“You can always trust Lydia,” said one or two of the girls.
And once she heard one of them exclaim: “I’ve never heard Lydia Raymond say an unkind word about anybody.”
It sounded very sweet and charitable, but Lydia, with a sense of humour not unlike her grandfather’s, had a little grim, private laugh at the irony of it.
Several of her schoolfellows asked her to tea, or to an occasional picnic in the summer, but Lydia very often regretfully said that her aunt did not like her to go out much, and declined the invitations, without ever referring them to Aunt Beryl at all.
She had a fastidious idea that she did not want to be reputed “great friends” with the children of the more superior tradespeople, or even with the two youthful social lights of the establishment, the daughters of a rich local dentist.
Instinct, and certain recollections of her mother, led her to seek the friendship of a quiet little girl, actually a boarder, whose home was in the west of England, and of whom Lydia only knew that her father was a clergyman, and that she had nice manners and somehow spoke differently from the others. Her name was Nathalie Palmer.
Nathalie did not make so many confidences as did the other girls, and when she did talk to Lydia it was of Devonshire and of her own home, not of the people at school.
This Lydia observed, instinctively approved, and inwardly made note of for future imitation.
As Nathalie knew no one outside the school, she was naturally unable to ask Lydia to come home with her, but just before the midsummer break-up her father came to visit her.
He stayed for two days at the Seaview Hotel, and Nathalie took Lydia to luncheon there.
Mr. Palmer looked old to be the father of fourteenyear-old Nathalie, and had a slow, clerical manner of speech that rather overawed Lydia.
She had never had a meal at any hotel since the days with her mother and father in London, that seemed now so immeasurably remote, and she felt rather nervous. Politely answering Mr. Palmer’s kind inquiries as to her place in class, her favourite games and les sons, she was all the time anxiously casting surreptitious glances at Nathalie to see how she helped herself to the strange and numerous dishes preferred by the waiter.
Aunt Beryl was very particular about “table-manners,” but at Regency Terrace there was never any such bewildering profusion of knives and forks to perplex one.
Once Lydia embarked upon the butter-dish, offered by Mr. Palmer, with her own small knife, and then, leaving it in the butter-dish, found only a very large knife left beside her plate with which to spread it.
Shame and disaster threatened.
Lydia looked up, and her distressed gaze met that of a waiter. To her own effable surprise, she made a movement of her head that brought him deferentially to her elbow with the required implement. Simplicity itself! Lydia inwardly decided that one need never be frightened, in the most unaccustomed surroundings, if only one kept one’s head and never betrayed any sense of insecurity.
Next day she had the gratification of being shyly told by Nathalie: “Father said what a pretty face you had, Lydia, and what nice manners. He was so glad I’d got such a nice friend, and he said I might ask you whether one day your aunt would let you come and stay with us during the holidays.”
IV
WHEN Lydia was fifteen, expectant of Honours in her examinations, highly placed in the school, and with a secret hope that the following term might see her Head of the School — and that, moreover, at an unprecedently early age — unexpected disaster overtook her.
The three placid years at Regency Terrace had been so little marked by any changes that she had forgotten that old sense of the insecurity and impermanence of life, bred of early days with her mother, and it came as a shock to her that anything should interfere seriously with her schemes.
Quite unexpectedly she fell ill.
“I don’t like that cough of yours, Lydia.”
“It’s only a cold, auntie.”
“It doesn’t seem to get any better. Let me see, how long have you had it now?” Lydia pretended to think that Aunt Beryl was only talking to herself, and bent lower over her books.
She always worked at her preparation in the evenings after supper now.
It was damp, chilly weather, and her cough grew worse, although she stifled it as far as possible, and said nothing about the pains in her back and sides.
Aunt Beryl brought her a bottle of cough mixture recommended by Mrs. Jackson, and Lydia put it on the mantlepiece in her bedroom, and carefully dusted the bottle every day, and sometimes poured away a little of the contents.
