia about her own work.
Had she been long with his old friend Sir Rupert?
Lydia explained that she had not.
Mr. Codd said that Sir Rupert might be a little taciturn, perhaps,
but that was only manner--a heart of gold. In fact, a rough diamond,
Mr. Codd called him, oddly selecting the very expression by which Sir
Rupert had described _him_, before his arrival.
“Our little friend, Lady Honoret, now,” said Mr. Codd, smiling, “is
quite different--most warm-hearted and enthusiastic.”
Lydia assented, explaining that to Lady Honoret’s kindness she really
owed her present position, and the success of her novel.
“Just like her!” Mr. Codd declared enthusiastically. “But still; we
mustn’t forget that it gives her real pleasure to discover genuine new
talent, and, besides, no doubt you’ve done many little things to help
her--perhaps almost as a daughter might have done?”
Lydia could not help liking the expression, although she knew that it
overstated the case. Almost as a daughter! Where were Miss Forster’s
pretensions now?
“Oh, I’ve not had the chance of doing much,” she said modestly, “though
of course I’d like to.”
But she added, lest Mr. Codd should suppose her inability to be of use
to Lady Honoret greater than it really was:
“Of course, I’ve always been very fond of figures, and I can do
accounts easily. Sometimes I’ve helped Lady Honoret that way.”
“Very rare to find a young lady who is really good at accounts,” said
Mr. Codd respectfully, almost as Mr. Monteagle Almond might have
spoken. “Quite a faculty apart. I suppose you’ve mastered accountancy
pretty thoroughly?”
Lydia told him, while he listened with great interest and attention,
of her experience at Madame Elena’s shop.
“Ah, yes! Of course, after that Lady Honoret’s straightforward little
accounts must seem to you like child’s play!”
Lydia laughed a little, secretly amused at the singularly inappropriate
adjective that he had selected for describing Lady Honoret’s system of
dealing with her expenditure, but she did not say anything.
Mr. Codd twirled his grey moustache, and declared that it was a
shame to waste her time by talking, but if he might say so, it was a
surprising relief to find a young lady who had other ideas in her head
than dressing up, or going to the play.
Lydia remembered Margoliouth, but, after all, she thought that she had
changed a great deal since those days. In fact, she must have done so,
since she could attract men like Mr. Clement Damerel, and even Mr. Codd
himself.
The liking that he evinced for her conversation was so unmistakable
that Lydia began to allow herself to place possible interpretations
upon it.
She was not attracted by Mr. Codd as she was by Clement Damerel, the
only man who had yet touched her imagination in any romantic sense.
But Mr. Codd--some instinct that she could not doubt assured her of
it--belonged, for all his polished manners, and his old friendship
with Sir Rupert and his extensive travels, to the classification
roughly described by Lydia as her own “sort,” although he might be, and
probably was, a rich man. Clement Damerel, the young London parson,
and certainly not rich at all, was different. He might be attracted
by Lydia, but an indefinable gulf separated the worlds to which they
respectively belonged.
It was entirely characteristic of Lydia’s eminently practical
outlook upon life that she should attach an importance to Mr.
Codd’s mild attentions which she had absolutely denied to her own
perfectly-recognized inclination towards the good-looking, diffident
young clergyman.
Mr. Codd’s visit continued for a whole fortnight, and appeared likely
to extend even beyond it. He explained to Lydia that he had no
relations in England now, and but few friends, and so Sir Rupert had
kindly bidden him make the house at Lexham Gardens his headquarters.
Perhaps it was because he wished his old friend to feel himself at home
that Sir Rupert took so little pains to entertain him, Lydia reflected,
but she did not feel that such a consideration would in any way account
for the extreme brusqueness of the Jewish financier’s manner from time
to time.
“Stop that damned foolery!” Lydia overheard him growl, when Mr. Codd
had made an innocent and friendly allusion to some adventure shared in
the past upon the West Coast of Africa.
Mr. Codd remained smiling and unperturbed, but he said to Lydia soon
afterwards that he was afraid the City was a strenuous place, and told
upon the nerves of many.
“Our poor friend, now--I daresay you notice a little irritability.
Of course, meaningless--he merely lets himself go with those who are
quite certain not to misunderstand him--but there’s a certain _tension_
about him that I don’t quite like. It looks to me very much like
over-strained nerves--probably from overwork. I don’t like it,” said
Mr. Codd emphatically.
Lydia did not like it either.
Sir Rupert’s nerves, Lady Honoret’s flightiness, even Mr. Codd’s bland,
observant presence, all combined to create an atmosphere of which Lydia
became, more and more, uneasily conscious.
She was oddly reminded of the uncomfortable weight hanging in the air,
the general sense of electricity, experienced on the sea-shore at home
just before the breaking of a heavy thunderstorm.
“_Shamrock can smell the thunder about._”
Grandpapa had been wont to claim such prescience for his favourite.
Regardless of the inelegance of the simile, Lydia felt inwardly as
though she, too, could smell the thunder about.
