“I can,” said Lydia.
She had no breath left with which to make a long speech.
Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
“Come on then.”
It was a scarlet-faced Lydia, with labouring chest, that eventually dropped on to the selected spot of Wimbledon Common, but she at least had the satisfaction of hearing her own name given in reply to Bob’s derisive inquiry as to which of them had set the pace.
Yet another proof of the profound wisdom of Grandpapa who had said, “There’s no such thing as can’t.”
Grandpapa’s theory, however, was less well exemplified in the impromptu cricket match that presently sprang up, in the sort of inevitable way in which a game that comprised the use of muscles and a ball invariably did spring up whenever the Senthovens were gathered together.
“I don’t play cricket,” Lydia haughtily observed to the least muscular-looking of the Swaine girls.
“Why not?” said her contemporary, looking very much astonished.
There was nothing for it but to put into words the humiliating admission: “I don’t know how to.”
“How funny! But we’ll soon teach you.”
Lydia resigned herself, and since she was no more deficient in physical courage than is any other imaginative egotist, who sets the importance of cutting a figure far above any incidental bodily risk that may be incurred in cutting in, she successfully avoided at least the appearance of running away from the ball.
The game, of course, was what was known to the Senthovens as “a rag” only, since with deficient numbers and a lack of implements, nothing so serious as a match could be contemplated. Consequently, Lydia presently found herself with Bob’s cricket bat tightly grasped in her unaccustomed hands.
She was not altogether displeased. It was only Olive who was bowling, and hitting the ball did not seem so very difficult. She might possibly distinguish herself even amongst these Philistines.
Lydia, in fact, was not above coveting the admiration of those whom she admittedly despised.
“Chuck you an easy one to start with,” shouted Olive, good-naturedly.
Lydia jerked up the bat, but heard no reassuring contact with the slow moving ball.
“Don’t spoon it up like that! You’d have been caught out for a dead cert if you had hit it!” A second attempt was made.
“You are a duffer! Show her how to hold the bat, someone.”
Lydia’s third effort mysteriously succeeded in knocking down the improvised stumps behind her, whilst the ball, still unhit, was neatly caught by a nine-year-old Swaine child.
“Oh, I say, this is awfully slow!” remonstrated Bob.
“She’s out now, anyway.”
“Give her another chance,” said Olive, “let her finish the over, anyway. There’s no scoring, what’s it matter?”
“Two more balls, then.”
But there was only one more ball. Lydia, desperately determined to succeed once at least, exerted her whole strength miraculously, hit the ball fair and square, and knew a momentary triumph as it flew off the bat.
There was an ear-piercing shriek from Olive, and Lydia, terrified, saw her fling up both hands to her face and stagger round and round where she stood.
“Oh, I say, are you hurt, ole gurl?” came in anxious, if rather obvious, inquiry from the surrounding field.
“Got her bang on the jaw!”
“What awful rot, poor wretch.”
They crowded round Olive, who was choking and gulping, her mouth streaming with blood, but undauntedly gasping: “It’s all right, don’t fuss, I tell you, Bee, it’s all right. I’ll be all right in a sec. I never dreamt she was going to hit out like that. I ought to have caught it.”
“Comes of having a mouth like a pound of liver splits,” said Bob, quite unconsciously making use of the strain of facetious personal incivility always used by him to any intimate, and all the while solicitously patting his sister on the back.
“Oh, Olive, I’m so sorry,” said Lydia, far more acutely aware than anyone else was likely to be of the inadequacy of the time-worn formula.
“Don’t be an ass,” returned Olive crisply. “Lend me a nose wipe if you want to do something useful.
Mine’s soaked.”
Such of the assembly as were possessed of pockethandkerchiefs willingly sacrificed them, although the number contributed proved utterly inadequate to the amount of blood lost by Olive, still determinedly making light of her injuries.
“Let’s have a look and see if your teeth are all out, old gurl,” urged Beatrice.
