Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  At first she was allowed to take Grandpapa’s dog, Shamrock, with her, although with many misgivings on the part of Aunt Beryl. Shamrock was reputedly a Sealyham terrier, and Grandpapa was inordinately attached to him. He roared with laughter when Uncle George said angrily that the dog made a fool of him by flattening himself under the front wheel of the bicycle which daily conveyed Uncle George to his office; and when Shamrock made all Regency Terrace hideous with howls, on the few occasions that Uncle George kicked him out of the way, Grandpapa’s deafness immediately assailed him in its most pronounced form, and he assured his daughter that he could hear nothing at all, and that it was all her fancy.

  “Good little dog, Shamrock,” said Grandpapa approvingly, when Shamrock prostrated himself in an attitude of maudlin affection before the old man’s armchair, as he invariably did, to the disgust of the house-, hold.

  He also showed himself scrupulously obedient to Grandpapa’s lightest word, although unfortunate Aunt Beryl might still be hoarse from prolonged cries at the hall-door in a vain endeavour to defend the bare legs of hapless little passing children, whom Shamrock took a delight in terrifying, although he never hurt them.

  Lydia liked Shamrock because he always pranced along so gaily, and wagged his tail so effusively, and also because she suspected him of more than sharing her dislike of the parrot.

  But their walks together were not a success. 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 bathchair men, to most of whom he was only too well known, would seize him by the scruff of the neck and hurl him away.

  Finally, as he never entered the house when Lydia did, but invariably contrived to give her the slip and extended the excursion by himself, Aunt Beryl no longer allowed her to take him out. Lydia was sorry, but she made no lamentations. If one lived with people, it was always better to conform to their wishes, she had long ago discovered. Her innate philosophy waxed with the disproportionate rapidity sometimes seen in children who are dependent on other than their natural surroundings, for a home.

  Crudely put, she conformed to each environment in which she found herself, but — and in this, Lydia, without knowing it, was exceptional — she never lost a particle of her own strong individuality. She merely waited, quite unconsciously, for an opportunity when it might expediently be set free.

  With Aunt Beryl she was a docile, rather silent little girl. Aunt Beryl gave her lessons every morning from “Little Arthur,” And set her arithmetic problems of which Lydia knew very well that she did not herself know the workings, and to which she merely looked up the answers in a key, and also made her practise scales upon the piano in the drawing-room.

  “It will make your fingers nice and supple, even if one or two of the keys won’t sound,” said Aunt Beryl.

  “I’ll write a note to the piano tuner next week.”

  But she never did.

  Lydia thought gloomily that she was learning even less now than in the old days in London, when her mother had, at least, taught her scraps of French, and given her innumerable books to read. Aunt Beryl Declared that Lydia could go on with French by herself, and a French grammar was bought.

  “I’ll hear you say your verbs,” said Aunt Beryl, brassed, “but I’ve forgotten my accent long ago.”

  As for books, there were none in the Regency Terrace house. When Aunt Beryl wanted to read, she had recourse to Weldon’s Fashion Journal, or to an occasional Home Chat. Grandpapa had the daily paper read to him, but her aunt once told Lydia that “Grandpapa used to be a great reader, but he can’t see now without glasses, and he won’t use them. So he never reads.”

  Uncle George, indeed, often brought home a book from the Public Library in the evenings, but he did not offer to lend them to Lydia, neither did such titles attract her as “Goodman’s Applied Mechanics,” or somebody else’s “Theory of Heat, Light, and Sound.”

  Aunt Beryl, however, was kind, and when Lydia had once said that she liked reading, she promised her a story-book for Christmas. It was then October.

  Meanwhile she taught her needlework, and Lydia learnt to make her own blouses, and to knit woollen underwear for a necessitous class vaguely designated by Aunt Beryl as “the pore.”

  Sewing was the only thing that Aunt Beryl taught Lydia in such a way as to make it interesting. She had no lessons after dinner, which was in the middle of the day. Sometimes in the afternoon she walked slowly on the Esplanade with Aunt Beryl beside Grandpapa’s chair, but more often, as the weather grew colder, she and Aunt Beryl went out alone, and then they walked briskly into what Aunt Beryl called “the town.” The part where Regency Terrace stood was the “residential quarter.”

  “The town” mainly consisted of King Street and one of those tributary streets where the shops were.

  Lydia rather liked the shopping expeditions with Aunt Beryl, and felt important when the grocer’s boy or the ironmonger’s young lady took an order, and said, “Yes, Miss Raymond. Good afternoon, Miss Raymond,” without asking for any address.

  Sometimes when Aunt Beryl’s list was a long one, and the darkness of approaching winter fell early, she took Lydia in to have tea at a small establishment known to King Street as the “Dorothy Cayfe,” And the shopping was resumed afterwards, in the cheerful light of the prevalent gas. This happened seldom, however, as Aunt Beryl liked to be at home, in order to give Grandpapa his tea — which was not wonderful, since whenever she failed to do so her parent never omitted to make caustic allusion to the “long outing that she must have been enjoying in the good fresh air.”

