The following day the doctor saw her, and shook his head at her.
“Better give her a change of air, Miss Raymond. If you won’t go away yourself, it will, anyway, set you rather more free not to have Miss Lydia on your mind.”
Lydia felt that the advice might have been worded in a manner more flattering to herself, but she was pleased at the idea of a change.
She had not been away since her first arrival as an inmate of Grandpapa’s household. Aunt Beryl’s theory was that one went away to the sea, not from it.
If one happened to live by the sea, there was no need to go away at all. Only Uncle George, taking his fortnightly holiday in the summer, departed on a walking or bicycling tour with some bachelor friend of his own.
“You’ll enjoy staying with your Aunt Evelyn,” said Aunt Beryl. “The girls must be nearly grown-up now, I declare. How time flies! Beatrice must be all of eighteen, and Olive sixteen, and I suppose Bob is somewhere between the two of them. How long is it since you’ve seen them, Lydia?”
“Not since I was quite little — about ten, I think.”
“It’ll be nice for you to make friends with the girls. I’ve often wished you had a sister.”
Lydia did not echo the wish when she had seen the Senthoven family circle.
“There’s no nonsense about us,” might have been taken for their motto, or even their war-cry.
On the evening of Lydia’s arrival she was mysteriously taken possession of by Olive, her youngest cousin, under pretext of unpacking.
“I say, Lydia.”
“Yes?”
“Yes?” mimicked Olive, with a screwed-up mouth and mincing pronunciation, in derisive mockery of Lydia’s low, clear enunciation, which was in part natural, and in part learnt from Nathalie Palmer.
“I declare you’re afraid of the sound of your own voice. You ought to hear us! My word! we’ll make you open your eyes — and ears too — before we’ve done with you. You should just hear the ragging that goes on whenever Bob’s at home. Look here, this is what I want to know.”
This time Lydia only looked interrogation. She despised Olive too thoroughly to care whether she laughed at her way of speaking or not, but she thought that the sooner Olive satisfied her curiosity and went away the better.
“Do you like fun?” said Miss Senthoven, bringing her prominent brown eyes and head of untidy, flopping hair close to Lydia’s face in her extreme eagerness for a reply.
Lydia, when she had recovered from her surprise at the form of the inquiry, assented, since assent was obviously expected of her, but she had grave doubts as to whether her own definition of “fun” would coincide with that of the Senthovens.
It did not.
“Fun” was synonymous with noise, and the most brilliant repartee known to any Senthoven was Bob’s favourite form of squashing such “nonsense” as a comment on the blueness of the sky: “Well, you didn’t expect to see it red, did you?” Bob, a hobble-de-boy of seventeen, short and thickset, was his mother’s idol. But there was “no nonsense” allowed from poor Aunt Evelyn by her terrible daughters.
“The mater’s so mushy,” they shouted disgustedly, when she made excuse, on the morning after Lydia’s arrival, for Bob’s very tardy appearance.
Lydia looked round the breakfast-table. She was quite well again now, and breakfast upstairs would have been unheard of. Beatrice was a still larger, taller, more athletic, and, if possible, noisier edition of Olive. She had just left school, and her dark hair, very thick and heavy, was piled into untidy heaps at the back of her head.
“No nonsense about my hair, I can tell you. Half the time I don’t even look in the glass to see how I’ve done it,” Beatrice would declare proudly.
The girls wore flannel shirts, with collars and ties, and short skirts that invariably contrived to be rather longer at the back than they were in the front.
They strenuously refused to make any change of toilette in the evenings, only substituting heelless strapped black shoes for their large and sturdy boots, over their thick-ribbed stockings.
Those evenings were the noisiest that Lydia had ever known.
Only Uncle Robert, small, and sallow, and spectacled, was silent.
He sat at the foot of the table, said a brief, muttered grace, and dispensed the soup.
“I say, what tommy-rot it is your not playing hockey, Lydie. Bee and I have got a match on tomorrow afternoon.”
“Can’t I come and watch you play?”
“I suppose so. I don’t care if you do, I’m sure,” Olive hastily repudiated the mere suggestion of such a dangerous approach to “nonsense” as was implied by a possible interest in another’s movements.
“I say, I do believe Bob gets later every blessed day.
A nice row there’d be if we came in late for every meal!”
“Too bally hungry to do that!”
“Your brother doesn’t get much fresh air. You must remember he’s in an office all day, and has two stuffy train journeys, poor boy,” said Bob’s mother unwisely.
“Ow! poor ‘ickle sing, then — mammy’s own babyboy!” yelled Beatrice derisively.
“Mater!” said Olive, “how can you be so sloppy?” Lydia looked round her, amazed. No one seemed to think, however, that Beatrice and Olive were behaving otherwise than well and dutiful.
“Beef, Lydia?”
“Yes, please, Uncle Robert.”
