XX
Never could Lydia forget the nightmare horror of the hours that followed. The only comfort to be found—but it was a very substantial one—was in Mr. Damerel’s kindness—almost tenderness.
It was he who took her away from Lexham Gardens in a cab, and drove with her to the boarding-house, where he saw Miss Nettleship himself, and explained that Miss Raymond had had a great shock, and ought to stay quietly in her own room for a day or two, if it could be managed without too much trouble, and not be worried to talk to anyone.
“That’ll be quite all right, I quite understand how it is,” Miss Nettleship repeated, certainly without any grounds for the last assertion, but evidently with the kindest intentions, and her hand clasping Lydia’s, while her round brown eyes were fixed anxiously upon Mr. Damerel’s face.
She was very kind to Lydia, and came and sat with her that evening, and Lydia, completely unnerved, told her the whole story.
Miss Nettleship confined all her comments to pitying ejaculations on Lydia’s behalf. Poor dear! how dreadful for her to be mixed up in such a thing—and how abominable of that Sir Rupert Honoret to pretend that he thought she knew anything about it! She had been most dignified and brave, Miss Nettleship was sure, while that horrible man was insulting her—and how right to trust that kind, gentleman-like young clergyman and tell him all about it!
Miss Nettleship’s championship and her praise of Lydia’s discretion made Lydia feel much more composed, if only by presenting to her a new aspect of the case. At first she had only been conscious that she might yet find herself held partly responsible for wicked Lady Honoret’s minor peccadilloes at least, and inclined to reproach herself bitterly for not having listened to old Mr. Palmer’s advice.
Now she saw that it was possible for her adventure to be viewed as that of an innocent victim, placed in a most difficult and dramatic position through no fault of her own.
In the eyes of Mr. Clement Damerel and Miss Nettleship, she was the heroine of the situation.
Lydia had adjusted herself to this rôle without difficulty when, two days later, Aunt Beryl made an unexpected appearance.
“Maria Nettleship wrote to me, dearie. You mustn’t be vexed with her, but she really felt the responsibility too much for her, and that Mr. Damerel the clergyman advised it. You’ll come home and have a good rest, now, won’t you?”
Lydia could really see no alternative.
Without a salary, it would be Aunt Beryl and Uncle George who would be paying her expenses at the boarding-house, and she realized for the first time that neither from the Honoret establishment, nor from Madame Elena—infuriated at the manner of Lydia’s departure from the shop—was she likely to receive a reference that would enable her easily to obtain another post. Moreover, she still felt that it would be almost intolerable to hear the affair at Lexham Gardens discussed, as it must be, by all the boarders.
Lydia agreed to go back with Aunt Beryl to Regency Terrace.
It was understood that Miss Nettleship would convey to the boarders that recent events had caused Lydia to leave the service of Sir Rupert Honoret with every credit to herself, and that her aunt had taken her home for a much-needed rest.
Clement Damerel came to say good-bye to her at a time when Aunt Beryl, to Lydia’s secret relief, was out.
Lydia, much less self-confident than usual, asked nervously whether any further developments had taken place at Lexham Gardens.
“I have seen Mr. Codd again, and he assures me that there is nothing for you to be afraid of. I practically got a definite assurance from him that there would be no question of your name appearing in the case. Of course, he was cautious, as those people must be, I suppose, but I think you can set your mind at rest. In any case, if there is any idea of calling you as a witness, he has promised to let me know in good time. And I will do everything—anything—to shield you from anything so painful,” said Mr. Damerel with agitation. “I think influence could be brought to bear——”
“Thank you very, very much,” said Lydia.
She felt shaken and tired, and almost childishly grateful for his championship.
“Will you let me know how you are, and—and—your plans later on?” asked the young man gently.
“When I know myself, I will write to you,” said Lydia rather mournfully. “I feel as though I’d failed—and I did want to do some work, and do credit to my aunt and uncle and perhaps be of a little help to them.”
Clement Damerel would not let her despond.
