Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

Lydia released her hand and looked round the room.

  The remaining visitors were engaged in conversation, or in scanning the pictures and miniatures on the walls.

  Lydia, very upright and with her head held high, turned round and walked out of the room. Her umbrella was miraculously put into her hand by the manservant in the hall; the door was opened and shut again behind her, and she stood on the pavement of Lexham Gardens and drew a deep breath.

  “My goodness gracious!” said Lydia to herself, in the tense, straightforward phraseology of Regency Terrace. “My goodness gracious! What a house, and what manners they all had!” This was the only unvarnished expression of her opinion that Lydia permitted herself.

  She gave Miss Forster a careful and rather manufactured account of the luncheon-party; she mentioned to the other girls at Elena’s that she had been introduced recently to a Lady Honoret who had twice invited her to her own house, and she wrote and told Aunt Beryl that Miss Forster’s friend, Lady Honoret, had been very kind to her, and was going to read something she had written and tell her if anything could be done with it. Lady Honoret wrote herself, and was the friend of publishers.

  Inwardly, Lydia was not without fears that her volatile patroness might forget all about her, and nothing more ever be heard of the novel and its possibilities, but in less than a week she received a summons to Lexham Gardens.

  This time she said nothing at all to Miss Forster, but took the Cromwell Road omnibus, when her work was over for the day.

  She regretted very much that she was not wearing the three-cornered hat, but only her every-day straw.

  Lady Honoret, however, greeted her with outstretched hands and an enthusiasm that quite overlooked any such minor considerations. To her real astonishment, Lydia learnt that her novel was a tiny, tiny gem, a wonderful discove’y, and the truest and purest return to the heart of Nature that Lady Honoret had read for years and years and years.

  “Oh, the little b’oken heart!” breathed Lady Honoret piously, as she hung over the final pages of the typescript.

  Of course, it was to go to a publisher — it would make a boom at once — it was so utterly new and young.

  “But not Cassela,” said Lady Honoret thoughtfully.

  “I think not Cassela. He goes in so tremendously for strong things, and your idyll is such a wee, wee tender little sto’y. Besides, he’s got his discove’y — this Red Indian girl, or whatever she calls herself. This is to be all mine!” Lady Honoret laughed in a gleeful, childish sort of way, and Lydia reflected coldly and ungratefully that a desire to outdo Mr. Cassela in the field of discoveries was probably at the bottom of her hostess’s extreme enthusiasm.

  Nevertheless, she felt very much excited, and she thanked Lady Honoret warmly and eagerly before she went away.

  Was her book really so very good, she wondered? She felt a suspicion that work produced so very easily was unlikely to have any great intrinsic merit.

  With considerable self-control, she said nothing whatever to anyone of the hopes that she now entertained, and which occasionally rose to immense and unreasonable heights, of an immediate accession to fame and fortune.

  Every day she looked eagerly and nervously for further news from Lexham Gardens.

  When it came at last she was astounded.

  Her book was accepted — it was to be published as soon as possible — the publisher thought well of it — she was to receive a draft agreement for her immediate consideration....

  This time Lydia cast discretion to the winds. She was wildly excited, and she told everybody that she had written a novel, and that it was going to be published at once.

  “Do you mean printed, dear?” said Miss Nettleship, in an awed manner. “Well, I never! The boarders will be anxious to read it — they’ll all think to see themselves.”

  This was no less than the truth.

  Mrs. Clarence showed the extreme of apprehension, lest she should discover herself in the central figure of Lydia’s novel, and seemed to credit the authoress with a supernatural power of insight enabling her to visualize her victim’s past, present, and future alike.

  “You writing people are so penetrating,” she said anxiously to Lydia, “and there are certain passages in my life — oh, years before I ever came here — when I never thought I should live in a residential hotel, in fact, but had my own house and servants — but there have been incidents which I’ve always thought exactly like a novel. Only I couldn’t bear to see my own character dissected in cold print.”

  Even Mrs. Bulteel, laughing rather nervously, said that she supposed writers were always on the look-out for copy, and they would all be afraid to open their lips in front of Miss Raymond now.

