Part 9

Lydia found it easy to believe that the staff was made up of young women taken from a class superior to that of the ordinary London shop-girl. That was Old Madam’s policy.

At intervals, Madame Ribeiro, always unannounced, drove up to the shop entrance of “Elena’s,” in her little old-fashioned, closed carriage, and walked slowly through the show-room, up the shallow steps that led to millinery, and into the small alcove, glass-panelled, where sat Madame Elena, poring over large tomes, or sometimes inditing scrawled communications on large, mauve-coloured sheets of notepaper, with “Elena” carelessly running across the top corner of the page in big purple lettering.

Old Madam never distinguished Lydia by any special notice on these occasions. She generally remained with Madame Elena for half an hour or so, and sometimes the latter would strike her little bronze bell, and ask, “Marguerite, _chérie_” or “Gina, my child” to bring in afternoon tea for Madam.

“Anyone would think we were tea-shop girls,” said Miss Ryott pettishly.

The order meant an excursion to the basement, where Mrs. Entwhistle had to be found, the keys asked for, and bread-and-butter cut very thin and arranged on a china plate, and two or three sponge biscuits taken out of a special tin, and the whole arranged on a small green-and-white tea-service consecrated to Madame Elena’s use. But then Madame Elena had her tea sent up at a reasonable hour, when the girls had theirs, and Mrs. Entwhistle prepared it, which she would never do unaided at any hour earlier than four o’clock. If Old Madam chose to have tea before half-past three one of the girls must get it ready.

Gina, especially on a hot afternoon in the slack season, very much preferred the shop.

“Shall I help you, dear?” affectionately inquired Marguerite. “Lydia could give us a call if anyone came in. Not that anyone will--they are all in Scotland or at the sea somewhere--lucky things!”

“Thanks, dear--how sweet of you!”

They went away arm-in-arm, leaving Lydia drowsily writing out “Marked down” tickets, copied from a list of Madame Elena’s making.

“_That_ friendship won’t last,” remarked Miss Graham sapiently, from her desk.

She was right, as usual.

Lydia had not been very long at Elena’s when the Great Quarrel took place, and assumed an intensity that could only have obtained during the month of September.

It all reminded Lydia very much of the girls at Miss Glover’s school.

Gina, it was evident enough, had hitherto dominated the little group of girls, but her temporary infatuation for the society of Miss Marguerite Saxon had rather diminished her prestige, and Marguerite, moreover, had made herself popular with the millinery young ladies by talking agreeably to them at dinner-time, when they sat together at the second table. Consequently they championed her with vigour.

“It really is too bad, you know, dear. Marguerite is awfully sensitive--those blondes so often are, much more so than brunettes, I fancy--and of course she feels it all the more because they used to be such _friends_. That’s what hurts her so much.”

“Well, Gina is hurt about it, too--and has cause to be, in my opinion,” inexorably said the girl who did alterations.

The first and second tables were allowed to overlap during the slack season very often.

“How did it begin?” Lydia asked.

But to this there was no satisfactory reply.

How did the slackening of those romantic bonds first make itself felt?

“Marguerite couldn’t help noticing that Gina’s manner had altered, of course,” said someone vaguely.

From this painful illumination it appeared as though Miss Saxon and Miss Ryott had proceeded to revive their drooping interest in one another by a series of mutual provocations.

“Gina is awfully proud. You couldn’t expect her to take the first step. I mean, she’s so frightfully proud.”

“You know, I believe Madame Elena knows about it,” said Rosie, giggling, precluded by Mrs. Entwhistle’s presence from making use of the auburn-headed principal’s usual _sobriquet_ of “Old Peroxide.”

It was quite true that Madame Elena was inclined to favour Gina. Lydia had noticed it with resentment.

When Rosie Graham’s shrewdness was justified, as it almost invariably was, by the event, and Madame Elena showed definite signs of partisanship in the quarrel, Gina became established as the heroine of the hour.

One afternoon, just before closing time, she suddenly burst into tears after a prolonged search for a mislaid pencil--that eternal preoccupation of the shop-girl’s day.

“Don’t cry,” said Lydia very gently, and feeling very impatient, since she disliked any display of emotion in other people--unless it was directly concerned with herself.

“I’ll lend you mine.”

