Her mind dwelt upon the first part of the letter, and she smiled to herself.
Even though Mr. Palmer had not seen her since she was fifteen years old, it was pleasant to know that he had thought her good-looking, and Lydia was almost certain that her appearance had improved very much since then, especially now that her dark hair was knotted up at the back of her head, with a high, Spanish-looking comb thrust into one side of the thick, outstanding twist.
“I suppose he meant men!” That phrase in Nathalie’s letter kept coming to her mind, and she smiled to herself a little.
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.
The only other male acquaintance to which Lydia felt that she could fairly lay claim was Mr. Monteagle Almond. She remembered her conversation with him on the subject of her departure from Regency Terrace, and the ease with which she had contrived to shift his point of view until it agreed with her own.
Judging by that solitary experience, men were not so very difficult to manage.
Lydia boldly admitted to herself that she hoped there would be men at Miss Nettleship’s boarding-house.
The hope was realized.
The Bloomsbury boarding-house was large and dark, and Miss Nettleship could accommodate an almost incredible number of boarders there.
She was a brown-eyed, distinctive-looking woman, inclined to stoutness, and concealing, as Lydia afterwards discovered, considerable efficiency under a permanently distressed voice and manner.
“I hoped your auntie might have come with you,” she greeted Lydia. “I could easily have put her up — we’re not so very full just now, and there’s always a corner.
I’m so glad to see you, dear, for her sake, and I do hope you’ll be happy. You must be sure and tell me if there’s anything” The eye of the manageress was roving even as she spoke.
“Excuse me, dear — but you know what it is — one has to be on the look-out the whole time — that’s the drawing-room bell, and no one answering it. I think I’ll have to go myself. I know you quite understand how it is” Miss Nettleship hurried away, and Lydia looked round her curiously.
She was in the manageress’ own office, a glass-enclosed alcove halfway up the stairs, probably originally designed for a flowery recess, in the palmy days of the old house. It was now boarded in halfway up with light-coloured grained deal, but a few sorry splinters of coloured glass still hung from the ceiling, clinking forlornly, in solitary token of the once frivolous purposes of the little alcove.
When Miss Nettleship returned, tired and apologetic, but more plaintive than ever, she showed Lydia the rest of the house.
It was built with a total disregard for domestic convenience, that Miss Nettleship assured Lydia was characteristic of old-fashioned London houses, but which she could not sufficiently deplore.
“So difficult ever to get a servant to come here, let alone stay here,” said Miss Nettleship, sighing.
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! We had one broke her ankle, running down these stairs, not a year ago. Luckily she wasn’t carrying anything but an empty tray at the time, but you never heard such a noise and a rattling in all your life! It’s wicked not having the serving on the same floor as the diningroom, is what I say.”
The dining-room was on the ground floor. It was a large room, with a long table already laid for dinner, running down the middle of it, and dusty aspidistras in pots stood in the bay windows, looking out, through yellowing Nottingham lace curtains, at the grimy dignity of the London plane trees on the far side of the Square railings.
Opposite the dining-room was a smoking-room, Miss Nettleship told Lydia.
“Better not look in now, perhaps,” she said. “Some of the gentlemen may be in there.”
“How many boarders are here now?”
“It’s always varying,” Miss Nettleship declared.
“But I make rather a specialty, in a way, of permanent lets. There’s old Miss Lillicrap — she’s always here — and Mrs. Clarence, a widow, and in rather poor health — awfully badly off. And the Bulteels — husband and wife — with a boy who goes to Gower Street University. They’re always here, more or less. And there’s a very nice maiden lady has been here six months now, and she’s said nothing about giving up her room. Miss Forster — I’m sure you’ll like her, dear. She’s a great card-player, and goes out a good deal. Between ourselves, she’s one of the best boarders I have — very regular in settling up, and always likes the best of everything, and doesn’t mind paying for it. She’s always sending in fruit, and the like. It gives quite a tone to the house to see the boy leaving those baskets of fruit two or three times a week.”
“Are there any girls who are going to work every day?” Lydia asked, half hoping that the reply would be in the negative.
“Not girls, no. Generally it’s cheaper for girls at work to go to a woman’s hostel or into rooms,” said Miss Nettleship candidly. “Of course, there are one or two gentlemen. Mr. Bulteel himself has retired from business, I understand, but there’s his son, Mr.
Hector, that I was telling you about, and there’s a Greek gentleman just now, who’s only been here a week. He goes to the City every day. I’ll introduce you to everyone at supper to-night, dear. It’ll be strange for you at first.”
