The Tale of Triona. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ defiant, vaguely disquieting to the country bred girl. Olivia felt suddenly shy.

      “It will take me a few days to turn round.”

      “Also to find clothes to turn round in,” said Lydia, with a good-humoured yet comprehensive glance at the funny little black frock. “I hope you haven’t been laying in a stock of things like that.”

      Olivia smiled. This was but a makeshift. She had been saving up for London. Perhaps Lydia would advise her. She had heard of a good place—what did they call it?—an enormous shop in Oxford Street. Lydia threw up her white arms.

      “My dear child, you’re not going to be a fashionable beauty at subscription dances and whist-drives at Upper Tooting! You’re going to live in London. Good God! You can’t get clothes in Oxford Street.”

      “Where shall I get them, then?” asked Olivia.

      From the illustrated papers she had become aware of the existence of Pacotille and Luquin and other mongers of celestial fripperies; but she had also heard of the Stock Exchange and the Court of St. James’s and the Stepney Board of Guardians; and they all seemed equally remote from her sphere of being.

      “I’ll take you about with me to-morrow,” Lydia declared grandly, “and put you in the way of things. I dare say I can find you a hat or two chez Lydia—that’s me—at cost price.” She laughed and put a patronizing arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “We’ll make a woman of you yet.”

      The lift carried them down to the restaurant floor. They dined, not too badly, at a side table from which they could view the small crowded room. Olivia felt disappointed. Only a few people were in evening dress. It was rather a dowdy assembly, very much like that in the boarding-house at Llandudno, her father’s summer holiday resort for years before the war. Her inexperience had expected the glitter and joy of London. Hospitably she offered wine, champagne, as her father, a lover of celebrations, would have done; but Lydia drank nothing with her meals—the only way not to get fat, which she dreaded. Olivia drank water. The feast seemed tame, and the imported mutton tough. She reproached herself for inadequate entertainment of her resplendent friend.

      They talked; chiefly Lydia, after she had received Olivia’s report on her family’s welfare and contemporary Medlow affairs; and Olivia listened contentedly, absorbing every minute strange esoteric knowledge of the great London world of which the pulsating centre appeared to be Lydia, Ltd., in Maddox Street. There Duchesses bought hats which their Dukes did not pay for. There Cabinet Ministers’ wives, in the hope of getting on the right financial side of Lydia, whispered confidential Cabinet secrets, while Ministers wondered how the deuce things got into the papers. There romantic engagements were brought from inception to maturity. There also, had she chosen to keep a record, she could have accumulated enough evidence to bring about the divorces of half the aristocracy of England. She rattled off the names like a machine-gun. She impressed Olivia with the fact that Lydia, Ltd., was not a mere hat shop, but a social institution of which Lydia Dawlish was the creating and inspiring personality. Lydia, it appeared, weekended at great houses. “You see, my dear, my husband was the son of an Honourable and the grandson of an Earl. He hadn’t much money, poor darling, but still he had the connection, most useful to me nowadays. The family buy their hats from me, and spread the glad tidings.” She commanded a legion of men who had vowed that she should live, free of charge, on the fat of the land, and should travel whithersoever she desired in swift and luxurious motor-cars.

      “Of course, my dear,” she said, “it’s rather a strain. Men will cart about a stylish, good-looking woman for a certain time, just out of vanity. But if she’s a dull damn fool, they’re either bored to tears and chuck her, or they’ll want to—well—well—— Anyhow, you’ve got to keep your wits about you and amuse them. You’ve got to pay for everything in this life—or work for the means of paying—which comes to the same thing. And I work. I don’t say it isn’t pleasant work—but it’s hard work. You go out with a man to dinner, theatre and a night club, and dismiss him at your front door at two o’clock in the morning with the perfectly contented feeling that he has had a perfectly good time and would be an ass to spoil things by hinting at anything different—and you’ve jolly well earned your comfortable, innocent night’s rest.”

      This explosion of the whole philosophy of modern conscientious woman came at the end of dinner. Olivia toyed absently with her coffee, watching successive spoonfuls of tepid light-amber coloured liquid fall into her cup.

      “But—all these men—” she said in a low voice—the position was so baffling and so disconcerting. “You are a beautiful and clever woman. Don’t they sometimes want to—to make love to you?”

      “They all do. What do you think? I, an unattached widow and, as you say, not unattractive. But because I’m clever, I head them off. That’s the whole point of what I’ve been telling you.”

      “But, suppose,” replied Olivia, still intent on the yellowish water, “suppose you fell in love with one of these men. Women do fall in love, I believe.”

      “Why then, I’d marry him the next day,” cried Lydia, with a laugh. “But,” she added, “that’s not the type of man a sensible woman falls in love with.”

      Olivia’s eyes sought the tablecloth. She was conscious of disturbance and, at the same time, virginal resentment.

      “As far as my limited experience goes—a woman isn’t always sensible.”

      “She has to learn sense. That’s the great advantage of modern life. It gives her every opportunity of acquiring it from the moment she goes out into the world.”

      “And what kind of man does the sensible woman fall in love with?”

      “Somebody comfortable,” replied Lydia. “My ideal would be a young, rather lazy and very broad-minded bishop.”

      Olivia shook her head. The only time she had seen a bishop was at her confirmation. The encounter did not encourage dreams of romance in episcopal circles.

      “But these men who take you out,” Olivia persisted thoughtfully “and do all these wonderful things for you—it must cost them a dreadful lot of money—what kind of people are they?”

      “All sorts. Some are of the very best—the backbone of the nation. They go off and marry nice girls who don’t frequent night clubs and settle down for the rest of their lives.”

      They drank their coffee and went upstairs, where questions of more immediate practical interest occupied their minds. Olivia’s wardrobe was passed in review, while Myra stood impassive like a sergeant at kit inspection.

      “My poor child,” said Lydia, “you’ve not a single article, inside or outside, that is fit to wear. I’ll send you a second-hand clothes man who’ll buy up the whole lot as it stands and give you a good price for it. I don’t know yet quite what you’re thinking of doing—but at any rate you can’t do it in these things.”

      Olivia looked wistfully at the home-made garments which Lydia cast with scorn across the bed. They, at least, had seemed quite dainty and appropriate.

      “Well,” she said, with a sigh, “you know best, Lydia.”

      These all-important matters held their attention till a quarter past eleven, when Mr. Sydney Rooke was announced. He was an elderly young man in evening dress, with crisp black hair parted in the middle and thinning at the temples. A little military moustache gave him an air of youth which was belied by deep lines СКАЧАТЬ