But one morning, one important morning when there was a French lesson which it was essential that Lydia, with whom French still remained the weakest of links in an otherwise well-forged chain, should attend, she found herself quite unable to go downstairs to breakfast.
Her head swam, her eyes and mouth were burning, and her legs unaccountably trembled beneath her.
“No such thing as can’t,” muttered Lydia fiercely, repeating Grandpapa’s favourite axiom.
The pain in her side had increased without warning, and suddenly gave her an unendurable stab every time that she tried to move.
“Oh!” Lydia sank back on the bed, and found herself crying hoarsely from pain and dismay. Surely even Grandpapa would admit the necessity for saying “can’t” at last.
But Lydia did not see Grandpapa for some time after that morning.
She lay in bed with a fire in the room, sometimes suffering a great deal of pain, and sometimes in a sort of strange, jumbled dream, when the pattern of the wall paper turned into mysterious columns of figures that would never add up, and French Irregular Verbs danced across the ceiling.
Aunt Beryl nursed her all day and sat up with her at nights very often, and Dr. Young came to see her every day.
Once he said to her: “You’re a very good patient. I don’t know what we should have done with you if you hadn’t been a good, reasonable girl, and done everything you were told.”
Lydia was pleased.
“Am I very ill?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ve turned the corner nicely now,” said Dr. Young cheerfully. “But pneumonia’s no joke, and you’ll have to be careful for a long while yet.”
“Shan’t I be able to go up for the examination?”
“Let me see — that’s about a month off. We shall have to see about that.”
Dr. Young’s daughter was at Miss Glover’s school, too, and he knew all about the terrible importance of the examination. Nevertheless, he gave Lydia no permission to resume her studies.
“Don’t worry, dear, there’s plenty of time before you, and now I’ve got some nice fruit jelly for you,” said Aunt Beryl, and Lydia always thanked her very gratefully and lay back against the pillow, trying all the time to recapitulate the French verbs and the list of Exceptions to Rules that she had been learning when she first fell ill.
Except for anxiety about the examination, convalescence was agreeable.
Uncle George came up to see her one day, and brought her some grapes, and explained to her why it was that the great pieces of ice in her glass of barley-water did not cause it to overflow, quite in the old Mr. Barlow manner, and once Nathalie Palmer came by invitation and had tea with her upstairs, and told her how sorry all the girls had been about her illness.
“And you’ll miss the exam,” moaned Nathalie, “and it seems such a shame. I know you’d have done splendidly.”
“What have you been having in class?” asked Lydia.
“Almost all recapitulation. The only really new thing that we’re doing is Henry V. for literature.”
That evening Lydia made Gertrude, the servant, bring her the volume of Shakespeare from the drawing-room.
Her brain felt quite clear now, and her eyes no longer hurt her when she tried to read.
Next day she was allowed to go downstairs for tea.
Aunt Beryl, who looked very tired and sallow, helped her to dress, and U
ncle George came upstairs to fetch her, and they both supported her very carefully down the stairs and into the drawing-room, where a fire had been lit, and a special tea laid on a little table beside the arm-chair.
Grandpapa, with Shamrock prancing unrestainedly at his feet, and the parrot, brought up from the diningroom, hanging upside down in his cage on the centretable, were all waiting to welcome her.
“Very glad to see you down, me dear,” said Grandpapa, shaking hands with her formally. “A nasty time you’ve had, a very nasty time, I’m afraid.”
“She’s been such a good girl, Grandpapa,” said Aunt Beryl, raising her voice as though by a great effort. “Dr. Young says she’s the best patient he’s ever had.”
“Did you have to swallow a great deal of physic, Lyddie? Ah, a very disagreeable thing, physic,” said Grandpapa, who was ordered a certain draught daily, which he was only too apt to pour away into the nearest receptacle in the face of all Aunt Beryl’s protests.
“Mr. Almond asked after you on Wednesday, Lydia.