“I lost two last summer,” the eldest Swaine remarked casually, “and Dot had one knocked out at hockey.”
“The front one feels a bit loose,” said Olive thoughtfully, and thrust a finger and thumb into a rapidly swelling mouth.
“Better not push it about,” someone suggested; “why not sit down and have tea now?”
“You don’t want to go home, do you, Ol?” Lydia heard Beatrice ask her sister aside.
“Good Lord, no. Don’t let’s have any fuss.”
Olive could certainly not be accused of making the most of her distressing circumstances.
She gave Lydia a tremendous bang on the back, and said: “Cheer up, old stupid! You jolly well don’t pretend you can’t hit out when you want to another time, that’s all!” After that she took her place amongst the others, and contrived to eat a great deal of bread-and-butter and several of the softer variety of cakes, in spite of the evident possibilities of a swelled and discoloured upper lip and badly bruised jaw.
“Old Olive has plenty of pluck — I will say that for her,” Bob remarked to Lydia, who agreed with the more fervour that she was conscious of a quite involuntary sort of jealousy of Olive. It must be so much pleasanter to be the injured than the injurer, and to know that everyone was, at least inwardly, approving one’s courage and powers of endurance.
When the picnic was over, Olive had quite a large escort to accompany her home, all relating in loud and cheerful voices the various disabilities and disfigurements that had sooner or later overtaken them in the pursuit of athletic enjoyment.
“It’s part of the fun,” declared Olive herself. “I only hope the mater won’t turn green at the sight of me. She’s a bit squeamish sometimes.”
“Hold your hand in front of your mouth.”
“Keep your back to the light all you can.”
But it became evident that none of these precautions would avail when Mrs. Senthoven was seen leaning over the gate, gazing down the road.
She waved a yellow envelope at them.
“Tellywag!” exclaimed Beatrice. “What on earth can it be?”
Telegrams were so rare in the Wimbledon establishment as to be looked upon with alarm.
She and Olive both began to run.
“It’s addressed to you, Lydia,” screamed Beatrice.
“Come and open it. Come on, you people.”
The last exhortation was in encouragement to the members of the Swaine family, delicately hanging back. At Beatrice’s semaphore-like gesticulations of invitation, they all followed Lydia’s rush forward, and as she opened her telegram she heard their loud babble uprise.
“Not so bad as it looks, is it, Ol?”
“She got a swipe on the jaw, and took it like a brick, too!”
“Oh, my dear girl!” from Aunt Evelyn. “Let me look this minute”
“Don’t fuss, mater. It’s all right, really.”
They were all pressing round the reluctant Olive.
Lydia looked up.
“No bad news, I hope, dear,” said Aunt Evelyn, as was her invariable custom whenever present at the opening of a telegram.
“It’s from Aunt Beryl about my examination,” said Lydia very clearly.
She was so much excited that her tense, distinct utterance produced a sudden silence, and they all looked at her.
“Passed your examination first-class honours,” read Lydia out loud.
“I say!”
“And you’d been ill the whole time, hadn’t you? My golly!”
“Why, we thought you hadn’t a chance!”
“Weren’t you the youngest one there, or some rot of that kind?”
“First-class honours! That’s as high as you can go, isn’t it?” They were all lavish of exclamations and hearty slangy congratulations.
Olive herself, and everybody else, had forgotten all about Olive’s injury, and Lydia was the centre of attention.
“I say, let’s have a celebration!” shouted Bob. “Come in after supper and have a cocoa-rag.”
The invitation was accepted with loud enthusiasm.
“You can have the dining-room, dears,” said Aunt Evelyn, “only not too much noise, because of father.
I’ll explain it to him, and get him to sit in the drawing-room.”