Lydia was more exhilarated than alarmed. She was not shy, and it rather pleased her to think that she would be unique in her position of worker, at least amongst all the other women.
“You’d like to peep into the drawing-room,” suggested Miss Nettleship, on the way up to Lydia’s bedroom, and from the tone in which she spoke, Lydia guessed that this was the room of which she was proudest.
It was certainly very large and very lofty, with double folding doors in the middle, a marble fireplace at either end, and the dingy remains of much gilding still evident in the decorations.
A solitary little figure sat listlessly at one end of the room, turning over the leaves of a battered picture paper.
“Oh, good evening, Mrs. Clarence,” said Miss Nettleship apologetically. “You’ll excuse me disturbing you, I know. I’m just showing this young lady round.
Miss Lydia Raymond — Mrs. Clarence.”
The little lady stood up in an uncertain sort of way, and put out a very tiny hand to Lydia, saying nervously: “How do you do, Miss — er — er.... I hope you’re quite well.”
“Quite well, thank you,” said Lydia, as Aunt Beryl had taught her to say.
She despised Mrs. Clarence at sight.
The widow was very small and slight, and might have been any age between twenty-eight and thirty-nine.
Her hair was of that damp, disastrous yellow, that always looks as though it had been unsuccessfully dyed, her tiny, sallow face was puckered into fretful lines, and Lydia felt convinced that she always wore just such an untidy black silk skirt, showing a sagging at the back, where it failed to meet the dingy, net blouse.
They looked at each other in silence, and Miss Nettlesh
ip 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.
They did not pause until the top landing of all had been reached.
“This is bedroom number seventeen,” optimistically declared Miss Nettleship, throwing open a door painted liver-colour, and bearing that number on it in black figures.
It looked more like a cupboard than a bedroom to Lydia, unaccustomed to London, although faint memories of lodging-hunting in her mother’s days came back to her as she gazed round.
There was a combined dressing-table and chest of drawers in the room, an iron tripod for washing purposes, with enamel basin and jug, a couple of cane seated chairs and a low iron bedstead. A print curtain, concealing a row of attenuated iron hooks and wooden pegs, hung against the wall. The only window was a fair-sized skylight.
“I’m going to send you up an easy-chair,” almost whispered Miss Nettleship, looking guiltily round her, as though afraid of being overheard. “There’s one in Mr. Hector Bulteel’s room, and really he doesn’t want it — a boy like him. There’s a rocker broken, so I can get it away to have it mended, and then I’ll bring it up here. This room doesn’t have a rocking-chair by rights, but I know myself the comfort they are when one’s been on one’s feet all day. I’m determined you shall have it, and I only wish it could have been here to-day, dear — but one has to be a bit careful, and Mrs.
Bulteel is so sharp, too. But it’ll be quite all right — and I know you quite understand, dear.”
Miss Nettleship seemed to find comfort in this assurance, which she repeated almost automatically every few moments.
Presently she left Lydia to unpack, telling her that the bell would ring for dinner at seven o’clock.
“I’ve put you next me at table, dear, for to-night, but of course I can’t keep you there. I wish I could, but I know you understand how it is — people are so particular. So you’ll understand if you’re down at the end for breakfast to-morrow, won’t you? Everyone takes their seat according to the time they’ve been here — and the latest comers down at the bottom, so you’ll be next to the Greek gentleman. Shall you find your way, dear? I’d come and fetch you, but I must overlook the waitress a bit — you know how it is — one can’t trust those girls a minute.”
“Shall I come straight to the dining-room?”
“They generally wait for the bell in the smokingroom, but they’re very prompt in. And you’d better be prompt, too, dear. That old Miss Lillicrap’s awful for taking half of every vegetable dish that’s handed, and I simply can’t let them have more than enough to go once the way round.”
Miss Nettleship went away, sighing.
Lydia thought that she was very kind, but talked too much.
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.
Then she went downstairs.
She could not make up her mind to open the door of the smoking-room, from behind which came the sound of feminine voices, but hung about in the narrow hall, under pretext of seeking a box in which to deposit her postcard.
Suddenly the sound of a deferential voice in her ear made her turn round.
“Did you want to post a letter?” Lydia faced a slim, dark man, with glistening, black (yes and a clean-shaven, swarthy face. She guessed, from some indefinable intonation that hardly amounted to an accent, in his quiet, silky tones, that this was the Greek gentleman alluded to by the manageress.
“Is there a letter-box?” she asked.
“I hardly advise you to make use of it, if your card is urgent. I have seen it remain uncleared for days.