Such a loan was unheard of, for the pencils, suspended by a chain from each girl’s waist, were in constant use, and the rule obliged each one to provide her own.

“Oh, I don’t care,” sobbed Gina, recklessly noisy. “Thanks most awfully, dear. I know it’s sweet of you--but I’m fed up with everything.”

She sank into a chair, still sobbing hysterically.

“So are we all,” said Miss Saxon low and viciously, looking up from the drawer before which she was kneeling, carefully swathing some frail chiffon scarves in tissue-paper. “So are we all, I should imagine, in this heat and all, but we don’t make a song and dance about it, I suppose. What _I_ should call absolute carrying on for notice.”

As though to verify the words, Madame Elena’s glass door flew open.

“What’s all this noise?” she asked irately. “If you girls think you’re here to make a row----”

Her eye fell on Gina, who had the wisdom to make a visible effort to check her sobs and rise to her feet. Lydia noted, with instinctive approval, that the face she turned to her principal was paler than usual, with black marks under either eye.

“I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” she faltered.

“What’s the matter?”

Gina was silent, gulping.

Madame Elena looked sharply round. Her eye fell on Marguerite, still demurely smoothing out silver paper.

Miss Saxon, less intelligent than Gina, and evidently far less intuitive than the watching Lydia, made the mistake of allowing a very small sneer to show itself upon her little roseleaf face.

Lydia saw Madame Elena’s expression alter.

She laid an authoritative hand upon Gina’s shoulder, and gave her a friendly push.

“Go in there,” she said. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

They vanished into the principal’s own sanctum, Marguerite, apparently no expert in the interpretation of signs, observing with satisfaction:

“I hope she’ll get properly skinned alive for making a row like that in business hours. Why, it’s downright unladylike.”

Miss Graham, from her desk in the corner, gave her little scoffing laugh.

“Don’t be a fool, Marguerite. She was playing for that, of course. She made that noise on purpose so as Perox should hear her, and ask what was up. Old Perox has been dying to hear what the row’s about between you two for days, and now Gina can pitch her own yarn. Just like Gina!”

Lydia was astounded, as she often was, at the little Cockney’s penetration.

“Why are you staring, goggle-eyes?” said Miss Graham, rudely but not unkindly. “Don’t you think it’s true?”

With Marguerite Saxon’s small, squirrel face turned to catch her answer, Lydia made a diplomatic evasion.

“Rather an unfair advantage to take, wasn’t it?” she hazarded.

“I’ll tell Gina you think so,” said Rosie, like a shot.

She burst out laughing at the dismay which Lydia, involuntarily, and to her own vexation, felt that she reflected upon her face.

“You don’t like that, do you?” remarked the terrible Miss Graham. “You want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds--keep in with everyone all round, and boss the lot of us. I know your sort. I daresay you’ll bring it off, too, given you’re here long enough.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Lydia, instinctively adopting the phraseology of her surroundings.

Rosie gave her little shrug.

“Don’t you worry, I’m only chaffing. _I_ shan’t make mischief. I like pulling your leg,” explained Miss Graham kindly, “because it’s so dead easy, that’s all.”

“Don’t mind her, dear,” said Marguerite. “That’s her style, that is. It doesn’t mean anything. I say, do _hark_ at that girl in there!”

Faint sounds, as of an eloquent outpouring of words mingled with an occasional sob, came from the partition behind which Gina and the principal were secluded.

“She’s crying dreadfully,” said Lydia, with a dim idea of diminishing, by her compassionate tone, the effect of her previous comment upon Miss Ryott’s methods.

A sardonic glance from Rosie Graham made her uneasily aware that this manœuvre had been only too transparent.

However, Rosie only remarked scornfully:

“Crying! That’s nothing at the end of a day’s work. Anyone can cry in the evenings--in fact, it’s easier than not. One’s tired, and it’s been beastly hot all day, and it’s a relief to sit down and howl. Most girls do it regularly if they aren’t going out anywhere, and can risk having a red nose. Wait till you see a girl crying at eight o’clock in the morning--then it’s time enough to be sorry for her. If she cries then, it’s because she can’t help it. If she cries at night she’s just letting herself go.”