Lydia saw Beatrice wink at Olive, and Olive stuff a corner of her Japanese paper napkin into her mouth, as though to prevent an explosion of laughter. She only perceived that the jest lay in the manner of her own reply, when to the same inquiry her cousins successively answered, very loudly and curtly: “Rather!” After the beef Aunt Evelyn helped the pudding.
There were two dishes in front of her, one containing the remaining half of the pink mould that had figured on the dinner-table in the middle of the day, and the other the cold remnants of the previous night’s tart.
And Lydia, invited to make her choice, replied very clearly and rather defiantly: “I should like some tart, if you please, Aunt Evelyn.”
Bob, who had made his entry with the second course, roared with laughter, and, reaching across his sister Beatrice, banged Lydia heavily on the back.
“That’s right, Lady Clara Vere de Vere. You stick to it!” Lydia, who hated being touched, jumped in her place, but she had the wit to guess that the surest way of making her cousins pursue any particular course of action would be to show that she disliked it, in which case they would instantly look upon her as “fair game.”
She did not in the least mind the series of witticisms, lasting the length of her visit, designed to emphasize what the Senthovens considered the affectations of her speech.
“Just the weeniest little tiny bit, if you will be so awf’ly kind, please. Thank you so awf’ly much.”
Thus Beatrice, humorously.
And Bob: “Well, perhaps — if you were to press me to a jelly—”
Lydia was not in the least amused at these sallies, but she laughed at them cheerfully enough. She felt immeasurably superior to the Senthovens, and had every intention of proving that superiority to them before the end of her stay.
At first blush, this did not appear to be any too easy. There was no doubt that the Senthovens, the girls especially, were efficient in their own line of action.
Beatrice was a renowned hockey captain; Olive had silver trophies from both the Golf Club and the Swimming Club, and both had won Junior Championships at lawn-tennis.
“Are you a good walker, old girl?” Beatrice one day inquired of Lydia.
This last term of endearment was a sign of the highest goodwill, and if employed too frequently would almost certainly lead to the accusation of sloppiness.
“Oh, yes,” said Lydia, thinking of the school crocodile wending its decorous way the length of the Parade.
“Good. Olive’s an awful rotter at walking. You and I can do some tramps together. Are you game for a six o’clock
start to-morrow morning?” Lydia laughed, really supposing the suggestion to be humorously intended.
“What are you cackling about? You’re such an extraordinary kid; you always seem to laugh with your mouth shut. I suppose they taught you that at this precious school of yours, where you don’t even play hockey. Well, what about to-morrow? We can take some sort of fodder with us, but I’ve got to be back at the Common at ten sharp for a hockey practice.”
Lydia was obliged to resign her pretensions. She hadn’t understood quite what Beatrice meant by a “good walker.”
“Anything up to twenty-five miles is my mark,” said Beatrice complacently.
She and Olive were both good-humouredly contemptuous of Lydia’s incapabilities, and Bob was even ready to show her how to serve at tennis, and how to throw a ball straight. Lydia was willing to be taught, and was sufficiently conscious that her tennis was improving rapidly, to submit to a good deal of shouting and slangy, good-humoured abuse.
She did not like it, but was philosophically aware that her stay at Wimbledon was drawing to a close, and that she would reap the benefit of improved tennis for ever afterwards.
“I suppose, being a duffer at games, that you’re a regular Smart Aleck at lessons, aren’t you?” Olive amiably asked her.
An assent would certainly be regarded as “bucking,” but, on the other hand, Lydia had no mind to let her claims to distinction be passed over.
“I’ve just been in for an examination,” she said boldly. “I might hear the result any day now.”
“Get on! I thought you’d been ill.”
“I’ve missed half the term at school, but I studied by myself, and I was up in time to go to the Town Hall for the exam. I had to go to bed again afterwards, though.”
“Do you suppose you’ve got an earthly?” said Beatrice, in highly sceptical accents.
“Oh, I don’t know. You see, I was the youngest competitor of all, as it happened.”
Lydia had been very anxious to introduce this last piece of information, and it was plain that Beatrice and Olive were not altogether unimpressed by it.
Aunt Beryl had promised Lydia a telegram as soon as the results of the examination were put up in the Town Hall, and Lydia had already decided that in the event of failure, she should say nothing at all to the Senthovens. They would never remember to ask her about it. But if she had passed, she told herself grimly, they would have to acknowledge that they were not the only people who could succeed. Lydia reflected that she was sick of hearing how Olive had just saved a goal, and Beatrice had conducted her team to victory in yet another hockey match.
V
THE last of Lydia’s Saturday afternoons at Wimbledon, however, was at length at hand.
“We might go and have some sort of a rag on the Common to-morrow for Lydia’s last day. Sunday doesn’t count,” said Beatrice, on Friday evening after supper.
“Quite a good egg,” agreed Olive. “Bob, are you game?” Bob assented without enthusiasm. He was stretched at full length on the sofa, with his arms crossed underneath his head.