She had been splendidly brave, and proved herself to be a most efficient worker, and other opportunities would come to her hand. The sense of failure was only a natural reaction after the shock she had undergone. There might—Clement Damerel hesitated—he felt sure there would be—opportunities undreamed-of for the exercise of her splendid gifts. Might he write to her from time to time? Perhaps he could put work in her way——
Lydia thanked him again, and gave him the Regency Terrace address.
“Good-bye, and let me know if there is anything—anything——” said Clement Damerel, and went away after wringing her hand.
As Lydia recovered her poise of mind, she was not unaware of a private wish that he had told her rather more as to what had happened at Lexham Gardens after her summary departure, and taken it less for granted that her only preoccupation was that she should be spared the possibility of an appearance in Court.
After all, it was an exciting affair, and likely to prove notorious to a high degree.
If one had to be so closely connected with the scene of action, it seemed foolish not to know more than other people of the steps that had led to the cataclysm.
Lydia came to this point of view by degrees, partly ashamed of herself for so coming, and yet urged on to it by Aunt Evelyn’s perfectly shameless absorption in every detail that she could extract from her niece bearing upon the forthcoming scandal.
“The case won’t come on for another six months, I daresay,” exclaimed Aunt Evelyn, suddenly become an authority by virtue of her protracted perusal of all that “A Little Bird” had to say in the Society columns of her favourite journals.
“Of course, I quite understand about your not wanting to talk of it, dear—but I’m afraid it’ll be one of those regular Society caws celeb. that the illustrated papers and all will take hold of....”
Aunt Evelyn proved a perfectly true prophet.
In rather less than six months the Honoret divorce case was figuring in flaunting headlines throughout the Press.
Aunt Evelyn and Olive were again staying at “The Osborne,” and the former, at any rate, seemed never to be without a printed sheet fluttering in her hand.
“Fancy, they’ve got a photograph of the house! I suppose they think it’ll interest people, but it seems morbid, too, in a way—doesn’t it? Which is the window of the room you worked in, Lydia?”
“It was at the back of the house,” said Lydia briefly.
Nevertheless, a sort of fascination brought her to Aunt Evelyn’s side, to gaze at the smudged outline of the steps and area railings, which was really all that could be distinguished on the page.
“Just fancy if they got at you, Lyd, and wanted your photograph, or something. They might, you know,” said Olive. “Wouldn’t it be frightful? What would you do?”
“She’d enjoy it very much, my dear—nearly as much as you and your mother,” said an unexpected voice in acid falsetto.
They had forgotten that Grandpapa was in the room.
Lydia would have liked to protest indignantly, but for one thing it would have been without any effect upon Grandpapa, and for another, she had a lurking and most unpleasing conviction that he was speaking the truth.
Quite insensibly, during the monotony of the last five months at Regency Terrace, she had come to depend for her only excitement upon the local importance attaching to her as a first-hand authority upon the prevalent topic of gossip—the big divorce case of the moment.
There were even times when she could have wished for that very contingency that at first had struck such terror to her mind—her own summons as a witness in the case—she hardly cared on which side. In any event, she would make a good witness, she knew—clear-headed, with an excellent memory, and untroubled by nervousness.
But Mr. Damerel had written a great many times to assure her that she need not be afraid of being called, and in his last letter had said how very thankful he was to be able to reassure her once and for all on the point. As things were going, he had been told on good authority that Miss Raymond’s testimony would not be required.
Mr. Damerel’s congratulations—which he applied to himself almost as freely as to Lydia, so much did he seem to have taken the question to heart—were very pleasant. Lydia liked receiving his letters, written in a small, rather meticulous handwriting, and she even liked the careful inditing of her own replies.
But life seemed to have come to a standstill, and the return to the monotonous Regency Terrace routine, hardly varying from that which had prevailed there in her twelfth year, was depressing to Lydia.
Grandpapa took hardly any notice of her, and had grown much older. He now sat in silence for hours at a time, only brightening into momentary gleams of his old, elfish humour when Aunt Beryl or Uncle George reported some fresh eccentricity of the irrepressible Shamrock.
