Heir — 3 - 6

III

After she had left them—for she had gone then and there, in her own phrase, “out into the night”—they had uttered, when they recovered a little from their consternation, all the things they might have been expected to utter.

They were very hot and angry.

Her father, a stout man, had blown out his cheeks, tugged at his whiskers and pronounced, “No daughter of mine.

” It was an excommunication.

“The ingratitude.

To think that ever ...

” her mother had whimpered.

Her aunt, who was elderly, frail, and timorous, had bleated, “Oh, and to think of all the _horrible_ men in the world.

” Her brother, a severely good young man, had said, “All I ask, father, and you, too, mother, is that I may NEVER hear her name again,” and his wife, who was like a little brown wren, his mere echo, had said, “Oh, dear, it does seem hard, doesn’t it?

but Bertie is always right about these things.

” Her sister, who was engaged, summed up their main unspoken thought as she said fretfully and anxiously, “But what are we to say to people?

” IV

Lydia Protheroe, whose mind worked instinctively in terms of drama, always saw herself afterwards, in retrospect, standing alone in the rain on the pavement outside her father’s house wondering where she should go.

She had not expected events to be so rapid or so complete.

She had foreseen long weeks of argument, during which her family would slowly be worn down to some reluctant compromise, and although this had not been much to her satisfaction as a prospect, she had resigned herself to hope for nothing more.

She found herself now, triumphant indeed, but a little disconcerted, with no luggage and too much pride to slip into the house again in order to pack.

No doubt they counted on her doing so; no doubt their ultimatum had been but bluff.

Probably they were even now sitting expectant, waiting to hear her key in the door, waiting to rush out and overwhelm her in the passage, and to pull her in with cries of “Alice, dear, we didn’t mean it!

” Let them wait!

She started down the wet street, where the gas-lamps shone reflected in the roadway, and as she went she turned up the collar of the overcoat she had snatched off the row of hooks in the passage, for the rain was dripping into her neck.

It then occurred to her that the overcoat was not her own.

She had taken her own hat, cramming it down as far as her eyebrows; but she had got the wrong coat.

She investigated it: it was her brother’s—Bertie’s. This seemed to her to be an extremely good joke—and Bertie, too, was always so particular about his things.

She felt quite disproportionately heartened by this occurrence, and as she thrust her hands into the pockets to keep them dry she pretended to herself that she was a man, to give herself additional courage; she even affected a masculine stride, and whispered to herself, “Lydia Protheroe ...

Richard Protheroe ...

who am I?

” and she skipped two or three paces in her excitement and trepidation.

There was a pipe in the pocket of the coat; she curved her fingers round its little friendly bowl, and for a minute she even took it out and stuck it in her mouth, sucking at it as she had seen Bertie do, but almost immediately she slipped it back again with a guilty air and the sense of having done something inordinately daring, grotesque, and improper.

The extravagance of her adventure was indeed going to her head.

She had been for so long enveloped in the cotton-wool of her family that to be free of it was, simply, incredible.

No father, no mother, no Bertie, to madden her with their injunctions and their restrictions.

She skipped again, another two or three paces.

But in the meantime she had no idea of where she was going or of what she meant to do.

This irresponsibility was all very well, this release very delightful, but from Lydia Protheroe masquerading down a dark wet street in her brother’s overcoat, to Lydia Protheroe the proprietress of a flourishing theatrical business, with her name over the door and fat ledgers on her desk, was a far cry; and she had nowhere to sleep that night.

She turned towards the station.

Where did the next train go to?

There would she go, even if it carried her to Wick or Thurso.

Since she had abjured all the common prudences, she would allow fate to decide for her hap-hazard: fate was a Bohemian, if ever there was one, overthrowing careful plans and disregarding probabilities—a random deity which must henceforth be her guide.

Before very long, she reflected, scoffing, though a little uncertainly, at herself meanwhile, she would be ordering her life by the spin of a coin or the conjunction of the planets, since here she was already, with not ten minutes of liberty behind her, resigning her destination into the keeping of Bradshaw.

She hurried on towards the station, huddled inside the coat that was much too big for her, frightened but indomitable: still pretending to herself that she was a man—a boy, rather, and such phrases as “He ran away to sea” kept flitting through her mind, inconsequent but vaguely inspiriting—and although she was thereby transporting herself into a world of pretence, she could not help feeling, with exultation, that she had discarded for ever the world of true pretence, of casuistry and circumspection, growing richer, more emancipated by the exchange.

