The Daughters of Danaus Part 38

"Poor cooks and dressmakers!" murmured Professor Fortescue, "where are _their_ serenities and urbanities?"

"I would not deprive any person of the good things of life," cried Valeria; "but at present, it is only a few who can appreciate and contribute to the delicate essence that I speak of. I don't think one could expect it of one's cook, after all."

"One is mad to expect anything of those who have had no chance," said Professor Fortescue. "That nevertheless we consistently do,--or what amounts to the same thing: we plume ourselves on what chance has enabled us to be and to achieve, as if between us and the less fortunate there were some great difference of calibre and merit. Nine times in ten, there is nothing between us but luck."

"Oh, dear, you _are_ democratic, Professor!" cried Lady Engleton.

"No; I am merely trying to be just."

"To be just you must apply your theory to men and women, as well as to cla.s.s and cla.s.s," Valeria suggested.

"_Mon Dieu!_ but so I do; so I always have done, as soon as I was intellectually short-coated."

"And would you excuse all our weaknesses on that ground?" asked Lady Engleton, with a somewhat ingratiating upward gaze of her blue eyes.

"I would account for them as I would account for the weaknesses of my own s.e.x. As for excusing, the question of moral responsibility is too involved to be decided off-hand."

The atmosphere of Griffin-land, as Professor Theobald called it, while becoming to his character, made him a little recklessly frank at times.

He admitted that throughout his varied experience of life, he had found flattery the most powerful weapon in a skilled hand, and that he had never known it fail. He related instances of the signal success which had followed its application with the trowel. He reminded his listeners of Lord Beaconsfield's famous saying, and chuckled over the unfortunate woman, "plain as a pike-staff," who had become his benefactress, in consequence of a discreet allusion to the "power of beauty" and a well-placed sigh.

"The woman must have been a fool!" said Joseph Fleming.

"By no means; she was of brilliant intellect. But praises of that were tame to her; she knew her force, and was perhaps tired of the solitude it induced." Professor Theobald laughed mightily at his own sarcasm.

"But when the whisper of 'beauty' came stealing to her ear (which was by no means like a sh.e.l.l) it was surpa.s.sing sweet to her. I think there is no yearning more intense than that of a clever woman for the triumphs of mere beauty. She would give all her powers of intellect for the smallest tribute to personal and feminine charm. What is your verdict, Mrs.

Temperley?"

Mrs. Temperley supposed that clever women had something of human nature in them, and valued overmuch what they did not possess.

Professor Theobald had perhaps looked for an answer that would have betrayed more of the speaker's secret feelings.

"It is the fashion, I know," he said, "to regard woman as an enigma.

Now, without professing any unusual acuteness, I believe that this is a mistake. Woman is an enigma certainly, because she is human, but that ends it. Her conditions have tended to cultivate in her the power of dissimulation, and the histrionic quality, just as the peaceful ilex learns to put forth thorns if you expose it to the attacks of devouring cattle. It is this instinct to develop thorns in self-defence, and yet to live a little behind the p.r.i.c.kly outposts, that leads to our notion of mystery in woman's nature. Let a man's subsistence and career be subject to the same powers and chances as the success of a woman's life now hangs on, and see whether he too does not become a histrionic enigma."

Professor Fortescue observed that the clergy, at times, developed qualities called feminine, because in some respects their conditions resembled those of women.

Theobald a.s.sented enthusiastically to this view. He had himself entered the church as a young fellow (let not Mrs. Temperley look so inconsiderately astonished), and had left it on account of being unable to conscientiously subscribe to its tenets.

"But not before I had acquired some severe training in that sort of strategy which is inc.u.mbent upon women, in the conduct of their lives.

Whatever I might privately think or feel, my office required that I should only express that which would be more or less grateful to my hearers. (Is not this the woman's case, in almost every position in life?) Even orthodoxy must trip it on tiptoe; there was always some prejudice, some susceptibility to consider. What was frankness in others was imprudence in me; other men's minds might roam at large; mine was tethered, if not in its secret movements, at least in its utterance; and it is a curious and somewhat sinister law of Nature, that perpetual denial of utterance ends by killing the power or the feeling so held in durance."

