She rallied her forces. Rosie should at least see in her the saving grace of a courageous candour.
“Perhaps that’s true,” she said slowly. “I’ve been first with one set of people, and then with another, since I was a small child, and perhaps I’ve got into a calculating way of just trying to please them, so that they should be nice to me. I don’t know that I’m really particularly fond of any of them....”
She passed in mental review as she spoke those with whom her short life had been most nearly connected.
Her parents.
She could hardly remember her father, and she had certainly never loved her mother, weak where Lydia, at twelve years old, was already hard, irrationally impulsive where Lydia was calculating, sentimental where Lydia was contemptuous. Looking back, she realized that her mother had done her best to make Lydia as feebly emotional as she was herself, and that Lydia’s own clear-sightedness had not only saved her, but had also forced upon her a very thorough reaction.
Grandpapa — Aunt Beryl — Uncle George — she thought of them all. Certainly she was fond of them in a way, and Grandpapa she most sincerely admired and respected, more than anyone she knew.
She was grateful to Aunt Beryl and Uncle George, and anxious to do them credit, but her interest in their welfare was not excessive. If she heard of their deaths that evening, Lydia knew very well that her chief pang would be remorse for a complete absence of acute sorrow.
There was Nathalie Palmer.
At school, Nathalie had adored her. She still wrote her long, intimate letters full of personal details which Lydia could not help thinking rather trivial and unnecessary.
But because one criticized, that did not preclude a certain degree of affection. Lydia was certainly fond of Nathalie.
She did not for an instant, however, pretend either to herself or to Rosie Graham, that the latter’s words were unjustified by fact.
“I’m certainly not at all in love with Mr. Margoliouth now,” she said, “but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be later on, I suppose. And because it’s more or less true that I’ve never cared a very great deal for anybody so far, it doesn’t follow that I never shall.
I’m not twenty yet.”
“I suppose there’s hope for you,” said Rosie Graham grudgingly. “But I’m very sorry for you when you once do begin to care for somebody — I don’t mind who it may be.”
Lydia was conscious of feeling rather flattered by the interpretation she put upon the words.
“I suppose that all one’s eggs in one basket is always a risk,” she said, not without complacency.
Rosie gave a short, staccato laugh, and again shot one of her disconcerting glances at her visitor.
“What I mean is that you’ll do it so jolly badly. You’ve never cared for anybody but yourself, and you won’t even know how to begin.”
“Then you had better be sorry for the person I care for,” said Lydia drily.
She was in reality very angry, and she rose to go for fear of betraying it.
“I daresay it’s rather beastly of me to have said that, when I’ve asked you here to spend the evening,” said Rosie with a certain compunction in her voice.
“I’m very glad you said what you thought,” Lydia returned calmly. “Good night, and thanks for having me.”
“Good night. And I say — don’t do anything in a hurry about that coloured friend of yours.”
Lydia walked downstairs and out of the front door without deigning any reply to this last, urgent piece of advice.
As she sat in the jolting, nearly empty omnibus that was to take her as far as Southampton Row, she reviewed Rosie Graham’s speeches of the evening.
It was quite true, Lydia supposed, that she did not really care for anybody but herself. She was too clearsighted to pretend that this distressed her. On the contrary, she realized the immense simplification of a life into which no seriously conflicting claims could enter.
After all it had taken the almost uncanny acumen of a Rosie Graham to discover the fundamental egotism that underlay all Lydia’s careful courtesy and studied kindness of word and deed.
She was annoyed that Rosie should have so poor an opinion of her, but Rosie was only one person; and though in Lydia’s present surroundings she held rank of high importance, the importance was merely relative.
The day would come when Rosie Graham, and what Rosie Graham thought, whether true or otherwise, would matter not at all to Lydia Raymond.
XII
NEVERTHELESS, Rosie Graham’s anecdote of the girl who had gone to Port Said, and her vehement advice to have nothing to do with the Greek, continued to haunt Lydia’s mind.
