The Partnership (19 page)

Annice entered the room with Dorothea's bottle in her hand. “There, there, there!” she said to the child, whom Lydia's ministrations had not soothed. Taking her hastily in her arms, she sat down and put the nozzle of the bottle between Dorothea's lips; a smile of beatific content spread itself over the child's whole countenance, and Annice, looking down into her eyes, smiled too. Lydia, however, hardened her heart, and placing herself directly in front of the pair, she held out her hand to Annice and disclosed the brooch in her open palm. Annice gave one glance at it, then a defiant and inscrutable look settled upon her face, and she dropped her eyes.

“When did you get this, Annice?” demanded Lydia sternly.

“At the seaside,” said Annice at once. Her tone lacked conviction, but her manner was so calm that Lydia could hardly believe she was telling a lie. It occurred to her, however, that she had never seen the brooch in Annice's possession
before her marriage. This might be accidental, or it might point to the truth; the harassed Lydia did not know which to think.

“I don't know whether to believe you or not!” she exclaimed, distracted.

Annice smiled and raised her eyes.

“Believe whatever you like best, Miss Lydia,” she said on a mocking note.

Lydia had noticed that nowadays Annice's use of this ancient prefix was something of a danger signal. She laid the brooch down and sighed deeply, at which Annice laughed, apparently much amused. Annoyed by this levity, Lydia turned on her. “Annice, I do hope,” she began severely, “that you have not been in communication with this man since your wedding. Think of your duty to your husband! Think of your marriage vows!”

She continued in this strain for several minutes, unconsciously raising her voice for the sake of emphasis, when Annice told her abruptly that she was disturbing Dorothea's meal. “Besides,” she observed—it was impossible to tell whether she spoke sincerely or with her tongue in her cheek—“you might rouse Mr. Dyson. He might come wandering in to see what was going on, and then where would you and Mr. Wilfred be?”

“Annice,” said Lydia, making a last effort to secure the truth by the force of her moral prestige, “when did you get that brooch?”

“At the seaside,” said Annice stolidly.

Lydia gave it up and went downstairs.

2

“Well, Lydia!” observed Wilfred rather sulkily a night or two later in Mr. Mellor's study. “A penny for your thoughts. You haven't said anything to anybody for the last hour.”

Lydia, with an effort, gave him an uneasy smile, but still said nothing.

“Aren't you going to answer Wilfred, my dear?” Charles urged her mildly after a pause. “What
are
you thinking about that seems to affect you so disagreeably?”

“Nothing!” exclaimed Lydia in alarm, her colour rising. “Nothing at all, really. A brown study, that was all.” She forced another painful smile, and immediately relapsed into her brown study again.

Charles sighed, and Wilfred frowned. Charles was troubled because his daughter's obvious distress lately made him think that the strain of waiting for the Dysons' financial situation to clear sufficiently to allow of her marriage with Wilfred was breaking Lydia's heart. Wilfred, on the contrary, who since the quarrel with his father “on the steps,” as Annice put it, was liable to sudden secret pangs of self-depreciation, was troubled because he imagined that his abrupt inquiry had hurt Lydia and that he was altogether too rough and ready for her to think of marrying him. In that case, he told himself angrily, he would be off and not bother her any more; he would not ever again remain where he
was not wanted. His love for her was not so overmastering but that he could get over it; he was heartily sick of Eric and the situation at Boothroyd Mills in any case, and wounded because there seemed no hope of a reconciliation with his father; if Lydia did not want him he would gladly depart.

Meanwhile Lydia was engaged in wondering, for the hundredth time, whether the soldier had given Annice the brooch at the seaside, or whether it had come into her possession—from the same source—later. And if the latter, what would it be right for her to do? Awful difficulties would inevitably present themselves if the soldier was again on Annice's horizon. Suddenly, with a sigh of relief, Lydia became convinced that he was not on the horizon; she was quite wrong: Annice had had the brooch in the Foyle Tower days. Almost she remembered seeing it then. Everything in Lydia's world was quite all right, and a great happiness was in store for her. As she thought this the anxiety died out of Lydia's eyes, her forehead became smooth again, her smile serene and loving. She turned to Wilfred.