He seemed to have forgotten his old predilection for Lydia’s society, and though she tried to talk to him and amuse him, it had become much more difficult.
When she gave him an ironical account of Miss Forster’s perpetual boasting of her friendship with Sir Rupert and Lady Honoret, Grandpapa remarked crudely:
“She may thank her stars at any rate that she didn’t foist herself into the house as their paid dependent.”
And when she tried to interest him with an account of all the new activities in which she had taken part during her visit to Devonshire, he replied coldly:
“I can quite believe that you helped your friends in their parish, my dear, until they hadn’t a leg to stand upon between them.”
Lydia was so much annoyed that she most unwisely inquired, with great indignation in her voice, what Grandpapa meant.
“You’re a situation-snatcher, Lyddie,” said her grandparent solemnly. “That’s what you are. You always were, even as a little child. Whatever the situation may be, or whom it may belong to, you’ll always manage to snatch the best of it for yourself.”
After that, Lydia gave up attempting to revive her old alliance with Grandpapa altogether.
She spent that spring and early summer rather drearily, missing the regular work to which she had become accustomed, and, above all, the many new people she had been meeting.
Her second book proved more difficult to write than had her first, and she worked at it indifferently and without much satisfaction.
Most of her days passed in making clothes that she saw no opportunity of wearing, and in listening to Olive Senthoven’s grumbling talk and her short, incessant cough.
Towards the middle of the summer Aunt Evelyn went home, and Olive came to live altogether at Regency Terrace, because the sea air was supposed to be good for her chest.
Otherwise the monotony of the days remained unbroken.
The greatest surprise of Lydia’s whole life was the proposal of marriage that she received at the end of that uneventful summer from Clement Damerel.
She had not seen him since the débâcle at Lexham Gardens, and although his letters were frequent, she had come to look upon them as mere impersonal expressions of the interest taken by a clergyman in someone whom he had befriended at a trying crisis. Otherwise, Lydia had argued, he would have suggested coming to see her, or even that she should go up to London for the day and meet him for lunch or tea.
But when the Honoret case was over, and Sir Rupert had been granted his decree, Mr. Clement Damerel really had nothing further to write about, and Lydia was not surprised to receive from him a very brief note saying that he was going to Devonshire for a week to see his mother.
Lydia wished languidly that Nathalie Palmer would invite her to the Rectory, and felt a momentary gleam of hope when she received a letter with the Ashlew postmark.
Her eyes widened as she read:
“Mr. Damerel is at Quintmere, and the other day I went up for tennis. We talked a lot about you, and he seemed so frightfully sorry for you about that dreadful Lady Honoret, and said you had behaved splendidly. I think he likes you awfully, Lydia, and I’m sure he’s been talking about you to Lady Lucy, because she asked me a whole lot about you afterwards, and seemed so interested. Of course I told her heaps of nice things, and she said Mrs. Damerel had read your book, and liked it, but she never reads novels herself.
“Father went up to Quintmere yesterday and was there ages, but he didn’t tell me what it was about, only he was frightfully absent-minded all the evening, and after supper (though we hadn’t mentioned your name) he suddenly said: ‘How old did you say little Lydia was, my dear?’ So I can’t help guessing that he and Lady Lucy had been talking about you too! I hope father wouldn’t call this letter ‘school-girls’ gossip’—but I expect he would! so I’ll stop.”
Lydia had hardly had time to attach all the various implications possible to Nathalie’s surprising statements when she received another note from Mr. Damerel. He was coming back to London the next day, and hoped that he might be allowed to see Miss Raymond. Could he run down for the afternoon from town and call upon her? Finally, and significantly, instead of being hers very sincerely, as hitherto, he asked Lydia to believe him, hers ever, Clement Damerel.
Lydia’s spirit woke from the lethargy that had crept upon it during that long, dull spell of months at Regency Terrace.
She felt excited, but also perfectly calm and alert.
She decided instantly that she did not want Mr. Damerel at Regency Terrace. Aunt Beryl might be all very well, and Uncle George—but who knew what Grandpapa might elect to say or to do? And Olive was impossible. No.