Neither had she forgotten Miss Nettleship’s warning, and the sense that the manageress was watching her with melancholy anxiety caused her to surmise that Mr. Margoliouth had not yet made good his assurance of payment.
She refused an invitation to go to the play with him, but was too anxious that the boarders should continue to look upon her as the heroine of an exciting love-affair to discourage him altogether, although she had really made up her mind that she should not care to be engaged to Margoliouth.
If the first man who had made her acquaintance since she left school showed so much tendency to make love to her, Lydia shrewdly told herself, there would certainly be others. She could well afford to wait, in the certainty of eventually finding a man who would possess such attractions and advantages as the Greek could not boast.
Meanwhile, Margoliouth made life interesting, and Lydia a subject of universal observation and discussion.
She was feeling agreeably conscious of this on the Saturday following her conversation with the manageress, as she came into the boarding-house in time for the midday meal.
Miss Nettleship was hovering at the foot of the stairs and failed to return Lydia’s smile.
“He’ll have to go,” she said without preliminary. “I got his cheque, and the Bank has returned it. You see how it is, dear — a terrible business. I don’t know whether I shan’t have to call the police in even now before I get my money. He’s leaving on Monday, and if I’ve not had the cash down from him, I don’t know what’ll happen, I’m sure.”
“Oh, Miss Nettleship, how dreadful! I am sorry for you,” said Lydia, giving expression to the surface emotion of her mind only, from habit and instinct alike.
“Don’t you have anything more to do with him, dear,” said Miss Nettleship distractedly. “That Agnes is letting something burn downstairs. I can smell it as plain as anything. I’ll have to go. Poor old Agnes! she means well but you quite understand how it is” The manageress hastened down the stairs to the basement.
Lydia could not help glancing at her neighbour in the dining-room with a good deal of anxiety. He seemed quite imperturbable, and said nothing about his departure.
Lydia, whose opinion of Miss Nettleship’s mentality was not an exalted one, began to think that Mr. Margoliouth knew quite well that he could pay his bills before Monday, and had no intention of going away at all.
Otherwise, why was he not more uneasy? Far from uneasy, Margoliouth seemed to be livelier than usual, paid Lydia one or two small compliments with his usual half-condescending, half-sardonic expression, and asked her if she would come out to tea with him that afternoon.
Miss Nettleship was on one of her periodical excursions to the kitchen, and Miss Forster, Mrs. Clarence, and Mrs. Bulteel were listening with all their ears, and with as detached an expression as each could contrive to assume.
“Thank you very much, I should like to,” said Lydia demurely.
They went to a newly-opened corner shop in Piccadilly, where a small orchestra was playing, and little shaded pink lights stood upon all the tables. The contrast with the foggy December dusk outside struck pleasantly upon Lydia’s imagination, and she enjoyed herself, and was talkative and animated.
Margoliouth stared at her with his unwinking black gaze, and when they had finished tea he left his chair, and came to
sit beside her on the low plush sofa, that had its back to the wall.
“A girl like you shouldn’t go about London alone,” he suddenly remarked, with a sort of unctuousness.
“At least, not until she knows something about life.”
“Oh, I can take care of myself,” said Lydia hastily.
“But you don’t know the dangers that a young girl of your attraction is exposed to,” he persisted. “You don’t know what sort of brutes men can be, do you?”
“No girl need ever be annoyed — unless she wants to be,” quoted Lydia primly from Aunt Beryl’s wisdom.
“You think so, do you? Now, I wonder if you’ll still say that in three years’ time. Do you know that you are the sort of woman to make either a very good saint or a very good sinner?” The world-old lure was too potent for Lydia’s youth and her vanity.
“Am I?” she said eagerly. “Sometimes I’ve thought that, too.”
The Greek put his hand upon her, slipping his arm through hers in his favourite manner.
“Tell me about your little self, won’t you?” he said ingratiatingly.
