And next day, with some suppressed tears and fictitious smiles, and a general excitement of the whole neighbourhood, as if the village itself had been going abroad, the party went away. The vicarage people and all the Selbys came out to their doors to see them pass. Raaf Selby on horseback stood like a statue at the end of the bridge, and took off his hat and gave Lydia a look half-tragical and altogether melodramatic. Joan drove her mother in the phaeton steadily, but with a very grave countenance, though now and then bursting into momentary jokes and laughter, to the station to see them off, her husband riding very slowly by their side. Joan laughed by times, but that did not change the seriousness of her face; and Mrs Joscelyn sat with her veil down, a large Spanish veil covered by great spots of black flowers, behind which nobody could see what she was doing. Lydia herself broke down, and cried freely, though her mother could not cry. “I’ll bring home Harry,” the girl cried, with a passionate promise, out of one window of the railway carriage. Lionel was at another, keeping in the background, eager to be off, and shorten the moment of farewells, when his attention was distracted from the pathetic group by the sudden swaying upwards of old Isaac’s shock head. “I thought you’d like to know, Sir,” old Isaac said, “as my missis and me’s the best of friends. And it’s all owing to you, as had the judgment never to say a word. Good-bye and good luck to you, Master; don’t forget old Isaac Oliver as will do you a good turn and welcome whenever he has the chance. Lord! but we took t’ Missis in, that time,” Isaac said, with a grin that reached from ear to ear. And that was the last the travellers saw of the village folk.
CHAPTER VII.
LYDIA’S TRAVELS.
THE quiet that fell over the White House, not to speak of other houses, when Liddy was thus carried off into the wider world, was something which might be felt, like the darkness in the vision. Mrs. Joscelyn subsided into a kind of half-life. She had been living in her child, and when her child was withdrawn, her existence ebbed away from her. She began to wring her hands again, especially when in the wild winter weather the posts were delayed. All that could be done for her was done by the Selbys, who humoured her and petted her, everybody said, like a child. Joan drove over in her phaeton as often sometimes as thrice in a week, and Philip, who was “an understanding man” his wife allowed, did what was still better. He subscribed for her to the circulating library, and kept the poor lady supplied, in defiance of all prejudices, even those of his wife, with a boundless supply of novels. Joan was somewhat indignant and much scandalised by this, asking him if he thought mother was a baby, and if it was his opinion that an old person should waste her time over such nonsense? “If it was a good book indeed,” Joan said. But Philip verified his title to be called “understanding.” He helped her through the dull days as nobody else could. She read and read till she got a little confused among the heroes and heroines, all of whom she wove together by an imaginary thread of connection with Liddy, comparing their fictitious graces, their adventures, their history with those of her child, and following her imaginary Liddy through many a chapter. Lydia’s letters when they came were like another warmer, fuller romance, the most enticing of all.
And then Ralph Joscelyn himself suddenly developed a new character. He was miserable when his daughter was fairly gone, though he had never betrayed any unwillingness to let her go. He read every word of her long letters with a patience which had never been equalled in his life. He gave up the dashes and blanks of which his conversation was once full, and would come in the cold afternoons and sit with his wife, often fatiguing her greatly, and keeping her back from the end of an exciting story, but always meaning the best, and filling her soul with gratitude, even when she felt most bored. And by and bye he would put on his spectacles, and surreptitiously turn over a novel too, when the day was wet, or on a long evening. Thus the sight might be seen of these two in their old parlour, one at each side of the fire, rather dull but friendly, like people who had grown old together, and in whom a moderate modest affection had outlived all quarrels and years. He was a little shamefaced when he was found thus in his wife’s company, but by degrees that wore off too.