Hadria coloured.

"That experience and its effect upon my own nature, which has lasted to this day," added Theobald, "served to increase my interest in the fascinating study of character in its relation to environment."

"Ah!" exclaimed Hadria, "then _you_ don't believe in the independent power of the human will?"

"Certainly not. To talk of character overcoming circ.u.mstance is to talk of an effect without a cause. Yet this phrase is a mere commonplace in our speech. A man no more overcomes his circ.u.mstance than oxygen overcomes nitrogen when it combines with it to form the air we breathe.

If the nitrogen is present, the combination takes place; but if there is no nitrogen to be had, all the oxygen in the world will not produce our blessed atmosphere!"

Joseph Fleming caused a sort of anti-climax by mentioning simply that he didn't know that any nitrogen was required in the atmosphere. One always heard about the oxygen.

Professor Theobald remarked, with a chuckle, that this was one of the uses of polite conversation; one picked up information by the wayside.

Joseph agreed that it was wonderfully instructive, if the speakers were intelligent.

"That helps," said the Professor, tapping Joseph familiarly on the shoulder.

"When shall we have our next meeting?" enquired Lady Engleton, when the moment came for parting.

"The sooner the better," said Valeria. "English skies have Puritan moods, and we may as well profit by their present jocund temper. I never saw a bluer sky in all Italy."

"I certainly shall not be absent from the next meeting," announced Theobald, with a glance at Hadria.

"Nor I," said Lady Engleton. "Such opportunities come none too often."

"I," Hadria observed, "shall be cook-hunting."

Professor Theobald's jaw shut with a snap, and he turned and left the group almost rudely.

CHAPTER XXV.

Hadria thought that Professor Theobald had not spoken at random, when he said that the sweetest tribute a woman can receive is that paid to her personal charm. This unwilling admission was dragged out of her by the sight of Valeria Du Prel, as the central figure of an admiring group, in the large drawing-room at Craddock Place.

She was looking handsome and animated, her white hair drawn proudly off her brow, and placed as if with intention beside the silken curtains, whose tint of misty pale green was so becoming to her beauty.

Valeria was holding her little court, and thoroughly enjoying the admiration.

"If we have had to live by our looks for all these centuries, surely the instinct that Professor Theobald thinks himself so penetrating to have discovered in clever women, is accounted for simply enough by heredity,"

Hadria said to herself, resentfully.

Professor Theobald was bending over Miss Du Prel with an air of devotion. Hadria wished that she would not take his compliments so smilingly. Valeria would not be proof against his flattery. She kindled with a child's frankness at praise. It stung Hadria to think of her friend being carelessly cla.s.sed by the Professor among women whose weakness he understood and could play upon. He would imagine that he had discovered the mystery of the sun, because he had observed a spot upon it, not understanding the nature of the very spot. Granted that a little salve to one's battered and scarified self-love was soft and grateful, what did that prove of the woman who welcomed it, beyond a human craving to keep the inner picture of herself as bright and fine as might be? The man who, out of contempt or irreverence, set a bait for the universal appet.i.te proved himself, rather than his intended victim, of meagre quality. Valeria complimented him generously by supposing him sincere.

Occasional bursts of laughter came from her court. Professor Theobald looked furtively round, as if seeking some one, or watching the effect of his conduct on Mrs. Temperley.

Could he be trying to make her jealous of Valeria?

Hadria gave a sudden little laugh while Lord Engleton--a shy, rather taciturn man--was shewing her his wife's last picture. Hadria had to explain the apparent discourtesy as best she could.

The picture was of English meadows at sunset.

"They are the meadows you see from your windows," said Lord Engleton.

"That village is Masham, with the spire shewing through the trees. I daresay you know the view pretty well."

"I doubt," she answered, with the instinct of extravagance that annoyed Hubert, "I doubt if I know anything else."