  When Aunt Beryl had duly been present at the rite of tea, however, it was an understood thing that she went out for a couple of hours afterwards, and left Lydia to entertain Grandpapa. “I am just going to step round to the Jacksons, dear, with my work. I’ll be back by six o’clock or so.” That was really the time that Lydia liked best.

  She soon found out that with Grandpapa she might be her own shrewd, little cynical self. He only required outward decorum and an absence of any modern slang or noisiness, which accorded well with Lydia’s natural taste and early training.

  She also speedily discovered that Grandpapa thought her clever and that so long as her opinions and judgments were her own, he was ready to listen to them with amusement and interest. Any affectation or insincerity he would pounce upon in a moment. “Don’t humbug,” he sometimes said sharply. “It’s the worst policy in the world. Humbug always ends in muddle.”

  “Shamrock’s a humbug,” said the old man once, chuckling as he fondled the little white dog. “He’s a humbug and he’ll come to a bad end. When I’m dead, they’ll get rid of Shamrock. They think I’m taken in by his humbug, but I know he’s a bad dog.”

  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.

  What do you mean to do when you’re grown up?”

  “Write books,” said Lydia.

  To Aunt Beryl she would have said, “Get married and have two boys and a little girl, auntie” — but her Aunt Beryl would never have dreamt of asking her this question.

  “Heigh?” said Grandpapa, in a rather astonished voice.

  “Write books.”

  “A blue stocking n
ever gets a husband,” said Grandpapa sententiously.

  Lydia did not know what a blue stocking was, although she deduced that it was no compliment to be called one, but she was too proud to ask.

  “What sort of books do you want to write?”

  “Stories,” said Lydia, “and perhaps poetry.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “Yes, Grandpapa.”

  “One of these days,” said Grandpapa, with cautious vagueness, “you may read me one of your stories, and we shall see what we shall see; but you mustn’t expect to make a living by writing books, Lyddie. That’s a thing that’s only done by hard work.”

  “What sort of hard work?”

  “There’s very little hard work that women are fit for. They can go governessing, or school teaching, or nurse in hospitals. Your Aunt Beryl had a fancy that way once, but I told her she’d get as much nursing as she wanted at home, all in good time, and you see I was quite right.”

  “Did Aunt Evelyn want to do something, too?”

  “She wanted to get married, my dear, and so she took the first young fellow that came after her. Never you do that, Lyddie.”

  Lydia raised surprised eyes to the old man’s face.

  “Well, well,” said Grandpapa soothingly, “you’ve got twice the brains of any of them, we know that.

  You get them from your mother. Not that brains ever did her any good, poor soul — she was unbalanced, as clever women generally are.”

  “Am I unbalanced, Grandpapa?”

  “Now that’s a bad habit,” said Grandpapa, suddenly extending a gnarled forefinger like a little twisted bit of old ivory, as though about to lay it on some objectionable insect. “That’s a very bad habit, Lyddie, me dear. Don’t refer everything back to yourself. It bores people. Do it in your own mind,” said Grandpapa, chuckling; “no doubt you won’t be able to help it — but not out loud. When someone tells you that Mrs. Smith dresses better than she walks, don’t immediately go and say, like nine women out of every ten, ‘Do I dress better than I walk?’” Grandpapa assumed a piping falsetto designed to simulate a feminine voice: “And don’t say, either, ‘Oh, that reminds me of what was said about me this time nine years ago.’ People don’t want to hear about you — they want to hear about themselves.”

  “Always, Grandpapa?” said Lydia, dismayed.

  “Practically always, and when you’ve grasped that, you’ve got the secret of success. Always let the other people talk about themselves.”

  Lydia’s memory was a retentive one, and to the end of her life, at the oddest, most unexpected moments, Grandpapa’s aphorism, delivered in the very tones of his cracked, sardonic old voice, was destined to return to her, always with increased appreciation of its cynical penetration into the weakness of human nature: “Always let the other people talk about themselves.”

  With the advent of Aunt Beryl and the lamp, needless to say, Grandpapa ceased imparting these educational items to Lydia.

  He listened to Aunt Beryl’s account of Mrs. Jackson’s asthma, agreed that Uncle George was late back from the office, and became deaf and vacant-eyed when Aunt Beryl reproachfully said that Shamrock had brought a live crab into the front hall, and upset the girl’s temper. At seven o’clock, Aunt Beryl and Lydia went away to don evening blouses, and, in the case of Aunt Beryl, a “dressy” black silk skirt, and half an hour later they all had supper in the dining-room.

  Once a week, Wednesdays, Mr. Monteagle Almond, from the Bank, used to come in at nine o’clock and play chess with Uncle George. He told Lydia once that he had never missed a Wednesday evening, except when either or both were away, during the last fifteen years.

  “And I don’t suppose,” solemnly said Mr. Almond, “I shall miss one for the next fifteen — not if we’re both spared.”

  He was a dried-up-looking little man, with a thin beard and a nearly bald head, and both Uncle George and Aunt Beryl chaffed him facetiously from time to time on the subject of getting married, but Mr. Monteagle Almond never retaliated by turning the tables on them, as Lydia privately considered that he might well have done.