She had no desire to exploit her home-life before Mr. Damerel, who had only seen her as the Palmers’ guest at Ashlew Rectory, or else as the quiet, reliable, and self-reliant young secretary at Lexham Gardens. She preferred that their next meeting should take place upon neutral territory.
“Aunt Beryl,” said Lydia that evening, “shall you go up to London for the day before the sales are over?”
“Not this time, dear. There’s nothing I really want, and Aunt Evelyn is kindly going to see about matching that sewing-silk for me. It was the only thing I had on my mind—such a difficult shade.”
Aunt Beryl continued to darn her second-best tablecloth, and Lydia, who was never impetuous, waited quietly.
“If you thought of going up yourself, dear, it would be quite an idea. It would be a little outing for you and Olive, if she’s not afraid of the bad air. The Tubes are very stuffy, and the trains are always so crowded nowadays. I’m sure Bob would be too delighted to meet you somewhere for lunch.”
Lydia was quite sure of it too, and equally certain that she should not avail herself of Bob’s escort.
“Mr. Damerel wants to see me, I think. I don’t know what it’s about—he may have another post in view for me, perhaps. Anyway, I think perhaps, if it isn’t unkind, I’d rather go up without Olive. You know what she’s like about things, auntie.”
“Certainly, she’s one for getting ideas into her head is Olive,” Aunt Beryl admitted thoughtfully, sucking a piece of thread. “But is it all right, dear, you going up alone like this? He’s quite a young man, isn’t he?—though I suppose it’s all right as he’s a clergyman.”
“Of course,” said Lydia energetically. “I shall simply go up by the ten o’clock train, and do a little shopping—better take advantage of the sales as they are on, after all—and then probably see him after lunch, and find out what he wants to say, and come back quite early. It’s just business.”
“Well, that seems all right,” Aunt Beryl doubtfully agreed. “I suppose as he’s a parson he wouldn’t have asked you to come without it was necessary.”
Lydia forbore to explain that this was not what Mr. Damerel had asked her to do, because it was exactly what she had hoped that Aunt Beryl would think.
She wrote a business-like note to Mr. Damerel, explaining that she should be in London on the following Monday, and offering to make an appointment with him at any time and place convenient to himself.
In answer, Damerel telegraphed that he would meet her train.
Lydia considered it fortunate that she encountered the telegraph boy on the very threshold, and received her missive direct. Otherwise she would certainly have had to explain the contents to the household, for telegrams were not common at Regency Terrace.
She told herself that it would be very foolish and a great pity to let her relatives attach significance to small events which, after all, did not in any way concern themselves, but she was all the time aware of a certain excitement growing within her.
When Monday morning came, and she stepped into the train, Lydia felt that infinite possibilities might lie ahead of her.
When Clement Damerel, after greeting her eagerly at the station, asked whether he might take her to lunch at the house of an uncle and aunt—“my mother’s unmarried brother and sister”—who would be delighted to make her acquaintance, she felt a shock of astonishment. He could not have much to say to her if he thus deliberately avoided a tête-à-tête, when he could so easily have suggested a Lyons’ restaurant or a quiet tea-shop!
Lydia accepted the invitation, but said that she had shopping to do, and would find her own way to Eaton Place later on.
She was never afterwards able to recapitulate her impressions of that visit. She knew that the aunt seemed old and kind, and very like Lady Lucy, and that a still older uncle sat at the head of the table, and had to be shouted at before he could hear anything at all, and that the courses were much plainer and less numerous than those that had figured at Lady Honoret’s luncheon-parties. She also felt, rather than knew, that Clement Damerel was nervous, and this perception, together with a subconscious preoccupation as to the reason for his nervousness, made her feel more shy than was usual with her.
When the uncle and aunt drifted away after lunch was over, the old lady saying kindly that she knew Clement would like to show Miss Raymond the pictures in the library, her head was almost swimming, and she felt absolutely frightened lest she should be about to faint.
The revulsion of feeling when she actually heard his gentle voice speaking to her, and knew that she had been right and that he was asking her to be his wife, came to her as a positive relief from an almost unendurable physical tension.
