The heel of Achilles

“Fancy about your book, dear!” wrote Aunt Beryl. “Well I am pleased. Aunt E. and Olive are back here now, and so surprised to hear your news. Mind you tell us when to order the book from the library. I always said you had it in you to write, dear.”

Lydia could not remember any such flattering prediction, but she put Aunt Beryl’s name down on the list of people to whom one of the six presentation copies of her book, that Lady Honoret had said she would receive, must be sent.

The list cost her a certain amount of thought.

Aunt Beryl went without saying—and of course, Lady Honoret, to whom it would be a real pleasure to present anything so certain to be rapturously received—Nathalie Palmer—rather a nuisance, that, perhaps?—but Lydia stifled the thought, with the remembrance that, after all, it was Nathalie who had typed the book—Grandpapa—one would like to show Grandpapa that even earning one’s own living in London was not without its higher side—and then Uncle George would be hurt if he alone of the Regency Terrace household were left out—four copies gone already, and one to keep for herself—that was five—and Lydia surveyed with dismay the number of people to each one of whom she would have liked to send the remaining copy.

Mr. Monteagle Almond—who would think more highly of her intellectual attainments than ever—Miss Glover, who had so much wanted to have Lydia on her staff of highly-qualified teachers—the Senthovens, who could themselves do nothing except play games—even Madame Elena passed through Lydia’s perplexed mind as a possible candidate, for of late the principal had appeared to pay very little attention to her assistant. But, in the end, Lydia reluctantly decided that the sixth copy of her book must be given to Miss Forster.

There was a tendency about Miss Forster, slight but unmistakable, to show herself affronted at the ease and rapidity with which her protégée had risen to undreamed-of heights of intimacy in the Honoret establishment.

Lydia indeed, inwardly, was rather annoyed with Lady Honoret for her want of discretion. It had become quite difficult to answer Miss Forster’s sharply-put questions as to the number of her visits to Lexham Gardens, on occasions when Miss Forster herself had received no invitation there.

Lydia had always been very popular at the boarding-house, and she felt that it would be unpleasant, and would spoil her triumph in the appearance of the book, if anyone were to feel injured and show vexation—particularly Miss Forster, who was also popular, and was, moreover, always quite ready to exploit any emotion that she might be experiencing, in conversation with the other boarders.

Lydia planned to give her the book, and to inscribe in it a grateful inscription, and meanwhile she was careful to dwell upon the fact that she had never yet met Sir Rupert Honoret—whom Miss Forster, of course, knew so very well indeed.

Imperceptibly enough, however, the opinion of the boarders ceased to matter, just as that of the girls at Madame Elena’s had ceased to matter, a little while before.

Lydia’s book was a success.

Some quality, at which the writer herself was secretly surprised, was found by the public and the reviewers alike in the slight little story. It met with something that very nearly approached the reception predicted for it so gushingly by the enthusiastic Lady Honoret.

Various people, their names for the most part well known to Lydia through the agency of Aunt Evelyn and her ladies’ paper, asked to meet her, and her publisher’s advertising-manager wrote and asked for her photograph, to appear in the Press.

Lady Honoret was triumphant.

“A child—a young, fresh child of eighteen—isn’t it too, too Arcadian?” she would inquire of her friends, although Lydia, at first rather inclined to be offended at having such juvenility thrust upon her, had already distinctly stated that she was twenty.

Then, it seemed with paralyzing suddenness, the day came when Lady Honoret said to her without any preliminary at all:

“Why don’t you leave that d’eadful shop—I’m sure it is d’eadful—and give up your whole time to your real work?”

Why?

Lydia could think of innumerable reasons, although she might not be disposed to put them before Lady Honoret.

Because it was well known to Aunt Beryl, Grandpapa, Rosie Graham, everybody—that to leave a good post unless it were for a better one, was a wanton and foolish flying in the face of Providence—because Mr. Monteagle Almond would revoke all his good opinion of her, after she had justified his recommendation of her so splendidly—because Grandpapa would call her a little fool, whose head had been turned—and, finally, because the writing of a successful first novel could not be looked upon in the light of earning one’s own living, as Lydia and Lydia’s relations understood the term.