  Mr. Bulteel congratulated her solemnly.

  “I am afraid that I very seldom read novels myself, but we shall make a point of obtaining your book from the library. I have often been urged to write myself — some of my experiences in foreign countries would certainly make interesting reading — but, I’ve always said, a writer has to have imagination. Don’t you find that imagination is absolutely necessary to you?” Lydia admitted that this was so.

  “I believe,” Mr. Bulled pursued his reflective way, “I believe that I could express myself in sufficiently correct English. But I lack imagination. I am a practical man, I fear.”

  His fear, Lydia could not help noticing, was tinged with something that much resembled complacency.

  “Perhaps, one day,” said good Mr. Bulteel, smiling, “one day, you and I might collaborate over a book.”

  After that the book that Lydia and Mr. Bulteel were to write in collaboration became one of the mild, standard jokes of the boarding-house.

  The congratulations which pleased Lydia least were those which she received from Miss Forster, who seemed inclined to look upon herself as the presiding genius of the situation.

  “And to think it’s all come from my having told my friend Lady Honoret all about you, that time when you were so down in the mouth last Christmas!” she cried exultantly. “Why, it was her taking you up that did the whole thing, wasn’t it? I’m sure I’m delighted to have been able to do something really helpful like that for you, my dear!” Lydia thanked Miss Forster, but without any great display of exuberance.

  She did not expect any compliments from old Miss Lillicrap, nor did she receive any, but the girls at Madame Elena’s were more enthusiastic.

  “I hope it ends sadly,” said Marguerite Saxon, hanging her head on one side. “I often like to weep a little weep over a story with a sad ending. I know it’s foolish to take a tale so much to heart, but I’m made that way. I get awfully absorbed in what I read. You know, when I put the book down it’s as though I’d said good-bye to real friends. That’s the way I feel, very often, about the people in the tales I read.”

  Gina Ryott’s congratulations began better, but they, also, tailed off into personal reminiscences of her own.

  Lydia noticed it with impatience, but without any surprise.

  “I can’t imagine how you afford the time to write, I must say. I’ve always thought you must be clever, Lydia. You know, the way one can tell sometimes, without any rhyme or reason — oh, so-and-so seems to be clever. That’s what I’ve often thought about you.

  A gentleman friend of mine always says I’m a judge of character, and somehow I think I must be. It’s just a sort of knack, somehow. One sort of sizes people up right, the minute one sets eyes on them. I always know in a second what I think of anybody.”

  Lydia, after these two, heard with something like relief the practical comments of Miss Rosie Graham.

  “Good for you! I hope they’re going to pay you.”

  “I’m getting a royalty,” Lydia explained. “That means so much on each copy sold. I daresay it won’t be very much, especially as they say it’s a very short book, and is only going to cost three-and-six instead of six shillings. But my friend, who arranged it all for me, says it’s a very good agreement indeed for a first book.”

>   “My-friend-who-arranged-it-all” was Lady Honoret. Thus did Lydia now freely describe that patroness of struggling art. Nor did she do so unjustified by Lady Honoret’s further advances. Miss Forster might be invited to Bridge parties during the week, but it was Lydia who was urged to come eve’y, eve’y Sunday and spend the afternoon, and meet all the dear people who had heard about her, and would be longing to read her book. It was Lydia who was introduced to all and sundry of the frequenters of the Lexham Gardens house as the very latest and youngest novelist, and after a little while she altogether ceased to resent the label of “actually serves in a shop, my dear!” which alternated with “little seamstress, in quite a tiny way,” that formed the aside to the introductions.

  It all seemed to add to her prestige with these extraordinary people.

  She assimilated the new atmosphere with astonishing ease, and, being unhampered by shyness, soon acquired absolute ease in her surroundings.

  Insensibly she became less interested in her work at Madame Elena’s, and although the habit of concentration still prevailed, she was conscious of relief now, when each working day came to an end.

