The heel of Achilles

Lydia’s rightful place at the Rectory was found even more quickly and easily than she had hoped.

She helped Nathalie with her Blanket Club accounts, she contributed most valuable garments, made by herself quickly and deftly during the long, pleasant evenings, to the Maternity Bag, and she begged to be allowed to relieve Nathalie sometimes by reading aloud at the meetings of the Mothers’ Union. It was gratifying to see how much the mothers appreciated it, when the Rector told them that this was his daughter’s friend, who was taking a well-earned holiday from hard work in London.

The Rector and Nathalie could hardly say enough of Lydia’s eagerness to join in all the activities of their large and straggling parish, and both expressed a naïve admiration for her wonderful aptitude over details which must be so new to her.

But Lydia enjoyed it all, and also enjoyed her own quickness, that admittedly so far surpassed Nathalie’s rather automatic performance of her many duties, and the sense of being a great success, and really helpful to the kind and hospitable Palmers.

The old intimacy between herself and Nathalie had revived very quickly, and it surprised and flattered Lydia to see the eagerness displayed by her friend to hear all about her life in London.

But she did not tell her a very great deal. It was always a mistake to talk very much about oneself, and the Rector had seemed to think it rather a pity that Lydia should be working for the Jewish Sir Rupert Honoret. More successful, somehow, to keep the conversation to the great novelty that she found in a country life, and her enjoyment of the Saturday afternoon cricket matches, attended by Nathalie always, and her father whenever possible, as a matter of course.

“I suppose I’m so used to them, and—it’s very slack of me—but I do get rather tired of always getting the tea ready,” Nathalie confessed.

“Do you give the tea?”

“The Cricket Club funds are supposed to provide it, but Lady Lucy lets us have the crockery and Mrs. Damerel often comes down to help. The Squire used to play, you know. And Mr. Clement Damerel sometimes plays when he’s down here. We may see him this afternoon.”

Lydia felt rather pleased, and put on a new pink frock that she had copied from one of Nathalie’s neat prints, because her customary long skirts and frilly blouses had somehow seemed out of place at the Rectory.

She went down with Nathalie to the cricket-ground in the middle of the village, early in the afternoon.

“We call at the post-office for the key of the cricket-pavilion,” said Nathalie, quite matter-of-factly.

The postmaster gave them the key, and they also called at the baker’s for a very large basket containing long loaves of yellow saffron cake.

The pavilion was a small, match-boarded erection, painted in green, and with a little wooden fence all round it. Within this enclosure, Nathalie and Lydia erected a trestle table, and from inside the pavilion they extracted a quantity of enamel mugs and plates, with two knives for cutting up the cake and spreading butter on the splits, as Nathalie called the round, white buns that Lydia had taken for scones.

“That’s splendid, Lydia! How quickly you do it. You see, we hand out the tea over the paling, then they eat it on the grass outside. The urns will come down presently from Quintmere.”

“What fun it is!” said Lydia.

“I wish you were always here!” cried Nathalie. “You’d make anything fun, and I sometimes get so tired of it all.”

Nevertheless, she went on spreading butter rapidly, and the splits were piling up on the enamel plates.

“Here’s Mrs. Damerel,” said Nathalie presently. Lydia looked up curiously, and felt rather disappointed at the sight of the Squire’s widow.

Mrs. Damerel was very tall, dressed in a short black skirt and a black shirt made very plainly indeed, a small black veil hung from her hat, denoting her widowhood, and she had the red, weather-beaten complexion of the hunting woman, with a very much turned-up nose and prominent teeth. She did not look more than thirty, but as a pathetic young widow, Lydia thought her appearance a failure.

“Good afternoon, Nathalie,” she said in a short, clipping way. “What a lot you’ve done! Billy and I came down to see if we could help.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Damerel. This is my friend, Lydia Raymond, who’s staying with us,” said Nathalie shyly.

“How d’y do?”

Mrs. Damerel shook hands, which Lydia had somehow not expected her to do.

“Quite well, thank you,” she replied politely, and there was a pause, while Mrs. Damerel pulled off her gauntlet gloves, revealing an unexpectedly white pair of hands.

She gave the two girls very efficient help, and the dishes of food were all ready and set out in the shade, covered with clean cloths, before the match had even begun.

