The Daughters of Danaus Part 37

"It is my attachment to logic that makes me crave for consistency," said Theobald, not over pleased at his friend's attack.

Professor Fortescue stared in surprise.

"But do you really mean to tell me that you think it logical to excuse one abuse by pointing to another?"

"I think that while there are ill-used women and children, it is certainly inconsistent to consider animals," said Theobald.

"It does not occur to you that the spirit in man that permits abuse of power over animals is precisely the same devil-inspired spirit that expresses itself in cruelty towards children. Ah," continued Professor Fortescue, shaking his head, "then you really are one of the many who help wrong to breed wrong, and suffering to foster suffering, all the world over. It is you and those who reason as you reason, who give to our miseries their terrible vitality. What arguments has evil ever given to evil! What shelter and succour cruelty offers eternally to cruelty!"

"I can't attempt to combat this hobby of yours, Fortescue."

"Again a be-littling epithet in place of an argument! But I know of old that on this subject your intellectual ac.u.men deserts you, as it deserts nearly all men. You sink suddenly to lower spiritual rank, and employ reasoning that you would laugh to scorn in connection with every other topic."

"You seem bent on crus.h.i.+ng me," exclaimed Theobald. "And Mrs. Temperley enjoys seeing me mangled. Talk about cruelty to animals! I call this cold-blooded devilry! Mrs. Temperley, come to my rescue!"

"So long as other forms of cruelty can be instanced, Professor Theobald, I don't see how, on your own shewing, you can expect any consistent person to raise a finger to help you," Hadria returned. Theobald laughed.

"But I consider myself too important and valuable to be made the subject of this harsh treatment."

"That is for others to decide. If it affords us amus.e.m.e.nt to torment you, and amus.e.m.e.nt benefits our nerves and digestion, how can you justly object? We must consider the greatest good of the greatest number; and we are twice as numerous as you."

"You are delicious!" he exclaimed. Mrs. Temperley's manner stiffened.

Acute as the Professor was in many directions, he did not appear to notice the change.

His own manner was not above criticism.

"It is strange," said Lady Engleton, in speaking of him afterwards to Hadria, "it is strange that his cleverness does not come to the rescue; but so far from that, I think it leads him a wild dance over boggy ground, like some will-o'-the-wisp, but for whose freakish allurements the good man might have trodden a quiet and inoffensive way."

The only means of procuring the indispensable afternoon tea was to go on to the Red House, which Mrs. Temperley proposed that they should all do.

"And is there no shaking your decision about the Priory, Professor Theobald?" Lady Engleton asked as they descended the steps.

The Professor's quick glance sought Mrs. Temperley's before he answered.

"I confess to feeling less heroic this afternoon."

"Oh, good! We may perhaps have you for a neighbour after all."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Hadria tried to avoid Professor Theobald, but he was not easily avoided.

She frequently met him in her walks. The return of spring had tempted her to resume her old habit of rising with the sun. But she found, what she had feared, that her strength had departed, and she was fatigued instead of invigorated, as of yore. She did not regard this loss in a resigned spirit. Resignation was certainly not her strong point. The vicar's wife and the doctor's wife and the rest of the neighbours compared their woes and weariness over five o'clock tea, and these appeared so many and so severe that Hadria felt half ashamed to count hers at all. Yet why lower the altars of the sane G.o.ddess because her shrine was deserted? Health was health, though all the women of England were confirmed invalids. And with nothing less ought reasonable creatures to be satisfied. As for taking enfeeblement as a natural dispensation, she would as soon regard delirium tremens in that light.

She chafed fiercely against the loss of that blessed sense of well-being and overflowing health, that she used to have, in the old days. She resented the nerve-weariness, the fatigue that she was now more conscious of than ever, with the coming of the spring. The impulse of creative energy broke forth in her. The pearly mornings and the birds'

songs stirred every instinct of expression. The outburst did not receive its usual check. The influences of disenchantment were counteracted by Professor Fortescue's presence. His sympathy was marvellous in its penetration, br.i.m.m.i.n.g the cold hollows of her spirit, as a flooded river fills the tiniest c.h.i.n.ks and corners about its arid banks. He called forth all her natural buoyancy and her exulting sense of life, which was precisely the element which charged her sadness with such a fierce electric quality, when she became possessed by it, as a cloud by storm.

Valeria too was roused by the season.

