Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Lydia thought that she was beginning to understand why Lady Honoret had so glibly metamorphosed her dress-expenditure into her charitable donations, for Sir Rupert’s inspection.

  Lady Honoret never penetrated to the study. She frequently sent messages by a servant to ask if Lydia would lunch with her, and these invitations Lydia always accepted. On other days, the footman brought a well-furnished tray to the study.

  At first, Lydia was a prey to that curious terror of servants that appears to be inherent in those unused to their presence. She would arrange herself in industrious attitudes for the footman’s benefit, her back carefully turned to the door by which she expected him to enter, and would scrupulously avoid looking at him while he arranged the tray on a side table or put more coal on the fire.

  Imperceptibly, however, Lydia’s powers of adaptability made themselves felt. She said “Thank you” to William in quite an audible voice, and one day asked for a fresh supply of ink. When William replied, in a very matter-of-fact way, merely “Yes, miss,” And the ink duly appeared, Lydia felt that she was really at one with her surroundings.

  The two pounds a week that she was earning gave her a sense of wealth, and her book went into a second edition and continued to receive excellent Press notices.

  She wondered whether Sir Rupert knew that he was employing as private secretary a novelist of undoubted distinction.

  It was only Lady Honoret and her friends who ever talked about Lydia’s literary achievement.

  Sir Rupert, a silent man enough, only spoke to her, in his dry little nasal voice, about her secretarial work.

  Lydia, half-suspicious of men after her adventure with Margoliouth, half-rendered so by the vague vulgarity of a hint received from Miss Forster, could not for an instant have deluded herself, even had she wished to do so, that her employer gave even the most passing thought to her possible attractions.

  But the men who came to see him in his study sometimes looked at her with less unseeing eyes.

  They were mostly old men, in Lydia’s estimation at least, and the leering smile turned on her from time to time, or the occasional familiarity of a hand laid on her arm, afforded her but little gratification.

  There was a young and very good-looking clergyman, however, who once came to see Sir Rupert and, in the midst of their long, low-voiced discussion of an East End family of Polish Jews, found time to glance at the slim figure of the private secretary, quietly writing in the far corner of the room.

  She was called presently to enter another appointment for him to see Sir Rupert the following week.

  “Four o’clock on Wednesday next, then. I have no other engagement, I think, Miss Raymond?”

  “No, Sir Rupert.”

  “Put down Mr. Damerel — the Reverend C. Damerel — for four o’clock.”

  Lydia made the entry, and the young clergyman, looking at her, said, almost timidly: “Thank you, Miss Raymond.”

  His instant use of her name flattered her, and he had a singularly attractive speaking-voice, low and musical.

  On Wednesday Lydia, with a half-smile at her own secretly acknowledged vanity, put on her most becoming blouse and a ribbon in her hair.

  At half-past three o’clock, Sir Rupert walked into the study and told her that she was free for the rest of the day, and might go at once. It was the first holiday he had ever offered her.

  Lydia took advantage of the concession, since she could not very well do otherwise, and was in reality glad of it, but she wondered whether the good-looking young man would notice her absence.

  That he had done so was made evident in his third visit, when his eager gaze instantly sought the corner where she sat, and as their eyes met, he smiled frankly.

  After that, Lydia and he met frequently, although they seldom exchanged many words, except one afternoon when Sir Rupert was late, and Lydia had daringly offered the visitor a cup of tea.

  Over the intimacy of the small tea-table, they had talked quite freely, and although Lydia had been a little bit disappointed at the very impersonal note maintained by one who so obviously admired her, she had attributed it to his profession. The impression chiefly left upon her mind had been of an extreme simplicity that was somehow mysteriously suggestive of good breeding.