He has been quite concerned over your illness,” Uncle George told her.
Lydia sat back in the arm-chair, her long plaits falling over either shoulder, and could not help feeling that all this attention was rather agreeable.
Aunt Beryl’s friend, Mrs. Jackson, “stepped in,” to ask how she felt, and to borrow a paper pattern for a blouse, and said she had also heard from Dr. Young and other sources what a good patient Lydia had been.
“And so hard on you, poor child, missing your examinations and all.”
“Perhaps Dr. Young will let me go,” said Lydia wistfully. “It’s only four days, and not till next week.”
Mrs. Jackson shook her head doubtfully.
“The Town Hall is well warmed, with those pipes and all, but I don’t know. Perhaps if you could go in a closed cab, well wrapped up.... But you’ve missed such a lot of study, haven’t you?”
“I know,” said Lydia dejectedly.
They were all very kind to her, and seemed to realize the great disappointment of failing after all, or even of putting off the examination for another year, when one would be nearly sixteen, and no longer the youngest candidate of all.’ Mrs. Jackson refused tea, and hurried away with her paper pattern, Shamrock flying to the head of the stairs after her, and breaking into a storm of howls, as though in protest at her departure. Aunt Beryl hastened distressfully after him.
“Hark at that!” said she unnecessarily.
Grandpapa put on his deafest expression.
“This is very trying for you, Lydia,” said Uncle George pointedly. “It seems to go through and through one’s head.”
Did Grandpapa actually throw a glance of concern at the invalid? She could hardly believe her eyes, and felt more than ever how pleasant it was to be the centre of attention.
And then Aunt Beryl came in again, dropped into a chair near the door, oddly out of breath, and quietly fainted away.
Gertrude had been sent for Dr. Young before they could bring her back to consciousness again, and when he did arrive, he and Uncle George almost carried Aunt Beryl up to her room.
“Thoroughly overdone,” said Dr. Young. “Miss Raymond has been so very unsparing of herself during her niece’s illness — one of those unselfish people, you know, who never think anything about themselves.
I am ashamed of myself for not seeing how near she was to a break-down.”
Decidedly Aunt Beryl was the heroine of the hour.
Lydia was ashamed of herself for the resentment that this turning of the tables awoke in her.
She went to her own room, unescorted, when the commotion had subsided, and her supper was brought up to her by Gertrude nearly an hour late.
“How is Aunt Beryl now?” she asked.
“Gone to sleep, miss. She is wore out, after sitting up at night, and then the nursing during the day, and seeing to the house and the old gentleman, all just the same as usual — and no wonder.”
No wonder, indeed! Everyone said the same.
During the two days that Aunt Beryl, by the doctor’s orders, remained upstairs, the household in Regency Terrace had time to realize what, in fact, was the case — that never before had Miss Raymond been absent from her post for more than a few hours at a time.
When Mr. Monteagle Almond came in on Wednesday evening, full of inquiries and congratulations for Lydia, he was hardly allowed time to formulate them.
“It’s my poor sister we are anxious about,” said Uncle George, just as though Lydia had never been ill at all.
“Quite knocked up with nursing,” said Grandpapa, shaking his head. “I’ve never known Beryl take to her bed before, and we miss her sadly downstairs.”
Mr. Monteagle Almond was deeply concerned.
“Dear me, dear me. This is very distressing news.
I had no idea of this. Miss Raymond never complains.”
“That’s it,” agreed Uncle George gloomily. “One somehow never thought of her overdoing it.”
“Unselfish,” said Mr. Almond, adding thoughtfully: “Well, well, well, selfish people have the best of it in this world, there’s no doubt.”
The little bank clerk was generalizing, according to his fashion, but Lydia felt angry and uncomfortable, as though the reference might have application to herself.
Aunt Beryl certainly looked much as usual when she reappeared downstairs, but it was very evident that two days without her had thoroughly awakened both Grandpapa and Uncle George to a new sense of her importance.
