E. M. Delafield

“ 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. ”

“ Almond, the Jacksons, Miss Glover herself, had all thought her very brave and high-spirited to go away to London by herself, and had made no doubt that her courage and capabilities alike would carry her on to triumph.
She remembered also that Nathalie Palmer had written to her, in reply to her own long letter announcing her plan. She drew the envelope from her pocket, and read Nathalie’s warm-hearted inquiries once more, feeling all the comfort of being so regarded by her friend.
“Lydia, I do think you’re splendid,” wrote Nathalie from Devonshire. ”

“ With that acute clarity of vision that enabled her to analyze certain aspects of her childhood’s world with such astonishing maturity, she once told herself:
“They don’t love me for myself at all. Grandpapa doesn’t love me the least bit—he doesn’t love anybody. And mother loves me because I’m her child, and the aunts love me because I’m father’s child, and they think I’m a comfort to mother.”
She could hardly remember her father, and though at first she had shed tears over his death, Lydia had quickly dried them. ”

“ And it’s nicer, too, for a young girl like Lydia—you know what I mean,” said Aunt Beryl mysteriously.
“But a boarding-house is expensive. I never thought of anything like that, auntie. Why, I should cost you more than I would if I lived at home, a great deal,” said Lydia, aghast.
“Oh, I could easily make an arrangement with Maria Nettleship. And you want the chance, Lydia, my dear. I’m sure I don’t blame you. It’s not a good thing to stay in one place all one’s life long, I suppose.” Aunt Beryl gave a sigh. ”

“ I remember now,” said Lydia, inwardly congratulating herself on the excellence of her memory.
“I feel certain that you and I are going to be pals,” Miss Forster exclaimed breezily. “Between ourselves, there’s nobody I’ve taken to very violently here. I really thought it was more of a residential hotel than a boarding-house, or I shouldn’t have come. One really can’t entertain one’s friends here, with such awful servants, and that terrible old Miss Lillicrap always about the place. She has a heart, you know, so one can’t say much.” ”

“ The echo of Grandpapa’s wisdom came back to her, as it so often did: “Always let the other people talk about themselves.” And once more it was justified.
Whilst her companion talked, Lydia congratulated herself upon the success of her manœuvre in waiting for Gina, and at the same time impressing upon Madame Elena, ever alert for signs of enthusiasm in the staff, her eager devotion to her work. There was not another employee in the shop who would voluntarily have remained on after hours, apparently from utter absorption in the task on hand. ”

“ What an inhuman kid you are!”
Lydia felt almost more bewildered than offended.
“Isn’t there anybody you care for beside yourself?” said Rosie Graham slowly. “I’ve been watching you ever since you came to us. Of course you’re very clever, and a cut above the rest of us—I know all that—and you’re awfully sweet and nice to everybody, and never say cattish things about anyone—but what’s it all for? You don’t care a damn for anybody that I can see. And then you talk about this chap who’s going with you—this Margoliouth—and whether he wants you to be engaged or not. ”

“ Most of the Swaines bestrode bicycles, upon which they balanced themselves whilst almost stationary with astonishing skill, and presently, amid many screams, a female Swaine took Olive and a picnic basket on the step of her machine, and departed with them in the direction of the Common. Bob and three junior Swaine brethren, also on bicycles, laid arms across one another’s shoulders, and thus, taking up the whole width of the road, boldly invaded the tram lines, and Beatrice, with her contemporary Swaine and Lydia, started out on foot at a swinging pace. ”

“ Decidedly Aunt Beryl was the heroine of the hour.
Lydia was ashamed of herself for the resentment that this turning of the tables awoke in her.
She went to her own room, unescorted, when the commotion had subsided, and her supper was brought up to her by Gertrude nearly an hour late.
“How is Aunt Beryl now?” she asked.
“Gone to sleep, miss. She is wore out, after sitting up at night, and then the nursing during the day, and seeing to the house and the old gentleman, all just the same as usual—and no wonder.”
No wonder, indeed! Everyone said the same. ”