  It puzzled her the more from the contrast with Lady Honoret and her expansive friends. London clergymen surely weren’t “anybody” as a rule, Lydia reflected sweepingly. Lady Honoret, whom no one, least of all the observant Lydia, could ever have accused of simplicity, was “somebody.” So was each one of her talkative, elaborate familiars. They all of them, in various guise, proclaimed it of themselves. Their conversation advertised themselves and their importance incessantly.

  “... Can’t stay one second, dearest. The Duchess is screaming for me to come and finish our stall for the Fancy Fair....”

  “Don’t talk about Calmar’s New Symphony! Wretched creature! He had the audacity to ask me what I thought of it, and I was perfectly frank. I said there’s only one way in which it strikes me, and that is — rococo!”

  “Of course, I designed the dress. The dear lady put herself entirely in my hands, and the result was that it was the only costume in the room that was really of the period... people raved about it.”

  “No, my dear lady, I haven’t a moment. My time is not my own; it belongs to the public — the wretched, reading, writing, advertising public.”

  This last was Cassela, the publisher.

  He came to Lexham Gardens more and more frequently, and the rivalry between himself and his hostess as to “new discoveries” appeared to have fallen into abeyance.

  He had complimented Lydia very effusively on her book when it first came out, but after she had taken her place in the household as Sir Rupert’s private secretary, he took very little notice of her, although he was almost always at lunch or in the drawing-room whenever Lydia was invited to either by Lady Honoret.

  She seldom went to Lexham Gardens on Sundays, although Sir Rupert had once or twice claimed an hour or two’s work from her in the morning.

  “Will that interfere with your hour of worship?” he once inquired solemnly.

  “I can go to church in the evening,” Lydia replied, “thank you, Sir Rupert.”

  As a matter of fact, Sunday, spent at the boardinghouse, now seemed to her the dullest day of the week.

  There were no interviews with strangers demanding Sir Rupert — and who might turn out to be good-looking and impressionable like Mr. Damerel — nor brief, friendly greetings from habitues who came of ten to the study and knew Lydia well by sight, and there was no possibly exciting interlude in the middle of the day, when the people in the dining-room accepted her almost as a daughter of the house, Lydia sometimes thought, and very often made most flattering allusions to her novel.

  The guests at the boarding-house seemed to her now incredibly dull. How could she ever have supposed them to be of my importance in the scheme of existence? When Hector Bulteel, after numerous failures, at length passed his Matriculation, and the event was celebrated, with perhaps tactless insistence, by the Bulteels’ fellow-boarders, Lydia joined civilly and even with a show of cordiality in their demonstrations, but at the back of her mind she was aware that the people with whom she now chiefly associated would look upon the achievement with a total absence of enthusiasm.

  Many of them, very probably, would not even know what Matriculation meant.

  The boarders all read Lydia’s novel, and Miss Nettleship actually bought a copy of it, for what she called “the drawing-room library,” which consisted of half a dozen torn novels in sixpenny editions, a copy of “Molly Bawn” with the last pages missing, and several unbound, and very old, numbers of The Lady’s Realm.

  All of them liked Lydia’s book, and Mrs. Clarence remarked with melancholy pleasure that she had cried over it to the extent of having to fetch a clean pocket handkerchief before she could finish the last chapter.

  But although Lydia was not less popular, the boa
rders were now a little bit more reserved with her, showing all that curious nervousness that assails the semieducated mind coming into contact with accredited “cleverness.”

  Lydia’s “cleverness” was an established fact now that she had published a book and secured the position of Sir Rupert Honoret’s secretary for herself.

  Sometimes they asked her about her work.

  “Mostly accounts, but I answer a good many business letters, and file and index them.”

  “And you meet interesting people, don’t you, dear?” said Mrs. Bulteel hungrily.

  “Oh, yes.”

  But Lydia did not vouchsafe many details to these eager listeners, partly because she did not want to rouse Miss Forster’s jealousy, and partly because she could never quite forget Grandpapa’s old advice: “Always let the other people talk about themselves.”

