Presently Gertrude brought the plum-pudding, blazing in a blue flame, and with a twig of holly sticking from the top, and much amusement was occasioned by the discovery that several of the slices contained a small silver emblem. Mr. Monteagle Almond solemnly disinterred a thimble, and Bob, with a scarlet face, a wedding-ring.
Under cover of Olive’s screams on the discovery of a three-penny bit on her own plate, he pushed the ring over to Lydia.
“I shall give it to you,” he muttered gruffly.
After the plum-pudding, they ate mince-pies, and a little spirit was poured over each and a lighted match applied by Uncle George, Mr. Almond or Bob, Aunt Ik’ryl and Aunt Evelyn, in accordance with the usage of their day, each uttering a small scream as the flame shot up. When the mince-pies were all finished, the dessert dishes were pulled out from under the piled-up heaps of crackers and holly surmounting them.
The dessert was also traditional — oranges, nuts, apples, raisins, almonds. Everybody avoided direct mention of these last from a sense of delicacy, until Mr. Monteagle Almond himself remarked humorously: “I think I will favour my namesake, if the ladies will pardon an act of cannibalism.”
Upon which everybody laughed a great deal and jokes were made, and Bob and Olive began to ask riddles.
In the midst of Bob’s best conundrum, Grandpapa suddenly knocked loudly upon the table.
“Send round the port, George,” he ordered solemnly.
“Round with the sun... that’s right. The ladies must take a little wine, for the toasts.”
Lydia knew what was coming. She had heard it every year, and the transition from jovial animal enjoyment to sudden solemnity always gave her a slight thrill.
Grandpapa raised his glass, and everybody imitated the gesture.
“The Queen! God bless her.”
The sentiment was devoutly echoed round the table.
Then Uncle George said in a very serious way: “Our absent friends.”
And the toast was drunk silently, Aunt Beryl raising her handkerchief to her eyes for a moment as she did every year, in whose honour nobody knew.
After that healths were proposed and honoured indiscriminately. Mr. Monteagle Almond ceremoniously toasted Aunt Beryl, and Bob, looking very sentimental, insisted upon knocking the rim of his glass several times against the rim of Lydia’s. Uncle George, noncommittally confining himself to generalities, proposed “The Fair Sex,” And Grandpapa effectually prevented anyone from rising to reply by sarcastically inquiring which of the ladies present would act as representative for them all.
The room grew steadily hotter.
Lydia had enjoyed the resumption of old festive customs and also the additional importance conferred upon herself as a two days’ visitor from London, but she found herself viewing the familiar Christmas rituals from a new and more critical angle.
She was inclined to wonder how they would strike the aristocratic boarding-house in Bloomsbury, or even the fashionable “young ladies” at Madame Elena’s.
Surely it was an out-of-date custom to join hot hand to hot hand all round the table, and sing, “Auld Lang Syne” in voices made rather hoarse and throaty from food, and silently to pull each a cracker with either neighbour, hands crossed, and Uncle George saying, “One — two — three — all together, now — Go!” Lydia felt mildly superior.
They adorned themselves with paper caps and crowns, Bob sheepishly self-conscious, Lydia critically so, and all the others merely serious. When no one could eat or drink anything more, Aunt Beryl said reluctantly: “Well, then — shall we adjourn this meeting?” And they rose from the disordered table, now strewn with scraps of coloured paper from the crackers, dismembered twigs of holly, and innumerable crumbs.
“You gentlemen will be going for a walk, I suppose?” Aunt Evelyn suggested, as everyone hung about the hall indeterminately.
“That’s right,” said Grandpapa. “Get up an appetite for tea. And you’ll take little Shamrock with you.”
Little Shamrock, having been given no opportunity for over-eating himself, after the fashion of his betters, was careering round Uncle George’s boots with a liveliness that boded ill for his docility during the expedition.
“We’ll smoke a cigarette first, at all events,” said Uncle George gloomily, and he and Mr. Almond and Bob went back into the dining-room again.
