Part 17

Practical although Lydia undoubtedly was, she allowed her imagination a brief excursion into various alluring by-paths, such as the pleasure of telling Miss Rosie Graham and the other girls at Elena’s that her services as a private secretary were so much in request as to have led to a flattering offer, that she felt it her duty to accept....

She wondered whether lunch every day at Lexham Gardens would mean the dining-room and all Lady Honoret’s smart friends, or merely a tray in the study. With the thought came one of those flashes of intuition to which Lydia owed a great deal more than she as yet knew.

The first person to approach must be Lady Honoret.

Lydia guessed already that Sir Rupert was not in the habit of taking his wife into his confidence, which made it all the more necessary that she, the latest discovery and protégée, should not allow herself to be annexed without reference to her original owner--the light in which she could not help feeling sure that Lady Honoret regarded herself.

The effect of a tactful appeal proved to be its own immediate justification.

Lady Honoret at first looked startled, and then said, in a very open and candid way:

“Now I’ll tell you the whole thing quite, quite f’ankly....”

She then made several contradictory statements, to the effect that she had herself advised Sir Rupert to take Lydia for his secretary, and that, of course, she had no idea that he even thought of suggesting such a thing, but, then, he was hatefully secretive, always, and if Lydia did come, then of course Lady Honoret knew that she must never hope for her help over the d’eadful accounts and things any more, because, of course, she’d have no time for anything but stocks and shares, and advisory committees, and it would be far, far better for Lydia--darling thing--than the awful shop in Upper Tooting, and give her the chance of writing another wonderful novel, and meeting all sorts of critics and interesting people....

Finally Lady Honoret exclaimed that it really all seemed just like a fai’y tale come true, and Lydia must leave the terrible shop the very next day and come to them.

Lydia reserved herself on the point, having long ago contemptuously decided that it was of no use ever to mention practical considerations to her patroness, but she went away with the assurance that Lady Honoret had definitely committed herself to a statement that she would welcome Lydia’s presence, as Sir Rupert’s private secretary, at Lexham Gardens.

Far-sighted as Miss Raymond’s calculations might be, she had as yet no thought of allowing for the repudiation of a spoken word.

That night Lydia carefully indited a letter.

“SIR RUPERT HONORET.

“DEAR SIR,

“I have considered your offer of a private secretaryship at £2 weekly and lunch in, and am prepared to accept same, after giving the usual week’s notice to my present employer.

“If you can give me till the end of the month before coming to you I shall be obliged, as giving me time to take a few days at home and explaining to my people.

“Hoping to give you every satisfaction, as I shall certainly make it my endeavour, “I remain, “Yours faithfully, “L. RAYMOND.”

After that, much more rapidly and easily, she wrote to Aunt Beryl, and explained what a very flattering offer Sir Rupert’s was, and how glad Lydia felt that now she would be able to pay all her own expenses, instead of letting Uncle George kindly undertake half of them. If she could, she would try and get a few days, to come and talk it all over before beginning her new work. And would dear auntie please explain it all to Grandpapa, and Uncle George, and Mr. Almond and everybody?

Lydia was not altogether without guile in relegating to Aunt Beryl the announcements to be made to, at all events, Mr. Monteagle Almond. After all, it was he who had found for her the post at Madame Elena’s, of which they had all been so proud less than a year ago. Lydia did not wish him to think her either ungrateful or capricious. She felt sure that Aunt Beryl would certainly be the best person to guard against any such unfavourable impression.

There were two announcements of her change of plans, however, which could not be deputed. Lydia was looking forward with pleasure neither to giving Madame Elena the week’s notice stipulated for on her engagement, nor to explaining to Miss Forster that she was about to enter the establishment of Miss Forster’s dear friends, to whom that lady had so very recently introduced her.

If Miss Forster made herself disagreeable, then Lydia decided that she would leave the boarding-house and live by herself in lodgings. But that would certainly offend Miss Nettleship, and perhaps Aunt Beryl as well, and Lydia had no desire to stand anything but well with everybody. It was a pity that other people were not more reasonable.

She spent some time in thinking out a tactful method of presenting her case to Miss Forster. Finally she did so with many expressions of gratitude for all that she owed to Miss Forster’s kind introduction, and with a very distinct emphasis laid upon the subordinate position to be hers at Lexham Gardens. Not for her, Lydia implied, the freedom of the Bridge table and tea-party, as for Miss Forster. Merely an excellent business appointment, with a salary higher than her present one. And it was all Miss Forster’s doing, and Lydia was so grateful.

To her extreme relief, Miss Forster was gracious. She took the credit for Lydia’s triumph upon herself and apparently enjoyed telling all the other boarders of the far-reaching effects of her great influence with Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret.

Telling Madame Elena was less successful.

“A week’s notice in the middle of the summer! What the dickens are you talking about?” demanded the auburn-headed principal, her eyes flashing fury.

“I’ve decided that clerical work will suit me better,” Lydia said calmly.

“Can you type?”

“No, but it’s easily learnt.”

“Or write shorthand?”

“Not yet.”

“And how many people, do you suppose, want a clerk that can’t do either shorthand or typewriting?” said Madame Elena, with a fine irony.