In a phrase much affected by Aunt Evelyn, she realized that “things
were getting on her nerves.”
She had less work to do for Sir Rupert than ever before. If he chanced
to return early he generally said to her:
“You can leave all that, Miss Raymond. I’ll look at the letters--just
let me have the room for half an hour or so.”
This was Sir Rupert’s fashion of intimating that Lydia should leave the
study. He himself remained there, fiercely picking at his teeth and
emitting that harsh, downward snort.
Mr. Codd remained also, and once, as she left the room, Lydia heard him
say very soothingly:
“Well, a few days more will see the end of it. We’ve got pretty nearly
all we want.”
That was the very day, Lydia remembered afterwards, that emerging
into the hall, she met Lady Honoret, coming in all alone from some
expedition that had left her with a white face and glittering eyes
behind the thick veil she was wearing.
“Oh, you startled me!” she said shrilly, at the sudden sight of Lydia.
“Is Sir Rupert there?”
“He’s just come in. He’s in the study with Mr. Codd.”
“I don’t know what he wants with that awful man,” said Lady Honoret
pettishly. “He’s never had anyone to stay before--though I’m only too,
too thankful for anything that’ll put him in a good humour. But does
this Codd c’eature mean to stay here for ever?”
With the recollection clearly in her mind of the words that she had
just overheard, to which she had definitely attached the implication
that Mr. Codd’s visit was drawing to a term, Lydia nevertheless obeyed
some obscure instinct entirely unintelligible to herself, and only
answered:
“I don’t know.”
Afterwards she could not understand why she had done so, and the
discomfort, unusual to her, of finding complexities in her own conduct
to which she held no clue, added to Lydia’s unease.
It was less than two days later that enlightenment came to her.
She arrived at Lexham Gardens as usual, to have the front door opened
for her with an instantaneous alacrity that was in itself a hint of
deviation from the normal.
Not only William, but two maids were in the hall, hovering about the
foot of the stairs with white, excited-looking faces.
Lydia wanted to ask, “What is the matter?” but disliked the idea of
questioning the gaping servants, and prepared to go silently upstairs
to the study on the first floor.
“Better not go up just yet, miss, if I were you,” said William, the
footman.
“Why not?” Lydia asked quickly.
“There’s her Ladyship in the study with Sir Rupert,” hesitated the man.
“Of course I’m going in,” said Lydia quietly. Her heart was beating
violently with some apprehension that she could not define, but not for
worlds would she have taken place amongst the hovering, whispering crew
of waiting domestics.
As she reached the first landing the door of the study flew open, and
Lady Honoret came out.
Her little dark face was distorted by violent weeping and by an emotion
which Lydia, with an abrupt, physical pang, recognized as sheer terror.
She put out her hand involuntarily as Lady Honoret dashed past her, and
then turned back with a stifled, hunted exclamation at the sight of the
servants below.
“Milady!” gasped a frightened voice from above, and Lydia looked up and
saw Lady Honoret’s own maid, a smart, ugly little Frenchwoman, halfway
down the second flight of stairs.
Lady Honoret stumbled upstairs with a sort of rush, and the woman led
her away.
Almost simultaneously Sir Rupert’s voice shouted from inside the study:
“_Shut_ that door, will you?” and Lydia, finding herself shaking all
over, and not knowing what else to do, went into the study and shut the
door behind her.
Sir Rupert and Mr. Codd stood side by side on the hearth-rug, the
little Jew with a face like parchment and hands tearing nervously at a
silk handkerchief, and Mr. Codd suave and imperturbable.
At the sight of Lydia, however, he came forward and pulled a chair
towards her.
“Sit down,” he said benevolently. “You saw...? It’s been a shock, of
course.”
“But what _is_ it?” Lydia wailed, feeling bewildered.
“_What is it?_” sneered Sir Rupert. “I suppose you haven’t been in
my lady’s counsels all the time, helping her to deceive me with her
accounts, and what-all, have you?”
The room reeled round Lydia, and she heard as from an immense distance
the remonstrating voice of Mr. Codd:
“Sir Rupert! I have already assured you----”
Could all this be about the accounts, and the money Lady Honoret had
spent? Lydia asked herself wildly.
“Be quiet, you fellow!” Sir Rupert was bellowing at Mr. Codd. “You’ve
done _your_ part. I don’t want to hear any more from you.”
“I make allowances, Sir Rupert,” said Mr. Codd with dignity, “for the
shock you have sustained. But really--your manner to this young lady,
to say nothing of myself----”
Sir Rupert drew a shaking hand across his face.
He said nothing, but his habitual, sudden snort seemed designed to
express a return to calm.
Mr. Codd turned to Lydia.
“Sir Rupert will hardly require you to-day. This has come as a complete
blow to you, I see.”
“But what _is_ it?” Lydia asked again.
Mr. Codd glanced at the financier, as though the words served to
corroborate some statement of his own.
“Miss Raymond, have you had no idea of what has been going on in this
house?” Sir Rupert demanded suddenly.
