The Daughters of Danaus Part 43

"_Mon Dieu!_ if one had always to judge for others and never for oneself, what Solons we should all be!"

"I hear that you have taken the child under your protection. She may think herself fortunate. It is an act of real charity."

Hadria winced. "I fear not. I have grown very much attached to Martha now, poor little soul; but when I decided to adopt her, I was in a state of red-hot fury."

"Against whom, may I ask?"

"Against the child's father," Hadria replied shortly.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Yes, mum, I see un go up to the churchyard. He's tidyin' up the place a bit for the weddin'."

"The wedding?" repeated Hadria vaguely. Mrs. Gullick looked at her as at one whose claims to complete possession of the faculties there seems sad reason to doubt.

"Oh, Miss Jordan's, yes. When is it?"

"Why, it's this mornin', ma'am!" cried Mrs. Gullick.

"Dear me, of course. I _thought_ the village looked rather excited."

People were all standing at their doors, and the children had gathered at the gate of the church, with hands full of flowers. The wedding party was, it appeared, to arrive almost immediately. The children set up a shout as the first carriage was heard coming up the hill.

The bride appeared to be a popular character in Craddock. "Dear, dear, she will be missed, she will, she was a real lady, she was; did her duty too to rich _and_ poor."

The Professor asked his companion if she remarked that the amiable lady was spoken of universally in the past tense, as some one who had pa.s.sed from the light of day.

Hadria laughed. "Whenever I am in a cynical mood I come to Craddock and talk to the villagers."

Dodge was found resting on a broom-handle, with a flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole. Marion Jordan had supplied him with port wine when he was "took bad" in the winter. Dodge found it of excellent quality. He approved of the inst.i.tution of landed property, and had a genuine regard for the fair-haired, sweet-voiced girl who used to come in her pony-cart to distribute her bounty to the villagers. Her cla.s.s in the Sunday-school, as he remarked, was always the best behaved.

The new schoolmistress, a sour and uncompromising looking person, had issued from her cottage in her Sunday best to see the ceremony.

"That's where little Martha's mother used to live," said Hadria, "and that is where she died."

"Indeed, yes. I think Mr. Walker pointed it out to me."

"Ah! of course, and then you know the village of old."

"'Ere they comes!" announced a chorus of children's voices, as the first carriage drove up. The excitement was breathless. The occupants alighted and made their way to the church. After that, the carriages came in fairly quick succession. The bridegroom was criticised freely by the crowd. They did not think him worthy of his bride. "They du say as it was a made up thing," Dodge observed, "and that it wasn't _'im_ as she'd like to go up to the altar with."

"Well, _I_ don't sort o' take to 'im neither," Mrs. Gullick observed, sympathizing with the bride's feeling. "I do hope he'll be kind to the pore young thing; that I do."

"She wouldn't never give it 'im back; she's that good," another woman remarked.

"Who's the gentleman as she had set her heart on?" a romantic young woman enquired.

"Oh, it's only wot they say," said Dodge judicially; "it's no use a listening to all one hears--not by a long way."

"You 'ad it from Lord Engleton's coachman, didn't you?" prompted Mrs.

Gullick.

"Which he heard it said by the gardener at Mr. Jordan's, as Miss Marion was always about with Mr. Fleming."

The murmur of interest at this announcement was drowned by the sound of carriage wheels. The bride had come.

"See the ideal and ethereal being whom you have been so faithfully impersonating all the afternoon!" exclaimed Hadria.

A fair, faint, admirably gentle creature, floating in a mist of tulle, was wafted out of the brougham, the spring sunshine burnishing the pale hair, and flashing a dazzling sword-like glance on the string of diamonds at her throat.

It seemed too emphatic, too keen a greeting for the faint ambiguous being, about to put the teaching of her girlhood, and her pretty hopes and faiths, to the test.

She gave a start and shiver as she stepped out into the brilliant day, turning with a half-scared look to the crowd of faces. It seemed almost as if she were seeking help in a blind, bewildered fashion.

Hadria had an impulse. "What would she think if I were to run down those steps and drag her away?" Professor Theobald shook his head.

Within the church, the procession moved up the aisle, to the sound of the organ. Hadria compared the whole ceremony to some savage rite of sacrifice: priest and people with the victim, chosen for her fairness, decked as is meet for victims.

"But she may be happy," Lady Engleton suggested when the ceremony was over, and the organ was pealing out the wedding march.

"That does not prevent the a.n.a.logy. What a magnificent hideous thing the marriage-service is! and how exactly it expresses the extraordinary mixture of the n.o.ble and the brutal that is characteristic of our notions about these things!"

"The bride is certainly allowed to remain under no misapprehension as to her function," Lady Engleton admitted, with a laugh that grated on Hadria. Professor Theobald had fallen behind with Joseph Fleming, who had turned up among the crowd.

"But, after all, why mince matters?"

"Why indeed?" said Hadria. Lady Engleton seemed to have expected dissent.

"I think," she said, "that we are getting too squeamish nowadays as to speech. Women are so frightened to call a spade a spade."

"It is the _spade_ that is ugly, not the name."

"But, my dear?"

"Oh, it is not a question of squeamishness, it is the insult of the thing. One insult after another, and everyone stands round, looking respectable."

Lady Engleton laughed and said something to lead her companion on.

She liked to listen to Mrs. Temperley when she was thoroughly roused.

"It is the hideous mixture of the delicately civilized with the brutally savage that makes one sick. A frankly barbarous ceremony, where there was no pretence of refinement and propriety and so forth, would be infinitely less revolting."

"Which your language is plain," observed Lady Engleton, much amused.

"I hope so. Didn't you see how it all hurt that poor girl? One of her training too--suspended in mid air--not an earthward glance. You know Mrs. Jordan's views on the education of girls. Poor girls. They are morally skinned, in such a way as to make contact with Fact a veritable torture, and then suddenly they are sent forth defenceless into Life to be literally curry-combed."