  It somehow seemed better to turn the conversation into the direction of that winter when the Bulteels had gone to Switzerland, and made the acquaintance of an Irish viscount and his wife, staying at the same hotel as themselves, or to let Miss Forster tell the story of the wonderful luck she had had playing Bridge at her club with the Honourable Mrs. Harry Maudesley as her partner.

  Lydia did not spend very much time at the boardinghouse now, although she had again begun to write a book in the evenings.

  She was often kept overtime at Lexham Gardens, and, coming in late, would find that Miss Nettleship had kept a plateful of meat and vegetables for her in the oven, which was put before her baked very dry and almost too hot to eat. But she was rather glad of the excuse for having the dining-room all to herself, and going straight upstairs to her bedroom afterwards, without joining the dull group in the drawing-room.

  When the summer was half over, Sir Rupert told Lydia that she could have a month’s holiday.

  “We shall spend all August in Scotland, and perhaps longer,” he said gloomily.

  “You’ll want me again when you get back to London, won’t you?” asked Lydia quickly.

  “Certainly. I’ll let you know. Leave me your address.”

  The question of her address during that month of freedom, was the very one that Lydia was beginning to turn over in her own mind. Of course there was Regency Terrace, but then she had spent several days there only a very little while ago, and August was really an intolerable month for the residents at the little seaside town. Also, the society of Aunt Beryl and Uncle George, with the Jacksons and Mr. Monteagle Almond for sole variety, was not very exhilarating.

  Grandpapa was growing very old, and had long since ceased to honour Lydia with any of his entertaining soliloquies; indeed his cynical pronouncements now had lost their originality and point, and become like the dim, old-fashioned platitudes of the bygone age to which Grandpapa belonged. Perhaps a few days at the end of the month for Regency Terrace, but Lydia thought that her holiday as a whole could very well be spent in Devonshire, paying that long deferred visit to Nathalie Palmer.

  Her letters to Nathalie during the past year had certainly been much less expansive than those written when first they had parted at the end of their school days together, but she had sent Nathalie a copy of her book and had received a rapturous appreciation in reply.

  Lydia that evening wrote to Nathalie — a letter no longer than those that she was in the habit of sending, but explaining that her work lately had taken up all her time, and that she had also begun to try and write another book. Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret were going away for August and Lydia was to have a holiday, and was longing to get away from London and have a complete change and rest. Her plans weren’t quite settled, however, because though Aunt Beryl would always love to have Lydia at home, at the same time Grandpapa was getting very old, and must be considered, and people coming and going always disturbed him. But of course it would be nice to help Aunt Beryl, who certainly had more to do than she could manage.

  Lydia was rather ashamed of the conscious insincerity with which she wrote that last sentence, but she let the letter go.

  Nathalie’s eager invitation came by return of post.

  It was pleasant to tell the boarders, when they discussed plans for the summer, with a certain harassed enjoyment in the much-debated topic, that one had an invitation to spend a month with a school friend in Devonshire.

  “Oh, how glorious! Is it moor, or seaside?”

  “Not far from Dartmoor, I think. It’s just on the borders of Cornwall and Devon.”

  “How lovely! I thought of the Cornish coast myself,” said Mrs. Clarence casually, “but on the whole I think I shall stick to Cromer. It’s not so much of a journey.”

  Old Miss Lillicrap cackled disagreeably at this undeniable truth, and Mrs. Clarence grew very red.

  “Shellness for us, I suppose,” said Mr. Bulteel cheerfully. “We’ve been to the same rooms for three years now — this’ll make the fourth — and I don’t know that we can do better.”

  “I’ve written a very plain letter to Mrs. Bett, though,” said his wife sharply. “She ought to know what we expect by this time, but you remember we had a fuss last year because she wouldn’t give us a hot sweet on Sundays. I’m not going to have any more nonsense of that sort. If she can’t do the little we require, then we must go elsewhere, that’s all. I’m sure there’s plenty of choice.”

