It was then that Lucia first began to notice a change in her
grandfather's manner towards her. Sometimes she would catch his eyes
fixed on her with a curious, scrutinizing gaze, and once or twice she
thought she detected in them a profound sadness. Whenever at these
moments they happened to meet her eyes they were immediately averted.
Sir Joseph had not been given to betraying emotion, save only on
points of scholarship, and it was evident that he had something on his
mind.
What he had on his mind was the thought that at the rate Frederick was
living he might at any moment cease to live, and then what would
become of Lucia? And what would become of the Harden Library? What of
the family tradition? By much pondering on the consequences of
Frederick's decease Sir Joseph had considerably hastened his own.
Lucia knew nothing of all this. She was only aware that her
grandfather had sent for Horace Jewdwine on his death-bed. What had
passed between them remained known only to Horace. But part of a sum
of money left by Sir Joseph's will towards the founding of a Harden
scholarship was transferred by a codicil to Lucia for her education.
The task begun by Horace Jewdwine was continued by a learned lady,
Miss Sophia Roots, B.A.; and Miss Roots did her work so well that when
Sir Frederick assumed his rightful guardianship of his daughter he
pronounced her the worst educated young woman in Europe. Of all that
Miss Roots had so laboriously imparted to her she retained, not a
smattering, but a masterly selection. And now at four and twenty she
had what is called a beautiful view of life; with that exciting book
which her father kept so sedulously out of her reach she was
acquainted as it were through anthologies and translations. For
anything Lucia knew to the contrary, life might be all bursts of lyric
rapture and noble sequences of selected prose. She was even in danger
of trusting too much to her own inspired version of certain passages.
But anthologies are not always representative, and nobody knew better
than Lucia that the best translations sometimes fail to give the
spirit of the original.
Something of this spirit she caught from her father's brilliant and
disturbing presence. Lucia adored her father. He brought into her life
an element of uncertainty and freedom that saved it from the tyranny
of books. It was a perpetual coming and going. A dozen times in a year
Sir Frederick hurled himself from Harmouth to London, from London to
the Continent, and from the Continent back again to Harmouth, to
recruit. The very transience of his appearances and Lucia's ignorance
of all that lay behind them preserved her in her attitude of
adoration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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