“Always let the other people talk about themselves.”
Oh, inconvenient and ill-timed recollection of Grandpapa’s high, decisive old voice! So vividly was it forced upon the ear of Lydia’s unwilling memory that she could almost have believed herself at Regency Terrace once more. The illusion checked her eager, irrepressible grasp at the opportunity held out by the foreigner. The game was spoilt.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she said abruptly, suddenly grown weary.
Grandpapa had said that long stories about oneself always bored other people, whether or no they politely affected an appearance of interest.
No doubt it was true.
Lydia knew that she herself was not apt to take any very real interest, for instance, in Nathalie Palmer’s long letters about her home, and the parish, and the new experiment of keeping hens at the vicarage, nor in the many stories, all of them personal, told by the girls at Elena’s, nor even in the monotonous recital of Miss Nettleship’s difficulties with her servants.
Why should the Greek be interested in hearing Lydia’s opinion of Lydia? She cynically determined that it would not be worth while to put him to the test.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
Margoliouth raised his eyebrows.
“I suppose that all women are capricious.”
His use of the word “women,” as applied to her nineteen-year-old self, always insensibly flattered Lydia.
She let him take her back to the Bloomsbury boarding-house in a hansom, and remained passive, although unresponsive, when he put his arm round her, and pressed her against him in the narrow confinement of the cab.
“Dear little girl!” sighed Margoliouth sentimentally, as he reluctantly released her from his clasp when the cab stopped.
Lydia ran up the steps, agreeably surprised at the instant opening of the door, and anxious to exchange the raw and foggy atmosphere outside for the comparative warmth and light of the hall.
The dining-room door also stood open, and as Lydia came in Miss Forster rushed out upon her.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” she cried effusively.
“Come in here, my dear, won’t you?”
“Into the dining-room?” said Lydia, amazed. “Why, there’s no fire there! I’m going upstairs.”
“No, no,” said Miss Forster still more urgently, and laying a tightly-gloved white-kid hand on Lydia’s arm.
“There’s someone up there.”
She pointed mysteriously to the ceiling.
Lydia looked up, bewildered, but only saw Miss Nettleship, the gas-light shining full on her pale, troubled face, hastening down the stairs. She passed Lydia and Miss Forster unperceiving, and went straight up to the Greek, who had just closed the street door behind him.
“Mr. Margoliouth!” she said, in her usual breathless fashion. “You see how it is — it’s quite all right, I’m sure... but your wife has come. She’s in the drawing-room.”
Margoliouth uttered a stifled exclamation, and then went upstairs without another word.
Miss Forster almost dragged Lydia into the diningroom.
“There! Of course you didn’t know he was married, did you? Neither did any of us, and I must say I think he’s behaved abominably.”
“But who is she? When did she come?” asked Lydia, still wholly bewildered at the suddenness of the revelation.
“Sit down, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Miss Forster settled her ample person in a chair, with a general expression of undeniable satisfaction.
“Just about half an hour after you’d left the house, I was just wondering if I should find dear Lady Honoret at home if I ran round — you know my great friends, Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret. I’m sure I’ve often mentioned them; they’re quite well-known people — but I thought, of course, there wouldn’t be a chance of finding them disengaged — she’s always somewhere — so Mrs. Bulteel and I were settling down to a nice, cosy time over the fire. Irene had actually made up quite a good fire, for once. And then the door opened” — Miss Forster flung open an invisible portal with characteristic energy— “and in comes Miss Nettleship — and I remember thinking to myself at the time, in a sort of flash, you know: Miss Nettleship looks pale — a sort of startled look — it just flashed through my mind.
And this woman was just behind her.”
“What is she like?” Lydia was conscious of disappointment and humiliation, but she was principally aware of extreme curiosity.
“Just what you’d expect,” said Miss Forster, with a decisiveness that somehow mitigated the extremely cryptic nature of the description. “The moment I saw her and realized who she was — and I’m bound to say Miss Nettleship spoke her name at once — that moment I said to myself that she was just what I should have expected her to be.”