“I was thinking about the Dyson family,” she told him with a little air of mischief.

Charles was reassured by the sparkle in her eye; Wilfred, once more his competent and cheerful self, observed in a jocular tone: “You shouldn't let your thoughts stray so far, Lydia.”

“I'll try not to do so in future,” Lydia promised him with a merry glance.

Unfortunately this was easier said than done. No dismissal of Lydia's doubts about the brooch ever seemed final; and as the seaside episode was known to no one but herself and Annice, she had no one with whom to discuss these doubts, and they revolved endlessly in her mind as in a cage. She found that in Annice's presence she was constrained and uneasy, began to go less to Boothroyd House on that account, then reflected that perhaps it was her duty to remain at Annice's side to counteract the influence represented by the brooch. But perhaps she was wronging Annice about the brooch! She passed several weeks in this confused and uncertain state of mind, and Wilfred had occasion to tease her about her absent moods rather oftener than he liked. Wilfred was the most faithful of men, and asked nothing better than to marry Lydia and remain in Hudley struggling with the results of Eric's foolishness—provided Lydia and Eric wanted him. But, after all, why should he, a strong, comely, capable man in the early thirties, put himself about for Eric, and hang round Lydia—a girl not in her first youth—if Eric was going to be so peevish and Lydia so moody and doubtful? There was no sense in it, he told himself with increasing frequency during these weeks; let them make up their minds one way or the other and say what they wanted.
He
hadn't the faintest desire to stay anywhere he wasn't wanted. After thinking these gloomy thoughts he usually encountered Lydia in one of her optimistic moods
when the brooch affair seemed ancient history; and immediately all his doubts fell away and the course of his future life seemed smooth and settled again.

Among her good works Lydia still counted the control of a troop of Brownies, and one night she had arranged to escort a few of them to a performance of
The Merchant of Venice
—a play of which Lydia was rather fond, for she liked to imagine herself as the learned Portia; it seemed such a thoroughly Tolefree part. She knew well that she had a strong moral influence over these young spirits; she was happy in the knowledge, and in the feeling which it gave her that she was of real use in the world, and she would have regarded anything which tended to minimize her prestige with them as a real disaster both for herself and for the children. She was not particularly pleased, therefore, when, as she was conducting her charges through the foyer towards their modest seats in the pit stalls, she was suddenly confronted by the dishevelled figure of a man, who clutched her arm feverishly.

“Eric!” she exclaimed, startled.

“Where's Annice?” blurted out her cousin.

“Annice?” said Lydia, annoyed by his loud tones and untidy look—he had neither cap nor coat, and he looked extremely dirty. “Really I haven't the faintest idea. Are you expecting to meet her here?”

“No,” said Eric unhappily, his moist eyes eagerly scanning the jostling crowd. “But I
thought I saw her coming in here, and then when I saw you I hoped she'd come to meet you—I remembered you'd said you were coming tonight. We had a bit of a quarrel at tea-time, you know,” he explained apologetically, “and while I was upstairs with father she slipped out—I saw her from the bedroom window. So I ran down and followed her.”

By this time the members of Lydia's little party were listening with all their ears; Lydia, her cheeks burning, waved them away into a corner to wait for her, and said severely to her cousin: “There's no need to shout. You'd better just go home and wait for Annice to return.”

“I saw her with a man!” cried Eric poignantly.

In spite of herself Lydia winced at this alarming detail. Eric noticed the change in her face, and, fixing his eyes on her in a look of angry cunning, exclaimed: “She's with Wilfred!”

“Nonsense!” replied Lydia.

“Do you think so?” said Eric, pathetically anxious to be convinced. He hesitated, and then went on with a deprecating titter: “We ought to stand together, you and I, Lydia; our interests are the same, you know.”

“Really, Eric!” exclaimed Lydia in a tone of strong disgust. “You don't know what you're saying. Go home and wait quietly for Annice, and do try to be more sensible, and not make such scenes.” She looked about her as she spoke. The foyer was emptying; from the distance came
strains of music; in the corner the four little girls fixed their eyes on her anxiously. “I can't stay talking to you here any longer,” she concluded, and turned away.

