The Daughters of Danaus Part 32

Hadria's face grew set and defiant.

"They represent to me the insult of society--my own private and particular insult, the tribute exacted of my womanhood. It is through them that I am to be subdued and humbled. Just once in a way, however, the thing does not quite 'come off.'"

"What has set you on edge so, I wonder."

"People, traditions, unimpeachable sentiments."

"_Yours_ are not unimpeachable at any rate!" Valeria cried laughing.

"_Caterina_ is an angel compared with you, and yet my publisher has his doubts about her."

"_Caterina_ would do as I do, I know," said Hadria. "Those who are looked at askance by the world appeal to my instincts. I shall be able to teach this child, perhaps, to strike a blow at the system which sent her mother to a dishonoured grave, while it leaves the man for whose sake she risked all this, in peace and the odour of sanct.i.ty."

Time seemed to be marked, in the sleepy village, by the baby's growth.

Valeria, who thought she was fond of babies, used to accompany Hadria on her visits to the cottage, but she treated the infant so much as if it had been a guinea-pig or a rabbit that the nurse was indignant.

The weeks pa.s.sed in rapid monotony, filled with detail and leaving no mark behind them, no sign of movement or progress. The cares of the house, the children, left only limited time for walking, reading, correspondence, and such music as could be wrung out of a crowded day.

An effort on Hadria's part, to make serious use of her musical talent had been frustrated. But a pathetic, unquenchable hope always survived that presently, when this or that corner had been turned, this or that difficulty overcome, conditions would be conquered and opportunity arrive. Not yet had she resigned her belief that the most hara.s.sing and wearying and unceasing business that a human being can undertake, is compatible with the stupendous labour and the unbounded claims of an artist's career. The details of practical life and petty duties sprouted up at every step. If they were put aside, even for a moment, the wheels of daily existence became clogged and then all opportunity was over.

Hope had begun to alternate with a fear lest that evasive corner should never be turned, that little crop of interruptions never cease to turn up. And yet it was so foolish. Each obstacle in itself was paltry. It was their number that overcame one, as the tiny arrows of the Lilliputs overcame Gulliver.

One of Hadria's best friends in Craddock Dene was Joseph Fleming, who had become very intimate at the Red House during the last year or two.

Hadria used to tire of the necessity to be apparently rational (such was her own version), and found it a relief to talk nonsense, just as she pleased, to Joseph Fleming, who never objected or took offence, if he occasionally looked surprised. Other men might have thought she was laughing at them, but Joseph made no such mistake when Mrs. Temperley broke out, as she did now and then, in fantastic fashion.

She was standing, one morning, on the little bridge over the stream that ran at a distance of a few hundred yards from the Red House. The two boys were bespattering themselves in the meadow below, by the water's verge. They called up at intervals to their mother the announcement of some new discovery of flower or insect.

Watching the stream sweeping through the bridge, she seemed the centre of a charming domestic scene to Joseph Fleming, who chanced to pa.s.s by with his dogs. He addressed himself to her maternal feelings by remarking what handsome and clever boys they were.

"Handsome and clever?" she repeated. "Is _that_ all you can say, Mr.

Fleming? When you set about it, I think you might provide a little better food for one's parental sentiment. I suppose you will go and tell Mrs. Walker that _her_ dozen and a half are all handsome and clever too!"

"Not so handsome and clever as yours," replied Mr. Fleming, a little aghast at this ravenous maternal vanity.

"What wretched poverty of expression!" Hadria complained. "I ask for bread, and truly you give me a stone."

Joseph Fleming eyed his companion askance. "I--I admire your boys immensely, as you know," he said.

"Not enough, not enough."

"What can I say more?"

"A mother has to find in her children all that she can hope to find in life, and she naturally desires to make the most of them, don't you see?"

"Ah! yes, quite so," said Joseph dubiously.

"n.o.body, I suppose, likes to be commonplace all round; one must have some poetry somewhere--so most women idealize their children, and if other people won't help them in the effort, don't you see? it is most discouraging."

"Are you chaffing, or what?" Joseph enquired.

"No, indeed; I am perilously serious."

"I can well understand how a mother must get absorbed in her children,"

said Joseph. "I suppose it's a sort of natural provision."

