Thereafter Miss Lillicrap had the upper hand, and knew it, and Miss Nettleship was wont to say pleadingly to her other boarders: “You know what it is — Miss Lillicrap is old, and then with her heart and all” They resented it, but they also were powerless before those tiny, gnarled hands, that little puckered face nodding and shaking under a lace cap, and that cracked, envenomed old voice.
“I wish there was less custard and more pudding, very often,” said Mr. Bulteel, with a sort of gloomy humorousness. “It’s always custard.”
“Made with custard powder at that,” put in his wife.
“Eggs are so expensive,” Mrs. Clarence’s habitual little whine contributed to the quota.
“Not that we don’t pay enough for her to give us real custard made with eggs,” she added hastily, lest it should be thought that she was accustomed to economical shifts.
“Hector,” said his mother sharply, “have you finished your tea?” The youth looked resentfully at his parents.
“Go and do your exercises then, my boy,” said his father firmly.
“All right, father, all right.”
“Now, go at once, Hector,” said Mrs. Bulteel, as she always said every evening when her son manifested reluctance with regard to the enforced physical drill, judged by his parents necessary to the well-being of their weedy offspring.
“The boy gets hardly any exercise,” his mother discontentedly informed her neighbour, the Greek, who contented himself with casting a disparaging eye over Hector’s lanky proportions, as though he thought it entirely immaterial whether these were duly developed or not.
“Wonderful thing, those dumb-bell exercises,” remarked Mr. Bulteel, shooting a scraggy wrist out of his coat sleeve, and then withdrawing it again hastily, as an unsuccessful advertisement. “Hurry up, my boy.”
The door opened again before Hector had responded in any way to the bracing exhortations of his progenitors.
“Miss Forster back again?” said the Greek gentleman. “We shall have our game of Bridge before dinner, then.”
“Don’t move, don’t move!” cried Miss Forster, breezily putting out a protesting hand very tightly fastened into a white kid glove, and thereby obliging Mr.
Bulteel to rise reluctantly from his arm-chair.
“Oh, what a shame!” Miss Forster sank into the vacated seat immediately, with a loud sigh of relief.
“Have you had a pleasant afternoon with your friends?” Mrs. Bulteel inquired. She was always inordinately curious about the social engagements of other people, but Miss Forster’s garrulousness needed no questionings.
“A topping afternoon!” she declared with youthful slanginess. “Never held such cards, either. What do you think of eight hearts to the Ace, King, Queen?” The Greek gentleman, to whom she appealed, was non-committal.
“It depends who was holding them,” he replied laconically.
“Well, I was, of course. My partner’s deal — he’d gone no trumps; they doubled, and of course I redoubled, and we made the little slam. Jolly, eh? though I prefer something with rather more play in it, myself.”
“Such as last night,” grimly suggested the Greek, in unkind allusion to an incident that Miss Forster might reasonably be supposed to prefer forgotten.
“Haven’t you forgotten that horrid diamond suit of yours yet?” cried the lady, shaking an admonitory forefinger. “It was certainly a slip, and I can’t think how I came to make it.”
“You took the lead out of your partner’s hand,” piped Mrs. Clarence, with a sudden display of knowledge that caused Miss Forster, the recognized Bridge expert of the house until the Greek gentleman’s recent arrival, to look at her in astonished resentment.
“I’m not a player, I know,” hastily said Mrs. Clarence, perhaps in tardy dread lest she also might be reminded of past fiascos. “Only I always remember that my husband’s golden rule used to be, ‘Third in hand plays his highest, and second in hand plays his lowest.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
Mrs. Clarence’s husband was the only claim to superiority which she could flaunt before the better dressed, better-housed, better-connected, generally better-off pretensions of Miss Forster and she flaunted him freely.
Perhaps it was on this account that no one paid the slightest attention to the mot of the departed card player.
Mrs. Bulteel picked up the Daily Sketch, and said without animation, as without any shred of meaning: “Fancy the Duke of Connaught going to Canada!” And Mr. Bulteel suddenly exclaimed in shocked tones: “Hector! You won’t have time to do your exercises before dinner if you don’t go at once.”
The youth slouched from the room.
“Mr. Hector should hold himself better!” cried Miss Forster, who never hesitated to make a remark on the score of its being a personal one. She flung back her shoulders as she spoke.
“My son is growing very fast,” said Mrs. Bulteel stiffly.
Miss Forster laughed.
“Well, I must go and take off my hat.”
She slightly lifted the brim of her large hat, as though to render her meaning perfectly clear, and left the room.
Mrs. Bulteel’s plain, pinched face was further disfigured by a sneer.
“Poor woman!” she said spitefully. “She really can’t afford to criticize other people. She gets stouter every day, I do believe.”
“Is she really such a very good Bridge-player?” Mrs.
Clarence asked, with a sort of restrained eagerness, as though ashamed of hoping — as she quite obviously did — that the answer would be in the negative.
“She plays a fair game — for one of your sex,” said the Greek ungallantly.
It was such small observations as this, which he let fall from time to time, that made Lydia feel almost certain that she disliked him, although at other times she was gratified by his half-covert admiration of her.