“The urns are coming down at four o’clock. Lady Lucy will be driving down,” said Mrs. Damerel. “Where’s Billy?”

They left the cool shelter of the little pavilion and went outside to find Billy, a fair child in white flannels, better-looking than his mother.

“The other team has just arrived,” he shouted excitedly, and a wagonette crowded with men and boys jolted slowly to a standstill outside the ground.

It was all new to Lydia, and she sat in the brilliant August sunshine and watched the groups of men on the ground, the rosy Devonshire school-children rolling about the grass, under the shade of some great elm trees, and the arrival of a number of village folk who took their places on forms conveniently placed for watching the match.

Mrs. Damerel spoke to many of them, and presently sat down on one of the benches, with Billy on the ground at her feet, playing with a big dog that seemed to belong to them, and of which Lydia felt rather nervous.

Nathalie said to her apologetically:

“I must go and score, Lydia. We’re a man short, because Bert Greenaway isn’t here, and the man who generally keeps the score has been put in first. I don’t suppose he’ll stay in long, though, and then I can come back. We’ve won the toss.”

She went to sit at a little table under a black-board on which a few figures, incomprehensible to Lydia, were chalked up, and busied herself with an enormous sheet of heavily scored paper.

Lydia tried to remember all that she had ever heard about cricket from the Senthovens.

What a long way off the Senthovens seemed—and London, and the girls at Elena’s, and even Sir Rupert’s study.

As she smiled at the thought, a voice beside her suddenly recalled to her with surprising vividness the very atmosphere of the Lexham Gardens house.

“How do you do, Miss Raymond? I never expected that we should meet down here.”

It was Clement Damerel, looking unfamiliar in dark-grey flannels.

Lydia flushed with surprise and jumped up. They shook hands.

“I never saw you arrive,” she said rather naïvely.

“I’ve been talking to Miss Palmer. She told me you were staying with her, and that you’d been kind enough to remember our meetings in London. You’re having a holiday, I suppose?”

“Yes. Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret have gone to Scotland.”

“I’ve got a fortnight, too. Isn’t this glorious after London? Have you met my mother yet?”

“No. I’ve only seen her in church, and then I was up in the choir, because Nathalie—Miss Palmer—was playing the organ. Lady Damerel had gone when we came out.”

Lydia had heard Nathalie and her father speak of “Lady Lucy,” but she felt sure that in a stranger this would sound like impertinent familiarity.

“My mother will be down here presently,” said Clement Damerel. “She doesn’t often miss a cricket match.”

He stayed beside her on the grass, watching the game, eyes screwed up against the sun.

“That’s a good bowler they’ve got—he’ll have Davy out in a minute, you’ll see.... No, that’s the end of the over ... the man at this end is a good man—if he’s wise he’ll block every ball until he gets his eye in.... Are you interested in cricket?”

“I’m enjoying this very much,” Lydia said, “but I don’t know much about the game. I used to play with some cousins——”

Mr. Damerel certainly was not at all like the Senthovens, the only other people Lydia had known who were much interested in games.

Although he watched the match and called out “Well hit, Mr. Yeo, well hit!” when a boundary was scored, and although he clapped generously when a slow ball unexpectedly sent Davy’s middle stump flying, he was all the time attentive to Lydia, addressing his conversation to her, and seeming really interested in everything she said.

When Davy walked sheepishly away from the wicket, unfastening his pads as he came and handing them to his successor with the bat, Nathalie was set at liberty.

“I’ll put myself down for a duck’s egg, Miss Palmer,” said Davy, grinning ruefully.

Nathalie laughed, and came to join her friend.

Lydia was on the whole not sorry to welcome her. Although at Regency Terrace it might be considered bad form to break into a tête-à-tête between any girl and any young man, her experience at Lexham Gardens had shown her that this rule was not by any means universally prevalent, and moreover she was beginning to find it a strain to show herself as consistently charming and intelligent as Mr. Clement Damerel quite obviously considered her to be.

With four o’clock there came a break.

Two large urns were lifted on to the trestle table by a man in groom’s livery, who touched his hat to Nathalie, and Clement Damerel got up and made his way to a small, old-fashioned pony-carriage just drawn up under one of the further elm trees.

“Shall we make the tea, Lydia?”

