The Daughters of Danaus Part 79

"I chafe against these situations!" cried Valeria. "I am so unused, in my own life, to such tethers and limitations. They would drive me crazy!"

"Oh," Hadria exclaimed, with an amused smile, "this is a new cry!"

"I don't care," said Valeria discontentedly. "I never supposed that one _could_ be tied hand and foot, in this way. I should never stand it. It is intolerable!"

"These are what you have frequently commended to me as 'home ties,'"

said Hadria.

"Oh, but it is impossible!"

"You attack the family!" cried the Professor.

"If the family makes itself ridiculous----?"

The Professor and Hadria laughed. Valeria was growing excited.

"The natural instinct of man to get his fun at his neighbour's expense meets with wholesome rebuffs in the outer world," said the Professor, "but in the family it has its chance. That's why the family is so popular."

Valeria, with her wonted capriciousness, veered round in defence of the inst.i.tution that she had been just jeering at.

"Well, after all, it is the order of Nature to have one's fun at the expense of someone, and I don't believe we shall ever be able to practise any other principle, I mean on a national scale, however much we may progress."

"Oh, but we shan't progress unless we _do_," said the Professor.

"You are always paradoxical."

"There is no paradox here. I am just as certain as I am of my own existence, that real, solid, permanent progress is impossible to any people until they recognise, as a mere truism, that whatever is gained by cruelty, be it towards the humblest thing alive, is not gain, but the worst of loss."

"Oh, you always go too far!" cried Valeria.

"I don't admit that in a horror of cruelty, it is possible to go too far," the Professor replied. "Cruelty is the one unpardonable sin." He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow, with a weary gesture, as if the pressure of misery and tumult and anguish in the world, were more than he could bear.

"You won't give up your music, Hadria," Valeria said, at the end of a long cogitation.

"It is a forlorn sort of pursuit," Hadria answered, with a whimsical smile, "but I will do all I can." Valeria seemed relieved.

"And you will not give up hope?"

"Hope? Of what?"

"Oh, of--of----. What an absurd question!"

Hadria smiled. "It is better to face facts, I think, than to shroud them away. After all, it is only by the rarest chance that character and conditions happen to suit each other so well that the powers can be developed. They are generally crushed. One more or less----." Hadria gave a shrug.

The Professor broke in, abruptly.

"It is exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down, that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible, and hope would be insane."

"Perhaps it is!" said Hadria beneath her breath.

The Professor had risen. He heard the last words, but made no remonstrance. Yet there was a something in his expression that gave comfort.

"I fear I shall have to be going back," he said, looking at his watch.

As he spoke, the first notes of a nightingale stole out of the shrubbery. Voices were hushed, and the three stood listening spellbound, to the wonderful impa.s.sioned song. Hadria marvelled at its strange serenity, despite the pa.s.sion, and speculated vaguely as to the possibility of a paradox of the same kind in the soul of a human being.

Pa.s.sion and serenity? Had not the Professor combined these apparent contradictions?

There was ecstasy so supreme in the bird's note that it had become calm again, like great heat that affects the senses, as with frost, or a flooded river that runs swift and smooth for very fulness.

Presently, a second nightingale began to answer from a distant tree, and the garden was filled with the wild music. One or two stars had already twinkled out.

"I ought really to be going," said the Professor.

But he lingered still. His eyes wandered anxiously to Hadria's white face. He said good-night to Valeria, and then he and Hadria walked to the gate together.

"You will come back and see us at Craddock Dene soon after you return, won't you?" she said wistfully.

"Of course I will. And I hope that meanwhile, you will set to work to get strong and well. All your leisure ought to be devoted to that object, for the present. I should be so delighted to hear from you now and again, when you have a spare moment and the spirit moves you. I will write and tell you how I fare, if I may. If, at any time, I can be of service to you, don't forget how great a pleasure it would be to me to render it. I hope if ever I come back to England----"

"When you come back," Hadria corrected, hastily.

----"that we may meet oftener."