“You don’t want to go for a walk, dear, do you?” said Aunt Beryl, and sighed with evident relief when Mrs. Senthoven shook her head in reply.
“Grandpapa?”
“The drawing-room is good enough for me,” said Grandpapa, and Uncle George had to be called out of the dining-room again to help him up the stairs and instal him in his arm-chair by the window.
“I say, aren’t you girls coming with us?” demanded Bob rather disconsolately, leaning against the open door of the dining-room with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth.
“You’ll go too far for us,” said Lydia primly.
“Let you and me go off somewhere on our own,” struck in Olive. “I’m game for a toddle, if you are but we don’t want the men, do we?”
“You want to talk secrets — I know you,” jeered Bob.
Lydia lifted her chin fastidiously and turned away.
Her cousins had not improved, she thought, and she was very angry when her dignified gesture inadvertently placed her beneath a beautiful bunch of mistletoe, hung in the hall by Aunt Beryl.
“Fair cop!” yelled Bob, and put his arm round her waist and gave her a sounding kiss.
She would not struggle, but she could not force herself to laugh, and she ran upstairs with a blazing face.
It was not that Lydia had any objection to being kissed, but that the publicity, and the scuffling, and the accompanying laughter offended her taste.
She felt almost as though she could have burst into angry tears.
“Are you two girls really going out?” Aunt Beryl inquired. “If so, I’ll give you the key, Lydia. I’m letting the girl go home for the rest of the day, as soon as she’s cleared up. The char’s coming in to give her a hand with the washing-up.”
“That’s a good girl you’ve got hold of,” Aunt Evelyn said emphatically. “She’s been with you quite a time now, hasn’t she?” Aunt Beryl and Aunt Evelyn went upstairs, talking busily about the difficulty of training a servant really well, and then inducing her to remain with one. Presently, Lydia knew, they would go into Aunt Beryl’s room, under pretext of looking at a paper pattern, or a new blouse bought at a clearance sale, and they would lie down on Aunt Beryl’s bed, with eiderdowns and a couple of cloaks to keep them warm, and doze until tea-time.
Lydia herself felt heavy and drowsy, but nothing would have induced her to lie down upon her bed with Olive beside her. Instead, she put on her best hat and jacket, and a pair of high-heeled, patent-leather walking shoes, and took her cousin out into the mild damp of the December afternoon.
“What I call a muggy day,” said Olive.
“Shall we go along the Front?” Lydia inquired.
“It’s all those shoes of yours are good for, I should think,” retorted Olive candidly. “Still the same old juggins about your clothes, I see?” The Front — a strip of esplanade with the shingle and the grey sea on one side, beneath a low stone wall, and the green of the Public Gardens on the other — was almost deserted.
One or two young men in bowler hats and smoking Woodbine cigarettes hung round the empty band-stand, and an occasional invalid was pushed or pulled along in a bath-chair. Here and there a pair of sweethearts sat together in one of the small green shelters — the girl leaning against the man, and both of them motionless and speechless.
The sight of one such couple apparently gave Olive a desired opening.
“I say, what’s all this about you falling in love with some chappie in London?” she demanded abruptly.
“I haven’t fallen in love with anybody, that I know of,” said Lydia coolly.
“But there was someone going after you, now, was
n’t there?” urged Olive.
Lydia reflected.
“Who told you anything about it?” she demanded at last.
“Aunt Beryl told the mater.”
Lydia perceived to her surprise that Olive did not, as she would have expected her to do, despise her cousin for “sloppiness.” On the contrary, she appeared to be really impressed, and anxious to hear details from the heroine of the affair. Lydia did not resist the temptation.
She gave Olive a brief and poignant version of the tragedy.
There had been a man — a fellow-boarder at the great boarding-house in Bloomsbury that was always full of people, men and women alike. He was a foreigner — a distinguished sort of man — who had certainly paid Lydia a great deal of attention. Everyone had noticed it. Theatres, hansom-cabs, chocolates — he had appeared to think nothing too good for her. Certain of these attentions Lydia had accepted.
“Well, whyever not!” ejaculated Olive.