“We must try and spare your aunt as much as possible,” Uncle George said gravely to Lydia. “I’m afraid that we’ve all been allowing her to do far too much for us.”
Lydia found it curiously disagreeable to see the focus of general interest thus shifted. Unconsciously, she had occupied the centre place in the little group in Regency Terrace ever since her arrival there, as the twelve-year-old orphan, in her pathetic black frock.
Without consciously posing, she had certainly, as the eager student at Miss Glover’s bringing back prizes and commendations, been the most striking personality of that small world, and she had known that her elders discussed her cleverness, her steady industry, even her increasing prettiness, as topics of paramount interest.
Lydia, in other words, was complacently aware of being the heroine of that story, which is the aspect worn by life to the imaginative. Now it appeared that this role had been summarily usurped by Aunt Beryl.
Lydia’s sense of drama was far too keen for her to undervalue the possibilities of the aspect presented by her aunt. It was pathetic to have toiled, without appreciation, all these years, to have nursed one’s niece devotedly day and night, and then to faint away helplessly without a word of complaint. But the more Lydia realized how pathetic it was, the more annoyed she became.
Her own convalescence was a very rapid one, partly owing to her determination to get to the Town Hall for the examination. Both Grandpapa and Uncle George, with the masculine inability to entertain more than one anxiety at a time, appeared to have forgotten that she had ever been ill, and Dr. Young himself, when applied to, only said: “Well, well, if you’ve really set your mind on it — the weather’s nice and warm. But you must wrap up well and keep out of draughts. We don’t want a relapse, mind. Miss Raymond can’t do any more nursing, you know. She ought to be nursed herself.”
Lydia would cheerfully have nursed Aunt Beryl, if only to retain her own sense of self-importance, but well did she know that her aunt would give her no such opportunity. Really, unselfish people could be very trying.
She went to the Town Hall, and was greatly restored by the enthusiastic greetings of her fellow-candidates.
“Oh, Lydia, how plucky of you to try, after all! Don’t you feel fearfully behindhand? Fancy, if you do get through! It’ll be even more splendid than if you hadn’t been ill, and had no disadvantage of missing such a lot.”
Lydia had a shrewd suspicion that she had not missed nearly so much as they all thoug
ht. Nathalie had said that most of the work done in class during her absence had been recapitulation, and recapitulation, to Lydia’s sound memory and habits of accuracy inculcated by Uncle George, had never been more than a pleasant form of making assurance doubly sure.
For the last two days she had been studying frantically, and had made Nathalie go through Henry V. with her, and mark the passages to be learnt by heart.
Fortune favoured her in causing the English Literature paper to be set for the last day of the examination.
When that last day came Lydia felt tolerably certain that she had thoroughly overtaxed her barely-restored strength, and would shortly suffer for it with some severity, but her examination-papers had been a series of inward triumphs.
French had certainly presented its usual stumblingblocks, but Lydia reasonably told herself that she would probably have experienced at least equivalent difficulties, had she attended every class, and where mechanical rote-learning could avail her, she knew that she was safe. Moreover, the algebra and arithmetic papers, over which most of the candidates were groaning, she could view with peculiar complacency.
“How did you get on?” several of the girls asked her eagerly.
“Not too badly, I hope,” said Lydia guardedly.
It would be far more of a triumph, if she did succeed, for her success to come as a surprise to everyone. They could hardly expect it, after such an absence from class as hers had been.
Even the governess in charge of the group of girls said to her kindly: “You mustn’t be disappointed if you don’t get through this time, dear. Miss Glover knows you’ve worked very well, and that it’s only illness that’s thrown you back.”
Lydia returned to Regency Terrace thoroughly exhausted.
“I’m sure you’ve done your best, dear, and if it isn’t this time, it’ll be next,” said Aunt Beryl philosophically. “Now go straight upstairs and have a good rest.”
Lydia went, and was not at all displeased to find that her head was throbbing and her face colourless.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 149