“_My_ difficulty is that I never can cry, however much I feel things,” said Miss Saxon, true to the feminine instinct, so much condemned by Lydia’s grandfather, of making instant personal application of a generality.

“I get awfully upset--quite foolishly so, mother always says. ‘You’ll never go through life, dear,’ she says, ‘if you take every little thing to heart so much.’ It’s awfully wearing, too--things kind of prey on me. I just go on turning them over and over in my own mind, you know. But as for crying--well, it’s just as though I couldn’t. I’d give anything to, sometimes--you know, I feel it would be such a relief, like--but I never was one to cry, even as a child.”

Miss Saxon, much interested in her own monologue, appeared as though she might go on for ever.

Rosie Graham made an expressive grimace at Lydia, and formed with her lips:

“Good reason why!” at the same time pointing to her own little sallow face, with a glance at Marguerite’s carefully rose-tinted cheeks.

Lydia smiled discreetly, safely conscious that she had her back turned to Miss Saxon.

The opportunity for which she had been looking came that evening.

She waited for Gina.

The other girls went down to the dressing-room, pinned on their straw and flower-wreathed hats, took hasty glances into the tiny mirror propped up against the window, and rubbed at their shining, heated faces with leaves of _papier poudre_, torn from little pink or blue books. Only Marguerite Saxon possessed a small silver elegance, hanging from a long chain, containing a little puff, with which she dabbed the tip of her nose delicately.

“Good night, dear,” she said cordially to Lydia, who responded as cordially, with her readiest smile. Already she guessed that Miss Saxon was willing to make a bid for her friendship, in the new-born apprehension that the tide of partisanship was turning rapidly in Gina’s favour.

With Gina, the advance was even easier. It was long after closing hours when she finally emerged from Madame Elena’s room, and then she was not alone. Madame Elena, in the immense be-plumed hat and long suède gloves that she always affected, preceded her.

“Lydia! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed sharply.

“I’ve finished those Paris model tickets, Madame Elena,” said Lydia meekly.

She had printed over two dozen cards whilst she waited, it being one of the sign manuals of the establishment to display all such tickets in elaborate fancy letterings.

“You haven’t!”

Madame Elena made one of her rapid, swooping movements, and snatched up a handful of the cards, miraculously avoiding those on which the ink was still wet.

“Now I call that charming,” said Madame Elena, with genuine enthusiasm. “First class. How on earth did you manage to get the letters all different and so straight! But don’t stay overtime another evening like that. You may find yourself locked in.”

She nodded and passed out of the side door, demonstratively waiting for the two girls, in order to lock it behind her.

“I get in here,” she said, pausing where a long row of omnibuses was drawn up beside the kerb. “Good night, girls.”

“Good night, Madame Elena,” they chorussed politely.

“Which is your way, dear?” inquired Gina, who called everyone “dear” without discrimination.

“Right across the Park. I generally walk,” said Lydia.

“Rotten to be so far off. _I_ live miles out, too, right the way to Mornington Crescent. I’ll walk with you, if you like. The air’ll do my head good, and I may as well get in at Oxford Circus as anywhere else.”

“Have you a headache?” said Lydia sympathetically.

“I should think I have! Why, I’ve been howling, on and off, since five o’clock. I daresay you think I’m a fool,” said Gina dolorously.

“No, of course I don’t. I’m so sorry for you.”

“Thanks, dear. I don’t generally say much about things when I feel them,” said Miss Ryott pensively, “but I don’t mind talking to you, between ourselves, like. Now, Rosie Graham--she’s the sarcastic sort--or tries to be. I could never let myself go in front of that girl----”

Gina paused, expressively enough, in lieu of seeking in the barren fields of the shop-girl’s range of imagery.

“I know what you mean,” said Lydia. She had long ago found out the incalculable value of this sympathetic, and entirely non-committal, form of words.

“You may have noticed that I haven’t been exactly what you might call a Sunny Jim lately,” said Miss Ryott.

She looked sidelong at Lydia, who turned a deeply interested gaze upon her, but said nothing at all. The echo of Grandpapa’s wisdom came back to her, as it so often did: “Always let the other people talk about themselves.” And once more it was justified.

Whilst her companion talked, Lydia congratulated herself upon the success of her manœuvre in waiting for Gina, and at the same time impressing upon Madame Elena, ever alert for signs of enthusiasm in the staff, her eager devotion to her work. There was not another employee in the shop who would voluntarily have remained on after hours, apparently from utter absorption in the task on hand.

