Hadria sighed. “I have just been receiving good advice from Mrs. Gordon,” she said, flushing at the remembrance, “and I think if you knew the sort of counsel it was, that you would understand one’s feeling a little fierce and bitter. Oh, not with her, poor woman! She meant it in kindness. But the most cutting thing of all is, that what she said is true!”
“That is exactly the worst thing,” said the Professor, who seemed to have divined the nature of Mrs. Gordon’s advice.
Hadria coloured. It hurt as well as astonished her, that he should guess what had been said.
“Ah! a woman ought to be born without pride, or not at all! I wish to heaven that our fatal sex could be utterly stamped out!”
The Professor smiled, a little sadly, at her vehemence.
“We are accused of being at the bottom of every evil under heaven,” she added, “and I think it is true. That is some consolation, at any rate!”
In spite of her immense reverence for the Professor, she seemed to have grown reckless as to his opinion.
The next few days went strangely, and not altogether comprehensibly. There was a silent warfare between Professor Fortescue and Hubert Temperley.
“I have never in my life before ventured to interfere in such matters,” the Professor said to Miss Du Prel; “but if that fellow marries Hadria, one or both will live to rue it.”
“I think it’s the best thing that could happen to her,” Miss Du Prel declared.
“But they are not suited to one another,” said the Professor.
“Men and women seldom are!”
“Then why——?” the Professor began.
“He is about as near as she will get,” Valeria interrupted. “I will never stand in the way of a girl’s marrying a good, honest man. There is not one chance in ten thousand that Hadria will happen to meet exactly the right person. I have made a mistake in my life. I shall do all in my power to urge her to avoid following in my footsteps.”
It was useless for the Professor to remonstrate.
“I pity Mr. Temperley, though I am so fond of Hadria,” said Miss Du Prel. “If he shatters her illusions, she will certainly shatter his.”
The event that they had been expecting, took place. During one of the afternoon practices, when, for a few minutes, Mrs. Fullerton had left the room, Temperley startled Hadria by an extremely elegant proposal of marriage. He did not seem surprised at her refusal, though he pleaded his cause with no little eloquence. Hadria found it a painful ordeal. She shrank from the ungracious necessity to disappoint what appeared to be a very ardent hope. Happily, the interview was cut short by the entrance of Mr. Fullerton. The old man was not remarkable for finesse. He gave a dismayed “Oh!” He coughed, suppressed a smile, and murmuring some lame enquiry as to the progress of the music, turned and marched out of the room. The sound of laughter was presently heard from the dining-room below.
“Father is really too absurd!” cried Hadria, “there is no tragedy that he is incapable of roaring at!”
“I fear his daughter takes after him,” said Temperley with a tragi-comic smile.
When Hadria next met her father, he asked, with perfect but suspicious gravity, about the music that they had been practising that afternoon. He could not speak too highly of music as a pastime. He regretted having rushed in as he did—it must have been so disturbing to the music. Why not have a notice put up outside the door on these occasions: “Engaged”? Then the meanest intelligence would understand, and the meanest intelligence was really a thing one had to count with, in this blundering world!
CHAPTER X.
HUBERT TEMPERLEY left Drumgarren suddenly. He said that he had business to attend to in town.
“That foolish girl has refused him!” exclaimed Valeria, when she heard of it.
“Thank heaven!” ejaculated Professor Fortescue.
Valeria’s brow clouded. “Why are you so anxious about the matter?”
“Because I know that a marriage between those two would end in misery.”
Valeria spoke very seriously to Hadria on the subject of marriage, urging the importance of it, and the wretchedness of growing old in solitude.
“Better even that, than to grow old in uncongenial company,” said Hadria.
Valeria shrugged her shoulders. “One could go away when it became oppressive,” she suggested, at which Hadria laughed.
“What an ideal existence!”
“Are you still dreaming of an ideal existence?”
“Why not?”
“Well, dream while you may,” said Miss Du Prel. “My time of dreaming was the happiest of all.”
On one occasion, when Hadria and the Professor went to call at Craw Gill, they found Miss Du Prel in the gloomiest of moods. Affection, love?—the very blood and bones of tragedy. Solitude, indifference?—its heart. And if for men the world was a delusion, for women it was a torture-chamber. Nature was dead against them.
“Why do you say that?” asked Hadria.
“Because of the blundering, merciless way she has made us; because of the needs that she has put into our hearts, and the preposterous payment that she demands for their fulfilment; because of the equally preposterous payment she exacts, if we elect to do without that which she teaches us to yearn for.”
Professor Fortescue, admitting the dilemma, laid the blame on the stupidity of mankind.
The discussion was excited, for Valeria would not allow the guilt to be thus shifted. In vain the Professor urged that Nature offers a large choice to humanity, for the developing, balancing, annulling of its various forces of good and evil, and that it is only when the choice is made that heredity steps in and fixes it. This process simulates Necessity, or what we call Nature. “Heredity may be a powerful friend, or a bitter enemy, according as we treat her,” he said.
“Then our sex must have treated her very badly!” cried Miss Du Prel.
“Or our sex must have obliged yours to treat her badly, which comes to the same thing,” said the Professor.
They had agreed to take a walk by the river, towards Ballochcoil. It was hoped that the fresh air and sunshine would cheer Miss Du Prel. The Professor led the conversation to her favourite topic: ancient Greek literature, but this only inspired her to quote the discouraging opinion of the Medea of Euripedes.
The Professor laughed. “I see it is a really bad attack,” he said. “I sympathize. I have these inconsolable moods myself, sometimes.”
They came upon the Greek temple on the cliff-side, and paused there to rest, for a few minutes. It was too cold to linger long under the slender columns. They walked on, till they came in sight of the bare little church of Ballochcoil.
The Professor instinctively turned to compare the two buildings. “The contrast between them is so extraordinary!” he exclaimed.
Nothing could have been more eloquent of the difference in the modes of thought which they respectively represented.
“If only they had not made such fools of their women, I should like to have lived at Athens in the time of Pericles!” exclaimed Hadria.
“I,” said Valeria, “would choose rather the Middle