Part 11

“Aha, you think that a foreigner cannot criticize English,” he said acutely, and interpreting her secret thought with perfect correctness. “But I assure you that I am right. Look! you put ‘alright’ for ‘all right’ and ‘She was very interested’ instead of ‘she was very much interested.’ And again, you have ‘under the circumstances’ for ‘in the circumstances.’ All these are common errors. Tell me, what authors do you read?”

Lydia was vague. Like the majority of readers, she chose books almost at random, because the title allured her, or because someone had said that the story was exciting.

The Greek shrugged his shoulders.

“The ideas are there,” he said, “but you must learn to express them better.”

Lydia felt so much mortified that she could hardly speak. She, the Head of the School at Miss Glover’s, the owner of the “mathematical mind” so rarely found in one of her own sex, the responsible and trusted accountant at Elena’s, to be told that she could not write English!

At that moment she disliked Margoliouth with all the cordial dislike accorded to a really candid critic.

Yet it was characteristic of Lydia that, even in the midst of her vexation, she realized that to display it would be to destroy much of the Greek’s flattering opinion of her superior intelligence. She drew a long breath, and gazed at him frankly and steadily.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “I must try and study the really good writers, and--and I’ll remember what you say, and try and write better English. I’m sure you’re right.”

It was a little set speech, uttered regardless of the indignation still burning within her, and it did not fail of its effect.

“Well done!” cried the Greek softly. “Well done, Miss Raymond! It is very rare to find so much frankness and determination in a lady, if I may say so--I am the more sure that you will eventually succeed.”

Lydia thanked him and took away her manuscripts.

She was inwardly just as angry at his criticism as she had been on first hearing it, and just as certain that a foreigner could know nothing about the correctness or otherwise of her English. But she congratulated herself on the presence of mind and strength of will which had enabled her to make so good a show of open-minded generosity. Quite evidently Margoliouth thought the better of her for it, and Lydia would not for the world have forfeited his admiration.

It gave her great _prestige_ in the eyes of the other boarders.

Lydia knew that they most of them liked her, Mr. Bulteel because she was young and pretty, his wife, and whining little Mrs. Clarence, because she always listened to them sympathetically, all the while inwardly mindful of Grandpapa’s rule--“_Always let the other people talk about themselves._”

Miss Forster liked her too.

Lydia did not exactly flatter Miss Forster, but she had a tactful way of introducing the topic of Miss Forster’s great friends, Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, and was always ready to hear about the Bridge parties that Miss Forster frequented at their house in Lexham Gardens.

Hector Bulteel, the pallid youth whose days were passed in Gower Street, had at first been too shy even to speak to Lydia, but one day she asked for his advice on a point of accountancy, and thereafter they occasionally discussed the higher mathematics or the distinctions between organic and inorganic chemistry.

Lydia did not really think very highly of Hector’s capabilities, but criticized him as shrewdly as she did everyone else with whom she came into contact.

She was always careful, however, to keep her rather caustic judgments to herself, and she knew that both at Madame Elena’s and at the boarding-house the reputation that had been hers at school still prevailed: Lydia Raymond never said an unkind thing about anyone.

Even old Miss Lillicrap, who seldom uttered a word that was not either spiteful or complaining, looked at Lydia in a comparatively friendly silence on the evening that the Greek gentleman first took her to the Polytechnic.

Lydia wore a new, pale-pink blouse, and her best dark-brown cloth coat and skirt.

For the first time, she decided that she really _was_ pretty.

The conviction lent exhilaration to the evening’s entertainment, which on the whole she found rather dull. She was not very much amused by the cinematograph films displayed, and when, towards the end of the evening, Mr. Margoliouth fumbled for her hand in the darkness and held it, Lydia was principally conscious that hers was still sticky from the chocolates that he had given her, and failed to derive any thrill from the experience.

XI

Towards Christmas time, as the evenings became shorter and shorter, Mr. Margoliouth developed great concern at the idea of Lydia’s coming back from her work alone.

Might he call for her at Madame Elena’s, and escort her home?

Lydia thanked him very much, and said that one of her fellow-workers generally came most of the way with her. But she was not insensible to the flattering vista thus opened.

The girls at Elena’s would be, in their own parlance, thrilled if a foreign and interesting-looking male should make his appearance outside the little shop and await there the privilege of accompanying Miss Raymond across the Park.

Gina Ryott boasted a “gentleman friend” who occasionally paid her the same compliment, and Lydia, as well as Marguerite Saxon, had peeped through the closed shutters of the shop window more than once, in order to watch them depart together.

And not only the girls but the community at the boarding-house would be full of interest and excitement.

Already Lydia knew perfectly well that Miss Forster and Mrs. Bulteel exchanged significant glances whilst she and the Greek talked to one another at meals.