Lydia, less eager for details of Miss Forster’s remarkable prescience than for further information, still looked at her inquiringly.
“Dark, you know,” said Miss Forster. “Very dark — and stout.”
She described a circle of immense and improbable width. “Older than he is, I should say — without a doubt. And wearing a white veil, and one of those foreign-looking black hats tilted right over her eyes — you know the sort of thing. And boots — buttoned boots. With a check costume — exactly like a foreigner.”
“I suppose she is a foreigner.”
“I spoke in French at once,” said Miss Forster. “It was most awkward, of course — and I could see that Mrs. Bulteel was completely taken aback. Not much savoir faire there, between ourselves, is there? But, of course, as a woman of the world, I spoke up at once, the moment Miss Nettleship performed the introduction. ‘Comment vous trouves-vous, M’dahme?’ I said.
Of course, not shaking hands — simply bowing.”
“What did she say?” Lydia asked breathlessly, as Miss Forster straightened herself with a little gasp, after a stiff but profound inclination of her person from the waist downwards.
“She answered in English. She has an accent, of course — doesn’t speak nearly as well as he does. Something about us knowing her husband. ‘Do you mean Mr. Margoliouth?’ I said. Naughty of me, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, very,” said Lydia hastily. “But what did she say?”
“Took it quite seriously,” crowed Miss Forster, suddenly convulsed. “Really, some people have no sense of the ludicrous. I said it for a bit of mischief, you know. ‘Do you mean Mr. Margoliouth?’ I said — and she answered me quite solemnly, ‘Yes, of course.’” Then it really was Margoliouth’s wife. Lydia began to realize the fact that until now had carried no sort of conviction to her mind.
Margoliouth, a married man, had been making a fool of her before all these people. Such was the aspect of her case that flashed across her with sudden, furious indignation.
She perceived that Miss Forster was looking at her with curiosity.
“I didn’t know that he was married at all,” said Lydia calmly.
“No one could have guessed it for a moment, and he never gave us a hint,” said Miss Forster indignantly.
“You won’t mind me saying, dear, that I wanted to get you in here and tell you quietly before you went up and found her there, sitting on the sofa as calm as you please.”
“Thank you,” said Lydia. “But really, you know, it doesn’t matter to me if Mr. Margoliouth is married.
Only I think he ought to have told Miss Nettleship, and — and all of us.”
“The cad!” cried Miss Forster energetically, and striking the rather tight lap of her silk dress with a violence that threatened to split the white-kid glove.
“What we women have to put up with, I always say! Only a man could behave like that, and what can we do to defend ourselves? Nothing at all. I was telling Sir Rupert Honoret the other day — those friends of mine who live in Lexham Gardens, you know — I was telling him what I thought of the whole sex. Oh, I’ve the courage of my opinions, I know. Men are brutes — there’s no doubt about it.”
“I suppose he didn’t expect her here?” said Lydia dreamily, still referring to the Margoliouth menage.
Miss Forster understood.
“Not he! You saw what a fool he looked when the manageress told him she was here. She’s come to fetch him away, that’s what it is. She as good as said so. But they’ll be here till Monday morning, I’m afraid — the pair of them. Ugh! “Miss Forster gave a most realistic shudder. “I don’t know how I shall sit at table with them. Miss Nettleship has no business to take in people of that sort — she ought to have made inquiries about the man in the first place, and I shall tell her so.”
“Oh, no,” said Lydia gently. “Please don’t. She’ll be so upset at the whole thing already.”
“Very generous!” Miss Forster declared, her hand pressed heavily on Lydia’s shoulder. “Of course, it’s you one can’t help thinking of — a young girl like you.
Oh, the cad! If I were a man, I’d horsewhip a fellow like that.”
She indulged in a vigorous illustrative pantomime.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 160