The Partnership (5 page)

3

When, therefore, on the following Thursday evening Lydia saw the girl in the brown coat sitting alone on a seat in front of Foyle Tower, she felt justified in saying “Good evening” to her with a cheerful smile as she passed. The girl's lips moved slightly in reply, but her blue eyes remained serious. Lydia reached the near end of the promenade and turned back again; the girl was still in the same easy attitude, her hands lying loosely in her lap, her eyes apparently resting on the grey waves. This time she gave Lydia a glance of recognition but did not stir; Lydia reflected that she was probably waiting for the soldier, and with a disapproving sigh quickened her step and passed on. The strains of “Auld Lang Syne” came to her reluctant ears; the Foyle Towerites, whom the morrow would part, were indulging in sentimental farewells. Lydia frowned and, with the intention of removing herself as far from the Tower as was possible, walked briskly along the promenade away from the seated girl. The weather seemed about to break; the sky was cloudy, the sea grey and turbulent, the air moist; by the time Lydia reached the farther end of the promenade, where the big hotel stood, she felt chilled to the bone, and was glad to turn her back upon the cold and driving wind. To her surprise the girl in the brown coat was still visible in the
same position; from this distance there was something forlorn and deserted about her solitary figure, and Lydia felt an impulse of sympathy towards her. As she advanced towards her she expected every minute to see that other familiar figure, the one in khaki, appear and join her; but when she reached the seat the girl was still there alone. Her hands looked red with cold, and her white throat seemed to Lydia dangerously exposed to the bitter wind.

“Aren't you cold sitting there?” volunteered Lydia in her best public manner of brightness, pausing in front of the seat.

The girl appeared to reflect deeply, and then answered with an air of shy surprise: “No.” She moved aside a parcel which lay on the seat at her right, and Lydia sat down beside her.

“Aren't you busy at the hotel at this time?” pursued Lydia, instinctively voicing her constant preoccupation with duty.

The girl looked shyly at her—Lydia was struck afresh by the blueness of her eyes, the fresh and comely rosiness of her round cheeks—and after a pause observed in a detached tone: “I'm not at the hotel now.”

“Not?” exclaimed Lydia.

The girl said that they had given her a week's pay instead of notice. “They said I was out too much,” she explained in a stolid and unremorseful tone.

“I'm not really surprised at that,” Lydia told her, allowing a gentle reproof to appear in her manner. “But what will you do now?”

The girl looked at Lydia and at the sea, smiled a little, and observed at length: “I don't know.” Her tone was interested but calm, as though she were discussing the fate of some quite other red-cheeked girl.

“Well—” began Lydia, and paused, somewhat disconcerted by this casual attitude to disaster. “But what
will
you do?” she pressed, driven on by the feeling of moral responsibility with which she was so familiar. “Shall you go home?”

The girl appeared to consider this, also, deeply and at length; but Lydia was becoming used to her long periods of silence, and put them down less to reflection than to a slowness in finding words. She waited patiently, and at last the girl replied, in those abrupt, rather rough, shy but somehow friendly tones of hers, that she thought of taking a room here and finding a place in a public-house—she had worked in one before, she said, at home, and was quite used to them.

Lydia exclaimed in horror. The Reverend Charles had brought her up to have a rooted objection to public-houses, and to imagine the young, attractive figure beside her planted down in such an atmosphere of temptation made her shudder. And with the soldier in camp just over the hill, too! It was impossible, it was not to be thought of, she told the girl emphatically. The girl looked at her in a kind of respectful surprise, and after a while volunteered the information that she was quite used to the work; her elder sister worked
in the one at the end of the street at home, and she had often helped her.

“But it was a little one,” she concluded, in her manner of putting each word separately forth into the world. “Not a big place like the Grand.”

Lydia thought she understood better now how the child had come to be engaged at that hotel; and she realized still more thoroughly her complete unsuitability for the place. “You must go back to your home,” she told her with all the persuasive moral force inherited by those who bore the name of Tolefree. “You can wait at home till you find another place.” She went on to explain the purpose of registry offices, but the girl interrupted her by saying with some decision: “I shan't go home.”