In the trivial monotony of the boarding-house existence, she even felt certain that Mr. Margoliouth and his increasingly-marked attentions to herself were the chief subjects of discussion.

She began to enjoy her position very much, and no longer held Mr. Margoliouth at a distance. She was not at all in love with him, but his attentions were very agreeable and certainly, Lydia told herself, he had enough discernment to realize that she was not a person with whom liberties might be taken.

As a fact, his manner towards her was respectful enough except for a certain tendency towards patting her wrist, or attracting her attention by a lingering touch upon her arm or her shoulder.

When they went to a theatre or a cinematograph, he always held her hand, and a curious sense of fair play in return for his hospitality induced Lydia to allow this, and even feebly to return an occasional pressure of her fingers, although she derived no slightest satisfaction from the contact.

The rapid development of her mentality had so far out-distanced other, more human attributes of youth, that she frequently debated within herself whether Mr. Margoliouth was ever likely to try and kiss her. If so, Lydia reflected with cold self-righteousness, she would rebuke him in such fashion that he would respect and admire her more than ever. She was full of instinctive horror at the idea of “making herself cheap,” and it had been inculcated into her both by Aunt Beryl and Aunt Evelyn that to do so was to invite disaster of some unspecified but terrible kind.

When her Christmas holiday was approaching--two days and a half which she was to spend at Regency Terrace--Lydia began to mention the Greek occasionally in her weekly letter to Aunt Beryl.

She was not averse from some slight exploitation of her first conquest, and moreover she thought it quite likely that a hint might reach Aunt Beryl any day through Miss Nettleship, and she wisely preferred to secure herself against any charge of secretiveness.

At first Aunt Beryl only wrote back, “Glad you enjoyed yourself at the Polytechnic, dear; mind and not take cold coming out from those hot places this bitter weather.” Then later: “This Mr. Margoliouth seems very attractive. Don’t let him break your little heart, dear!!”

The two notes of exclamation denoted Aunt Beryl’s humorous intention, as Lydia well knew. But one day she wrote more seriously.

“I must say it would be a real pleasure to hear you were properly engaged, providing it was to some really nice fellow. Don’t be in a hurry to decide though, dear--you’re very young.”

Lydia herself had hardly contemplated the possibility of an engagement. But now she began to wonder whether or no any such idea held a place in Margoliouth’s mind. He had certainly said that he should like to show her his own country, and told her how much she would enjoy a sea voyage and how greatly the new experience of travelling would help her to write.

Meanwhile he continued to take her out two or three times a week, and to give her expensive boxes of chocolates and occasional books.

The girls at Madame Elena’s became aware of him, and chaffed Lydia agreeably, and at the boarding-house Miss Forster, always outspoken, one day asked whether she had ordered her wedding-dress yet.

Lydia did not like Miss Forster’s blatancy, but her old predilection for finding herself the heroine of her surroundings was stronger than ever, and it gratified her to know that they were all watching her and wondering what would happen to her next.

A less agreeable manifestation of interest was, however, in store for her.

Miss Nettleship sought her out apologetic but conscientious.

“You know how it is, dear, I know--but really I do feel responsible to your auntie, just a wee bit--and I feel I really must say something. They’re all talking about it, you know--not saying anything, I don’t mean of course, but you know--just talking, like.”

The distinction that Miss Nettleship wished to imply between the saying of anything and mere talking about it, was perfectly clear to the resentful and embarrassed Lydia.

True to her instincts, however, she showed none of the resentment and as little as she could of the embarrassment.

“There really isn’t anything for anyone to talk about. Mr. Margoliouth is very fond of the theatre, he says, and he hasn’t anyone to go with him. It’s very kind of him to take me, I think.”

“Once here and there,” said Miss Nettleship distractedly, “but really, dear, it’s getting more than that, and of course it’s a bit conspicuous because of his never hardly taking any notice of anyone else. At the Bridge now, when they play in the evenings, he’s downright uncivil to poor Mrs. Clarence, and I’ve heard him very rude to Miss Forster too, though of course she’s well able to hold her own. But it makes it all the more marked, his going on the way he does with you.”

“I can’t help his liking me,” said Lydia meekly, but inwardly rather gratified at Miss Nettleship’s artless exposition of the distinction that she enjoyed.

“Now don’t go thinking I’m blaming you for an instant, dear. I know very well that your auntie’s brought you up to be careful, and, besides, I can see for myself you’re steady--not one of those girls I call regular _flirts_. But it’s your being so young, and there’s something else too.”

Miss Nettleship hesitated, her pleasant, anxious-looking face much discomposed.

“Really I oughtn’t to say anything about it to you, but you do understand how it is, dear--I feel the responsibility of having you here, and your auntie being such a friend of mine and everything, I feel I can’t let it go on and not say anything.”