Little muslin bags of tea leaves were at the bottom of each urn, and boiling water was miraculously procured from immense kettles that appeared to have spent the afternoon over a fire of sticks concealed behind the pavilion.

Nathalie emptied milk and sugar with a practised hand into the tea-urns.

“We always give it to them ready mixed,” she said with finality.

Lydia felt no inclination to criticize. Everything at Ashlew, imbued with the immemorial traditions of a country parish, seemed as much beyond criticism as might be some age-old law that had remained unbroken throughout centuries.

They handed mugs of tea and plates of cake and splits across the wooden palings, and Billy Damerel came to ask for some tea for his mother, and carried a brimming mug carefully away with him.

Mrs. Damerel remained seated between two village matrons, talking to them in her abrupt yet unembarrassed manner, but the old lady in black, whom Lydia had vaguely discerned in the pony-cart, presently descended, and came slowly across the grass, leaning on her son’s arm.

If Mrs. Damerel’s appearance had been a disappointment to Lydia, that of Lady Lucy Damerel was an even worse shock.

She was small and old, with wisps of untidy white hair blowing round her face, under a big mushroom hat of black straw, whereof the edges were unmistakably frayed, her black dress was of a cut and antiquity that even Aunt Evelyn, who reputedly “had no time to think about appearances,” would have disdained, and she wore a large pair of clumping black boots.

Lydia thought of Lady Honoret’s ruffled tea-gowns, and picture hats, and innumerable sparkling, jangling rings, and chains and lockets, and felt that Lady Lucy Damerel really could be no one so very important, after all.

Even her voice, as she greeted Nathalie by her Christian name, had not the peculiar distinction that was noticeable in her son’s.

“Is your father coming down?” she asked Nathalie.

“I’m afraid he won’t be back in time. He’s had to take a funeral at Clyst Milton Halt this afternoon.”

“Is that the Beer baby?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, poor Mrs. Beer. I want to get over and see her one afternoon, but it’s a long way for the old pony. They sent over the eldest boy to ask for some flowers yesterday.”

Lady Lucy sat down on one of the wooden benches, and began to talk amiably to Lydia.

“Is this your first visit to Devonshire?”

“Yes. I think it’s lovely.”

“There’s no place like it,” said Lady Lucy, with the calm of conviction. “My son tells me that you work in London. Do you find that interesting?”

“Very interesting.”

Lydia gave a few details, shyly, and Lady Lucy listened with the same attentive interest that her son had shown, and which Lydia, in her, found even more surprising, remembering the scant courtesy accorded by Lady Honoret and her friends to one another’s discourse.

Finally the old lady said to Nathalie:

“Have you a free afternoon next week, my dear, when you can bring Miss Raymond up for some tennis?”

“We should like to very much, Lady Lucy, thank you. Any day except—let me see, Friday is choir-practice, and on Tuesday I suppose Mrs. Damerel will have the G.F.S. girls at Quintmere?”

“So she will. What about Monday, Clement?”

“Splendid,” said her son.

“Then about four o’clock, my dear. And tell your father I’ll try and see Mrs. Beer as soon as I can get down-along to Clyst Milton Halt.”

She made use of the Devonshire idiom with the utmost naturalness. Lydia, who had thought it provincial from Nathalie and her father, was again very much surprised.

“Good-bye,” said Clement Damerel, “we shall meet again on Monday, then.”

They met again on Monday, and on several other occasions.

Lydia inwardly commended her own foresight of long ago in letting the Senthovens bully her over innumerable games of tennis. She might, and indeed did, lack practice, but she had only to say so, and thanks to Bob and Olive, she knew that her style was good.

She played as often as possible at the Rectory against Nathalie, whose game was an admirable one, and her strokes improved every day.

It was satisfactory to write to Aunt Beryl, knowing that the information would filter through to Miss Nettleship, and thence to all the boarding-house people: “Yesterday Nathalie and I went up to Quintmere again and played tennis. The clergyman son, Mr. Clement Damerel, plays awfully well. He and I won a set against Nathalie and another man who is staying there. Old Lady Damerel is awfully nice. She doesn’t seem to know anybody much outside Devonshire; she didn’t even know who Lady Honoret was. I like her better than her widowed daughter-in-law, who lives with her, called Mrs. Damerel. I am having a ripping time, auntie.”