The servant is very careless. But there is a pillar box just outside. Allow me!” Lydia hesitated, but the Greek put out a slim finger and thumb, and neatly twitched the card out of her hand.
“A pleasure,” said he, opening the front door.
As he left it ajar behind him, Lydia supposed that he had only a few steps to go, and remained in the hall.
In a moment he reappeared.
“That should be delivered by the first post to-morrow morning, Miss Raymond.”
Lydia wondered how he knew her name, but the next minute she received enlightenment.
“I do not know the East Coast personally, but your home must be in a pleasant spot. The seaside is always attractive,” conversationally observed the Greek gentleman, apparently unaware of anything obnoxious in his method of acquiring information as to his neighbour’s concerns.
The reverberation of a gong saved Lydia from making any reply, although the Greek’s manner was so much that of ordinary social intercourse that she almost found herself wondering whether her annoyance at his indiscretion were justified or not.
Before the sound of the gong had died away the smoking-room door was opened, and half a dozen people had filed past Lydia into the dining-room, each one of them giving her a curious glance, sometimes accompanied by a slight bow, as they passed.
She went into the room last, and was relieved to see Miss Nettleship’s broad figure and coils of untidy brown hair surmounting her pleasant, anxious-looking face, at the head of the table.
When Lydia was beside her, Miss Nettleship said aloud: “I must introduce Miss Raymond to you. I hope she’s going to be here some time. Miss Lydia Raymond, I should say. Miss Lillicrap — Mrs. Bulteel — Mr. Bulteel — Mr. Hector Bulteel — you’ve met Mrs.
Clarence already” Lydia exchanged bows rather nervously right and left. Mr. Bulteel, who had a melancholy yellow face with prominent eyes, and wore an alpaca coat, and trousers that bagged at the knees, was the only person to smile at her — a doubtful, sallow sort of smile.
Lydia noticed that the Greek, although he had not been named by the manageress, also bowed, much more elaborately than anybody else, and sought her eye with a meaning look, as though some understanding already existed between them.
The meal was a very silent one.
“We quite miss Miss Forster; she’s always so bright,” Miss Nettleship remarked in a general sort of way. “I expect she’s gone to those friends of hers again, for Bridge.”
Miss Nettleship did not visibly partake of the entirety of dinner. When the tepid soup had been handed round by a particularly heavy-footed, loud-breathing servant, who never seemed to have quite enough space to move round the table without slightly lurching against the back of each chair in turn, Miss Nettleship rose and hurried away to the basement.
“I always do the carving downstairs,” she told Lydia in a whisper. “Then there’s no question of favouring.”
Equally Miss Nettleship disappeared again after the meat course, presumably to perform the same office by the pudding.
“I’m so sorry, dear — but you know what it is — one can’t trust those girls to themselves for a moment.
Irene’s such a feather-head, and poor old Agnes” Miss Nettleship squeezed past the chairs, and hurried away without particularizing the deficiencies of poor old Agnes. Nor did they require pointing out, Lydia reflected drily, if Agnes was, as she supposed, the cook.
After Miss Nettleship had left the room, the conversation, such as it was, mostly came from Mrs.
Clarence and Mrs. Bulteel, a pinched, anaemic-looking little Cockney with frizzy, colourless hair.
/> Hector Bulteel, a yet more pallid edition of his mother, with an upstanding crest of hair that made him look like a cockatoo, said no word throughout the meal, and the Greek gentleman was equally silent.
Old Miss Lillicrap, who had her place at the right hand of the manageress, only spoke in a shrill, quavering old voice, in order to abuse the quality of her food.
Lydia looked furtively round at them all, and felt rather dismayed.
She wondered whether they would ever take on the similitude of real people to her, or if they would continue to appear as mere grotesque figures that could bear no serious relation to her new life.
VIII
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.
Lydia, much surprised, went downstairs.
A strong and greasy smell of roasting pervaded the stairs, and the clatter of a Sunday dinner in preparation could be faintly heard ascending from the basement.
In the drawing-room sat old Miss Lillicrap, in a violet silk dress and a lace cap with ribbons, nodding above a newspaper.
A large, white-haired, but somehow youthful-looking female figure, unknown to Lydia, bent over the writingtable.
In the middle of the room stood Lydia’s visitor, a small, plain girl, with a pale face and untidy fair hair, who put out her hand in a business-like way.
“I’m from Elena’s,” she said abruptly. “My name is Graham. Old Madam said I was to come and see how you were getting on, and if you’ll be ready to start to-morrow.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lydia. “Won’t you sit down?” Miss Graham selected a chair in the middle of the room, as far as possible removed from the other two inmates.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 154