Presently the Bulteels went in pursuit of Hector and his dumb-bells; old Miss Lillicrap tottered off to scream shrilly for hot water from the top of the kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Clarence, glancing at Lydia with a friendly little furtive smirk, sidled out of the room to engage upon one of those mysterious futilities that served to bridge the gaps in the one regular occupation of her life: her attendance at meals.
Lydia and the Greek were left alone together in the drawing-room.
“The days are drawing in very fast,” he observed, gazing at the window.
Lydia felt slightly disappointed at the highly impersonal nature of the remark.
“Yes,” she said unenthusiastically.
“Do you find the evenings rather long after you get in from your work? You very seldom join us in the drawing-room, I notice, after dinner.” “Sometimes I go and sew in Miss Nettleship’s room, and talk to her,” said Lydia.
“Sometimes, no doubt. But are there not evenings when you retire to your own apartment very early?” Lydia reflected that foreigners no doubt held views unshared by the conventional British mind, as to the propriety of expressing a manifest curiosity in the affairs of other people.
“Sometimes I have writing to do,” she said shyly.
The admission was not altogether unpremeditated.
Lydia knew that the Greek was an insatiable reader, mostly of French novels, and it had occurred to her some time since that he might not unpossibly be of use in advising her. Besides, she owned to herself quite frankly, that his interest in her was not likely to be diminished by the discovery of her literary ambitions.
“I came to London partly so as to be able to write,” she told him. “I have wanted to write books ever since I was a child.”
“Ever since you were a child!” he repeated with a hint of friendly derision. “That is indeed a long while. And what form does this writing of yours take? No doubt you write poetry — all about love, and springtime, and death?” Lydia felt herself colouring with annoyance as she replied with decision: “Dear me, no. I shouldn’t think of writing poetry nowadays. I know very well that I can’t. But I’ve writte
n one or two short stories, and I should like one day — to write books.”
“Have these stories of yours been published?”
“No, not yet,” said Lydia. “I haven’t tried to publish them. I don’t know if they’re the right length, or where to send them, or anything.”
“Haven’t you ever come across a useful little book called ‘The Artist and Author’s Handbook?’ That would give you all the information you require.”
“Would it? I could try and get it.” said Lydia doubtfully.
She did not want to spend any extra money. There had proved to be so many unforeseen expenses in London.
“I think I have a copy. Allow me to lend it to you,” said the Greek. “It will give you a list of the publishers, and publications, and a great deal of very practical information. You should certainly see it. I will give it to you to-morrow.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“In return,” said the obliging foreigner, with a slight smile, “may I not be allowed to read one of your tales?” Lydia, the intuitive, had been mentally anticipating the request. She was eager enough for a verdict upon her work, and only pretended a little modest hesitation.
“I am afraid you wouldn’t find them very interesting — but I should like to know if you think there’s any hope for me, Mr.”
“My name is Margoliouth,” said he.
No one else had ever been honoured by the information.
Lydia went upstairs, discreetly taking upon herself to break up the tête-à-tête, with increased self-satisfaction.
She was less pleased a few days later when she discovered that everybody in the boarding-house now knew that she wrote stories.
“I’m not a bit surprised,” Miss Forster cried loudly and joyously. “I always felt we had a lot in common.
Why, I should write myself if I could only find the time.”
She traced rapid scribbles in the air with her forefinger.
“It must be a great hobby for you,” said pale Mr.
Bulteel, looking respectfully at Lydia.
“Perhaps one night you’ll read us one of your stories,” his wife suggested.
She was not usually gracious to the other women in the house, but Lydia had always listened sympathetically to her account of the agony that she suffered from her teeth, now undergoing extensive structural alterations.
Only little Mrs. Clarence gazed at Lydia with a thoroughly uneasy eye.
“I must say,” she said with a note of aggression in her habitual whine, “I do hope you won’t put me into one of your books, Miss Raymond.”
Lydia enjoyed the attention that was bestowed upon her, even while she critically told herself that it lacked discernment.
She did not read her stories out loud to the assembled boarders, as Mrs. Bulteel had suggested, but she submitted several of them to the inspection of Margo-liouth.
“They have merit, and originality,” he told her.
“But your English is not good.”
Lydia held out her hand for the manuscripts without replying.
“Aha, you think that a fo’reigner cannot criticize English,” he said acutely, and interpreting her secret thought with perfect correctness. “But I assure you that I am right. Look! you put ‘alright’ for ‘all right’ and ‘She was very interested’ instead of ‘she was very much interested.’ And again, you have ‘under the circumstances’ for ‘in the circumstances.’ All these are common errors. Tell me, what authors do you read?” Lydia was vague. Like the majority of readers, she chose books almost at random, because the title allured her, or because someone had said that the story was exciting.
The Greek shrugged his shoulders.
“The ideas are there,” he said, “but you must learn to express them better.”
Lydia felt so much mortified that she could hardly speak. She, the Head of the School at Miss Glover’s, the owner of the “mathematical mind” so rarely found in one of her own sex, the responsible and trusted accountant at Elena’s, to be told that she could not write English! At that moment she disliked Margoliouth with all the cordial dislike accorded to a really candid critic.