  On the evenings when Mr. Almond was not present, Aunt Beryl very often took off her shoes and rested her feet, which were always causing her pain, against the rung of a chair. Sometimes, when Gertrude had cleared away, she hung over the dining-room table, spread with paper patterns and rolls of material, and after hovering undecidedly for a long while, would suddenly pounce on her largest pair of scissors and begin to slash away with every appearance of recklessness. But the recklessness was always justified when the dress or the blouse was finished. She was never too much absorbed to remember Lydia’s bedtime, however, and at nine o’clock every night Lydia was expected to rouse Grandpapa from the light slumber into which he would never admit that he had fallen, Uncle George from the newspaper or “Applied Mechanics,” And shake hands with them gravely as she said good night.

  Only the game of chess might not be interrupted.

  Aunt Beryl always came up to say good night to Lydia in her nice little room at the top of the house.

  “Sure you’re quite warm enough, dear?”

  “Yes, quite, thank you, auntie.”

  “There’s another blanket whenever you want one.

  You’ve only to say. Have you said your prayers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And brushed your teeth?”

  “Yes, auntie.”

  “Good night, dearie. Sleep well.”

  Aunt Beryl tucked her up and kissed her, and sometimes she said: “Sleep on your back and tuck in the clothes, and then the fleas won’t bite your toes.”

  Then she went downstairs again, and Lydia never heard her and Uncle George going up to bed, for Grandpapa always refused to stir before twelve o’clock, and sometimes later, and it was necessary that both of them should wait so as to keep him company and eventually take him up to his room. The only variety in the week was Sunday, and even Sundays had their own routine. A later breakfast and a morning in church were succeeded by a heavy midday meal and a somnolent afternoon for Aunt Beryl and Grandpapa.

  Uncle George very often took Lydia for a long walk, in the course of which he became more than ever like Mr. Barlow, and would suddenly, while crossing the railway bridge, propound such inquiries as: “Now, what do you suppose is meant by the word Tare, on the left-hand bottom corner of those trucks?” Lydia very seldom knew the answer to these conundrums, but whether she did or no, she was sufficiently aware that no scientific precision of reply on her part would have given her uncle half the satisfaction that it did to enlighten her ignorance. Accordingly, she generally said demurely: “I’ve often wondered, Uncle George. I should like to know what it means.”

  She always listened to Uncle George’s accurate and painstaking explanations and tried to remember them.

  Suspecting extraordinary deficiencies in Aunt Beryl’s system of education, she was genuinely desirous of supplementing them whenever she could.

  Her ambitions to acquire learning, accomplishments, and the achievement of extreme personal beauty, all of which seemed to her to be equally far from realization, were Lydia’s only troubles at Regency Terrace.

  On the former questions she had determined to approach either her uncle or her grandfather after Christmas. Not before, Lydia shrewdly decided, or they would say that she was in too great a hurry, that she had not yet had a fair trial of the system of regular lessons at home. In foresight and appraisement of valuation where the touchstone of what she considered to be her own best interest was concerned, Lydia’s judgment and calm, unchildlike tenacity of purpose might have been envied by a financier. But to the’ question of her own appearance, she brought all the ridiculous finality, childish vanity and exaggeration, of twelve-year-old femininity. She spent a long time in front of her small looking-glass, almost every day, staring at her little pointed face, seeking desperately for traces of beauty in her olive skin and straight brows and wishing that her eyes were blue, or brown, or eve
n grey — anything except a dark, variable sort of hazel.

  The only satisfaction she got was from the contemplation of her hair, which was long and dark and very thick. Aunt Beryl made her wear it in two plaits, during the day-time, but Lydia did not dislike this; as the plaits undone and carefully brushed out in the evenings, gave a momentary wave to the perfectly straight mass.

  Lydia brushed it off her forehead and fastened it back with a round comb, and thought that she looked rather like the pictures of “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”

  She was tall for her age, which was another source of satisfaction, but the length of her slim hands and feet were a terrible portent of inordinate future growth, and Aunt Beryl, with a foresight unappreciated by her niece, insisted upon a precautionary and unsightly tuck in all Lydia’s garments.

  But in spite of the tucks, and the frequent east wind, and Aunt Beryl’s lessons, and the complete absence of any society of her own age, Lydia liked Regency Terrace very much.

  She had an odd appreciation for the security implied by the very monotony of each day as it slipped by. With her mother there had been no security at all.

  They had come from China when Lydia was five, and she could only just remember a little about the voyage, and the terrible parting from her Amah. After that, they had been in London, sometimes at a boarding-house, sometimes in rooms, once in a big hotel where Lydia had had her first alarming, unforgettable experience of going up and downstairs in a lift. When Lydia was six, and her father had gone back to China, she and her mother had stayed first with one relation and then with another, and none of the visits had been very comfortable nor successful. Lydia’s mother had cried and said that no one understood the sort of thing she was used to in Hong Kong, and what a dreadful change it was for her to be without a man to look after her.

  Lydia, a detached and solemn little girl, had retained from those early years a dislike of scenes and tears, and self-pitying rhapsodies, that was to remain with her for the rest of her life.

  They were in London when Lydia’s mother became a widow and the next three years had been worse than ever.