  Everybody looked rather admiringly at Mrs. Bulteel, who could afford to speak thus.

  Only Miss Forster made a spirited show of having a choice of her own, too.

  “Of course, Scotland is jolly at this time of the year, but I’ve got a dear friend who’s taken a wee cottage in the Fen country, and I may join forces with her.

  Though, of course, I could spend August and September in paying visits, but that means such a lot of travelling.”

  “Too expensive,” indelicately said the outspoken Miss Lillicrap. “Look at what tips for the servants alone comes to.”

  The allusion naturally closed the conversation.

  Lydia, however, had derived from it inspiration.

  “Do you know what Miss Nettleship is doing for a holiday?” she inquired privately of Miss Forster, who always knew everything.

  “She wants to get away for a fortnight, if she can get a friend to come here just for the time. I’m sure she needs a change; she hasn’t been away for nearly twelve months, and you know what a worry she’s had, one way and another” Miss Forster stopped self-consciously, obviously on the very brink of an allusion to the Margoliouth episode.

  Lydia wrote to Aunt Beryl.

  Miss Nettleship really did want a change, and though Lydia hadn’t said a word to her, she couldn’t help thinking that if Auntie asked her down to Regency Terrace, it would be a weight off her mind, and do her all the good in the world. She could have Lydia’s room, and Lydia really would like to think of her there — she had always been so kind. And if things were arranged like that, then Aunt Beryl needn’t worry about Lydia for a moment, because Lydia would simply accept the urgent invitation that she had so often put off or refused, to pay Nathalie Palmer a visit at the Devonshire Rectory. Aunt Beryl remembered Nathalie, of course? Aunt Beryl remembered Nathalie quite well, and it would be nice for Lydia to stay with her friend. A disappointment, of course, to all of them, not to see her at home; but perhaps Devonshire would be more of a change, and Maria Nettleship had certainly been very kind — it would be a real pleasure to try and make it up to her a bit.

  So Miss Nettleship received, and gratefully accepted, the invitation to occupy Lydia’s room at Regency Terrace, and Lydia herself, unable to help feeling that everything had been arranged in the most masterly manner, was able to take her place in a crowded train in all the heat and smoke of Paddington station, prepared to enjoy a new experience with no troublesome arriere-pensee in the background to spoil things.

  She could not remember that she had ever been to “the real country” before, although Uncle George’s Sunday walks had often taken them right away from shore and tram-line, to charming little woods or pictures
que farmhouses.

  But Devonshire, Lydia had learnt from books and from Nathalie’s eager descriptions when she was a homesick little girl at Miss Glover’s school — Devonshire was different.

  The country that the train was rushing through with so few stops grew prettier and more wooded, the soil richer, the green more luxuriant.

  Presently there was a stop at Exeter, and Lydia knew that she must be nearing her destination, the little station with the double name, that Nathalie had warned her would come almost immediately after the glimpse of Dartmoor.

  There was a sudden change in the character of the scenery — a barren and beautiful expanse, dotted with grey boulders and with a tumbling stream foaming across it — and Lydia heard an old country-woman observe to her neighbour: “There’s ole Dartymoor, same as ever.”

  She pulled her hand-bag down from the rack, feeling strangely excited, and hastily put on her gloves just as the train slowed down and stopped.

  “Clyst Milton and Ashlew!” Would Nathalie have changed — would they even recognize one another? Lydia stepped out of the train, for once inclined to nervousness.

  But reassurance was at hand. Nathalie had not changed — there she was, come to meet her friend, with the same trustful welcome shining in her blue eyes, and her fair hair twisted up under a plain straw hat instead of hanging in a slender little pigtail, that had never attained to half the weight and length of Lydia’s own two plaits.

  “Oh, Lydia! I am glad you’ve come.”

  “So am I! You haven’t changed a bit. Oh, my trunk! Is it out?” The train had begun to move already.

  Nathalie turned composedly to the only porter.