Yet it was characteristic of Lydia that, even in the midst of her vexation, she realized that to display it would be to destroy much of the Greek’s flattering opinion of her superior intelligence. She drew a long breath, and gazed at him frankly and steadily.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “I must try and study the really good writers, and — and I’ll remember what you say, and try and write better English.
I’m sure you’re right.”
It was a little set speech, uttered regardless of the indignation still burning within her, and it did not fail of its effect.
“Well done!” cried the Greek softly. “Well done, Miss Raymond! It is very rare to find so much frankness and determination in a lady, if I may say so — I am the more sure that you will eventually succeed.”
Lydia thanked him and took away her manuscripts.
She was inwardly just as angry at his criticism as she had been on first hearing it, and just as certain that a foreigner could know nothing about the correctness or otherwise of her English. But she congratulated herself on the presence of mind and strength of will which had enabled her to make so good a show of open-minded generosity. Quite evidently Margoliouth thought the better of her for it, and Lydia would not for the world have forfeited his admiration.
It gave her great prestige in the eyes of the other boarders.
Lydia knew that they most of them liked her, Mr. Bulteel because she was young and pretty, his wife, and whining little Mrs. Clarence, because she always listened to them sympathetically, all the while inwardly mindful of Grandpapa’s rule— “Always let the other people talk about themselves.”
Miss Forster liked her too.
Lydia did not exactly flatter Miss Forster, but she had a tactful way of introducing the topic of Miss Forster’s great friends, Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, and was always ready to hear about the Bridge parties that Miss Forster frequented at their house in Lexham Gardens.
Hector Bulteel, the pallid youth whose days were passed in Gower Street, had at first been too shy even to speak to Lydia, but one day she asked for his advice on a point of accountancy, and thereafter they occasionally discussed the higher mathematics or the distinctions between organic and inorganic chemistry.
Lydia did not really think very highly of Hector’s capabilities, but criticized him as shrewdly as she did everyone else with whom she came into contact.
She was always careful, however, to keep her rather caustic judgments to herself, and she knew that both at Madame Elena’s and at the boarding-house the reputation that had been hers at school still prevailed: Lydia Raymond never said an unkind thing about anyone.
Even old Miss Lillicrap, who seldom uttered a word that was not either spiteful or complaining, looked at Lydia in a comparatively friendly silence on the evening that the Greek gentleman first took her to the Polytechnic.
Lydia wore a new, pale-pink blouse, and her best dark-brown cloth coat and skirt.
For the first time, she decided that she really was pretty.
The conviction lent exhilaration to the evening’s entertainment, which on the whole she found rather dull.
She was not very much amused by the cinematograph films displayed, and when, towards the end of the evening, Mr. Margoliouth fumbled for her hand in the darkness and held it, Lydia was principally conscious that hers was still sticky from the chocolates that he had given her, and failed to derive any thrill from the experience.
XI
TOWARDS Christmas time, as the evenings became shorter and shorter, Mr. Margoliouth developed great concern at the idea of Lydia’s coming back from her work alone.
Might he call for her at Madame Elena’s, and escort her home? Lydia thanked him very much, and said that one of her fellow-workers generally came most of the way with her. But she was not insensible to the flattering vista thus opened.
The girls at Elena’s would be, in their own parlance, thrilled if a foreign and interesting-looking male should make his appearance outside the little shop and await there the privilege of accompanying Miss Raymond across the Park.
Gina Ryott boasted a “gentleman friend” who occasionally paid her the same compliment, and Lydia, as well as Marguerite Saxon, had peeped through the closed shutters of the shop window more than once, in order to watch them depart together.
And not only the girls but the community at the boarding-house would be full of interest and excitement.
Already Lydia knew perfectly well that Miss Forster and Mrs. Bulteel exchanged significant glances whilst she and the Greek talked to one another at meals.
In the trivial monotony of the boarding-house existence, she even felt certain that Mr. Margoliouth and his increasingly-marked attentions to herself were the chief subjects of discussion.
She began to enjoy her position very much, and no longer held Mr. Margoliouth at a distance. She was not at all in love with him, but his attentions were very agreeable and certainly, Lydia told herself, he had enough discernment to realize that she was not a person with whom liberties might be taken.
As a fact, his manner towards her was respectful enough except for a certain tendency towards patting her wrist, or attracting her attention by a lingering touch upon her arm or her shoulder.
When they went to a theatre or a cinematograph, he always held her hand, and a curious sense of fair play in return for his hospitality induced Lydia to allow this, and even feebly to return an occasional pressure of her fingers, although she derived no slightest satisfaction from the contact.
The rapid development of her mentality had so far out-distanced other, more human attributes of youth, that she frequently debated within herself whether Mr. Margoliouth was ever likely to try and kiss her. If so, Lydia reflected with cold self-righteousness, she would rebuke him in such fashion that he would respect and admire her more than ever. She was full of instinctive horror at the idea of “making herself cheap,” And it had been inculcated into her both by Aunt Beryl and Aunt Evelyn that to do so was to invite disaster of some unspecified but terrible kind.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 158