“We have been all over the house,” said Hadria hastily, with an anxious glance at Miss Du Prel, whom she half expected to rise and walk out of the room. It must surely be the first time in her life that her presence had not been received as an honour!
“It is all very old and shabby,” said Mrs. Fullerton. “I hope you will take some tea; if you have walked far to-day, you must be cold and in need of something to eat.”
“Oh no, no, thank you,” returned the visitor; “I ought to be getting back to Ballochcoil to-night.”
“To Ballochcoil!” exclaimed mother and daughter in simultaneous dismay. “But it is nearly seven miles off, and the sun is down. You can’t get back to-night on foot.”
“Dear me, can I not? I suppose I forgot all about getting back, in the interest of the scenery.”
“What an extraordinary person!” thought Mrs. Fullerton.
Miss Du Prel glanced helplessly at Hadria; rising then and looking out of the window at the dusk, which had come on so rapidly. “Dear me, how dark it has grown! Still I think I can walk it, or perhaps I can get a fly at some inn on the way.”
“Can we offer you a carriage?” asked Mrs. Fullerton.
“Oh no, thank you; that is quite unnecessary. I have already intruded far too long; I shall wend my way back, or what might perhaps be better, I could get a lodging at the farmhouse down the road. I am told that they put travellers up sometimes.”
Miss Du Prel hurried off, evidently chilled by Mrs. Fullerton’s freezing courtesy. Hadria, disregarding her mother’s glance of admonition, accompanied the visitor to the farm of Craw Gill, having first given directions to old Maggie to put together a few things that Miss Du Prel would require for the night. Hadria’s popularity at the farm, secured her new friend a welcome. Mrs. McEwen was a fine example of the best type of Scottish character; warm of heart, honest of purpose, and full of a certain unconscious poetry, and a dignity that lingers still in districts where the railway whistle is not too often heard. Miss Du Prel seemed to nestle up to the good woman, as a child to its mother after some scaring adventure. Mrs. McEwen was recommending a hot water-bottle and gruel in case of a chill, when Hadria wended her way homeward to brave her mother’s wrath.
CHAPTER VI.
“I CANNOT make you realize that you are an ignorant girl who knows nothing of the world, and that it is necessary you should accept my experience, and condescend to be guided by my wishes. You put me in a most unpleasant position this afternoon, forcing me to receive a person whom I have never been introduced to, or heard of——”
“Valeria Du Prel has been heard of throughout the English-speaking world,” said Hadria rhetorically.
“So much the worse,” retorted Mrs. Fullerton. “No nicely brought up woman is ever heard of outside her own circle.”
Hadria recalled a similar sentiment among the ancient Greeks, and thought how hard an old idea dies.
“She might have been some awful person, some unprincipled adventuress, and that I believe is what she is. What was she prowling about the back of our house for, I should like to know?”
“I suspect she wanted to steal chickens or something,” Hadria was goaded into suggesting, and the interview ended painfully.
When Hadria went to Craw Gill, next morning, to enquire for Miss Du Prel, Mrs. McEwen said that the visitor had breakfasted in bed. The farmer’s wife also informed Miss Fullerton that the lady had decided to stay on at Craw Gill, for some time. She had been looking out for a retreat of the kind.
“She seems a nice-like body,” said Mrs. McEwen, “and I see no objection to the arrangement.”
Hadria’s heart beat faster. Could it be possible that Valeria du Prel was to be a near neighbour? It seemed too good to be true!
When Miss Du Prel came down in her walking garments, she greeted Hadria with a certain absence of mind, which smote chill upon the girl’s eagerness.
“I wanted to know if you were comfortable, if I could do anything for you.” Miss Du Prel woke up.
“Oh no, thank you; you are very kind. I am most comfortable—at least—it is very strange, but I have lost my keys and my umbrella and my handbag—I can’t think what I can have done with them. Oh, and my purse is gone too!”
Whereupon Mrs. McEwen in dismay, Mr. McEwen (who then appeared), the maid, and Hadria, hunted high and low for the missing properties, which were brought to light, one by one, in places where their owner had already “thoroughly searched,” and about which she had long since abandoned hope.
She received them with mingled joy and amazement, and having responded to Mrs. McEwen’s questions as to what she would like for dinner, she proposed to Hadria that they should take a walk together.
Hadria beamed. Miss Du Prel seemed both amused and gratified by her companion’s worship, and the talk ran on, in a light and pleasant vein, differing from the talk of the ordinary mortal, Hadria considered, as champagne differs from ditch-water.
In recording it for Algitha’s benefit that evening, Hadria found that she could not reproduce the exhilarating quality, or describe the influence of Miss Du Prel’s personality. It was as if, literally, a private and particular atmosphere had encompassed her. She was “alive all round,” as her disciple asserted.
Her love of Nature was intense. Hadria had never before realized that she had been without full sympathy in this direction. She awoke to a strange retrospective sense of solitude, feeling a new pity for the eager little child of years ago, who had wandered up to the garret, late at night, to watch the moonlight spread its white shroud over the hills.
With every moment spent in the society of Valeria Du Prel, new and clearer light seemed to Hadria, to be thrown upon all the problems of existence; not by any means only through what Miss Du Prel directly said, but by what she implied, by what she took for granted, by what she omitted to say.
“It seems like a home-coming from long exile,” Hadria wrote to her sister. “I have been looking through a sort of mist, or as one looks at one’s surroundings before quite waking. Now everything stands out sharp and cut, as objects do in the clear air of the South. Ah me, the South! Miss Du Prel has spent much of her life there, and my inborn smouldering passion for it, is set flaming by her descriptions! You remember that brief little fortnight that we spent with mother and father in Italy? I seem now to be again under the spell of the languorous airs, the cloudless blue, the white palaces, the grey olive groves, and the art, the art! Oh, Algitha, I must go to the South soon, soon, or I shall die of home sickness! Miss Du Prel says that this is only one side of me breaking out: that I am northern at heart. I think it is true, but meanwhile the thought of the South possesses me. I confess I think mother had some cause to be alarmed when she saw Miss Du Prel, if she wants to keep us in a chastened mood, at home. It seems as if all of me were in high carnival. Life is raised to a higher power. I feel nearly omnipotent. Epics and operas are child’s play to me! It is true I have produced comparatively few; but, oh, those that are to come! I feel fit for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. I think of the two, I rather lean to the manslaughter. Oh, I don’t mean it in the facetious sense! that would be a terrible downfall from my present altitudes. To such devices the usual wretched girl, who has never drawn rebellious breath, or listened to the discourses of Valeria Du Prel, has to turn for a living, or to keep ennui at bay. But I, no, the inimical sex may possess their souls