  She ceased to cultivate the little cashier, Rosie Graham, since her advances never led to any permanent success, and, moreover, she could not altogether forget Rosie’s strictures on the evening they had had supper together. Madame Elena went to Paris without leaving Lydia in charge, as she had half said she would do, and on her return seemed inclined to fall back into the old way of favouring Gina Ryott.

  Early in the summer Marguerite Saxon’s roseleaf face developed a series of spots that rapidly became sores, and Madame Elena remarked them, in spite of layers of thick white powder, and told Marguerite that she need not return until they were cured.

  The wretched model sobbed and cried, asserting that she had used bottle upon bottle of “stuff,” some of which must soon take effect, but as the sore places spread daily, and two clients asked what was the matter with that girl’s face, she received her dismissal, and the show-room at Elena’s knew her no more.

  “She was bound to end by ruining her skin with all that paint and stuff,” said the other girls.

  Lydia was not greatly interested. She examined her own clear olive complexion in the glass, and decided that the very moderate use of a small powder puff was not likely to have results that would bring upon her the disastrous fate of Marguerite Saxon, and thereupon dismissed the whole incident from her thoughts.

  Full of tremulous excitement, she corrected the proofs of her novel, and waited for its appearance.

  XVI

  “FANCY about your book, dear!” wrote Aunt Beryl.

  “Well I am pleased. Aunt E. and Olive are back here now, and so surprised to hear your news. Mind you tell us when to order the book from the library. I always said you had it in you to write, dear.”

  Lydia could not remember any such flattering prediction, but she put Aunt Beryl’s name down on the list of people to whom one of the six presentation copies of her book, that Lady Honoret had said she would receive, must be sent.

  The list cost her a certain amount of thought.

  Aunt Beryl went without saying — and of course, Lady Honoret, to whom it would be a real pleasure to present anything so certain to be rapturously received — Nathalie Palmer — rather a nuisance, that, perhaps? — but Lydia stifled the thought, with the remembrance that, after all, it was Nathalie who had typed the book — Grandpapa — one would like to show Grandpapa that even earning one’s own living in London was not without its higher side — and then Uncle George would be hurt if he alone of the Regency Terrace household were left out — four copies gone already, and one to keep for herself — that was five — and Lydia surveyed with dismay the number of people to each one of whom she would have liked to send the remaining copy.

  Mr. Monteagle Almond — who would think more highly of her intellectual attainments than ever — Miss Glover, who had so much wanted to have Lydia on her staff of highly-qualified teachers — the Senthovens, who could themselves do nothing except play games — even Madame Elena passed through Lydia’s perplexed mind as a possible candidate, for of late the principal had appeared to pay very little attention to her assistant. But, in the end, Lydia reluctantly decided that the sixth copy of her book must be given to Miss Forster.

  There was a tendency about Miss Forster, slight but unmistakable, to show herself affronted at the ease and rapidity which which her protégée had risen to undreamed-of heights of intimacy in the Honoret establishment.

  Lydia indeed, inwardly, was rather annoyed with Lady Honoret for her want of discretion. It had become quite difficult to answer Miss Forster’s sharply put questions as to the number of her visits to Lexham Gardens, on occasions when Miss Forster herself had received no invitation there.

  Lydia had always been very popular at the boardinghouse, and she felt that it would be unpleasant, and would spoil her triumph in the appearance of the book, if anyone were to feel injured and show vexation — particularly Miss Forster, who was also popular, and was, moreover, always quite ready to exploit any emotion that she might be experiencing, in conversation with the other boarders.

  Lydia planned to give her the book, and to inscribe in it a grateful inscription, and meanwhile she was careful to dwell upon the fact that she had never yet met Sir Rupert Honoret — whom Miss Forster, of course, knew so very well indeed.

  Imperceptibly enough, however, the opinion of the boarders ceased to matter, just as that of the girls at Madame Elena’s had ceased to matter, a little while before.

  Lydia’s book was a success.

  Some quality, at which the writer herself was secretly surprised, was found by the public and the reviewers alike in the slight little story. It met with something that very nearly approached the reception predicted for it so gushingly by the enthusiastic Lady Honoret.

