The Mating of Lydia Part 69

"Take care of her! You will be the happiest people in the world--save two!"

He let her talk to him, the inner agitation whatever it was, disappearing. She soothed, she steadied him. Now, at last, they were to be true friends--comrades in the tasks and difficulties of life. Without words, her heart promised it--to him and Felicia.

As they left the room, she pointed, smiling, to the drawings.

"So you were the elderly solicitor, with a taste for art, I used to see in my dreams!"

His eyes lit up boyishly.

"I had to keep them here, for fear you'd find out. Now, we'll hang them properly."

It was Victoria who broke the news to Netta Melrose. She, a little wasted ghost among her pillows, received it calmly; yet with a certain bitterness mingled in the calm. What did the money matter to her? And what had she to do with this English world, and this young lord Felicia was to marry? Far within, she hungered, on the threshold of death, as she had hungered twenty years before, for the Italian sun, and the old Italian streets, with the deep eaves and the sculptured doorways, and the smells of leather and macaroni. Her father had loved them, and she had loved her father; all the more pa.s.sionately the more the world disowned him. She sat in spirit beside his crushed and miserable old age, finding her only comfort in the memory of how his feeble hands had clung to her, how she had worked and starved for him.

Yet, when Felicia came to her, she cried and blessed her. And Felicia, softened by happiness, knelt down beside her, and begged and prayed her to get well. To please them all, Netta made her nurse do her hair, and put on a white jacket which Victoria had embroidered for her. And when Tatham came in to see her, she would have timidly kissed his hand had he not been so quick to see and prevent her.

Meanwhile Victoria, still conscious of the clinging of Felicia's arms about her, was comparing--secretly and inevitably--the daughter-in-law that might have been, with the daughter-in-law that was to be. Now that Fate's throw was irrevocably made, she found herself appreciating Lydia as she had never done while the chances were still open. Lydia had refused her Harry; Felicia had captured him. Perhaps she resented both actions; and would always--secretly--resent them. But yet, in Lydia--Lydia with her early maturity, her sweet poise and strength of nature, she foresaw the companion; in Felicia, the child and darling of her old age. And looking round on this crooked world, she acknowledged, now as always, that she had got more than she deserved, more--much more--than her share.

A conviction that Cyril Boden did his best to sharpen in her. With the invincible optimism of his kind, he scoffed at the misgivings which she confided to him, and to him only, on the score of Felicia's lack of training, her touchy and pa.s.sionate temper, and the little unscrupulous ways that offended a fastidious observer.

"What does it matter?" he said to her--"she is in love--head over ears.

You and he can make of her what you like. She will beat him if he looks at anybody else; but she will have ten children, and never have a thought or an interest that isn't his. And as to the money--"

"Yes--the money!" said Victoria, dejectedly. "What on earth will they do with it all? Harry is so rich already."

"Do with it!" Boden turned upon her. "Grow a few ideas in your landlord garden! Turn the ground of it--enrich it--change it--try experiments!

How long will this England leave the land to you landowners, unless you bring some mind to it--aye, and the best of your _souls_! you--the nation's servants! Here is a great tract left desolate by one man's wickedness. Restore the waste places--build--people--teach! Heavens, what a chance!" His eyes kindled. "And when Faversham and Lydia come back--yoke them in too. Curator!--stuff! If he won't own that estate, make him govern it, and play the man. Disinterested power!--with such a wife--and such a friend! Could a man ask better of the G.o.ds! Now is your moment. Rural England turns to you, its natural leaders, to shape it afresh. Shirk--refuse--at your peril!"