Uncle Robert never took part in any festivity of his family’s. It was supposed that he needed peace and solitude after his day’s work, and in summer he pottered about the little green-house, and at other times of the year dozed behind the newspaper, unmolested. Nevertheless, Uncle Robert, to Lydia’s astonishment and gratification, actually came out of his taciturnity that evening at supper-time in order to pay tribute to her achievement.
“Fancy the pater waking up like that!” ejaculated Bob afterwards. “More than he’s ever done for any of us.”
“A fat lot of exams, we’ve ever passed!” said Beatrice scornfully.
It was true that no Senthoven had ever attained to any such distinction, and Lydia realized with the more surprise that for this very reason they regarded her success as something nearly approaching to the miraculous.
Almost against her own will, she was struck with Olive’s unfeigned relief at having the general attention distracted from herself and her accident, and focussed instead upon her cousin’s triumph.
Lydia half admired and half despised Olive, and most wholly and thoroughly enjoyed the novel sensation of being for once of high account in the eyes or the Wimbledon household.
Certainly towards the end of the exceedingly rowdy “celebration,” the cause of it was rather lost sight of in the fumes of unlimited cocoa, the shrieking giggles of the younger Swaine children, and the uproarious mirth of their seniors, the whole-hearted amusement, that almost seemed as though it would never be stayed, at so exquisitely humorous an accident as the collapse of Bob’s chair beneath him.
Nevertheless, the celebration was all in Lydia’s honour, and her health was drunk in very hot, very thick cocoa, with a great deal of coarse brown sediment at the bottom of each cup, afterwards scraped up into a spoon, and forcibly administered to the youngest child present, who had rashly declared a liking for “grounds.”
Lydia, highly excited, for once made as much noise as anybody, and began to feel that she should be quite sorry to say good-bye to them all on Monday.
But she was much too clear-sighted in the analysis of her own situations to delude herself into supposing that a prolongation of her stay at Wimbledon would result in anything but failure.
One could not pass an examination with brilliancy every day, and once the first sensation over — which it speedily would be — the old routine of walks and hockey and “ragging” would go on as before, and Lydia could no longer hope for anything but, at best, a negative obscurity. Far better to leave them before any of their gratifying enthusiasm had had time to die down.
She could tell, by the very nature of their farewells, the immense difference that now obtained in their estimation of her importance.
“You must go on as well as you’ve begun, Lydia.
It’s a great thing for a girl to be clever,” said Aunt Evelyn rather wistfully. “I suppose you’ll want to take up teaching, later on?”
“Perhaps. I’m not quite sure yet.”
Lydia had long ago given up talking about her childish ambition to write books, although it was stronger than ever within her.
“Well, there’s time to settle yet. You’re not sixteen, and there’s no hurry. I’m sure Grandpapa and Aunt Beryl would miss you dreadfully if you thought of going away anywhere. It would be best if you could get something to do down there, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, Aunt Evelyn,” said Lydia amiably. She always listened to older people politely and agreed with what they said, but their advice had no disturbing effect upon her, because it never seriously occurred to her that anyone could be a better judge of her own interests than she was herself.
Even Uncle Robert, hastily saying good-bye before starting for the office, found time to say to her: “Well, good-bye, child. Don’t overwork yourself with all this examination stuff. You can come down here if you want a change any time. Settle it with your aunt.”
“Better come down for the Christmas hols. We can show you some tobogganing then, most likely. I got some whopping great bruises on my legs last year,” was the inducement held out by Olive. “I must be off to that beastly old holiday task now, I suppose. I always put it off to the last minute. Wish I was a stew-pot like you.”
Beatrice and Bob escorted Lydia to the station.
“Well, ta-ta, and be a good girl,” said Bob patronizingly, tilting his hat rather far back on his head and smoking a cigarette that aggressively protruded from the extreme corner of his mouth, “when’s the old man going to have the decency to remember my existence? You’ve cut us all out with him with your blooming book-work. He goes in for being a bit of a brainy old bird himself, doesn’t he?” Inured though she might be to the Senthoven vocabulary, Lydia nearly shuddered visibly at the thought of Grandpapa, had he heard his descendant’s description of him.