This last was the reason she chose to give Lady Honoret:

“I ought to do something for myself. My aunt and uncle, who brought me up, couldn’t afford to have me living at home doing nothing at all—it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Lady Honoret with a slight shudder. “I’m sure you oughtn’t to live with any uncle and aunt—they’re always such Philistines, too—but if you really have to think about the te’ible money part of it, of course you know you’re bound to make a little money from writing. Only I suppose you simply can’t bear to think of writing for money? It would paralyze it all?”

Lydia did not like to say that all that she was afraid of was that the money made by writing would be insufficient in quantity, so she remained silent, and Lady Honoret squeezed her hand sympathetically.

“You must think it all over, you dear little strange, wild thing,” she declared affectionately, “and then if you settle to leave your shop, as I’m sure you ought, you must let me know.”

And she said nothing more of her astonishing suggestion.

That was just the way of those new, strange people whom Lydia was now coming to know! They made the wildest and most revolutionary plans, proposing lightly such wholesale changes as the people from whom Lydia sprang would never contemplate in a lifetime bound by tradition and practical considerations alike, and then, when one pleaded for time to assimilate the scheme, to weigh and consider it, and to consult one’s relations, they brushed it all aside in a moment and seemingly forgot all about it!

Lydia marvelled at them, and was rather inclined to despise them for want of self-control, and lack of the bread-winner’s early acquired self-discipline.

All the same, Lady Honoret’s suggestion that she should leave the shop unwillingly allured Lydia, as holding vague possibilities of some higher, more splendid preferment in store.

One Sunday she found her patroness in despair over a little writing-table that was loaded with morocco-bound account-books, silver and enamel pencils, carved penholders and spoilt nibs, photographs in mosaic frames, a mosaic clock telling the wrong time, a china inkpot with ink running down its steep, purple sides, a small silver mirror on legs, and all round and underneath and on the top of all these, a vast quantity of detached bills and scribbled-over half-sheets of notepaper.

“These mis’eable accounts!” cried Lady Honoret quite desperately. “Sir Rupert has told me to put all these in order and let him have what he calls a statement, and all my charities are mixed up with personal expenses, and heaps of things I can’t possibly let him see, and I’ve lost my cheque-book—though I don’t really mind that, because I know I’m ter’ibly, ter’ibly overdrawn—but ev’ey time I add these things up they come diff’ent. Oh, darling, are you good at a’ithmetic?”

Lydia could never become in the least used to the terms of endearment, so much in vogue amongst Lady Honoret and her friends, and “darling,” in particular, was a word that she had never heard applied except to small children. She blushed involuntarily, and said:

“I am accountant at the place where I work, you know.”

“Does that mean that you can y’eally, y’eally understand accounts?” demanded Lady Honoret, assuming an even more infantile guilelessness than was habitual to her.

“Oh, do take all these, and make the statement or whatever it is he wants. I’m so tired!”

“Is any of this private?” rather hesitatingly asked Lydia, brought up in that strict creed of reticence, as to money affairs, that is so essentially of the middle classes.

“Not in the least, darling,” said her hostess languidly, and flung herself into an arm-chair with every sign of exhaustion, while Lydia sat down at the unbusiness-like little writing-table, of which she felt inwardly scornful, and began to disentangle its confusion.

Her task was not made any easier by the ceaseless flow of Lady Honoret’s talk, and it took her over an hour to produce order from so much elegant chaos.

Then she said succinctly:

“Since the New Year fifty-five pounds have gone to various charities and societies—I have the list of accounts here—and all the rest is—is personal expenditure.”

She did not like to say “clothes,” although the bills were for nothing else, and there was not a single household item amongst them all.

“How much?”

“Two hundred and twenty-eight pounds, sixteen shillings and sixpence,” said Lydia.

“Oh! Darling thing, you’re so clever at all this—would you mind putting it all down on paper the other way round—the fifty for dress expenses, and the other to charity? He never asks to see the bills.”

Lydia was thunderstruck.

“Cook the accounts?” She worded it bluntly in her confusion, but her voice was shaky.