Lydia sighed despairingly, but the combative moral side of her nature urged her on, and she pursued firmly: “Where is your home?”

“I shan't go home,” murmured the girl; and she explained to Lydia that there were eight of them at home besides herself and her elder sister. The Grand had been her first real place, it appeared, though she had gone out by the day before. She had answered an advertisement and got the place. “I shan't go home,” she concluded with an air of finality.

Lydia was able to imagine for herself the joy of the family when they had found an economic niche for one of their number, and their dismay if she should be thrown back again upon their hands. “It's a pity you didn't manage to keep the
place,” she hinted, feeling that such an opportunity for the inculcation of moral precepts ought not to be missed. Even as she uttered the words, however, she felt insincere, for she was sure that the girl's outings with the soldier were only part of the dissatisfaction of the Grand with her as a maid; and when the girl replied, “It wasn't the kind of place for me,” she felt justly rebuked. “Well,” she began again, and broke off, saying in a more sympathetic tone: “Won't you tell me your name?”

After her customary pause the girl said: “Annice Lee.”

Something familiar in the cadence of this made Lydia ask her quickly: “Where is your home? What part of England do you come from?”

The girl turned her friendly blue eyes full upon Lydia's face and named a mining district in the West Riding.

“Oh!” cried Lydia. “Oh!” The situation seemed somehow immensely simplified by the fact that the girl came from Yorkshire. Of course she would take her home with her as a maid for Louise. Now that she had thought of this plan she could not imagine why it had not occurred to her before. “Oh!” she repeated. “I come from Yorkshire too,” she confided to Annice.

“Yes, miss,” said the girl simply. “I saw it on your luggage in the train.”

Lydia was rather disconcerted by this piece of shrewdness, but she recovered herself and began to set forth her plan. Annice could return to
Yorkshire with her on the morrow; Mrs. Mellor would train her; Annice would be near home and able to see her family at regular intervals—the idea was simply splendid from every point of view. Annice said nothing, but Lydia thought she could feel reluctance in her attitude; imagining that she was encountering the influence of the soldier from over the hill, she set herself with all her force to fight it. She did not refer to him in any way, for she felt instinctively that if she did she would be routed, but dwelt upon the nearness of Annice's family, the kindness of Louise, and her own pleasure if she could take Annice home with her. This last was perfectly genuine; from the first she had been inexplicably attracted to the girl, and now she felt a real affection for her. The firm substantial curves of her young body seemed homely and reassuring, her eyes and lips were friendly and—in spite of the soldier—good; there was something alive and merry about her which made one feel cheerful even in sight of Foyle Tower. With these thoughts at the back of her mind Lydia went on expounding and arguing the advantages of her plan with earnest vigour. Her face grew flushed, and her hat slipped to the back of her head, while her companion, motionless, gazed quietly out to sea. At last Annice interrupted her.

“All right,” she said unexpectedly, “I'll come.”

She turned her head and smiled at Lydia, and at once it became plain to the elder girl that the attraction between them was mutual; her own
affection was returned by this stalwart child of adversity. She was surprised but immensely pleased, and jumped up at once to put her plan into execution. Annice, startled but dutiful, rose and followed her, the paper parcel containing all her worldly goods in her hand.

Lydia despatched a telegram to Louise announcing Annice's arrival, and then busied herself with finding a room for the girl for the night, as it appeared she was not to return to the hotel. This was not so easy; Lydia had no idea where to look for a suitable room, and when they had tramped the place for an hour unsuccessfully—Lydia with increasing despondency, Annice with her customary air of serene indifference—Lydia decided to consult the Foyle Tower authorities. They, however, were far from helpful (possibly because of Lydia's tone in making the request). Glancing sourly at the hole in Annice's coat, they affirmed that they knew of no such place, and that all their rooms, as Lydia knew, were full. Annice hereupon affirmed that if she was left to herself she could find a room all right and meet Lydia at the station next morning; but this Lydia would not hear of—she had too definite and lurid a picture in her mind of the possible result of leaving a homeless Annice free to listen to the persuasions of the soldier. Eventually, by taking a very high tone with the Foyle Towerites, and offering a payment rather out of proportion to the service required, she secured the privilege of accommodating Annice on a sofa
in her own room. This arrangement was repugnant to the fastidious Lydia, and it appeared to be equally repugnant to Annice; the girl's bright cheeks took on a deeper hue, and she protested stoutly that she could easy find a room if she were left to it. Lydia, however, was now excited to the point of overbearing all opposition, and the pair passed the night together.