“ Lydia could not help thinking that “they” had some excuse in supposing Grandpapa to be blind and deaf to his protégé’s iniquities, but she put out her hand and patted the dog’s rough head.
“Would you look after Shamrock, Lyddie?”
“Yes, Grandpapa, I am very fond of him.”
“Why?” said Grandpapa sharply.
“Because he amuses me,” answered Lydia truthfully.
“Ah ha! we all find it amusing to see other people being made fools of!” was Grandpapa’s charitable sentiment. “Well, you shall have him one of these days, Lyddie. I hope you’ll have a good home to give him. ”

“ Now don’t say can’t again,” said Grandpapa sharply.
The unfortunate Lydia looked helplessly at her tyrant.
“There’s no such thing as can’t,” said Grandpapa truculently. “Just you take hold of that and don’t you ever forget it. Never place any reliance on a person who says can’t. Let ’em say they won’t—or they don’t want to—that may be true. The other isn’t. Anybody can do anything, if they only make up their minds to it.” ”

“ But Lydia did not see Grandpapa for some time after that morning.
She lay in bed with a fire in the room, sometimes suffering a great deal of pain, and sometimes in a sort of strange, jumbled dream, when the pattern of the wall paper turned into mysterious columns of figures that would never add up, and French Irregular Verbs danced across the ceiling.
Aunt Beryl nursed her all day and sat up with her at nights very often, and Dr. Young came to see her every day. ”

“ They looked at each other in silence, and Miss Nettleship said at last:
“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Clarence—I knew you’d quite understand—you mustn’t let us disturb you——”
She covered Lydia’s retreat and her own with her usual harassed, good-natured apologies.
“Mrs. Bulteel, and Miss Forster and Mr. Hector are much more lively people than poor Mrs. Clarence,” she told Lydia in a consolatory tone, on the way upstairs. ”

“ It came quite down before Beatrice had finished pommelling her brother, and Uncle Robert had waked, and said that it was too bad that a man who’d been working hard all the week couldn’t read the paper in peace and quiet for five minutes in his own house without being disturbed by all this horse-play.
Lydia watched her cousins, despised them very thoroughly indeed, and was more gratified than humiliated when Olive remarked:
“It’s easy to see you’ve never been one of a large family, Lydia. You don’t seem to understand what rotting means.” ”

“ She ventured into the drawing-room after the hot and heavy meal, but found that Sunday afternoon was by common consent given up to repose.
Miss Lillicrap and Miss Forster both went to their rooms, little Mrs. Clarence, sunk into an arm-chair with a library novel, fell asleep at once, and snored faintly from time to time; Mrs. Bulteel disposed herself elegantly upon the drawing-room sofa, and said to Lydia:
“I hope you don’t mind me having my toes up like this?”
“Oh, no, indeed.”
“I’m not very strong. My husband and my son go for a walk on Sunday afternoons, but I’m not very strong.” ”

“ She wondered whether Aunt Beryl had told Miss Nettleship all about her school triumphs, and the post that they had obtained for her. The thought of Aunt Beryl almost made her jump. Regency Terrace seemed such a very long way off already! She could hardly believe that she had been with them all—Grandpapa and Uncle George and Aunt Beryl, and Shamrock—at breakfast-time that very morning.
After she had taken off her hat and scrutinized herself carefully in the looking-glass, Lydia wrote to Aunt Beryl a postcard, to tell her of her safe arrival and of Miss Nettleship’s kindness. ”

“ There was only one crossing, but Shamrock always contrived to negotiate it as badly as possible under an advancing tram, thus causing the driver to shout angrily at Lydia. He would simulate sudden, delighted recognitions of invalid old ladies in bath-chairs, and hurl himself upon them with extravagant demonstrations, until the bath-chair men, to most of whom he was only too well known, would seize him by the scruff of the neck and hurl him away. ”