“I don’t understand,” Lydia said blankly.
“Do you know why Mr. Codd is here?”
“You asked him to stay.”
“Asked him to stay! What do you suppose I asked him for?”
Mr. Codd interposed again.
“I assure you, Sir Rupert, that no one in this house has had the
faintest idea of the purpose for which I have been here--yourself
excepted. Secrecy was essential to our scheme, and this young lady was
completely duped. It would be strange indeed,” said Mr. Codd, with a
slight, superior laugh, “if a private inquiry agent of my experience
were to betray himself like a mere tyro.”
A private inquiry agent....
Lydia had seen in the papers the advertisements of firms offering to
supply the services of such....
Mr. Codd, Sir Rupert’s old friend, who had hunted big game with him
in West Africa, a private inquiry agent---- But, of course, the West
African reminiscences were only part of a necessary pose--he wasn’t a
friend at all, but a paid spy. Then who...?
Wave after wave of sick enlightenment broke over Lydia.
“Has Lady Honoret----” she began, hardly knowing what she said.
“You scarcely understand, even yet,” said Mr. Codd compassionately,
and yet with an underlying streak of satisfaction in his voice, as
though at the entire success of his disguise. “It’s like this, Miss
Raymond. Sir Rupert here had to find out--to put the matter in a
nutshell--whether he had adequate grounds on which to file a petition
for a divorce. He very wisely put the matter into the hands of a most
eminent firm, which I have the honour to represent.”
Lydia, like many another girl of her age and standing, seldom read
a newspaper. She had been taught that “divorce” was a shocking
word, not mentioned among decent people. The occasional gossip at
the boarding-house, arising from paragraphs in so-called “society
papers,” constituted the nearest view that she had ever had of the ugly
phenomenon.
Shaking all over, she burst into tears that were an actual physical
relief.
“Do you mean to tell me that you had no idea at all of her ladyship’s
little games?” said Sir Rupert, almost threateningly. “I thought you
were as thick as thieves.”
“No!” cried Lydia, wildly repudiating she knew not what.
“You’ve seen that dam’ fellow Cassela hanging about?”
Lydia nodded her head, barely understanding the implication.
“I told you so, Sir Rupert,” Mr. Codd said. “I was certain that Miss
Raymond could know nothing. But we shall have plenty of witnesses
without her.”
The word “witnesses,” associated in a vague, muddled way in Lydia’s
mind with the barely-apprehended horrors of the police court, filled
her with panic.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she gasped, and rose to her feet.
“Let me go.”
“Not so fast,” said Sir Rupert with sudden, renewed suspicion. “How am
I to know that you aren’t concealing valuable evidence? I tell you,
I’m going to see this thing through if I have to drag the lot of you
through the Courts to do it.”
Mr. Codd shook his head, and put a fearless hand on the Jew’s trembling
shoulder.
“Now, now, Sir Rupert. This is most natural, but you’re frightening the
young lady. When the proper time comes, she will conceal nothing that
is necessary for the pursuit of justice--but I assure you that last
night’s testimony will--will do the trick, in vulgar parlance. We have
more than enough evidence to institute proceedings at once, as I have
told you already.”
Lydia wrenched at the door handle and found herself, she scarcely knew
how, out of the room, with its echo of horrible words.
Shaking from head to foot, she went downstairs.
What had happened was no longer incomprehensible to her, but her
ignorance inspired her with terrible fears as to the results to herself
of the cataclysm.
Could they put her into a witness-box--perhaps try her for having
falsified Lady Honoret’s accounts?
The innate provincialism in Lydia rose up and turned her almost sick
with the thought of a publicity that must shame her so unutterably in
the eyes of her relations--Aunt Beryl, the Senthovens, Uncle George,
Mr. Monteagle Almond--all of them. Their names rushed to her mind in a
chaotic bewilderment of horror.
With a new, sudden pang in the midst of so much that stabbed, Lydia
remembered old Mr. Palmer, and his kindly, hesitating inquiries as to
the “tone” of the household where Lydia had chosen to work.
After all, then, he had known best!
It seemed to her shaken perceptions almost a natural continuation of
the thought that she should hear a voice speaking to her in the hall,
connected with all the infinitely distant and regretted peace of her
Devonshire visit.
“Something has happened--can I do anything?”
She saw Clement Damerel, and realized with distraught, passionate
gratitude that the solicitude in his kind, anxious face was for herself.
Crying and sobbing in an abandonment such as she had never known, even
in the days of her already self-controlled childhood, Lydia pushed him
into the empty drawing-room, out of the way of the prying servants.
“It’s frightful--frightful!” she sobbed. “There’s been a detective and
I never knew, and Sir Rupert is going to divorce Lady Honoret, and he
thinks I know about it and can be a witness. Don’t let me--take me
away--help me, _somehow_!”
“Oh, you poor child!” said Clement Damerel, and he put Lydia into an
arm-chair, and knelt down on one knee beside her.