“I’ve written to Aunt Beryl all about Mr. Margoliouth, you know,” said Lydia quickly.

She felt the announcement to be a trump card, and was surprised that Miss Nettleship’s harassed expression did not relax.

“I was sure you would, dear--it isn’t that. You see the fact is, though I oughtn’t to mention it but I know you can be trusted never to pass it on,--the fact is that Mr. Margoliouth, as he calls himself, isn’t altogether sound, and I don’t know that I shan’t have to ask him to leave.”

“Why?” cried Lydia, astonished.

But Miss Nettleship had her own methods of imparting information, and was not to be hustled out of them.

“Of course you know how it is in a place like this--one has to be very particular, and I’ve always asked for references and everything, and there’s never been any trouble except just once, right at the start. That was with foreigners, too, a pair of Germans, and called themselves brother and sister. However, that’s nothing to do with you, dear, and I had to send them packing very quickly--in fact, the minute I had any doubts at all. It’s the ruin of a place like this ever to let it get a name, as you can imagine, and the fright I got then made me more particular than ever. This fellow Margoliouth gave me a City reference, and another a clergyman somewhere up in Yorkshire, and paid his first week in advance. And since then it’s just been one put off after another.”

“But how--what do you mean, Miss Nettleship?”

“He’s not paying his way,” said the manageress, fixing her brown eyes compassionately upon Lydia’s face.

“He asked me to let him have his account monthly, as it was more convenient, and I gave in, although it’s not my rule, and I wouldn’t have that old Miss Lillicrap--you know what she is, dear, and how one can’t go against her--I wouldn’t have her hear about it for the world. Well, it was seven weeks before he paid me the first month, and I had to ask him for it again and again. He said there was some difficulty about getting his money from Greece paid into the Bank here. However, he paid in the end, but since then it’s been nothing but putting off and putting off--would I let it stand over for a week because it wasn’t convenient, and so on and so on. I told him he’d have to get his meals out if it went on, and then he gave me something on account--but not a third of what he owes me, dear. I really don’t know what to do about it. He’s so plausible, I half believe it’s all right when he’s talking to me, but I can’t afford to go on like this. He’ll have to go if he hasn’t paid in full at the end of this week. And how I’m to get the money back if he doesn’t pay up I really don’t know, for a prosecution would be a fearful business for me, and lose me every boarder in the place.”

“Oh, it would be dreadful!” cried Lydia, sincerely shocked. “But he _must_ pay. I thought of him as quite rich.”

“So you might, from the way he goes on. And the bills that are always coming for him, too!” said Miss Nettleship.

“I can’t help seeing them, you know, when I clear the box in the mornings. However, he says there’s money coming to him from Greece, and it’s only got to be put into his Bank over here, and he can promise me a cheque on Saturday at latest. So I’m not saying any more till then, but _after_ that my mind’s made up. But you’ll understand, dear, why I felt I had to speak to you about it first.”

Lydia felt that she understood only too well, and she went to business next morning in so thoughtful a mood that Rosie Graham, whose observation nothing escaped, made sharp inquiry of her as they snatched a ten minutes’ tea-interval in the afternoon: “What’s up that you’re going about with a face as long as a fiddle?”

In the midst of her perfectly real preoccupation, it was not in Lydia to fail to perceive her opportunity for at last arousing a tardy interest in Miss Graham.

“I’m worried,” she said frankly.

“Worry won’t mend matters,” quoted Rosie tritely, but Lydia reaped the advantage of her invariable abstention from the airing of daily minor grievances such as the other girls brought to their work, in the instant acceptance of her statement shown by the astute little Cockney.

“Come round to my place for a yarn this evening,” she suggested. “My pal’s out and I can find some food, I daresay, though it won’t be seven courses and a powdered footman behind the chair, like that place of yours.”

Lydia accepted, and felt flattered. No one else had ever been asked to Rosie’s place.

They took a Sloane Street omnibus at six o’clock, and got out at Sloane Square, where Lydia made use of a public telephone to inform Miss Nettleship that she would not be in to supper, and then Rosie led her through a very large square, a mews, and into a little street called Walton Street. They crossed it, and entered Ovington Street.

“Number ninety-one A,” said Miss Graham, producing a latch-key.

She took Lydia to the top of the house, and Lydia was astounded at the lightness and airiness of the fair-sized room, with a much smaller one opening out of it, evidently in use as a dressing-room.

“Not so dusty, is it?” Rosie said complacently. “This sofa turns into a bed, and there’s another proper bed in the other room. The whole thing--unfurnished--costs us twenty-two and six a week, and includes everything except the use of the gas. There’s a penny-in-the-slot machine for that. We do most of our cooking on the gas-ring, but the landlady’s very decent about sometimes letting us use the kitchen fire.”