Much as she would afterwards have liked to recall every word of their conversation in the library, where they spent almost the whole of that afternoon uninterrupted, Lydia could never do so.
The utmost that she was able to recapture was her own sense of bewilderment, that was not yet merged in triumphant realization, and the sense of Clement Damerel’s extreme gentleness and consideration for her. He would not even ask her for an immediate answer.
“I know it can’t be with you as it is with me, dearest—the first moment I saw you, I knew I’d found my ideal.”
That at least Lydia could remember.
And again:
“You must think it over—not only whether you can care for me a little bit, but whether you can face the life of a dull country parson’s wife—that’s what it’ll end in, Lydia. When dear old Palmer retires, my mother wants me to come home, and there’s work enough even there—besides, I must think of her—she’s growing old, and my brother’s death was a fearful blow....
“Lydia, I should never have had the courage to think of this, I don’t suppose, if I hadn’t seen you first at work—not afraid to take up employment for the sake of your own independence, and the people who’d taken care of your childhood——”
Lydia listened to him almost as though she were in a dream.
“I don’t think I’m good enough,” she once faltered, and the ardour of his protestations startled her afresh.
“But I never knew—never guessed for a minute that you felt like that.” She found herself voicing the amazement that possessed her.
“Didn’t you?” said Damerel wistfully. “Sometimes I thought you couldn’t help guessing—but it wouldn’t have been fair to say anything while you were so much upset about that horrible affair of the Honorets—and then—well, Lydia—you’ll let me call you that, won’t you?—it’s such a dear little name—I’ll be honest with you, and tell you that I couldn’t have helped coming to see you, at least—if my dear old mother hadn’t implored me to keep right away for a time, and make perfectly certain of my own feelings. She guessed, of course—that time last summer when you were with the Palmers—but she’s old-fashioned, and though of course she couldn’t help seeing how—how wonderful you are in every way—one has to make allowances for the novelty—to people of her generation—of one’s wanting to marry anybody who isn’t either a more or less distant connection, or else Devonshire born and bred! You do understand...?”
Lydia understood very little. She gathered a vague impression that Lady Lucy was surprised, perhaps even distressed, at her son’s choice, but that she would make no opposition to it, and Clement Damerel repeated again and again that his mother had only to know Lydia rather better in order to love her.
“Dear old Palmer went up and talked to her last week—I asked him to—and he couldn’t say enough of your cleverness, and the wonderful way in which you’d helped them in the parish down there, just as though you’d been born to it. It did make me hope, Lydia, that perhaps, after all, you wouldn’t mind a lifetime of that sort of work....”
Clement Damerel said a very great deal more, but he would not press Lydia for a definite promise, and she was slightly relieved not to find herself bound, although the conviction was growing within her that she meant all the time, as soon as the first shock of surprise had left her, to accept his devotion proudly and joyfully.
It was like nothing that she had ever experienced or imagined, and though the response invoked in her by his ardour was more in the nature of mental appreciation for his methods than anything else, she felt an increasing satisfaction glowing within her.
Still as though she were in a dream, she rose when the old aunt—with a great deal of preliminary rattling at the door—came in, and obeyed her gentle bidding to come upstairs for a cup of tea before going to the station.
It was only afterwards that she became aware of having noted, with surprised approval, her hostess’s total lack of any apparent curiosity as to the result of the long conference in the library.
Certainly, Aunt Evelyn’s eyes, to say nothing of Olive’s, would almost have been starting from their heads with sheer eagerness to hear what had happened!
Even Aunt Beryl was not above the extremely transparent device of having come to meet Lydia at the station on her return, and they had hardly passed the ticket-collector’s little barrier before she said: “Well?”
Lydia found it simplest to explain that she was really rather tired, and could she talk it all over with auntie to-morrow?
“It?”
Well, yes—Mr. Damerel had really had something special to say to her, but she didn’t feel able to talk about it yet—she must have time to think things over.
