Part 31
“I hope it will be,” said Lydia tonelessly. “Are you very happy, Jennie?”
“Yes,” said Jennie simply, her grey eyes ecstatic.
Then she looked at her mother, and added wistfully:
“I should be perfectly happy if--if only you were, too.”
Lydia smiled faintly.
She thought that she could appraise at its true value Jennie’s obvious afterthought.
Her fatigue was almost overwhelming, and, to her own surprise, she slept heavily all through the night.
Then it was Jennie’s wedding-day--a clear, grey day, without sunshine and without wind.
Surprisingly enough, Lydia felt, one went through it with very little feeling of any kind. The emotion that struck most sharply at her consciousness was one of surprise that so long a waiting, so many preparations, should have culminated only in so brief an apotheosis.
The wedding was over before she had adjusted herself to the expected pang of it, and actually very little impression of it all remained with her.
The odd epithet that had rung in her ears since the day before rang there still, meaningless, and yet strangely expressive.
“_Situation-snatcher._”
It even mingled senselessly in the farewells that rang all round her, when Jennie--Jennie Valentine--took her leave of them all with her husband.
“Good-bye--good luck!”
“Good-bye, dear Aunt Joyce--Grandmama--everybody--I’ll see you all again in a little while----”
“Good-bye, Roland. Take care of her.”
“I will, ma’am--you may be sure of that.”
Roland was bending over old Lady Lucy’s hand.
“Look here, dear, I don’t want to hurry you, but you’ve only just time----”
Colonel Kennedy, of course--always a victim to “train-fever.”
“Oh!”
The bride flung her arms round her mother’s neck.
“It’s only for a week, mama,” she whispered, consolingly. “Thank you for giving me such a _lovely_ wedding----”
The chauffeur started the engine of the waiting motor-car, and its throbbing broke on the air and caused Jennie to detach her clasp from her mother. But she still faced Lydia with a pleading, puzzled look, her eyes tearful, but, lurking in their grey depths, an unconquerable joyousness.
“I _must_ say something,” Lydia reflected desperately, dully astonished at her sudden inability to find any words at all.
A situation-snatcher. No--no--the foolish term was an obsession; she had not been that--not now----
She bent forward and kissed Jennie once more.
“Good-bye, my child. You’ll write....”
The chauffeur held the door of the car open, and Jennie’s foot was on the step.
She was within it, and her husband was beside her. Leaning across him, her fresh face at the lowered window, her bare hand, with the new wedding-ring gleaming upon it, grasped the door.
A sense of wrenching open, as of vistas of finality, suddenly dispersed Lydia’s apathy, and, at the agonizing glimpse of her own bereft and isolated future, she found, as the car began to move slowly from the door, the habitual, instinctive self-expression that alone could drug her misery.
“Good-bye, Jennie! I’ll see to everything--don’t worry about letters or packing--I’ll do it all for you whilst you’re away.”
“Jennie is still waving!” cried Joyce Damerel, and waved back again vigorously.
But at the same instant Lady Lucy laid her tremulous old hand upon Lydia’s, gazing at her compassionately, and Nathalie Kennedy exclaimed aloud, turning towards her:
“Oh, poor Lydia!”
The scattered groups of relatives and friends coalesced, surrounding her.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.