  Various people, their names for the most part well known to Lydia through the agency of Aunt Evelyn and her ladies’ paper, asked to meet her, and her publisher’s advertising-manager wrote and asked for her photograph, to appear in the Press.

  Lady Honoret was triumphant.

  “A child — a young, fresh child of eighteen — isn’t it too, too Arcadian?” she would inquire of her friends, although Lydia, at first rather inclined to be offended at having such juvenility thrust upon her, had already distinctly stated that she was twenty.

  Then, it seemed with paralyzing suddenness, the day came when Lady Honoret said to her without any preliminary at all: “Why don’t you leave that d’eadful shop — I’m sure it is d’eadful — and give up your whole time to your real work?” Why? Lydia could think of innumerable reasons, although she might not be disposed to put them before Lady Honoret.

  Because it was well known to Aunt Beryl, Grandpapa, Rosie Graham, everybody — that to leave a good post unless it were for a better one, was a wanton and foolish flying in the face of Providence — because Mr.

  Monteagle Almond would revoke all his good opinion of her, after she had justified his recommendation of her so splendidly — because Grandpapa would call her a little fool, whose head had been turned — and, finally, because the writing of a successful first novel could not be looked upon in the light of earning one’s own living, as Lydia and Lydia’s relations understood the term.

  This last was the reason she chose to give Lady Honoret: “I ought to do something for myself. My aunt and uncle, who brought me up, couldn’t afford to have me living at home doing nothing at all — it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Oh, no, no!” cried Lady Honoret with a slight shudder. “I’m sure you oughtn’t to live with any uncle and aunt — they’re always such Philistines, too — but if you really have to think about the te’ible money part of it, of course you know you’re bound to make a little money from writing. Only I suppose you simply can’t bear to think of writing for money? It would paralyze it all?” Lydia did not like to say that all that she was afraid of was that the money made by writing wo
uld be insufficient in quantity, so she remained silent, and Lady Honoret squeezed her hand sympathetically.

  “You must think it all over, you dear little strange, wild thing,” she declared affectionately, “and then if you settle to leave your shop, as I’m sure you ought, you must let me know.”

  And she said nothing more of her astonishing suggestion.

  That was just the way of those new, strange people whom Lydia was now coming to know! They made the wildest and most revolutionary plans, proposing lightly such wholesale changes as the people from whom Lydia sprang would never contemplate in a lifetime bound by tradition and practical considerations alike, and then, when one pleaded for time to assimilate the scheme, to weigh and consider it, and to consult one’s relations, they brushed it all aside in a moment and seemingly forgot all about it! Lydia marvelled at them, and was rather inclined to despise them for want of self-control, and lack of the bread-winner’s early acquired self-discipline.

  All the same, Lady Honoret’s suggestion that she should leave the shop unwillingly allured Lydia, as holding vague possibilities of some higher, more splendid preferment in store.

  One Sunday she found her patroness in despair over a little writing-table that was loaded with moroccobound account-books, silver and enamel pencils, carved penholders and spoilt nibs, photographs in mosaic frames, a mosaic clock telling the wrong time, a china inkpot with ink running down its steep, purple sides, a small silver mirror on legs, and all round and underneath and on the top of all these, a vast quantity of detached bills and scribbled-over half-sheets of notepaper.

  “These mis’eable accounts!” cried Lady Honoret quite desperately. “Sir Rupert has told me to put all these in order and let him have what he calls a statement, and all my charities are mixed up with personal expenses, and heaps of things I can’t possibly let him see, and I’ve lost my cheque-book — though I don’t really mind that, because I know I’m ter’ibly, ter’ibly overdrawn — but ev’ey time I add these things up they come diff’ent. Oh, darling, are you good at a’ithmetic?” Lydia could never become in the least used to the terms of endearment, so much in vogue amongst Lady Honoret and her friends, and “darling,” in particular, was a word that she had never heard applied except to small children. She blushed involuntarily, and said: “I am accountant at the place where I work, you know.”