“Well,” muttered Eric, sulky and only half convinced, “I shall come down again after the performance and see if she's here.”

Lydia gave an exasperated sigh and walked off. When, however, she had hurried her charges into the darkened auditorium and settled them in their seats, her exasperation began to give way to a feeling of painful sadness. Where would it all end, this drama of Eric and Annice, the reverberation of which had such a profound effect on her own life? Had Eric really seen Annice with some man? What was the truth about the brooch? When, in the future, she herself was married to Wilfred, would Eric continue to make these absurd accusations against his half-brother? And, if so, would she be able to rebut them with as complete a confidence, as complete an absence of jealousy, as she had done to-night? She thought that she would; but it pained her that Wilfred—the upright, the conscientious, the honourable Wilfred—should be the victim of such accusations and such ingratitude. It was always the Bassanios of this world, the light-hearted spenders, she reflected as the play began, who set out richly clad to court the lady of their heart; it was the Antonios, the lenders, the helpers, the Tolefrees, who stood in danger of their lives, for there was not always a Portia at hand to save them. Lydia
could not help passing on to the reflection that she had stood to Annice in much the same relation as Antonio to Bassanio, and had paid for it with a pound of flesh in the shape of five years of her life. It was with some bitterness that she watched the progress of the familiar story.

At last the curtain fell; the lights came on, and a babble of childish voices demanded Miss Mellor's opinion on this and that. Bassanio was in high favour; Antonio was thought kind but rather dull and fat. Lydia's bitter-sweet fancies were still whirling in her brain as she smiled encouragingly on her charges, and called their young attention to the more obvious beauties of Shakespeare. She looked about her round the house, explained the meanings of the plaster reliefs which decorated the front panels of the various balconies, and suddenly found her attention riveted and her heart turned to stone. Near one end of the gallery Annice was indubitably sitting, with, by her side, a young man whose figure, though not now clad in khaki, was to Lydia only too familiar. She gazed at him in incredulous horror—surely, surely it could not be he? But it was almost certainly the soldier; the dark closely cropped hair, the merry smile, the quick turn of the head, the animation with which he was talking to Annice, were visible to Lydia even at that distance, and carried with them the conviction of his identity. Lydia sprang to her feet; at the same moment Annice perceived her, and likewise rose. Lydia threw out a few
hurried injunctions to the children—to sit still, not to talk too loud, not to worry about her absence; then she ran along the aisle, and, asking the attendant at the door the way to the gallery, hastened up the stone stairs.

When she reached the place, however, Annice and her companion were no longer visible. Puzzled—for she had not met them on the stairs and there seemed no other exit—Lydia gazed about her searchingly. An attendant approached and asked if she were looking for anybody, and when she rather breathlessly described the couple she was seeking, said he thought he had seen them go into the theatre café, which he indicated on the left. Lydia had left her hat downstairs—no Tolefree ever retained a hat in the theatre which might incommode those sitting in the rear—and felt very conscious of its absence. She was still panting from her rapid ascent; and the little room, from which issued smoke, a smell of coffee, a babble of conversation, and occasional bursts of laughter, seemed to her, as the daughter of the Reverend Charles, a very dangerous and dissipated place; nevertheless, she walked firmly in. The two people she wanted were sitting on a velvet settee against the wall behind the door, and this deliberate attempt at concealment angered Lydia. Her cheeks flaming, she marched straight up to their little marble-topped table and began in a subdued but angry tone: “Well, Annice?”

Annice flashed on her one of her most defiant looks; she then glanced at her companion, who
was indubitably the soldier, and observed flatly: “You'd better go, Evan.”

“Evan!” cried Lydia, petrified. “
Evan
!” She turned to the quondam soldier, who had risen and was moving away. “You're the driver of Mr. Dyson's lorry!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, miss,” replied Evan smartly in his familiar cheerful tones. “Any objection?”

Lydia turned her back on him.