The Daughters of Danaus Part 72

Hadria had been growing more and more restless since the arrival of the new-comer. She took no further part in the conversation. She was struggling to avoid making comparisons between her two companions. The contrast was startling. Every cadence of their voices, every gesture, proclaimed the radical difference of nature and calibre.

Hadria rose abruptly. She looked pale and perturbed.

"Don't you think we have sat here long enough?" she asked.

They both looked a little surprised, but they acquiesced at once. The three walked together down the yew avenue, and out across the lawn.

Professor Fortescue recalled their past meetings among these serene retreats, and wished they could come over again.

"Nothing ever does come over again," said Hadria.

Theobald glanced at her, meaningfully.

"Look here, my dear fellow," he said, grasping Professor Fortescue by the arm, and bending confidentially towards him, "I should like those meetings to repeat themselves _ad infinitum_. I have made up my mind at last. I want to take the Priory."

Hadria turned deadly pale, and stumbled slightly.

"Well, take it by all means. I should be only too glad to let it to a tenant who would look after the old place."

"We must talk it over," said Theobald.

"That won't take long, I fancy. We talked it over once before, you remember, and then you suddenly changed your mind."

"Yes; but my mind is steady now. The Priory is the place of all others that I should like to pa.s.s my days in."

"Well, I think you are wise, Theobald. The place has great charm, and you have friends here."

"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed Theobald.

Professor Fortescue looked vaguely round, as if expecting Hadria to express some neighbourly sentiment, but she said nothing. He noticed how very ill she was looking.

"Are you feeling the heat too severe?" he asked in concern. "Shall we take a rest under these trees?"

But Hadria preferred to go on and rest at home. She asked when Professor Fortescue was coming to see them at the Red House, but her tone was less open and warm than usual, in addressing him. He said that to-morrow he would walk over in the afternoon, if he might. Hadria would not allow her companions to come out of their way to accompany her home. At the Priory gate--where the griffins were grinning as derisively as ever at the ridiculous ways of men--they took their respective roads.

Some domestic catastrophe had happened at the Red House. The cook had called Mary "names," and Mary declared she must leave. Hadria shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, well then, I suppose you must," she said wearily, and retired to her room, in a mood to be cynically amused at the tragedies that the human being manufactures for himself, lest he should not find the tragedies of birth and death and parting, and the solitude of the spirit, sufficient to occupy him during his little pilgrimage. She sat by the open window that looked out over the familiar fields, and the garden that was gay with summer flowers. The red roof of the Priory could just be caught through the trees of the park. She wished the little pilgrimage were over. A common enough wish, she commented, but surely not unreasonable.

The picture of those two men came back to her, in spite of every effort to banish it. Professor Fortescue had affected her as if he had brought with him a new atmosphere, and disastrous was the result. It seemed as if Professor Theobald had suddenly become a stranger to her, whom she criticised, whose commonness of fibre, ah me! whose coa.r.s.eness, she saw as she might have seen it in some casual acquaintance. And yet she had loved this man, she had allowed him to pa.s.sionately profess love for her. His companionship, in the deepest sense, had been chosen by her for life. To sit by and listen to that conversation, feeling every moment how utterly he and she were, after all, strangers to one another, how completely unbroken was the solitude that she had craved to dispel--that had been horrible. What had lain at the root of her conduct? How had she deceived herself? Was it not for the sake of mere excitement, distraction? Was it not the sensuous side of her nature that had been touched, while the rest had been posing in the foreground? But no, that was only partly true. There had been more in it than that; very much more, or she could not have deceived herself so completely. It was this craving to fill the place of her lost art,--but oh, what morbid nonsense it had all been! Why, for the first time in her life, did she feel ashamed to meet Professor Fortescue? Obviously, it was not because she thought he would disapprove of her breaking the social law. It was because she had fallen below her own standard, because she had been hypocritical with herself, played herself false, and acted contemptibly, hatefully! Professor Fortescue's mere presence had hunted out the truth from its hiding-place. He had made further self-sophistication impossible. She buried her face in her hands, in an agony of shame. She had known all along, that this had not been a profound and whole-hearted sentiment. She had known all along, of what a poor feverish nature it was; yet she had chosen to persuade herself that it was all, or nearly all, that she had dreamed of a perfect human relationship. She had tried to arrange facts in such a light as to simulate that idea. It was so paltry, so contemptible. Why could she not at least have been honest with herself, and owned to the nature of the infatuation? That, at any rate, would have been straightforward. Her self-scorn made the colour surge into her cheeks and burn painfully over neck and brow. "How little one knows oneself. Here am I, who rebel against the beliefs of others, sinning against my own. Here am I, who turn up my nose at the popular G.o.ds, deriding my own private and particular G.o.ds in their very temples!

That I have done, and heaven alone knows where I should have stopped in the wild work, if this had not happened. Professor Fortescue has no need to speak. His gentleness, his charity, are as rods to scourge one!"

CHAPTER XLIV.

When Professor Fortescue called at the Red House, he found that the blinds, in the drawing-room, were all half down. Hadria held the conversation to the subject of his plans. He knew her well enough to read the meaning of that quiet tone, with a subtle cadence in it, just at the end of a phrase, that went to his heart. To him it testified to an unspeakable regret.

It was difficult to define the change in her manner, but it conveyed to the visitor the impression that she had lost belief in herself, or in some one; that she had received a severe shock, and knew no longer what to trust or how to steer. She seemed to speak across some vast spiritual distance, an effect not produced by reserve or coldness, but by a wistful, acquiescent, subdued quality, expressive of uncertainty, of disorder in her conceptions of things.

"How tempting those two easy-chairs look, under the old tree on your lawn," said the Professor. "Wouldn't it be pleasant to go out?"

Hadria hesitated for a second, and then rose. "Certainly; we will have tea there."

When they were seated under the shade taking their tea, with the canopy of walnut leaves above their heads, the Professor saw that Hadria shewed signs of serious trouble. The haggard lines, the marks of suffering, were not to be hidden in the clear light of the summer afternoon. He insensibly shifted his chair so as not to have to gaze at her when he spoke. That seemed to be a relief to her.

"Valeria is here till the day after to-morrow," she said. "She has gone for a walk, and has probably forgotten the tea-hour but I hope you will see her."

"I want to find out what her plans are. It would be pleasant to come across one another abroad. I wish you were coming too."

"Ah, so do I."

"I suppose it's impossible."

"Absolutely."

"For the mind, there is no tonic like travel," he said.

"It must be a sovereign cure for egoism."

"If anything will cure that disease." Her face saddened.

"You believe it is quite incurable?"

"If it is const.i.tutional."

"Don't you think that sometimes people grow egoistic through having to fight incessantly for existence--I mean for individual existence?"

"It certainly is the instinct of moral self-preservation. It corresponds to the raised arm when a blow threatens."

"One has the choice between egoism and extinction."

"It almost amounts to that. Perhaps, after long experience and much suffering, the individuality may become secure, and the armour no longer necessary, but this is a bitter process. Most people become extinct, and then congratulate themselves on self-conquest."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Hadria musingly. "How dangerous it is to congratulate oneself on anything! One never is so near to folly as then."

The Professor threw some crumbs to a chaffinch, which had flown down within a few yards of the tea-table.

"I think you are disposed, at present, to criticise yourself too mercilessly," he said in a tone that had drawn forth many a confidence.

It was not to be resisted.

"No; that would be difficult."

"Your conscience may accuse you severely, but who of us escapes such accusations? Be a little charitable with yourself, as you would with others. Life, you know, is not such an easy game to play. Beginners must make wrong moves now and then."

There was a long pause.