Uncle Robert was behind his newspaper as usual, and Aunt Evelyn was earnestly perusing a ladies’ paper, from which she occasionally imparted to Lydia — the only person who made any pretence at listening to her — certain small items of information regarding personalities equally unknown to both of them.
This was Mrs. Senthoven’s one relaxation, and afforded her an evident satisfaction.
“Fancy! It says here that, ‘It is rumoured that a certain demoiselle of no inconsiderable charm, and well known to Society, is shortly to exchange her rank as peer’s daughter for one even more exalted.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Lady Rosalind Kelly that was meant. I suppose she’s going to marry some duke.
They say she’s lovely, but I wouldn’t care to see a son of mine marry her, after all the stories one’s heard.”
Aunt Evelyn looked fondly at the recumbent Bob.
“I say, we might get the Swaines to come with us to-morrow,” said Olive, “then we could get up a rag of some sort.”
“I say, old girl, chuck me my pipe. The mater won’t mind.”
“Get it yourself,” retorted Olive, utterly without malice, but in the accepted Senthoven method of repudiating a request for any small service.
“Here’s rather a good story about that fellow — you remember, Lydia, we saw his picture in the Sunday paper — Gerald Fitzgerald, who’s acting in some play or other. Listen to this!” Aunt Evelyn read aloud a reputed mot of the famous comedian that did not err upon the side of originality.
“I wonder if that’s true, now!”
“Bee, chuck me my pipe,” from Bob.
No Senthoven ever listened to any piece of information not directly bearing upon their own immediate personal interests.
“No fear! What a slacker you are, Bob! Why don’t you get up off that sofa? Lydia’s shocked at your ways.”
“She’s not!”
“She is!” Lydia hoped that she showed her sense of superiority by contributing nothing to the discussion, which continued upon the simple lines of flat assertion and contradiction until Bob flung a cushion at his sister’s head.
Beatrice thereupon hurled herself on him with a sort of howl.
“Don’t make so much noise; you’ll disturb father.
Bee, you really are too old to romp so — your hair is nearly coming down.”
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.”
“I wonder you haven’t got used to being chaffed at your school. It must be a sloppy sort of place.”
“I daresay you’d think so,” said Lydia calmly. “But then, you see, the girls there go in for work, not play.”
“Oh, they go in for work, not play, do they?” mimicked Olive, but without much spirit, and as though conscious of her extreme poverty of repartee.
Lydia noticed, however, that both the Senthoven girls asked her frequent questions about her school, questions which she answered with all the assurance that she could muster.
That was something else to be remembered: it was better to assume that if your standards differ from those of your surroundings, it is by reason of their superiority.
Lydia lived up to her self-evolved philosophy gallantly, but she was in a minority, against a large majority that had, moreover, the advantage, incalculable in the period of adolescence, of a year or two’s seniority.
She did not like the feeling of inferiority, painfully new to her.
At Regency Terrace she was the subject of ill-concealed pride. Even Grandpapa, although he never praised, found no fault with her manners and bearing, and had lately admitted — no small compliment — that “Lyddie could manage Shamrock.”
Uncle George discussed chemistry and botany with her seriously, and even allowed her opinion to carry weight in certain small questions of science, and Mr. 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 role 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.
No one at Miss Glover’s bothered much about games, and, anyhow, Lydia’s play at tennis was accounted amongst the best in the school.
It
annoyed her to realize, as she most thoroughly did realize, that judged by the Senthoven standards, that best was very mediocre indeed.
She had never played golf, or hockey, or cricket, and her swimming consisted of slow and laborious strokes that grew very feeble, and came at very short intervals if she attempted to exceed a length of fifty yards.
Lydia’s ambitions would never be athletic ones, and although she wished to be seen to advantage, she was far too shrewd to attempt any emulation of Beatrice and Olive and their friends upon their own ground.
She only wished — and it seemed to her a highly reasonable wish — to show them that, in other and greater issues, she, too, could count her triumphs.
She waited her opportunity with concealed annoyance at its tardiness in coming.
The Saturday afternoon picnic, ostensibly arranged in her honour, was such a form of entertainment as was least calculated to make Lydia enjoy herself.
It began with a noisy rendezvous between the Senthoven family and a tribe of male and female Swaines, ranging from all ages between eight and eighteen years old.
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.
“Give me ekker,” said Beatrice contemptuously.
“There’s no ekker in biking that I can see.”
Exercise, Lydia grimly reflected, they were certainly having in abundance. She and Beatrice held either handle of the large picnic hamper containing the Senthovens’ contribution to the entertainment, and as it swung and rattled between them, Lydia made increased efforts to accommodate her steps to Beatrice’s unfaltering stride.
“I s’pose,” presently remarked Beatrice, with that aggressive accent that to a Senthoven merely represented the absence of affectation, “you’ll be saying presently that we’ve walked you off your legs. I never knew such a kid! Here, slack off a bit, Dot — she can’t keep up.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 150