By a final inspiration, Lydia suggested that Aunt Beryl should be really kind, and prevent Olive from bombarding her with questions as to the way in which her day had been spent, thus successfully precluding the very obvious possibility of Aunt Beryl’s joining in the bombardment herself, as well as propitiating her by the suggestion of an alliance between them.
Whatever else Aunt Beryl might be, she was loyal.
Lydia was able to register a fleeting mental acknowledgment of the fact in the days that followed.
And in the end she actually found herself almost asking counsel of this faithful relative, although she knew inwardly that her mind was already made up, and had been so from the first word of Clement Damerel’s proposal.
But it was reassuring to hear Aunt Beryl’s outburst of unhesitating satisfaction.
“Nothing could be nicer than a clergyman,” declared Aunt Beryl, almost as though she supposed her niece to be in need of reassurance as to her suitor’s social standing. “And people you knew at the Palmers and all! I must say, Lydia, I always thought you’d settle down early, though Aunt Evelyn didn’t agree with me, saying you’d get no opportunities, working, and rubbish of that sort. And, after all, you’ll be engaged and married before poor Olive, let alone Beatrice and that scallywag of a young Swaine—I’m afraid he’s nothing else. Well, I am pleased, dearie!”
“Then you think it will be all right?” Lydia asked eagerly, wondering whether Aunt Beryl had altogether realized the difference between Mr. Damerel and anybody to whom Beatrice or Olive Senthoven might have aspired.
“Why shouldn’t it be all right? You’re the very girl for a parson’s wife—so energetic and all, and look at the way you enjoyed helping Nathalie Palmer last summer. And if he goes to a country living, as you say, it’s just what you’ll like—very different to a London curate. Nice for the old lady, too, to have you both settled down next door to her,” said Aunt Beryl calmly.
“You mean Lady Lucy? You know she has her daughter-in-law and the little grandson living with her at Quintmere?”
“That’s the widow is it, poor thing! It’s very nice him being so well connected. Your mother would have been pleased at that, Lydia. Her own people were County, she always said—though I never knew any of them.”
That was the way Aunt Beryl looked at it.
The simplicity of her point of view did but little, however, towards counteracting Lydia’s annoyance at the way in which the others of her little circle expressed themselves when she was able to announce to them that she was really and definitely engaged to be married quite shortly to Mr. Clement Damerel.
Uncle George, indeed, merely said: “Well, it’s a great stroke of luck, my dear, but you deserve it if ever a girl did, and I consider him a lucky young man—even though you haven’t got a handle to your name!”
Mr. Monteagle Almond was more decorous, though Lydia, self-trained to other standards, hoped that Clement would never hear his grandiloquent references to the Sacred Calling that was all too seldom dignified by the members of our ancient aristocracy.
Aunt Evelyn wrote an excited letter that might almost have been a page from “Burke’s Landed Gentry,” so many details did it contain as to the family into which her niece was marrying, and Olive, in Lydia’s opinion, was quite as “impossible” as she always had been.
“Fancy, you sly thing, going and getting engaged like that before either of us! Whatever will Bob say? We always used to chaff him about having a soft corner for you in his heart, you know, Lyd. As for poor old Bee, sticking to her Stanley without a dog’s chance of ever being able to marry him—you’ve put her nose out of joint all right! I’m only rotting, you know, ole girl—we’re all awfully pleased, I’m sure, that you’ve done so well for yourself. What’s the old lady like, Lyd? Shall you get on with her? Fancy you with a ladyship for your mama-in-law!”
But of all the congratulations that Lydia received—with feelings that were, to say the least of it, mixed—those which disconcerted her most thoroughly came from her grandfather.
“Going to be married to the Reverend Damerel, are you?” said Grandpapa. “And hob-nob with all sorts of fine folk, your aunt tells me. I’m not at all surprised to hear it of you, Lyddie. I quite expected you’d do something of the sort.”
Then Grandpapa began to chuckle, and something almost sinister crept into his tone, although he had turned away from Lydia and pretended to be addressing himself to Shamrock.
“What was it we always used to say, little dog—eh? There’s no such thing as can’t; that’s it, no such thing as can’t.”