“Shut up, you ass,” said Beatrice, in an automatic sort of way. “Well, bye-bye, ole gurl. You’ve fixed it up with the mater about popping down again some time, I s’pose. Just come and take us as you find us, as the saying goes. Here’s your train.”
Lydia, leaning from the window of the third-class railway carriage, wondered whether to shake hands with Beatrice or not. The law of “No nonsense about us” would certainly preclude kissing, even had she felt the slightest desire to embrace her rough-haired, frecklefaced cousin, shifting from one leg to the other, her rod hands thrust into the pockets of her woollen coat, and her tarn o’ shanter pulled well down over one eye.
Bob was already casting glances in the direction of the refreshment room.
“Good-bye,” said Lydia, definitely deciding against putting out her hand. “And thanks so much.”
“Good heavens! Don’t start speechifying, whatever you do,” cried the Senthovens in protesting horror, both at the same moment, and as nearly as possible in the same words.
So Lydia was obliged to have recourse to that most uncomfortable form of ejaculatory conversation that appears to be incumbent upon all those who are unfortunate enough to be accompanied by their friends to the railway station.
“Nearly off now, I think.”
“Oh, yes, there’s the whistle.”
“Well, I suppose Aunt Beryl will expect us to send our love, or some rot of that kind.”
“AH right. I think we really are starting this time.”
We were not, however, and Lydia looked dumbly at her waiting cousins and wondered why, since they had nothing more to say, and were obviously quite as ill at ease as she was herself, they did not go.
“I wish you wouldn’t wait. We shall be off in a minute now.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
Beatrice shifted her weight on to the other leg, and Bob pulled out a packet of Woodbine cigarettes and lit one of them.
“I hope Grandpapa will be in good form,” said Bob desperately.
“I’ll tell him you asked.”
“Oh, don’t bother.”
“He knows there isn’t any nonsense about us,” said Beatrice.
To this last familiar refrain, the train actually began to move out of the station at last. Lydia waved her hand once or twice, received curt nods in reply, and sank
back with a feeling of relief on to her seat.
The end of the Senthovens.
She could not help feeling glad that her visit was over.
The familiar quiet of Regency Terrace awaited her now. Aunt Beryl, as her letters had assured Lydia, once more returned to the unobtrusive role out of which her illness had momentarily forced her into unsuitable lime-light. Uncle George, certain to be full of quiet pride in the result of the examination, even Mr. Monteagle Almond, next Wednesday, probably framing elaborate little congratulatory sentences.
Lydia looked forward intensely to it all.
She wondered how Grandpapa would receive her, and mentally conned over the amusing descriptions that she would give him in private of the Senthoven menage, treading upon his well-known prejudice against that slang in the use of which it was so proficient.
She did not expect to be met at the station, but sent her luggage by the omnibus, and herself walked to Regency Terrace by the short cut, remembering as she did so her arrival, more than three years ago, under the care of both aunts, and full of uncertainty as to her own eventual destination.
Security, reflected Lydia maturely, was the most important thing of all. One was secure where one was appreciated, and held to be of importance.
She remembered that it was upon her own representations that Grandpapa had consented — going against his own prejudice to do so — to her being sent to school. It had been a great success, as even Grandpapa must have long ago acknowledged to himself.
Perhaps one day he might even acknowledge it to her.
Lydia smiled to herself over the improbability of the suggestion.
Then she turned the corner into Regency Terrace and saw the familiar house on the opposite side of the road.
As she caught sight of it, the hall-door opened, and Aunt Beryl, in her well-known blue foulard dress with white spots, that she generally only wore on Sundays, looked out. At the same instant Lydia saw Grandpapa peering from the dining-room window, which was already open, and raising his stick a few inches in the air to shake it in welcome.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 151