“ I’ve no head for figures, and never had,” said Madame Elena, with perfect complacency.
She dismissed Lydia at five o’clock, although the working day was not over until six.
“But I know well enough what a first day’s work is,” she remarked shrewdly. “You’ve a splitting head, and don’t know a one from a two by this time. Trot along, and if I were you, I’d walk home. The air will do you good. You can start properly to-morrow. It’s a slack time of year, anyhow.” ”

“ One Wednesday evening, to Lydia’s infinite surprise, silent, dried-up little Mr. Monteagle Almond suddenly broached the subject. He chose his opportunity with evident care. Grandpapa, who still elected to maintain his pose of rapidly-approaching dissolution, had waited until the first game of chess was in full swing, and then demanded plaintively if his son was too busy amusing himself to give the poor old man an arm upstairs. ”

“ It was quite time, Lydia considered, that she should learn something about men.
Grandpapa was old and didn’t count—apart from the fact that, as Lydia shrewdly surmised, he was quite unlike any other man, and could never be looked upon as the representative of a type. Uncle George and Uncle Robert didn’t count, either—uncles never did. Bob Senthoven Lydia dismissed with a shrug. She had not seen him since her visit to Wimbledon nearly three years ago, when he had made no favourable impression upon the young candidate for examination honours. ”

“ Monteagle Almond always treated her like a grown person, and alluded respectfully to the rarity of finding a mathematical mind in a woman.
As to Aunt Beryl, in spite of the way in which she had lately usurped Lydia’s recent rôle of invalid and acknowledged centre of general interest, Lydia knew very well that her own achievements and capabilities formed the chief theme of Aunt Beryl’s every discourse with her friends. At school she was not only liked by her companions, but looked upon as the intellectual pride of the establishment. ”

“ Lydia did not altogether wonder at it, when she saw the basement, occupied by kitchen, pantry, and scullery, a gas-jet permanently burning in the two latter divisions—and the only outlook of the former, rising area steps, iron railings with cracked paint, and the feet of the passers-by on the pavement.
The kitchen stairs, which led to the narrow hall, were stone, very steep, and perfectly dark.
“However they do, with the trays and all, is more than I can guess. Not that I don’t carry them myself, often enough—but my heart’s in my mouth the whole time. And girls are so careless, too! ”

“ Uncle George liked one to be intelligent and very attentive to everything he said. Lydia had often asked him questions, the answers to which left her profoundly indifferent, merely for the sake of pleasing him. Her unconsciously cynical acknowledgment to herself of her own motives at least saved her from the charge of insincerity. ”

“ It is more common than is generally allowed, for an intelligent child, still in bondage to her natural instinct, reinforced by the tradition of allegiance to natural authorities, to couple that allegiance with a perfectly distinct antipathy to the personality of either or both parents. Lydia’s dislike of her mother’s sentimentality, her constant vacillation of purpose, and her incessant garrulity, was only unchildlike in her calm analysis of it, and in the conscious restraint that she put upon it.
Mrs. Raymond had often said, sometimes in Lydia’s hearing, that she would welcome death. ”

“ Lydia found it curiously disagreeable to see the focus of general interest thus shifted. Unconsciously, she had occupied the centre place in the little group in Regency Terrace ever since her arrival there, as the [49] twelve-year-old orphan, in her pathetic black frock. Without consciously posing, she had certainly, as the eager student at Miss Glover’s bringing back prizes and commendations, been the most striking personality of that small world, and she had known that her elders discussed her cleverness, her steady industry, even her increasing prettiness, as topics of paramount interest. ”

“ The day following Lydia’s arrival in London was a Sunday and gave her further opportunity for studying her fellow-inmates.
She remained in her own room, however, most of the morning, until the maid Irene burst in upon her, a victim to that peculiar breathlessness so frequently characteristic of lodging- or boarding-house servants.
“There’s a young lady wants to see you in the drawing-room,” she panted. ”

“ 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. ”