Lydia marvelled, with perfectly genuine wonder, that none of them should have the wit to see how enormously worth while it was to sacrifice an hour or two of leisure once in a way for the sake of the immense effect that such a display produced upon the authorities.

She never made the mistake of attempting to deceive herself as to her own motives, and was consequently able to estimate to the full the results at which she had consciously aimed.

“You’re a perfect dear to have listened to me,” said Gina warmly when they parted. “I’m sure I’ve been the most frightful bore, really.”

Lydia assured her that this had not been the case, and was able to do so with the more earnestness that she was inwardly full of exhilaration at the growing conviction that her personality was once more giving her prominence amongst her surroundings.

The next day Marguerite Saxon twice emphatically called her “my dear”--a mark of potential friendship as distinguished from the professional and abstracted “dear,” that invariably punctuated the day’s intercourse.

She was also required to listen, during the tea-interval, to Miss Saxon’s version of the recent disturbance.

It need scarcely be said that Lydia’s perfectly non-committal sympathy was extended as freely to Marguerite as it had been to Gina, with the result that each declared a warm liking for her, and she speedily became the central figure in their little world.

Madame Elena was not prone to personal enthusiasms, and the signs that she gave of having distinguished Lydia from among her compeers, were all but imperceptible. Only Lydia’s ruthless clear-sightedness where her own interests were concerned enabled her to discern them.

She soon found that the two young ladies in the millinery were rather looked down upon by the show-room young ladies, who had, indeed, little opportunity for intercourse with them. Nevertheless, Lydia smiled sedulously at them when she said, “Good morning,” and never pretended deafness when one or the other of them asked her to “pass along the bread, please,” at dinner.

Consequently they were overheard to say to one another that Miss Raymond was the only lady in the place, so far as manners went.

Mrs. Entwhistle was somewhat of the same opinion, since Lydia was the only girl who never grumbled at helping her when Old Madam’s unexpected calls led to a sudden demand for afternoon tea.

There remained Miss Rosie Graham.

Lydia was perhaps more nearly afraid of her than she had ever been of any member of her own sex.

To a Cockney sharpness of tongue, Rosie added an almost uncanny power of insight into the minds of her neighbours, and it was commonly asserted amongst the girls that she could “thought-read.”

The “thought-reading,” Lydia decided, was a trick, based upon natural shrewdness and an almost infallible instinct for the detection of small affectations and insincerities, but it may reasonably be supposed that it added no sense of security to the circles of which Miss Graham was a member.

Lydia knew that Rosie was not, and never would be, popular, but she uneasily surmised in her a strength of character that might equal, if it did not surpass, her own. And the idea was disturbing to Lydia’s conception of her own allotted rôle in life, well to the forefront of the stage.

She was always charming to Miss Graham, in accordance with her invariable rule, but after three months at Madame Elena’s she was still vexedly aware that the medium by which the charm could be made efficacious had yet to be discovered.

It was obviously waste of time to say to Rosie, as she might have said to Marguerite Saxon, for instance:

“You do look tired to-day. I’m sure you’re not a bit strong.”

For, whereas Miss Saxon would have denied the charge, simpering with gratification the while, and at an early opportunity have returned the kindness by some such compliment as, “What a sweet figure that costume gives you, dear. I’m sure you wear lovely corsets,” it might safely be assumed that Rosie would shrug her shoulders, and retort matter-of-factly that her pallor was due to indigestion. She frankly disliked personalities, although she was willing enough to give her opinion, uncivilly and often unkindly, although never maliciously, in regard to other people.

Lydia sometimes thought that the only avenue of approach lay in the sense of humour that they shared, and which was deficient in the other members of the small group. And it always gave her an odd sense of reassurance when, in the course of the day, some trivial incident, or chance word, would cause her eyes and those of Rosie Graham to meet, involuntarily and quite instinctively, in a silent laugh.

X

“There’s only one piece each,” said old Miss Lillicrap, in the sharp, fierce squeak that the other boarders always heard with dismayed resentment, rendered powerless because of her extreme age, and the violet tinge that shadowed her hard old lips.