"What a parable it all is, as old as the earth, and as fresh, each new year, as if a messenger-angel had come straight from heaven, in his home-spun of young green, to tell us that all is well."

If Hadria met Professor Theobald in her rambles, she always cut short her intended walk. She and Valeria with Professor Fortescue wandered together, far and wide. They watched the daily budding greenery, the gleams of daffodils among their sword-blades of leaves, the pus.h.i.+ng of sheaths and heads through the teeming soil, the bursts of suns.h.i.+ne and the absurd childish little gushes of rain, skimming the green country like a frown.

"Truly a time for joy and idleness."

"If only," said Hadria, when Professor Theobald thus grew enthusiastic on the subject, "if only my cook had not given a month's notice."

She would not second his mood, be it what it might. Each day, as they pa.s.sed along the lanes, the pale green had spread, like fire, on the hedges, caught the chestnuts, with their fat buds s.h.i.+ning in the sun, which already was releasing the close-packed leaflets.

Hadria (apparently out of sheer devilry, said Professor Theobald) kept up a running commentary on the season, and on her hapless position, bound to be off on the chase for a cook at this moment of festival. Nor was this all. Crockery, pots and pans, clothes for the children, clothes for herself, were urgently needed, and no experienced person, she declared, could afford to regard the matter as simple because it was trivial.

"One of the ghastliest mistakes in this trivial and laborious world."

Valeria thought that cooks had simply to be advertised for, and they came.

"What _navete!_" exclaimed Hadria. "Helen was persuaded to cross the seas from her Spartan home to set Troy ablaze, and tarnish her fair fame, but it would take twenty sons of Priam to induce a damsel to come over dry land to Craddock Dene, to cook our dinners and retain her character."

"You would almost imply that women don't so very much care about their characters," said Valeria.

"Oh, they do! but sometimes the dulness that an intelligent society has ordained as the cla.s.sic accompaniment to social smiles, gets the better of a select few--Helen _par exemple_."

It frequently happened that Hadria and Miss Du Prel came across Lady Engleton and her guests, in the Priory garden. From being accidental, the meetings had become intentional.

"I like to fancy we are fugitives--like Boccaccio's merry company--from the plague of our daily prose, to this garden of sweet poetry!" cried Miss Du Prel.

They all kindled at the idea. Valeria made some fanciful laws that she said were to govern the little realm. Everyone might express himself freely, and all that he said would be held as sacred, as if it were in confidence. To speak ill or slightingly of anyone, was forbidden. All local and practical topics were to be dropped, as soon as the moss-grown griffins who guarded the Garden of Forgetfulness were pa.s.sed.

Hadria was incorrigibly flippant about the banishment of important local subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on a level with the Spartan boy, if not above him.

Valeria might scoff, as those proverbially did who never felt a wound.

Hadria found a certain lack of tender feeling among the happy few who had no such tragic burdens to sustain.

Not only were these prosaic subjects banished from within the cincture of the gentle griffins, but also the suspicions, spites, petty jealousies, vulgar curiosities, and all the indefinable little darts and daggers that fly in the social air, destroying human sympathy and good-will. Each mind could expand freely, no longer on the defensive against the rain of small stabs. There grew up a delicate, and chivalrous code among the little group who met within the griffins'

territory.

"It is not for us to say that, individually, we transcend the average of educated mortals," said Professor Theobald, "but I do a.s.sert that collectively we soar high above that depressing standard."

Professor Fortescue observed that whatever might be said about their own little band, it was a strange fact that bodies of human beings were able to produce, by union, a condition far above or far below the average of their separate values. "There is something chemical and explosive in human relations.h.i.+ps," he said.

These meetings stood out as a unique experience in the memory of all who took part in them. Chance had brought them to pa.s.s, and they refused to answer to the call of a less learned magician.

Lady Engleton and Mrs. Temperley alternately sent tea and fruit to the terrace, on the days of meeting, and there the little company would spend the afternoon serenely, surrounded by the beauties of the garden with its enticing avenues, its chaunting birds, its flushes of bloom, and its rich delicious scents.

"Why do we, in the nineteenth century, starve ourselves of these delicate joys?" cried Valeria. "Why do we so seldom leave our stupid pre-occupations and open our souls to the sun, to the spring, to the gentle invitations of gardens, to the charm of conversation? We seem to know nothing of the serenities, the urbanities of life."

"We live too fast; we are too much troubled about outward things--cooks and dressmakers, Mrs. Temperley," said Professor Theobald.