Presently she stood upon the railway bridge, looking down upon the station, an etching in silver-point never by her forgotten.

The rails were lines of polished silver, the low black sheds of the station were spanned by girders against a black and silver sky.

Only a few yellow lights gave colour;

and, high up, the light of a signal, like a high and isolated ruby, burned deep upon the wrack of the silver-rifted clouds.

V

The difficulties of life had not sobered her.

On the contrary, as she disencumbered herself more and more from the oppression of the traditions in which she had been brought up, her mettle had risen with proportionate buoyancy.

She soared, as the weights dropped from her.

She fled from these realities with increasing determination into the realms of make-believe.

In her worst moments—for there had been bad moments, hours in her career which would have seemed to anyone else unpromisingly dark, hours when dishonesty saddened and failure discouraged her—she could always say to herself, “I don’t exist at all.

There’s no such person as Lydia Protheroe.

” And she thought of all the parish ledgers, serious and civic, in which the birth, baptism, and other _faits et gestes_ of Lydia Protheroe ought properly to be recorded, and from which Lydia Protheroe was so gratifyingly absent.

This habit of mind grew upon her, until every suggestion of her actual existence as a citizen and a ratepayer was enough to throw her into a state of indignation.

Who was Lydia Protheroe, that unsubstantial and fantastic being, that she should be bound down to the orthodoxy of an urban district council form for the payment of property-tax or house-duty?

that she should be asked to account for her income and to contribute a shilling in the pound towards the upkeep of her country?

she who had no country, no status?

she who was so impudently and audaciously a myth?

It was manifestly impossible to induce the tax-collectors to take this view.

It would have entailed, moreover, the betrayal of Lydia Protheroe’s secret, and the asking of questions leading inevitably to the resurrection of Alice Jennings.

She consoled herself, therefore, in the midst of her mortification as she filled in her forms (never until “third application” glared across the top of the paper), by reflecting that she was playing a trick on the authorities with her tongue well thrust into her cheek.

But there was nothing she would not do to evade the census returns, when they came round in 1891, and again in 1901, and again in 1911. VI

Her family had been quite wrong when they predicted a change in her appearance.

The sleek brown bands remained the same, the snuff-coloured gown, though of necessity every few years it had to be replaced by a successor, to outward appearance was unaltered.

Lydia Protheroe, inheriting an odd and incongruous remnant of Presbyterianism from the late Alice Jennings, considered freedom of the spirit of more consequence than eccentricity of garb.

Therefore, her external sobriety gave no hint of her internal flamboyance.

People used to remark that the only thing in the shop devoid of all fantasy was the proprietor behind the counter.

“Proper Protheroe” they called her, and similar names.

But they had to admit her supremacy on all questions of travesty.

She had more than the mere technical, the mere historical, knowledge; she had a flair and an imagination which surprised and convinced, unarguably.

Without a trace of enthusiasm she issued her directions, coldly pointing with a ladylike forefinger, and when the finger was not in use she resumed that characteristic, tight little attitude, which had remained with her, of clasping her elbows with the opposite hand, while she watched her directions slavishly carried out.

Her customers wondered whether she was ever gratified by her complete success.

If so, she never betrayed it.

The utmost approval that she was known to bestow, was a chilly “That will do.

” And yet, after her forty years of labour, she was a recognized authority in her profession; hidden away in her provincial town, she was the court of appeal in all problems connected with her trade, an arbitrator to whom even London had recourse.

People said that as time went on she became grimmer and more intimidating.

Certainly she became more self-contained, and none knew what passed beneath the sleek brown bands in their unvariable neatness, or behind the gown that buttoned, like a uniform, down the front.

Something of a legend grew up around the personality of Lydia Protheroe.

It became the fashion for strangers in the town to pay a visit to the shop, buying a box of powder or a stick of lip-salve to provide themselves with an excuse, while they covertly observed the ambiguous gentlewoman.

The legend gradually became enhanced by scraps of gossip that crept into circulation about Lydia Protheroe.

It was known in the town that she no longer allowed her solitary servant to sleep in the house, but that at six o’clock punctually, when the staff of the shop, consisting of three, left the premises, the servant-girl went with them.

The bell over the door would tinkle for the last time of the day, the three assistants, turning up their collars or burying their hands in their muffs, would issue out one by one into the street, the servant-girl bringing up the rear; three “Good-night, Miss Protheroe’s” would be rapped out, and one “Good-night, miss,” from the servant, always scared and never in the least devoted;

and the door would be shut behind them, and there would be the sound of the key turning in the lock.