"Think of Mrs. Allan with her outrageous eight--all making mud-pies!"

cried Hadria; "a magnificent 'natural provision!' A small income, a small house, with those pervasive eight. You know the stampede when one goes to call; the aroma of bread and b.u.t.ter (there are few things more inspiring); the cook always about to leave; Mrs. Allan with a racking headache. It is indeed not difficult to understand how a mother would get absorbed in her children. Why, their pinafores alone would become absorbing."

"Quite so," said Mr. Fleming. Then a little anxious to change the subject: "Oh, by the way, have you heard that the Priory is really to be inhabited at last? Professor Theobald has almost decided to take it."

"Really? that will be exciting for Craddock Dene. We shall have another household to dissect and denounce. Providence watches over us all, I verily believe."

"I hope so," Joseph replied gravely.

"Truly I hope so too," Hadria said, no less seriously, "for indeed we need it."

Joseph was too simple to be greatly surprised at anything that Mrs.

Temperley might say. He had decided that she was a little eccentric, and that explained everything; just as he explained instances of extraordinary reasoning power in a dog by calling it "instinct."

Whatever Mrs. Temperley might do was slightly eccentric, and had she suddenly taken it into her head to dance a fandango on the public road, it would have merely put a little extra strain on that word.

By dint of not understanding her, Joseph Fleming had grown to feel towards Mrs. Temperley a genuine liking, conscious, in his vague way, that she was kind at heart, however bitter or strange she might sometimes be in her speech. Moreover, she was not always eccentric or unexpected. There would come periods when she would say and do very much as her neighbours said and did; looking then pale and lifeless, but absolutely beyond the reach of hostile criticism, as her champion would suggest to carping neighbours.

Not the most respected of the ladies who turned up their disapproving noses, was more dull or more depressing than Hadria could be, on occasion, as she had herself pointed out; and would not _this_ soften stony hearts?

When she discovered that her kindly neighbour had been fighting her battles for her, she was touched; but she asked him not to expend his strength on her behalf. She tried in vain to convince him that she did not care to be invited too often to submit to the devitalizing processes of social intercourse, to which the families of the district shrank not from subjecting themselves. If Joseph Fleming chanced to call at the Red House after her return from one of these entertainments, he was sure to find Mrs. Temperley in one of her least comprehensible moods. But whatever she might say, he stood up for her among the neighbours with persistent loyalty. He decked her with virtues that she did not possess, and represented her to the sceptical district, radiant in domestic glory. Hadria thus found herself in an awkwardly uncertain position; either she was looked at askance, as eccentric, or she found herself called upon to make good expectations of saintliness, such as never were on land or sea.

Saintly? Hadria shook her head. She could imagine no one further from such a condition than she was at present, and she felt it in her, to swing down and down to the very opposite pole from that serene alt.i.tude.

She admitted that, from a utilitarian point of view, she was making a vast mistake. As things were, Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Allan, laboriously spinning their ponderous families on their own axes, in a reverent spirit, had chosen the better part. But Hadria did not care. She would _not_ settle down to make the best of things, as even Algitha now recommended, "since there she was, and there was no helping it."

"I will _never_ make the best of things," she said. "I know nothing that gives such opportunities to the Devil."

Hadria had characteristically left the paradox unjustified.

"What do you mean?" asked Algitha. "Surely the enemy of good has most hold over the discontented spirit."

Hadria likened the contented to stagnant pools, wherein corruptions grow apace. "It is only the discontented ocean that remains, for all its storms, fresh and sane to the end."

But though she said this, for opposition's sake perhaps, she had her doubts about her own theory. Discontent was certainly the initiator of all movement; but there was a kind of sullen discontent that stagnated and ate inwards, like a disease. Better a cheerful sin or two than allow _that_ to take hold!

"But then there is this sickly feminine conscience to deal with!" she exclaimed. "It clings to the worst of us still, and prevents the wholesome big catastrophes that might bring salvation."

CHAPTER XXI.

Another year had blundered itself away, leaving little trace behind it, in Craddock Dene. The schoolmistress's grave was greener and her child rosier than of yore. Little Martha had now begun to talk, and promised to be pretty and fair-haired like her mother.

The boys and Algitha had come to spend Sat.u.r.day and Sunday at the Red House. Hadria hunted out a stupendous card-case (a wedding gift from Mrs. Gordon), erected on her head a majestic bonnet, and announced to the company that she was going for a round of visits.

There was a yell of laughter. Hadria advanced across the lawn with quiet dignity, bearing her card-case as one who takes part in a solemn ceremony.