She worked hard all the week, and it was pleasant to have a little relaxation, and, besides, the Greek gentleman was most cultivated and clever — one had really interesting conversations with him about books.
But Lydia paused impressively, really uncertain of what she was about to say. She was very seldom anything but truthful, and could not remember ever having told a direct lie since she was a little girl. Nevertheless, she did not want Olive to suppose her a mere dupe, the more especially as she felt perfectly certain that whatever she told Olive would be repeated to Olive’s family, as nearly as possible word for word.
Lydia, therefore, said nothing untrue, but she rather subtly contrived to convey a desirable impression that, without any direct statements, should yet penetrate to Olive’s consciousness. There had certainly been a mystery about the Greek. He was very uncommunicative about himself — even to Lydia herself. Then one day, after he had taken her out and been more attentive than ever, they had come in to find a foreign woman there who called herself his wife.
“Why, it’s like a novel!” gasped Olive. “There’s a plot exactly like that in a story called ‘Neither Wife nor Maid.’ Only the fellow turns out to be all right in the end, and the girl marries him.”
“I should never have married Mr. Margoliouth,” said Lydia haughtily.
“But of course he’d no right to carry on like that if he was married all the time,” said Olive. “Men are rotters!” Lydia gazed at her cousin thoughtfully.
“That woman said she was his wife,” she remarked quietly.
“I say! d’you think it was all my eye and Betty Martin?”
“I don’t know. But it was an awkward sort of position for him.”
“Lord, yes!” said Olive more emphatically than ever, and Lydia felt that any humiliation attaching to the debacle had been effectually transferred, so far as Olive’s interpretation of it was concerned, from herself to the Greek deceiver.
“Of course, it doesn’t matter to you, Lyd — a good looking gurl like you,” said Olive simply.
Lydia felt that after this she could well afford to change the conversation.
She made inquiries about Beatrice.
“Oh, just rotting about,” said Olive discontentedly.
“I wish she and I could do something for ourselves, the way you do, but the old birds wouldn’t hear of it.
Besides, I don’t know what we could do, either of us.
Bee plays hockey whenever she gets the chance, of course, and goes to all the hops. She’s taken up dancing like anything.”
“And haven’t you?”
“Can’t,” said Olive briefly. “They’re scared of me going off like the pater’s sister. Chest, you know.
But Beatrice is as strong as a horse. You know she’s sort of engaged?”
“Who to?”
“The eldest Swaine boy — you remember Stanley Swaine? Nobody’s a bit pleased about it, because they can’t ever get married, possibly.”
“No money?”
“Not a penny, and he’s a perfect fool, except at games. He got the sack from the Bank, and now he hasn’t any job at all. Bob says he drinks, but I daresay that’s a lie.”
“And does Beatrice like him?” said Lydia, rather astonished.
“Perfectly dotty about him. He’s always hanging round — I think the pater ought to forbid him the house. But instead of that he comes in after supper of an evening, and he and Bee sit in the dining-room in the dark, and she comes up after he’s cleared off with her face like fire and her hair half clown her back.
Absolutely disgusting, I call it.”
Lydia was very much inclined inwardly to endorse this trenchant criticism.
She had never been so much aware of her own fastidiousness as she was now, on her return from the new surroundings which seemed to her so infinitely superior to the old. Really, it was terrible to think of how clever, fashionably-dressed Miss Forster, or haughty and disagreeable Miss Lillicrap, would have looked upon Olive Senthoven and her slangy, vulgar confidences.
As for the young ladies at Elena’s, they would probably have refused to believe that anything so unrefined could be related to Lydia Raymond at all.
Nevertheless, Lydia Raymond expressed interest and even sympathy in all that Olive told her, and was conscious of feeling both pleased and flattered when, as they entered Regency Terrace again, Olive remarked with what, by the Senthoven standards, perilously approached to sentiment: “I must say, ole gurl, I never thought you’d turn out such a decent sort.”
They found Aunt Beryl, whose nap must after all have been a very short one, preparing a magnificent muffin-and-crumpet tea in the kitchen.