Meanwhile, Lydia went far afield, leaving dulness and darkness and cloud behind her; finding winter turned into summer, and her life into sunshine. It would be impossible to use words too strong to express the change that had come upon her. From the north country of England to the south of France was not a more complete difference than from the grey and limited life of the yeoman household to the brightness and variety and grace of existence among people accustomed all their lives to wealth and refinement and luxury. The way in which they travelled, the attendants always round them, the ease with which they took all their gratifications, surprised by nothing that was pleasant, taking luxuries, which were princely to Liddy, as a matter of course, had an extraordinary effect upon her—the effect of a forced and miraculous education, in which every half hour told like a year. For a short time she was much subdued, almost stupefied, indeed, by the revolution in everything round her, and was so very quiet that Lady Brotherton almost came the length, notwithstanding her animated countenance, and the favourable first impression she had made, of thinking her dull. In fact, she was only in a state of intense receptiveness, taking in everything, opening her mind and spirits to all the new influences, which confused and dazzled her. But after thus lying dormant for a time, Lydia suddenly awoke into new life, and bloomed like a flower. She awoke to a great many things which were completely new and strange; to beauty and wealth, to art, which was entirely unknown, and a revelation to her; and to Nature of a lavish and splendid kind, almost as entirely unknown.
There were other revelations, too, upon which, at this moment, it is unnecessary to dwell. It was more than enough that little Lydia, out of what was not much more than a northern farmer’s house, should have found herself in society, in that wandering society of the English abroad where the finest specimens are to be found afloat among the coarsest, and in which all the elements of life are represented; hearing names familiarly pronounced every day which she had hitherto read with reverence in books, talking to personages whose distant doings she had but heard of with awe and wonder, and living in palaces, which she heard found fault with as poverty-stricken and uncomfortable, she who had known nothing better than the drawing-room at Heatonshaw. The party went from France to Italy; to Florence and Rome, and still further south, Naples and all its dependencies. So dazzled and transported was she with all the new things she saw and heard that for the first month or two Lydia forgot all about her quest. When she bethought herself of it, a question arose which was far more troublesome here than it had been at home. What was she to do? To examine anxiously every new face she saw, to look out in the streets and in every company she entered for somebody like Harry, seemed a far less hopeful enterprise in Italy than it had been in England. She did not remember Harry’s face, which was disabling to begin with, and then why should he be in Italy? she asked herself. Poor people (unless they were artists) did not seem to come to Italy, but only people with plenty of money and leisure, who came to enjoy themselves. She was so bewildered by this altogether new idea that she did not know what to do, nor did Lionel, “Cousin Lionel,” to whom she began to refer everything (as indeed his mother did), suggest anything that could help her. They looked over all the visitors’ books together, and lists of the English inhabitants in every new place they came to, with their young heads together, and much secret enjoyment of the business; but neither did this stand her in much stead. In Rome, where they spent Christmas, they were joined, as Lady Brotherton’s prophetic soul had divined, by Lord Eldred; but when they left he did not follow, and Liddy’s course, which was not that of true love but wandering fancy, required no trouble to keep it smooth. But, by others besides Lord Eldred, Lydia was “very much admired,” as people say. She might have got “a very good match” out of her wanderings; but walked through all these possibilities unwitting, not having even her little head turned, which Lady Brotherton expected. The elder lady, however, was delighted with the little sensation she made. She liked the little flutter of moths about this gentle taper. She liked to have half-a-dozen young men standing ready to do every necessary civility, to procure everything that was wanted. Lydia saved her a great deal, she said, in commissionaires; and old Sir John laughed his chuckling old laugh, and said she was just like her mother; his Cousin Lydia had always a train after her. Liddy wondered sometimes whether it was a former Cousin Lydia, a century old or so, whom the old man meant. But they were very kind to her. They became fond of her as the time went on. She lived an enchanted life among them, with “Cousin Lionel” always at her side, seeing everything, doing everything, along with her; and she could not have believed that it would prove so easy to forget Harry and all about him. Sometimes she awoke to this thought with such a sense of guilt as depressed her for days; but in the meantime life was flowing on in content, brightness, and variety, full of a hundred occupations. There was not a moment vacant. Sometimes it would glance across her that the day must come when she must leave it all and return to the White House. Alas, poor mother! vegetating there, keeping herself alive by means of her novels, and chiefly the unfinished romance of Lydia, most delightful of all. What would she have felt had she known the cold chill which came over Lydia as she realised that the day must come when she would be once more at home; and how wretched, how angry Lydia was with herself, how she despised her own frivolous being when she felt this chill invading her! Generally however she put the thought away, and was content to live, and no more. To live, how sweet it was! “Good was it in that time to be alive, and to be young was very heaven.” At last Lydia came, as the time of return approached, to throw away every consideration, and exist only in the moment, with a kind of desperation of happiness. “I shall never have it over again,” she said to herself, and shut her eyes and went on, forgetting home and forgetting Harry, refusing to think of anything but the sweet hours that were going over her; “I shall have had my day.”