“What a quaint expression!” said Lady Honoret delightedly. “Is that what you call it? Oh, yes, do cook them for me!”

No wonder that certain of the novels read by Lydia with so much interest talked about the immorality of the upper classes!

Lydia was highly scandalized, but she had not the slightest intention of risking Lady Honoret’s friendship, and she “cooked” the accounts very neatly and skilfully.

“But if Sir Rupert asks to see the bills from the shops, or the receipts from the charity places?” she suggested.

“Then you’ll have to come and help me to cook again, or I can always say I have lost them,” Lady Honoret declared. “It may sound the teeniest bit deceitful”—it certainly did, reflected Lydia grimly—“but I make it a rule never to lie unless I have to, and then do it tho’oughly, tho’oughly well, you know. Sir Rupert really drives me to it sometimes—you’ve no idea what he’s like.”

Lydia rather wished that she had, and less than a week later her curiosity was gratified, and she met Sir Rupert Honoret.

He was quite unlike her conception of a wealthy Jew, taken mainly from the stage. She had expected a pompous and corpulent presence, with a fur-lined coat, and a cigar, an immense hooked nose and a lisp. Instead she saw a small, wizened figure, with a broken front tooth, that gave him an oddly dilapidated appearance, prominent and rather bilious-looking eyes, and a discontented expression. His voice was low and nasal, and came with a peculiar hiss through the gap of the broken tooth.

“Are you the girl who does accounts?” he asked her.

Lydia’s breath caught in her throat as she reflected how exceedingly probable it was that the financier had become aware of the particular direction in which her skill had recently taken her.

She shot a glance at Lady Honoret, who nodded gaily and quite openly.

“Yes,” said Lydia.

“She writes, you know, Rupert. So ve’y, ve’y wonderful to think——”

“Are you fond of figures?” Sir Rupert demanded, ignoring his wife.

“Very.”

“Any good at book-keeping? Double entry?”

“I’ve learnt it, and am working now as accountant.”

“Where?”

“At a—a shop,” hesitated Lydia. “A ladies’ shop, called Elena’s, in Day Street.”

“Yes—run by an old woman called Ribeiro. I know.”

Lydia looked upon him as nothing less than omniscient after that.

“D’you like the work there?”

Instinct made Lydia reply without enthusiasm:

“Pretty well.”

“You’d like something better, eh? Can you do typing and shorthand?”

“No.”

“Only accounts? Well, if you can keep those properly you can do more than most women.”

He turned on his heel and went away without saying anything more, and it was with genuine astonishment that Lydia heard Lady Honoret exclaim:

“Oh, how, how clever of you! You’ve managed to get on the right side of Sir Rupert at once—and he is so difficult. Now I can have you here as much as I like, without his being disag’eeable.”

Sir Rupert was not disagreeable. Once or twice he spoke to Lydia, and once he handed over to her an elaborate collection of figures, and asked her to “see what she made of that.” Various unfamiliar terms, “shares” and “preference shares,” “debenture stock,” perplexed her, but the figures themselves could be capable of no combination too baffling for the mathematical mind, and Lydia tabulated very neatly and clearly the result of her work.

“Good.”

Sir Rupert put the paper down.

“Give Ribeiro notice, and I’ll make you my secretary at two pounds a week. You can have your luncheon here. Hours ten to six, and overtime when I want you. That will probably include Sundays as well.”

“But—but—Lady Honoret....”

“You can help her when I’ve nothing for you to do—but that won’t be often. Think it over and give me an answer to-morrow.”

Sir Rupert walked into his study and shut the door almost in Lydia’s face, leaving her completely bewildered.

It was an opportunity—it might lead to anything! Already Lydia had learnt to look upon even her newfound triumphs merely as stepping-stones to some further splendid destiny, the form of which she did not particularize.

After all, she was practically a shop-girl—that was all that her position at Madame Elena’s represented, to those outside. Private secretary to Sir Rupert Honoret would be a very different thing. And her salary doubled—even Mr. Monteagle Almond would see no imprudence in making a change so much for the better.

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.

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.