She gave Lydia a supper of sausage-rolls, bread-and-butter, cocoa and a variety of sweet cakes and biscuits, and all the time talked more agreeably and less caustically than Lydia had ever heard her talk before.

When the little meal was over and the table pushed out of the way, Rosie made Lydia draw her chair close to the tiny oil-stove.

“There’s a gas-fire,” she said frankly, “but we don’t use it unless the weather’s simply perishing. It’s rather an expensive luxury. Sure you’re all right like that?”

“Yes, thank you. What a lot of heat this thing gives out!”

“Doesn’t it? Well, now,” said Miss Graham abruptly, “spit it out. What’s all the trouble? Is it anything to do with that foreign freak who stands about waiting for you outside Elena’s of an evening sometimes?”

Lydia was too well inured to the shop-girl vocabulary to resent this description of her admirer.

She decided that she would allow herself the luxury of contravening Grandpapa’s rule, and for once talk about herself, justified in doing so by her conviction that it was the only short cut to the rousing in Miss Rosie Graham of that interest which Lydia still desired the more keenly from the very ease with which she could command it in others.

She told her story, but omitted all mention of Miss Nettleship’s confidences.

“My aunt, who brought me up, knows a little about it--I wrote and told her he was taking me out sometimes--and she said in a letter I had from her the other day that it would be so nice if I got engaged. Somehow, you know, I hadn’t really thought of that before. But I’ve been rather worried since, wondering whether perhaps he means to ask me. If so, I suppose I oughtn’t to let him go about with me quite so much unless I make up my mind to say ‘yes.’”

Lydia was aware that she had stated her problem one-sidedly, for her real preoccupation was whether or no Margoliouth was going to pay her the compliment of a proposal. But the temptation to represent herself as merely undecided if she should become engaged to him or not, was irresistible.

She thought that Rosie looked at her rather curiously as she finished speaking.

“Of course, if you’re always about with him and let him give you presents and all the rest of it, the poor Johnnie’s bound to think you mean business,” she said slowly. “But you’d better be careful, kid. Are you so sure that he wants to marry you?”

Lydia felt herself colouring hotly, sufficiently understanding the older girl’s implication to resent it.

“I should think Mr. Margoliouth is too much of a man of the world not to see for himself the sort of girl _I_ am,” she said haughtily.

“He can see for himself that you’re only a silly kid, if that’s what you mean,” retorted the outspoken Rosie Graham. “Tell me, where does this Margoliouth, or whatever he calls himself, come from? He’s as black as my hat, anyway.”

Lydia began to wish that she had never embarked upon the path of confidences at all.

“He is Greek,” she said very stiffly.

“That might mean anything,” retorted Miss Graham sweepingly. “I tell you frankly that’s what I don’t like about the business--his being such a rum colour. I don’t trust black fellows.”

“You talk as though he were a nigger!” said Lydia, furious.

“I know what I’m talking about. I knew a girl once who took up with a fellow like that. He wasn’t a bit darker than your Margoliouth, and he talked awfully good English, and she got herself engaged to him. He said he was a prince, and frightfully rich, and he gave her all sorts of presents, and when he had to go back to his own country he sent her the money for her passage so she could come out next year and get married to him. Well, she got everything ready--heaps of clothes and things--and was always talking of how she was going to be a princess, and he’d promised to meet her at a place called Port Said with his own carriage and horses and all the rest of it. Some of us thought she was taking a bit of a risk, but she didn’t care a scrap, and was just wild to get out there. Well, off she went--and we didn’t hear anything more about her, or get any of the letters and photographs and things she’d promised to send. And then three months later, I met her in the City, where I was matching silks for old Peroxide, and she’d sneaked back to her old firm and got them to take her back as typist again.”

“But what had happened?”

“She didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask her. But she told another girl, and I heard about it afterwards. She’d gone off on the ship all right, with all her fine new luggage and the rest of it, and she’d told all the people on board who she was going out to marry, and most of them said what a fool she was, and it would be an awful life for an English girl, and she’d never be allowed to come home again. But there was one man on board--a parson--who simply wouldn’t let her alone about it, and said she didn’t know what she was doing, and at last he got her to promise that she wouldn’t actually marry this chap until he’d made inquiries about him. And he did the minute they arrived--although the fellow was there just as he’d said, with a great carriage and two horses, to take her away. I don’t exactly know what happened, but this clergyman fellow went straight off to some British Consul or someone, and they found out all about the man straight away. He _was_ a sort of prince all right, and quite as rich as he’d said--though he didn’t live in a palace, but some place right away from everywhere--but he wasn’t a Christian--and _he’d got two native wives already_.”

“Oh!” Lydia gasped involuntarily at the climax of the narrative, which came upon her inexperience as a complete shock.