Miss Lillicrap had been known to have a violent and mysterious “attack” for a less reason than the appropriation of a second piece of seed-cake at tea-time on a Sunday afternoon by someone other than herself.

The boarders assembled in the drawing-room instantly entered into the unanimous league of a silent resolution to ignore Miss Lillicrap’s indelicate insistence on the extremely limited quantity of cake supplied by Miss Nettleship.

“Meal-time again!” sighed little Mrs. Clarence, at the same time edging her chair forward, so as to sit nearest to the small milk-jug and inadequately-filled sugar-basin. “It always seems to be time to eat, somehow.” Her pale, pink-rimmed blue eyes were anxiously scanning the food on the table as she spoke.

“Only one piece each,” snapped Miss Lillicrap again, more loudly than before.

Again they all ignored her.

“Who’s going to do ‘mother,’ and pour out?” asked Mrs. Bulteel with a rather nervous laugh.

Everyone knew that as the principal married woman in the room, she felt herself entitled to the office of dignity. Almost equally well, everyone knew that it would be disputed.

“I thought Miss Forster did that,” said old Miss Lillicrap.

Had Miss Forster been present she would certainly have supported Mrs. Bulteel.

“Miss Forster is out, Miss Lillicrap,” retorted Mrs. Bulteel, raising her already shrill voice, so as to impress upon Miss Lillicrap that she was old, and must therefore be very deaf as well.

“Oh, all right--all right. Yesterday I was awake nearly all night, the tea was so strong.”

“I’ll give you the first cup,” shrilled Mrs. Bulteel, provided with an excellent excuse for snatching the teapot before Mrs. Clarence, who, as a widow, could have no status at all, could put her little be-ringed, claw-like fingers round the handle.

Lydia, who, for reasons connected with her own undoubted popularity at the boarding-house, never took part in the tea-time amenities of the boarders--of which, indeed, she was only witness on occasional Saturday and Sunday afternoons--looked sympathetically at Mr. Bulteel, waiting nervously for the teacups which he habitually handed politely round.

He evidently thought his wife very spirited and clever when she used her shrewish Cockney tongue against the other women.

“Allow me,” said he, taking round the cups of strong, black brew. He threw a resentful glance, as he did so, at the Greek gentleman, who never took his share in dispensing these small courtesies. He only stood, as he usually did, in front of the empty fireplace, his hands in his pockets, and his dark eyes roaming sardonically round the room. He was still spoken of as “the Greek gentleman,” since no one had mastered his name. Lydia had listened with interest to various conversations about him, but had derived little information from them. It might be entertaining, but it was not particularly illuminating to hear Mrs. Bulteel say to Mrs. Clarence, as Lydia had heard her say a little while ago, in a very penetrating manner:

“That’s not a face I should _trust_.”

Mrs. Clarence, who never ventured to differ from anybody, and least of all from Mrs. Bulteel, who had a live husband and son to testify to the fact that she had justified her feminine existence, had only replied doubtfully:

“No? Well, perhaps you’re right. What makes you think...?”

“He looks as though he had foreign blood in him.” Mrs. Bulteel adduced the damning grounds for her inference with gloomy prescience, which she appeared to think amply justified by the facts that the Greek spoke English with a slight accent, and had a name that even Miss Nettleship only rendered as Mr. M ... m ... m.

A little while afterwards the unconquerable Mrs. Bulteel had actually asked him outright, “And do tell me, _how_ is your name pronounced?” in a very intelligent way, as though she knew of two or three excellent alternatives.

To which the Greek gentleman had replied, with slightly outspread, olive fingers:

“Just--exactly--as you please.”

“But how do _you_ say it in your own country?”

“I am not in my own country.”

“I know that. You are a foreigner,” said Mrs. Bulteel, much as she might have said, “You are a cannibal.” “But if you _were_ in your own country?”

Then had replied the Greek gentleman morosely:

“I should have no need to say it at all. It is too well known.”

And Mrs. Bulteel, seeing herself defeated, could only cry out in a shaking voice the time-honoured indictment of the English middle classes of whatever is slightly less than blatantly obvious:

“Oh! How sarcastic!”

Nothing could be more evident than that the Greek was indifferent to the charge, or, indeed, to any other that might be proffered against him by his fellow-inmates.