"Indeed, that will be something to look forward to!"

They exchanged the hearty, lingering handshake of trusty friendship and deep affection. The last words, the last good wishes, were spoken, the last wistful effort was made of two human souls to bid each other be of good cheer, and to bring to one another comfort and hope. Hadria leant on the gate, a lonely figure in the dim star-light, watching the form that had already become shadowy, retreating along the road and gradually losing itself in the darkness.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Autumn had come round again. Craddock Dene had calmed down after the exciting event of the summer. Martha's little cottage was now standing empty, the virginia creeper trailing wildly, in thick festoons and dangling sprays over the porch and creeping up round the windows, even threatening to cover them with a ruddy screen, since now the bright little face no longer looked out of the latticed panes, and the cottage was given over to dust and spiders.

Mrs. Temperley was often seen by the villagers pa.s.sing along the road towards Craddock. She would sometimes pause at the cottage, to gather a few of the flowers that still came up in the tiny garden. It was said that she gathered them to lay on Ellen Jervis's grave.

"Dear, dear, she do take on about that child!" Dodge used to say, as she pa.s.sed up the street of Craddock. And Mrs. Gullick, good soul, would shake her head and express her sympathy, in spite of not "holding" with Mrs. Temperley's "ways."

Her poorer neighbours understood far more than the others could understand, how sorely she was grieving about the child. Because she said nothing on the subject, it was generally supposed that she had ceased to care. After all, it was an act of charity that she had undertaken, on an impulse, and it was quite as well that she should be relieved of the responsibility.

Hannah used to write regularly, to let her know how Martha was.

Professor Theobald had directed Hannah to do this. The nurse had to admit that he was very good and very devoted to the child. She throve in her new home, and seemed perfectly happy.

Hadria was now delivered over to the tender mercies of her own thoughts.

Her memories burnt, as corrosive acids, in her brain. She could find no shadow of protection from her own contempt. There was not one nook or cranny into which that ruthless self-knowledge could not throw its cruel glare. In the hours of darkness, in the haunted hours of the early morning, she and her memories played horrible games with one another.

She was hunted, they the hunters. There was no thought on which she could rest, no consoling remembrance. She often wished that she had followed her frequent impulse to tell Miss Du Prel the whole wretched story. But she could not force herself to touch the subject through the painful medium of speech. Valeria knew that Hadria was capable of any outward law-breaking, but she would never be prepared for the breaking of her own inner law, the real canon on which she had always laid so much stress. And then she had shrunk from the idea of betraying a secret not solely her own. If she told the story, Valeria would certainly guess the name. She felt a still greater longing that Professor Fortescue should know the facts; he would be able to help her to face it all, and to take the memory into her life and let its pain eat out what was base and evil in her soul. He would give her hope; his experience, his extraordinary sympathy, would enable him to understand it all, better than she did herself. If he would look at this miserable episode unflinchingly, and still hold out his hand to her, as she knew he would, and still believe in her, then she might believe still in herself, in her power of rising after this lost illusion, this shock of self-detection, and of going on again, sadder, and perhaps stronger; but if he thought that since she was capable of a real treason against her G.o.ds, that she was radically unsound at heart, and a ma.s.s of sophistication, then--Hadria buried her face in the pillow. She went through so often now, these paroxysms of agony. Do what she would, look where she might, she saw no relief. She was afraid to trust herself. She was afraid to accept her own suggestions of comfort, if ever a ray of it came to her, lest it should be but another form of self-deception, another proof of moral instability. In her eternal tossing to and fro, in mental anguish, the despairing idea often a.s.sailed her: that after all, it did not matter what she did or thought. She was but an atom of the vast whole, a drop in the ocean of human life.

She had no end or motive in anything. She could go on doing what had to be done to the last, glad if she might bring a little pleasure in so acting, but beyond that, what was there to consider? The wounds to her vanity and her pride ached a little, at times, but the infinitely deeper hurt of disillusion overwhelmed the lesser feeling. She was too profoundly sad to care for that trivial mortification.