Cashel Byron's Profession

When Lydia was in her twenty-first year her father's health failed

seriously. He became more dependent on her; and she anticipated that

he would also become more exacting in his demands on her time. The

contrary occurred. One day, at Naples, she had arranged to go riding

with an English party that was staying there. Shortly before the

appointed hour he asked her to make a translation of a long extract

from Lessing. Lydia, in whom self-questionings as to the justice of

her father's yoke had been for some time stirring, paused

thoughtfully for perhaps two seconds before she consented. Carew

said nothing, but he presently intercepted a servant who was bearing

an apology to the English party, read the note, and went back to his

daughter, who was already busy at Lessing.

"Lydia," he said, with a certain hesitation, which she would have

ascribed to shyness had that been at all credible of her father when

addressing her, "I wish you never to postpone your business to

literary trifling."

She looked at him with the vague fear that accompanies a new and

doubtful experience; and he, dissatisfied with his way of putting

the case, added, "It is of greater importance that you should enjoy

yourself for an hour than that my book should be advanced. Far

greater!"

Lydia, after some consideration, put down her pen and said, "I shall

not enjoy riding if there is anything else left undone."

"I shall not enjoy your writing if your excursion is given up for

it," he said. "I prefer your going."

Lydia obeyed silently. An odd thought struck her that she might end

the matter gracefully by kissing him. But as they were unaccustomed

to make demonstrations of this kind, nothing came of the impulse.

She spent the day on horseback, reconsidered her late rebellious

thoughts, and made the translation in the evening.

Thenceforth Lydia had a growing sense of the power she had

unwittingly been acquiring during her long subordination. Timidly at

first, and more boldly as she became used to dispense with the

parental leading-strings, she began to follow her own bent in

selecting subjects for study, and even to defend certain recent

developments of art against her father's conservatism. He approved

of this independent mental activity on her part, and repeatedly

warned her not to pin her faith more on him than on any other

critic. She once told him that one of her incentives to disagree

with him was the pleasure it gave her to find out ultimately that he

was right.

He replied gravely: "That pleases me, Lydia, because I believe you. But such things are

better left unsaid. They seem to belong to the art of pleasing,

which you will perhaps soon be tempted to practise, because it seems

to ail young people easy, well paid, amiable, and a mark of good

breeding. In truth it is vulgar, cowardly, egotistical, and

insincere: a virtue in a shopman; a vice in a free woman. It is

better to leave genuine praise unspoken than to expose yourself to

the suspicion of flattery."