Nothing could be more appreciative than Aunt Beryl’s reply. Although not apt to be eloquent in correspondence, for which she rightly said that she had no time, Aunt Beryl, prompted evidently by Aunt Evelyn and the fashion paper’s Society supplement, was quite expansive about the Damerels.

Lydia did not mind at all. Hers was never the trivial vanity that resents criticism, and she was only too pleased to find herself guarded from possible future errors. She was enjoying her visit to Devonshire more and more.

The weather was fine almost all the time, but Lydia found, to her surprise, that Nathalie went out just the same whether it rained or not.

“We couldn’t let it make any difference, you know,” the Rector’s daughter explained. “In the autumn down here it rains nearly every day—a sort of wet mist that’s just the same as rain, anyway. Only your boots aren’t very thick, Lydia.”

They were not—in fact, it was very obvious that Nathalie only spoke of the thin, patent-leather, high-heeled things as “boots” by courtesy.

Lydia remembered Lady Lucy Damerel’s substantial footwear, and bought a pair of thick country shoes the next time that they went into Clyst Milton.

When she had been nearly three weeks at the Rectory Clement Damerel returned to London.

“I hope I shall see you there some time,” he said to Lydia.

She felt flattered, and hoped so too, but Mr. Damerel was a slight puzzle to her.

She supposed that it was because he was a clergyman, that, although he obviously liked her society, he did not suggest taking her out to tea some Saturday afternoon, which surely he could easily do in London. However, he had definitely given her to understand that his business with Sir Rupert Honoret was likely to be of indefinite duration, and Lydia knew that they would meet again.

She was attracted by the young clergyman, by something in him which she inwardly described to herself as “high-class,” by his good looks, of the fair, athletic type, essentially opposite to her own, and by his deferential courtesy to herself.

She thought that it was a pity he should be a parson. Clergymen were all very well, but apparently they were unable to let themselves go quite as other young men might have done, to the pleasant cultivation of a passing attraction.

Lydia gave no thought to anything more enduring than a passing attraction, partly because the Margoliouth episode had confirmed her strongly in the belittling view of sexual adventure that was hers by temperament, and partly because, although her imagination had been slightly stirred by Damerel, her emotional capabilities were as utterly undeveloped as her strong and ambitious mentality was overmatured.

Before she went back to London the Rector spoke to her gently and kindly of her life there.

“You are very young to be living by yourself, if I may say so. Nathalie tells me that this lady, in whose house you lodge, is a friend of your aunt’s?”

“Yes. She’s very nice.”

“Yes—yes. I am sure of it. And she takes care of you—sees that you eat enough, and don’t sit up too late at night writing those clever stories?”

“She takes great care of me,” said Lydia, smiling.

The Rector was old-fashioned and particular, and she did not want him to think his daughter’s friend reckless or overindependent.

“I’m glad of that—very glad. Nathalie and I must claim the privilege of being a little bit anxious about you sometimes. And what about your work, now?”

Lydia had guessed what was coming, and wilfully pretended to misunderstand it.

“I’m writing another book, and the people who published my first one have already asked me about it, so I hope they’ll take it.”

“Ah, indeed. Well, no doubt they will be only too glad—I hope so, I hope so. But I meant your daily work, my child—the secretaryship.”

“I shall begin again next month—as soon as Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret come back from Scotland.”

“What are these people like, may I ask?”

“Lady Honoret writes, and knows a great many clever people, and Sir Rupert is in the City—and gives a great deal to charity.”

“Does he—does he? But now forgive me, my dear child—are these people altogether desirable—is the tone of their house quite what it should be?”

Lydia, genuinely astonished, could only reply:

“I think so—I don’t know—I’ve never thought about it.”

“No, indeed—how should you at your age? But your acquaintance with this lady came about very casually, I understand, and—and—— In short, my dear Lydia, I have lately heard one or two things which disturbed me, and led me to think it my duty to utter a word of warning. Nathalie has so much affection for you, and you have so identified yourself with our little daily round of life here, that I—I could no more let you go into danger with your eyes shut than I could my own daughter.”

The good Rector’s voice held emotion, as well as great earnestness, and Lydia said with perfect sincerity:

“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Palmer, and I can’t be grateful enough. But my post is a very good one, and really and truly the work I do is almost all connected with charities—the hospitals, and institutions and things of which Sir Rupert is patron. He is a very generous man.”