“Auntie! let me help you,” Lydia cried.
“No, no. You go and take off your things.”
Lydia pulled off her hat and jacket and laid them on the kitchen dresser.
“Are we using the blue tea-service to-day?” she asked calmly.
“But you’re on a holiday, dearie! Don’t you worry about the tea — I’ll manage it. It’s only to get the table laid in the drawing-room.”
Lydia, however, carried her point. It would have made her feel thoroughly uncomfortable to see Aunt Beryl toiling upstairs with the heavy trays, and it would have looked, besides, as though she, Lydia, had grown to think herself too “fine” for household work.
So she carried the best blue china upstairs and set it out on the embroidered tea-cloth, and Aunt Evelyn, who was sitting with Grandpapa, looked at her approvingly and called her a good girl.
After tea she received other compliments.
They asked about her work in London, and Lydia told them about the great ledgers, and the bills and the invoices, and of how Madame Elena had practically said that she should leave Lydia in charge of the other girls, when she went to Paris to buy new models for Easter.
She also told them about the other young ladies, of Gina Ryott’s good looks, and the cleverness and independence of little Rosie Graham, who lived in such nice rooms with a girl friend.
“And do they make you comfortable at the boardinghouse?” Aunt Evelyn asked solicitously.
“Yes, very comfortable — and there were such nice superior people there. There was a Miss Forster, who played Bridge splendidly, and was great friends with a Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, who lived in Lexham Gardens.”
“Fancy!” Aunt Evelyn ejaculated. “I’ve seen Lady Honoret’s name in print, too, I’m almost certain.”
And the Bulteels were a nice family, Lydia said, with a clever son who went to Gower Street University.
“A great many clever folk in the world,” said Mr.
Monteagle Almond sententiously. “And no doubt you’ll meet many of them in London. But I think, if you’ll excuse personalities, that you’ll find it’s as I say — the true mathematical mind is a very rare thing in one of your sex.”
Lydia’s relations looked at her admiringly.
Only Grandpapa, with a detached expression, occupied himself in making a great fuss about Shamrock.
Th
at night, when Lydia said good night to him, the old man fixed his eyes upon her with his most impishlooking twinkle.
“Why didn’t you tell them about your romance, eh, Lyddie? The broken heart, and all the rest of it. You could have made a very pretty story out of it, I’m sure.
You only told one-half of the tale when you were entertaining us all so grandly this evening. Always remember, me dear, whether you’re listening to a tale or telling one: Every penny piece that’s struck has two sides to it.”
XIV
LYDIA had to go back to London by an afternoon train on Boxing Day.
Aunt Beryl packed her small hand-bag for her and gave her a large packet of cake and chocolate for the journey, and said, with all the increase of affectionate anxiety that she had displayed since learning of the Margoliouth catastrophe: “Good-bye, dearie, and bless you. I haven’t packed those new fur gloves, because I thought you’d want to wear them up. Mind you don’t get cold, now. It’s been lovely, having you.”
Grandpapa said good-bye to Lydia in his most condescending manner, and told her that next time she would honour them with a visit a second chestnutpudding should certainly be forthcoming.
“For I notice, Lyddie, that a broken heart doesn’t impair the appetite.”
“Good-bye, Grandpapa,” said Lydia austerely. It vexed her that the old man, with whom she had always had so good an understanding, should treat her now, as he did everyone else, with mockery.
No doubt he had not forgiven her for going to London.
She was escorted to the station by Uncle George and Shamrock.
“Do you find things pan out all right, as regards the root of all evil?” Uncle George suddenly made inquiry, after they had whistled and called for a long time, in a vain endeavour to dissuade Shamrock from chasing a strange cat.
“Oh!” said Lydia, surprised. “Yes, really I do.
Of course I haven’t saved quite as much as I hoped I should, but now I know my way about rather better I hope it’ll be easier.”
“Ah, I daresay,” said Uncle George absently.
“I should like to be able to refund you and Aunt Beryl some of all the money I’ve cost you.”
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