The Mating of Lydia

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"How clever of you! That's a Fra Angelico"—said Lady Tatham pointing, and not knowing what to do with these confidences—"an Annunciation."

Mrs. Penfold thought it quite lovely. Lydia, when she was studying in London, had copied one like it in the National Gallery. And her poor father had liked it so. As they wandered on through the pictures, indeed, Lady Tatham soon came to know a great deal about Lydia's "poor father"—that he had been a naval officer, a Captain Penfold, who had had to retire early on half-pay because of ill-health, and had died just as the girls had grown up. "He felt it so—he was so proud of them—but he always said, 'If one of us is to go, why, it had better be me, Rosina—because you have such spirits—you're so cheerful.' And I am. I can't help it."

It was all sincere. There was neither snobbishness nor affectation in the little widow, even when she prattled most embarrassingly about her own affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth. But no one could deny it was untutored. Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side—Harry's uncles and cousins—and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia's earnings and Lydia's blouses. And not all the inward laughter which the notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be severe.

Had she really injured the prospects of her boy by the way—the romantic, idealist way—in which she had brought him up. Her Harry!—with whom she had read poetry, and talked of heroes, into whose ears she had poured Ruskin and Carlyle from his youth up; who was the friend and comrade of all the country folk, because of a certain irrepressible interest in his kind, a certain selflessness that were his cradle gifts; who shared in his boyish way, her own amused contempt for shams and shows—had she, after all, been training him for a mistake in the most serious step of life?

For, like it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and unfitting—as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her prettiness, and her art, and her small world—was it fair to her? Is there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position, when, bon gré, mal gré, there is a big part in the world's social business to be played?

And meanwhile, with a fraction of her mind, she went on talking "Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff." She did the honours of half their possessions. Then it suddenly seemed to her that the time was long, and she led the way back once more to the drawing-room, in a rather formidable silence, of which even her cheerful companion became aware.

But as they entered the room, the door at the farther end opened again, and Tatham and Lydia emerged.

Good heavens!—had he been proposing already? But a glance dispelled the notion. Lydia was laughing as they came in, and a little flushed, as though with argument. It seemed to his mother that Harry's look, on the other hand, was overcast. Had the girl been trampling on him? Impossible! In any case, there was no denying the quiet ease, the complete self-possession, with which the "inexperienced" one moved through Harry's domain, and took leave of Harry's mother. Your modern girl?—of the intellectual sort—quite unmoved by gewgaws! Minx!

Harry saw the two ladies into their pony-carriage. When he returned to his mother, it was with an absent brow. He went to the window and stood softly whistling, with his hands in his pockets. Lady Tatham waited a little, then went up to him, and took him by the arms—her eyes smiling into his, without a word.

He disengaged himself, almost roughly.