The Mating of Lydia Part 38

XIII

When Delorme left Duddon, carrying with him a huge full-length of Victoria, which must, Victoria felt, entirely cut her off from London during the ensuing spring and summer--for it was to go into the Academy, and on no account could she bear to find herself in the same room with it--he left behind him a cordial invitation to the "little painting girl"

to come and work in his Somersetshire studio--where he was feverishly busy with a great commission for an American town-hall for the remainder of August and September. Such invitations were extraordinarily coveted; and Lydia, "advanced" as she was, should have been jubilant. She accepted for her art's sake; but no one could have called her jubilant.

Mrs. Penfold, who for some weeks had been in a state of nervous and rather irritable mystification with regard to Lydia, noticed the fact at once. She consulted Susy.

"I can't make her out!" said the mother plaintively. "Oh, Susy, do you know what's been going on? Lydia has been at Duddon at least six times this last fortnight--and Lord Tatham has been here--and _nothing_ happens. And all the time Lydia keeps telling me she's not in love with him, and doesn't mean to marry him. But what's _he_ doing?"

Susan was looking dishevelled and highly strung. She had spent the afternoon in writing the fifth act of a tragedy on Belisarius; and it was more than a fortnight since Mr. Weston, the young vicar of Dunscale, had been to call. Her cheeks were sallow; her dark eyes burnt behind their thick lashes.

"Suppose he's done it?" she said gloomily.

Mrs. Penfold gave a little shriek.

"Done what? What do you mean?"

"He's proposed--and she's said 'No.'"

"Lord Tatham! Oh, Susy!" wailed Mrs. Penfold; "you don't think that?"

"Yes, I do," said Susan, with resolution. "And now she's letting him down gently."

"And never said a word to you or me! Oh, Susy, she couldn't be so unkind."

Mrs. Penfold's pink and white countenance, on which age had as yet laid so light a finger, showed the approach of tears. She and Susy were sitting in a leafy recess of the garden; Lydia had gone after tea to see old Dobbs and his daughter.

"That's all this _friendship_ business, she's so full of," said Susy. "If she'd accepted him, she'd have told us, of course. Now he's plucked as a lover, and readmitted as a friend. And one doesn't betray a friend's secrets--even to one's relations. There it is."

"I never heard such nonsense," cried Mrs. Penfold. "I used to try that kind of thing--making friends with young men. It was no use at all. They always proposed."

Susan's state of tension--caused by the fact that her Fifth Act had been a veritable shambles--broke up in laughter. She couldn't help kissing her mother.

"You're priceless, darling, you really are. I wouldn't say anything to her about it, if I were you," she added, more seriously. "I shall attack her, of course, some day."

"But she still goes on seeing him," said Mrs. Penfold, pursuing her own bewildered thoughts.

"That's her theory. She sees him--they write to each other--they probably call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry.'"

"Susy!"

"Why not? Christian names are very common nowadays."

"In my youth if any girl called a young man by his Christian name, it meant she was engaged to him," said Mrs. Penfold with energy, her look clearing. "And if they do call each other 'Lydia' and 'Harry' you may say what you like, Susy, but she will be engaged to him some day--if not now, in the winter, or some time."

"Well, you may be right. Anyway, don't talk to her, mother. Leave her alone!"

Mrs. Penfold sighed deeply.

"Just think, Susy, what it would be like"--she dropped her voice--"'_Countess_ Tatham!'--can't you see her going to the drawing-room--with her feathers and her tiara? Wouldn't she be lovely--wouldn't she have the world at her feet? Think what your father would have said."

"I don't believe those things ever enter Lydia's mind!"

Mrs. Penfold slowly shook her head.

"It isn't human," she said plaintively, "it really isn't." And in a mournful silence she returned to her embroidery.

Susan invaded her sister's bedroom late that night, and found Lydia before her looking-gla.s.s enveloped in shimmering clouds of hair. The younger sister sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.

"Why are you so slack about this Delorme plan, Lydia? I don't believe you want to go."

Lydia turned with a start.

"But of course I want to go! It's the greatest chance. I shall learn a heap of things."

Susan nodded.

"All the same you don't seem a bit keen."

Lydia fidgeted.

"Well, you see, I admire Mr. Delorme's work as much as ever. But--"

"You don't like Mr. Delorme? The greatest egotist I ever saw," said the uncompromising Susan, who, as a dramatist, prided herself on a knowledge of character.

"Ah, but a great, great painter!" cried Lydia. "Don't dissuade me, Susan.

Professionally--I must do it!"

"It's not because Mr. Delorme is an egotist, that you don't want to go away," said Susan, quietly. "It's for quite a different reason."

"What do you mean?"

"It's because--no, I don't mind if I do make you angry!--it's because you're so desperately interested in Mr. Faversham."

"Really, Susan!" The cloud of hair was thrown back, and Lydia's face emerged, the clear, indignant eyes shining in the candlelight.

"Oh, I don't mean that you're in love with him--wish you were! But you're roping him in--just like Lord Tatham. And as he's the latest, he's the most--well, exciting!"

Susan with her chin in her hands, and her dusky countenance very much alive, seemed to be playing her sister with cautious mockery--feeling her way.

"Dear Susy--I don't know why you're so unkind--and unjust," said Lydia, after a moment, in the tone of one wounded.

"How am I unkind? You're the practical one of us three. You run us and take care of us. We know we're stupids compared to you. But really mamma and I stand aghast at the way in which you manage your love affairs!"

"My love affairs!" cried Lydia, "but I haven't got any!"