Lydia was stung into an unguarded reply.

“I’ve already had a most excellent post offered to me, as it happens, Madame. Book-keeping is all that’s wanted.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to get at,” said Elena, with one of her most disconcerting thrusts. “You’ve already taken on another job, you little rotter. That’s a dirty trick, if you like.”

Lydia kept silence, partly because it was really rather difficult to think of any very satisfactory reply, and partly from the old habit of deferring to authority.

She was feeling thoroughly uncomfortable, and had to tell herself inwardly that, after all, Madame Elena’s opinion didn’t _really_ matter. A very few days after leaving the shop, and Lydia knew that Madame Elena and all her girls would seem to be shadowy and unreal as dreams.

The actual moment in which one discarded an out-worn phase was unpleasant, but it was the way of progress.

“Just when I’ve taught you the work, too!” came the climax of this storm.

“I can stay on and show my work to anyone who is going to take my place,” Lydia ventured.

“You can do no such thing. The quicker you clear out of here the better I shall be pleased,” retorted the principal. “This day week you go, and I only wish I could send you packing straight away.”

Elena flounced into her little room, slamming books and ledgers about noisily, and was in a terrible temper for the rest of that day.

Lydia told the other girls in the dressing-room in the basement at closing time.

“You must have something very good up your sleeve to chuck this,” said Gina Ryott. “It isn’t everywhere that they give you a decent meal like ours.”

“I know,” said Lydia.

“You aren’t getting married, are you?” said someone else, giggling.

“No fear.”

“Is Peroxide furious? She was in the D’s own temper this afternoon, I know that much.”

“Old Peroxide doesn’t like us girls to give notice. I suppose she thinks we ought to be only too thankful to stay on here for ever, with what she does for us.”

“Do you know if anyone is taking on your job?” asked Rosie Graham.

“No one, yet. She’ll have to find somebody in a hurry, because I’m leaving this day week.”

“All right. I shall apply for it myself. I’m sick of that everlasting stool of mine behind the glass, and she can easily find another cashier. Just put me up to a wrinkle or two about your old ledgers and things.”

“I will to-morrow,” said Lydia promptly. “I hope you’ll get on all right. It’s a good job.”

“Then why are you leaving it?”

“Because,” said Lydia slowly, “I am going to be private secretary to Sir Rupert Honoret, at his own house in Lexham Gardens, for just exactly twice the money that I get here.”

The announcement created all the sensation that she had hoped for. The girls congratulated her, and expressed their envy, and made much enthusiastic noise.

The little pale cashier, Rosie Graham, was the only one to keep silence, and she looked at Lydia with uplifted eyebrows and a mocking expression, that conveyed quite clearly an opinion nearly as unfavourable as Madame Elena’s own of Lydia’s methods of self-advancement.

But Lydia did not care any longer what Rosie might choose to think. After the next week she would probably never see her again.

Nevertheless, when she did say good-bye to the girls with whom she had worked for nearly a year, and with whom she had made herself so popular, Lydia exchanged really affectionate farewells with them, and echoed eagerly their plans for not losing sight of one another, but meeting on an occasional Sunday afternoon.

“I should like to hear how it’s all getting on,” she declared vehemently, taking a last look at the diamond-paned window, with the careless gilt lettering above it.

But, after all, the Sunday afternoon meetings did not take place.

Lydia had her holiday at Regency Terrace, and then she came back with a new silk frock, bought out of her savings, just in case lunch at Lexham Gardens should ever turn out to mean Lady Honoret’s dining-room table, and not a tray in Sir Rupert’s study, and she became very quickly absorbed in new work, new surroundings, and many new people.

Lydia and the staff at Elena’s now had really nothing in common.

XVII

Sir Rupert Honoret gave his secretary a great deal of work to do, but he left her free to do it in her own way, and at her own time. He was very seldom in the study himself, except during the first hour of the morning’s work. After that, he went off to the City. The time of his return was always uncertain and varied daily. Sometimes Lydia wondered whether his unheralded entries were occasionally made in the hopes of taking her by surprise.

It was something not unconnected with this suspicion, perhaps, that made her, as soon as her work was over, generally by four o’clock in the afternoon, try to teach herself typewriting.

A big machine stood on a table in a corner of the room, and presently Lydia learnt to manipulate it successfully.

Sir Rupert never made any inquiries as to her progress, but the first time that she handed him a typewritten letter for signature, he scrutinized it very carefully, suggested one or two alterations in the spacing and placing of the lines, and gave her a look which she felt to be one of approval.

It was a surprise to Lydia to find what a number of charitable organizations figured on the list of Sir Rupert’s activities. He was on the committees of several hospitals, homes, and asylums, and a most regular visitor at one of the largest branches of the Borstal Institute.

The money that he expended upon charity seemed to Lydia to be almost unlimited, and the appeals that poured in daily formed the major part of the correspondence that she was required to sort. No application was to be left unanswered, and all were to be filed, indexed, and elaborately referenced and cross-referenced.

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 discov’ies” 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 boarding-house, 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 habitués who came often 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 any 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 boarders were now a little bit more reserved with her, showing all that curious nervousness that assails the semi-educated 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 boarding-house 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.