Thus time came to have a prodigious sweep and fling as the long delicious holiday approached its end. The hours and days rushed on like the waters of a river hurrying to the falls, every minute increasing the velocity; already the skies were getting bright (as if they had ever been anything but bright!) with spring; the flowers were bursting forth everywhere; the warmth becoming excessive; the English tourists beginning to return home in clouds. And the Brothertons spoke quite calmly of going back to England. To them it meant a natural succession, no more; they would return home to other delights. When autumn came back they would set out again, and go over the same enchanted lands; but for Lydia all would be over. She tried to enter into their plans, however, quite steadily, concealing the vertigo that seized her, and her wild sense of the hurrying rush of those last days. When it was suggested that they should rest a few days at Pisa, Sir John having a cold, and from thence go on to Leghorn, and take the steamer, Lydia felt like a criminal who has got a reprieve; but oh, how guilty, how more than ever deserving of any sentence that could be passed upon her!
By this time there had come a strange uneasiness into her intercourse with “Cousin Lionel.” Liddy had always been more reserved with him than with anyone else, she could not tell why. Since the first frankness of the days when she went with him to Birrenshead there had been a great seriousness in all their relations. This was partly his doing, and partly hers. Lord Eldred’s appearance had checked him when he had been getting rid of the impression which his mother’s opinion on the subject of Lord Eldred had produced on him. And Lydia’s seriousness had subdued the young man. She had consulted him indeed, referred to him constantly, took his advice, kept up an invariable tacit appeal to him in all her concerns, which she was scarcely herself aware of, but which went to the very bottom of his heart; but she was always serious. Her gayer flights were with the moths, as Lady Brotherton called them, the commissionaires, the young men who fluttered about the two ladies, and whom Lydia, caring nothing about them, treated with every kind of gay malice, and a hundred caprices; but she was never capricious with cousin Lionel. They treated each other with a sort of stately dignity, reserved on one side, reverential on the other, to the amusement, but great gratification of Lady Brotherton.
“Thank heaven there is no fear of these two falling in love with each other,” she said, “which is an embarrassment one is scarcely ever safe from.” As for Sir John, he chuckled and declared that his son was an old woman. “Talk’sh like two ambassadorsh,” said the old man. Never was anything more satisfactory; for to have a course of true love so near to her, notwithstanding her sentimental sympathy with the thing in the abstract, would not have suited Lady Brotherton at all. But on the day of Sir John’s cold at Pisa, something occurred which, if she had not been so busy administering gruel, she might not have found so satisfactory. The two young people being thus left alone went out together, and walked very soberly, as was their wont, about the Cathedral and the Baptistery, gazing at everything as it was their duty to do. They stood and looked up at the delicate fretted galleries of the leaning tower, and the blue sky above which filled up every opening. They had been very silent, and silence is dangerous. At last Lionel said hastily:
“I don’t know why this should make me think of the old Joscelyn tower you showed me; there is not much likeness certainly between this and a Border tower.”