Lydia sent the child early to bed, so that the painful scantiness of her wardrobe—at which she guessed—might not be a source of embarrassment to her, and when she herself came up Annice was rosily asleep. But in the small hours of the morning a fierce wind and much heavy rain kept Lydia awake, and a subdued sigh from the sofa led her to believe that her companion was awake too. In this she was wrong, for no amount of wind could keep Annice awake; but when she spoke to the girl in a low tone, after what seemed her usual hesitation, Annice answered. Encouraged by the screening darkness, the two fell into confidences about their respective lives. Lydia spoke of the Reverend Charles, of Louise, of the Dysons, and Cromwell Place; Annice in occasional jerky sentences threw out facts about life in the mining district which was her home, and about the management of the Grand Hotel. The soldier she did not mention, and Lydia again did not feel that she could press her on that point; but after some hesitation the elder girl brought out a few moral maxims and cautionary tales which she thought applicable to
that part of Annice's story. Annice received these in a silence so complete that Lydia thought she must have fallen asleep during their recital, and spoke her name interrogatively. The girl replied at once with her usual serene cheerfulness, and Lydia felt that her previous silence had been an intentional rebuff.

“We'd better go to sleep now,” she said rather severely. “Good night.”

“Good night,” replied Annice cheerfully in her calm round tones.

She sounded so completely unconscious of any deficiencies in her behaviour that Lydia sighed and was silent.

Next morning the pair set out early for Cromwell Place.

1

“There's Mr. Wilfred, Miss Lydia,” said Annice with a bright shy smile.

It was her first evening in the Mellor household; looking raw and pathetic, but somehow very lovable, in the solitary print frock with which her mother had furnished her forth into the world, she leaned against Lydia's bedroom door and made this announcement with joyous gusto.

Lydia, on her knees unpacking, looked up, startled. Annice had only just that second made Wilfred's acquaintance, for he had not, as Lydia had half hoped, come to the station to meet them; he was detained by a customer, explained Eric, who had come instead. Lydia had been conscious of a most unreasonable feeling of disappointment at this substitution, and her annoyance was not diminished by the behaviour of Eric, who gaped silently at Annice all through the short drive up to Cromwell Place, and seemed unable to take his eyes off her for a moment. Annice had behaved with all due decorum, turning her head aside and gazing out of the window with proper
maidenly reserve; but Lydia felt that her cousin's unmannerliness, not to say boorishness, was getting beyond all bounds and needed to be taken thoroughly in hand. Thanks to this incident, however, Annice might be said to be acquainted with Eric, but she was not so in any sense with Wilfred; how was it then that she uttered his name with such an emphatic and significant intonation? Lydia coloured as she gave herself the answer to this question, for it was obvious even to her simplicity that Annice regarded Wilfred as Lydia's young man; and as she ran downstairs she reflected, in an amusement tinged with alarm, on the bent of Annice's mind, which had thus at once settled on a possible intimacy between herself and Wilfred as the chief point of interest in its new situation. She was still conscious of the significance of Annice's having run up a flight of stairs to tell her of Wilfred's arrival—which certainly nobody had instructed her to do: Wilfred's visits to number seven were much too frequent for such a formality—when she entered the room and met him.

Whether it was due to the soldier, or to Annice, or to the sight of the two together, or to the stimulus of Annice's tone just now, Lydia did not know; but as soon as her eyes rested upon Wilfred her heart gave a quick leap and she was almost sure she loved him. Her colour rose and her candid tones fluttered as she greeted him; and Wilfred, who desired greatly to marry Lydia but feared that she was too superior to condescend
to him, was much encouraged. He took her hand, smiled his wide friendly smile, looked at her with his customary air of affectionate admiration, and observed: “Well, Lydia!” in frank cheerful tones, which Lydia now seemed to recognize as the kindest she had ever heard.