“Is that so? There are many most open-handed members of the Jewish community, I know—indeed, many a professed Christian might be put to shame by them. But that brings me to another point. Should you not rather employ your capabilities—your great capabilities—in some service other than that of an alien faith?”

“But Sir Rupert gives to religious objects too,” said Lydia quickly. “At least, I mean he makes no distinction between denominations. There is a Roman Catholic hospital on his list, and he has sent money to Mr. Clement Damerel’s Church Lads’ Brigade, I know, and several other things.”

“Yes—yes. Damerel certainly described him as a most generous man.”

But the Rector still looked thoroughly uneasy.

“I have no shadow of a right to coerce you in any way, my dear child,” he said at last. “But I do implore you to look upon me as a friend, and if at any time you should feel perplexed or doubtful, as to your position with these people, write to me quite freely. Your confidence will always be treated as sacred, and I might be able to help you. You know,” said the Rector wistfully, “there are a great many branches of work in our own Church that would be only too glad of help and brains like yours. I could easily make inquiries as to a secretarial post with the Church Army or the Y.W.C.A. in London.”

“I am obliged to think of my salary,” said Lydia, not without intention. “My aunt and uncle have done a great deal for me, and it makes a difference to them that I should be able to keep myself comfortably. I get two pounds a week from Sir Rupert Honoret, and my lunch and my tea every day.”

“That is good,” said the Rector.

And the thought crossed his mind, just as Lydia had intended that it should, and found semi-expression in his murmured words: “Yes—I don’t know that the Y.W.C.A. can afford quite that scale of pay....”

On the whole, Lydia, thinking it over afterwards, could not feel the conversation in any way to be regretted. It had established her on the footing almost of an adopted daughter, as regarded the kind old Rector, and Lydia felt that she hardly needed Nathalie’s assurance, warmly given on the night before she was to return to London:

“Of course you’ll come to us again, Lydia dear, whenever you can get away, won’t you? Father does so hope you will—I’ve never seen him take such a fancy to anyone as he has to you. And you’ve been so good and dear about helping us, and joining in all our dull ways down here!”

Lydia protested affectionately, and said how much she should love to come and stay with Nathalie again. Only, of course, there was Aunt Beryl to be thought of—and Grandpapa. They must never be allowed to think that Lydia preferred to spend her holidays elsewhere ... in fact, if it wasn’t that she’d been at Regency Terrace for an unexpected visit after leaving Madame Elena’s, she ought to have gone there at least for the last week of this month.

“Of course I quite understand,” said Nathalie, “and it’s very good of you, Lydia, always to think of them first. Only, you know, a long journey like the one from London here is hardly worth while unless it’s for a real, proper visit, is it now?”

Aunt Beryl, oddly enough, had written very much the same, in reply to Lydia’s letter, explaining that she would have to go straight back to London when she left Clyst Milton.

So evidently no one’s feelings had been hurt, and Lydia could enjoy the Palmers and their comfortable Rectory until the last possible moment quite freely.

She went away at last, able to look back upon her Devonshire month with a delightful feeling of happiness and success. Her friendship with Nathalie was more firmly established now that they had met again, both grown up, and that Nathalie’s childish admiration for Lydia had been reinforced—as it was impossible not to know that it had—from its enthusiastic endorsement from Nathalie’s father, and from Lydia’s own triumphant adaptation of herself to her surroundings.

She had learnt a lot of new things—how one dressed in the country, and wore heavy boots, and went out in all weathers, and climbed backwards out of a dog-cart, and she had made acquaintance with Lady Lucy Damerel, which would silence Miss Forster, once and for all, with her perpetual “Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret.”

The recollection of the Honorets gave Lydia the slightest moment’s pause. After all, Lady Lucy Damerel seemed never to have heard of them, and all that Lydia had reported of the literary and theatrical society that came to Lexham Gardens, and the great publisher’s, Mr. Cassela’s constant visits there, had apparently conveyed nothing at all to the people at Quintmere.

But another thought also struck Lydia quite suddenly, and woke in her an amused mingling of resentment and gratification.

Only one person could have spoken to the old Rector of the Honorets in such a fashion as to make him wonder whether, as he had said, the tone of their house was such as to warrant Lydia’s spending her days there.

And that person was the Reverend Clement Damerel.