“You would have thought that when Miss Du Prel and Professor Fortescue arrived on the scene, I had about enough privileges; but no, Destiny, waking up at last to her duties, remembers that I have a maniacal passion for music, and that this has been starved. So she hastens to provide for me a fellow maniac, a brother in Beethoven, who comes and fills my world with music and my soul with——But I must not rave. The music is still in my veins; I am not in a fit state to write reasonable letters. Here comes Mr. Temperley for our practice. No more for the present.”
Temperley would often talk to Hadria of his early life, and about his mother and sister. Of his mother he spoke with great respect and affection, the respect perhaps somewhat conventional, and allowing one to see, through its meshes, the simple fact that she was looked up to as a good and dutiful parent, who had worshipped her son from his birth, and perfectly fulfilled his ideas of feminine excellency. From her he had learnt the lesser Catechism and the Lord’s Prayer, since discarded, but useful in their proper season. Although he had ceased to be an orthodox Christian, he felt that he was the better for having been trained in that creed. He had a perfect faith in the system which had produced himself.
“I think you would like my mother,” said Temperley.
Hadria could scarcely dispute this.
“And I am sure she would like you.”
“On that point I cannot offer an opinion.”
“Don’t you ever come to town?” he asked.
“We go to Edinburgh occasionally,” she replied with malice, knowing that he meant London.
He set her right.
“No; my father hates London, and mother never goes away without him.”
“What a pity! But do you never visit friends in town?”
“Yes; my sister and I have spent one or two seasons in Park Lane, with some cousins.”
“Why don’t you come this next season? You ought to hear some good music.”
The tête-a-tête was interrupted by the Professor. Temperley looked annoyed. It struck Hadria that Professor Fortescue had a very sad expression when he was not speaking. He seemed to her lonely, and in need of the sort of comfort that he brought so liberally to others.
Although he had talked to Hadria about a thousand topics in which they were both interested, there had been nothing personal in their conversation. He was disposed, at times, to treat her in a spirit of affectionate banter.
“To think that I should ever have dared to offer this young lady acidulated drops!” he exclaimed on one occasion, when Hadria was looking flushed and perturbed.
“Ah! shall I ever forget those acidulated drops!” she cried, brightening.
“You don’t mean to say that you would stoop to them now?”
“It is not one’s oldest friends who always know one best,” she replied demurely.
“I shall test you,” he said.
And on that same day, he walked into Ballochcoil, and when he returned, he offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked on, enjoying his idleness with the zest of a hard worker. The twinkle of amusement faded gradually from his face, and the sadness that Hadria had noticed the day before, returned to his eyes. She was leaning against the dyke, pensively enjoying her festive meal. The dark fresh blue of her gown, and the unwonted tinge of colour in her cheeks, gave a vigorous and healthful impression, in harmony with the weather-beaten stones and the windy breadth of the northern landscape.
The Professor studied the face with a puzzled frown. He flattered himself that he was a subtle physiognomist, but in this case, he would not have dared to pronounce judgment. Danger and difficulty might have been predicted, for it was a moving face, one that could not be looked upon quite coldly. And the Professor had come to the conclusion, from his experience of life, that the instinct of the average human being whom another has stirred to strong emotion, is to fasten upon and overwhelm that luckless person, to burden him with responsibilities, to claim as much of time, and energy, and existence, as can in any way be wrung from him, careless of the cost to the giver.
Professor Fortescue noticed, as Hadria looked down, a peculiar dreaminess of expression, and something indefinable, which suggested a profoundly emotional nature. At present, the expression was softened. That this softness was not altogether trustworthy, however, the Professor felt sure, for he had seen, at moments, when something had deeply stirred her, expressions anything but soft come into her face. He thought her capable of many things of which the well-brought-up young Englishwoman is not supposed to dream. It seemed to him, that she had at least two distinct natures that were at war with one another: the one greedy and pleasure-loving, careless and even reckless; the other deep-seeing and aspiring. But which of these two tendencies would experience probably foster?
“I wonder what you like best, next to acidulated drops,” he said at length, with one of his half-bantering smiles.
“There are few things in this wide world that can be mentioned in the same breath with them, but toffy also has its potency upon the spirit.”
“I like not this mocking tone.”
“Then I will not mock,” she said.
“Yes, Hadria,” he went on meditatively, “you have grown up, if an old friend may make such remarks, very much as I expected, from the promise of your childhood. You used to puzzle me even then.”
“Do I puzzle you now?” she asked.
“Inexpressibly!”
“How amusing! But how?”
“One can generally see at a glance, or pretty soon, the general trend of a character. But not with you. Nothing that I might hear of you in the future, would very much surprise me. I should say to myself, ‘Yes, the germ was there.’ ”
Hadria paled a little. “Either good or bad you mean?”
“Well——”
“Yes, I understand.” She drew herself together, crossing her arms, and looking over the hills, with eyes that burned with a sort of fear and defiance mingled. It was a singular expression, which the Professor noted with a sense of discomfort.
Hadria slowly withdrew her eyes from the horizon, and bent them on the ground.
“You must have read some of my thoughts,” she said. “I often wonder how it is, that the world can drill women into goodness at all.” She raised her head, and went on in a low, bitter tone: “I often wonder why it is, that they don’t, one and all, fling up their rôles and revenge themselves to the best of their ability—intentionally, I mean—upon the world that makes them live under a permanent insult. I think, at times, that I should thoroughly enjoy spending my life in sheer, unmitigated vengeance, and if I did”—she clenched her hands, and her eyes blazed—“if I did, I would not do my work by halves!”
“I am sure you would not,” said the Professor dryly.
“But I shall not do anything of the kind,” she added in a different tone; “women don’t. They always try